Second-Best Husband

Her parents had only met their new neighbour briefly, but Sara had gained the impression that her mother had rather taken him to her heart.

‘All on his own living in that great draughty place,’ was what she had said at Christmas, adding that she had invited him to join them for Christmas Day, but that he had apparently already made arrangements to spend the holiday with friends in the north-east of the country.

‘He’s not married, and has no family to speak of. Both his parents are dead, and his brother lives in Australia.’

How like her mother to wheedle so much information out of a stranger so very quickly, Sara reflected fondly. Not out of nosiness; her mother wasn’t like that. She was one of those people who was naturally concerned for and caring about her fellow man.

What would she have made of Ian had Sara ever taken him home? It came to her with a small unpleasant jolt of surprise that she knew without even having to consider the matter that her parents would not have taken to Ian; that he in turn would have treated them with that slightly disdainful contempt she had seen him use to such effect with anyone he considered neither important enough nor interesting enough to merit his attention.

She bit her lip, worrying at it without realising what she was doing.

But Ian wasn’t really like that. He was fun, clever, quick-witted…not…not shallow, vain and self-important. Or was he? Had she in her love for him been guilty of wearing rose-coloured glasses, of seeing in him the qualities she wanted to see and ignoring those which reflected less well on him, which actually existed?

If he was really the man she had wanted to believe he was, had allowed herself to believe he was, would he have been attracted to a woman like Anna, outwardly attractive in an obvious and rather overdone sort of way, but inwardly…?

Sara bit her lip again. She had no right to criticise Anna just because she… No doubt Ian saw a side of her that wasn’t discernible to her, another woman…a woman moreover who loved him. Jealousy wasn’t an attractive emotion, and she was hardly an impartial critic, she reminded herself sternly. And, anyway, what did it matter what she thought of Anna? Ian loved her. He had told her so himself.

Her body tensed as she remembered that awful day. A Monday morning. Ian had been away for the weekend to stay with ‘friends’. To stay with Anna, she had realised later. He had arrived halfway through the morning glowing with enthusiasm and excitement.

It had happened at last, he had told Sara exuberantly. He had at last met the woman with whom he wanted to spend the rest of his life…a woman like no other…

She remembered how she had listened, sick at heart, her body still as she forbade it to reveal the anguish she was suffering, her face averted from him as she fought to control her shock, her pain.

And then, when she had actually met Anna for the first time, she had realised what a fool she had been to ever imagine that Ian might come to love her. She and Anna were so completely different from one another. She was tall and slim, thin almost; Anna was shorter, and all voluptuous curves. She was shy, withdrawn almost, quiet and rather reserved; Anna was a self-publicist with no inhibitions about singing her own praises, advancing her own talents.

Where she preferred restraint, quiet clothes in classic colours and styles, Anna wore the kind of expensive designer outfits calculated to draw people’s attention.

Watching the way Ian looked at her, seeing the desire, the admiration in his eyes as he followed Anna’s every movement, Sara had recognised how truly foolish she had been in ever allowing herself to hope that there might come a day when Ian would turn to her, would look at her.

She was simply not his type. Oh, he might like her…he might praise her work, he might even flatter her as he had done over the years…and she might have been silly enough to use that flattery to build herself a tower of hope that any sensible woman would soon have realised had no foundation at all; but the reality was that, whether Anna had arrived in his life or not, Ian would never have found her, Sara, desirable.

Face it, she derided herself bitterly now. You just aren’t the kind of woman that men do desire.

She remembered how often her sister had teased her about her aloofness, had told her that she ought to relax more, have fun… ‘You always look so prim and proper,’ Jacqui had told her. ‘So neat and perfect that no man would ever dare to ruffle your hair or smudge your lipstick.’

She had wanted to protest then that that wasn’t true, but had been too hurt to do so. It wasn’t her fault if she wasn’t the curly, pretty, vivacious type.

She cringed inwardly, remembering how Anna had mocked her, telling her, ‘Honestly, you’re unbelievable. Quite the archetypal frustrated spinster type, dotingly in love with a man she can never have. I suppose you’re still even a virgin. Ian thinks it’s a huge joke, a woman of your age who hasn’t had a lover; but then, as he said, what red-blooded man would want you?’

Anna had smiled a cruel little smile as she casually threw these comments to her, malice glinting in her light blue eyes as they focused on Sara’s pale, set face.

Now, as she recalled her comments, Sara’s hands tightened on the steering-wheel, her knuckles gleaming white with tension. Up until this moment, she hadn’t allowed herself to think about that. To think about Anna and Ian— Ian whom she had loved so much and for so long—laughing about her, making fun of her.

She shuddered sickly, a rigour of tension and pain, and yet in the middle of her anguish there was still room for a small, cold voice that asked why, when she had had such a high opinion of Ian, she was not immediately and instantly rejecting the very idea that he would be so cruel, so callous about anyone? Never mind about her, someone whom he had known for so long, someone whom he had claimed to admire and care about.

She could accept that he couldn’t love her; why should he? Love wasn’t something that could be summoned on demand, nor banished equally easily, as she had good cause to know; but surely the Ian she had admired and liked so much, the Ian she had thought she had known so well, would never, ever have made fun of her, laughed so cruelly and tauntingly about her with anyone, even if that person was the woman he was going to marry. Surely the Ian she had thought she had known would have had the consideration, the kindness, the sheer compassion for even those members of the human race who were not known to him personally not to be able to entertain such small-mindedness.

The Ian she had thought she had known, even if he had known about her feelings, her love, would never have been able to behave in the way that Anna had described to her, and yet, when Anna had thrown her taunts at her, instead of immediately and automatically being able to rebuff them as being totally unworthy of Ian, totally impossible for a man of his calibre, all she had been able to do was to stand there sickly acknowledging the extent of her own folly, her own self-deceit.

And yet even now it wasn’t Ian she hated. It wasn’t Ian she despised.

No, those bitter, acid emotions were reserved for herself. Which was why she had had to come away. She dared not allow herself to weaken, to become even more foolish and contemptible by staying in London where it would be all too fatally easy to find some excuse to make contact with Ian…some excuse…any excuse…and she wasn’t going to allow that to happen. Dared not allow that to happen.

Thank goodness she had her parents to come home to. They knew nothing about her feelings for Ian; her mother always asked her about her life in London, about whether or not she had met ‘anyone special’, and Sara knew how disappointed she was that she too hadn’t married and had children, like her sister—not because she wanted more grandchildren but because she knew how much Sara herself loved them.

She glanced at her watch. Soon she would be home. Only another few miles to Wrexall, the village where she had been brought up. She loved this part of the country with its rolling hills, its views of the distant Welsh borders. Ludlow with its historic past wasn’t very far away, and she had grown up on the legends and myths of the countryside’s old and bloody history.

Until his retirement, her father had been a partner in a solicitors’ practice in Ludlow. It had been working in his office in the school holidays which had first given her the enthusiasm to train as a secretary. Her original ambition had been to perfect her languages and then to work abroad, possibly in Brussels, but then she had met Ian and everything had changed, and it was too late now to wonder what her life might have been if their paths had never crossed.

As she drove through the quiet village it was just growing dusk, lights coming on in the cottages that lined the road.

An anticipatory feeling warmed her heart, momentarily dispelling the aching coldness which had invaded it recently. No matter how mature she was supposed to be, she had never lost the feeling of happiness she always experienced at coming home.

Not even working for Ian had totally compensated her for seeing so little of her parents, her sister, her old friends—although most of her school-friends had moved away now; this part of the country couldn’t provide them with the means to earn a satisfactory living. And her sister had moved away as well. She and her husband now lived in Dorset.

As she turned off the main road and into the lane that led to her parents’ house, she felt her eyes sting a little. Heavens, the last thing she wanted to do was to break down in tears the moment she saw her parents. If she did that, her mother was bound to guess that something was wrong. She might have come home to lick her wounds, so to speak, but she fully intended to lick them in private.

She turned in through the open gates and drove up to the house, frowning a little as she saw that no lights were on, and then shrugging to herself. Her parents were probably in the kitchen. Her mother would be preparing supper and her father would be sitting at the kitchen table reading his evening paper.

Smiling to herself, she stopped her car and got out, hurrying down the side of the house.

However, when she turned the corner, there was no light on in the kitchen, no sign of life anywhere, and, worse, the garage door was open and her parents’ car was missing.

Could they perhaps have gone shopping? She frowned to herself, chewing on her bottom lip. Unlikely, surely…

She was just beginning to wonder where on earth they could be when she heard the sound of a car coming up the lane.

However, as she hurried back to the front of the house, her relief evaporated as she saw that the vehicle which was now stationary at the bottom of the drive wasn’t her parents’ sedate saloon car, but a battered Land Rover.

The man swinging himself out of it was unfamiliar to her. Tall and powerfully built, with thick dark hair which looked as though it was overdue for a cut, he was frowning as he saw her.

He was wearing a pair of faded, worn jeans, ripped over one knee, and an equally ancient checked shirt. His Wellington boots were muddy and so were his hands, Sara noticed as he came towards her and told her, ‘If you’re looking for the Brownings, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. They’ve gone to Dorset. Apparently their daughter went into premature labour late yesterday afternoon, and their son-in-law asked if they could possibly get down there to help out…’

He stopped abruptly, his frown deepening as he demanded, ‘You aren’t going to faint, are you?’

Faint? Her? Sara have him a quelling, icy look. Never in her life had anyone accused her before of looking like the kind of woman who was likely to faint. In any other circumstances she might almost have found the fact that he had so obviously misjudged her slightly amusing. Men usually found her efficiency, her self-sufficiency rather off-putting, and the suggestion that he considered her weak and vulnerable enough to resort to something so ridiculously Victorian as fainting simply because her parents weren’t here made her reflect inwardly that, whatever else this man was, he was certainly no expert on the female sex.

‘No, I’m not going to faint,’ she told him crisply. ‘I was just rather shocked to discover that my parents aren’t here.’

‘Your parents!’ He had been about to turn away, but now he swung round again and studied her with open curiosity. ‘You’re Sara!’ he pronounced at last, looking at her with such obvious bewilderment that Sara wondered what on earth he had been told about her to make him view the reality of her with so much obvious disbelief.

‘Yes, I’m Sara,’ she agreed coolly, and then, remembering that she was back home now and not in London and that there was no need for her to be defensive and withdrawn, and moreover that this man was obviously well known to her parents, she added, ‘And you must be…’

‘Stuart Delaney,’ he told her, extending his hand, and then withdrawing it as they both looked at the mud encrusting it. ‘I’ve just been heeling in some young trees. I was on my way back home to get cleaned up when I saw your car. I knew your folks were away and so I thought I’d better just stop and take a look. Did they know you were…?’

Sara shook her head.

‘No, I…’ She broke off, unwilling to explain that her return home had been an impulse decision.

So this was her parents’ new neighbour, the man who had bought the old manor house. He was younger than she had expected, somewhere in his early thirties, she judged, a tough-looking individual and yet one who evidently had far more neighbourliness in him than his appearance had led her to suspect, if he had been concerned enough to stop and see who was visiting her parents’ home.

‘Well, I’d better be on my way, then. You’ve got a key for the house, have you? Only your parents left a spare with me…’

‘Yes, I’ve got my own key,’ Sara assured him, thinking again how deceptive appearances could be. From the look of him she would hardly have expected him to be concerned about her, or about anyone else for that matter. He looked too hard, too remote…not like Ian, who looked so much more human, so much more approachable. And yet, in the same circumstances, would Ian have concerned himself about the possible plight of a stranger?

She started to turn away from him, aware that she was suddenly shockingly close to tears. To have come so far and then found that her parents weren’t here. Only now was she prepared to admit how much she had counted on their being at home…on the soothing balm of their love, their quiet, unfussy concern, their…their presence. Well, it was far too late now to turn her car round and drive back to London, even if she had wanted to do so, which she did not. But the prospect of spending the night in an empty house with nothing to do other than fight against dwelling morbidly on everything that had happened… She started to move towards the house, and then blinked as the gravel beneath her feet started to heave and roll in the most peculiar way, rather as though it were water and not gravel at all. She was feeling oddly light-headed as well, and an irritated male voice seemed to be calling her name, but it came from so far away that it was little more than a dull rumble, like hearing sound through a seashell. Even so, she tried to respond to it, to turn in its direction, but everything was going dark…black… Too late she recognised that it had perhaps not been sensible of her not to have eaten anything before she left London earlier in the day, but she had been in such a fret of anxiety to get home, and anyway her appetite had completely deserted her over these last few days.

She tried to say something, to reassure the shadowy figure coming towards her that she was perfectly all right, but the words wouldn’t come and she was spinning wildly in a black vortex of darkness that refused to let her go.

She was, she recognised in shocked surprise, despite all her claims to the contrary, about to faint.

CHAPTER TWO

‘BUT I never faint!’

Sara frowned, recognising her own voice. She opened her eyes and discovered that she was lying in the back of a Land Rover, and moreover that there was something hard and lumpy under her spine. She tried to move, but a pair of large male hands restrained her.

‘Not so fast, otherwise you’ll be off again. Keep still for a moment.’

‘Off again…’ What on earth did he think she was? she wondered indignantly. ‘I never faint,’ she repeated firmly. ‘And if you would just let go of me…’

She tried to sit up, to struggle against him, and gasped in shock at the way her head started to swim the moment she lifted it from the floor.

‘Keep still. You’ll feel better if you do.’

The deep voice, so calm, so authoritative, ought to have annoyed her, but for some reason it had exactly the opposite effect, relaxing her tense muscles, soothing both her body and her mind so that this time she stayed where she was, closing her eyes, conscious of the hard fingers circling her wrist, monitoring her pulse.

‘Now try breathing slowly and deeply. Not too deeply…’

Again, half to her own astonishment, she did as she was instructed, finding it easy somehow to match her breathing to the even cadences of the voice instructing her.

‘Feeling any better?’

This time, when she opened her eyes and nodded, the world didn’t spin round her but stayed stationary.

‘It’s my own fault,’ she announced as she sat up, a little more cautiously and far more successfully this time. She was, she realised, in the back of Stuart Delaney’s Land Rover. It smelled of fresh clean earth, of rain and growing things. ‘I didn’t have anything to eat before I left London.’

No need to tell him that she had not in fact eaten properly for several days, not merely several hours.

She winced a little as she had an unwanted mental vision of Anna’s soft femininity, her curves, the fluid contours of her flesh, so much a contrast to her own more angular slenderness. Thin and dried-up, that was how Anna had dismissively described her, making her feel somehow desiccated, withered, old almost, even though Anna was in actual fact two years her senior.

Men didn’t like thin women; they liked curves, softness, the ripe promise of a female body that was alluringly shaped; and she tensed a little, waiting for Stuart Delaney to make some comment about her thinness, but instead to her relief he merely commented almost absently, ‘Well, we all do it at times, when we’ve more important things on our minds. Done it myself. In fact…’

She was sitting up now, ruefully conscious of the fact that the dirty interior of the Land Rover wouldn’t have done her cream suit much good.

‘Look, I was just on my way home. I haven’t eaten myself yet. Since your parents aren’t here, why don’t you join me? Mrs Gibbons from the village will have been up today to give the place a clean. She normally leaves me something to eat, and in view of the hospitality I’ve received from your parents…’

It would be foolish to refuse his offer. This wasn’t London, where a woman had to be wary of invitations and approaches from any man on such a short acquaintance. And besides, she already knew from her mother’s phone calls how much her parents liked their new neighbour.

The alternative was remaining at home on her own, brooding, remembering…

‘Well, if you’re sure you don’t mind…’

‘If I minded, I wouldn’t have suggested it in the first place.’

There was more than a touch of brusqueness in his comment, but instead of feeling rebuffed by it Sara found that it was refreshing almost. He was so very different from Ian. Ian, whose charm had masked a cruelty, a callousness that had left her feeling as though she had been mauled and left sore and bleeding when a harder, cleaner blow would have been kinder.

‘Fine. I’ll follow you up to the house in my own car, shall I?’ she suggested, but Stuart Delaney shook his head.

‘No, better not… I doubt that you’re likely to faint again, but it’s best not to take the chance.’

‘Oh, but that means you’ll have to bring me back,’ she began to protest, but he had apparently stopped listening to her, and was walking to the rear of the Land Rover, jumping out and heading for the driver’s door.

Sara started to follow him. She was no stranger to travelling in the back of beaten-up old Land Rovers, and had done so on many occasions during her teens, and so she knew from experience just how uncomfortable a ride she was likely to have if she stayed where she was. No, she would be far more comfortable in the passenger seat.

As she reached the rear of the vehicle, she slipped off her high heels and prepared to struggle down to the ground with the handicap of her straight skirt, but to her amazement Stuart, who she thought had left her to make her own way out of the Land Rover, was waiting for her, calmly scooping her up in his arms.

‘Please…there’s no need for you to do this,’ she protested breathlessly, clutching her shoes with one hand and discovering very quickly that it was necessary to cling to the front of his shirt with the other.

It was very difficult to sound cool and businesslike with her head tucked into his shoulder and her fingertips inadvertently brushing the warm bare flesh of his throat.

It disconcerted her to realise how oddly aware of him she was, how very quickly and unexpectedly her breathing had altered to become shallow and quick as her body registered the proximity of his.

A look of startled bewilderment darkened her eyes, causing her to immediately close them as her body tensed against the sensations she was experiencing.

It was just the total unexpectedness of being held like this, she told herself. How long had it been since a man had picked her up and held her in his arms?

How long had it been since she had experienced this kind of male-to-female intimacy in any form at all, no matter how non-sexual?

She tried to remember, to conjure up some corresponding mental image to offset the peculiar and unwanted sensations that were causing her such discomfort and embarrassment, and could not do so.

Oh, there had been occasions in her teens…boys…clumsy, awkward kisses and embraces; but she had always been on the shy side…and then since she had met Ian…

As he felt her tension, Stuart stopped moving, and told her equably, ‘It’s OK, I’m not going to drop you. Don’t forget I’m used to carrying half-grown trees about, and if you’re thinking they don’t need to be treated as fragile and easily damaged, then you’re wrong. There is nothing more vulnerable and open to damage than a young tree removed from its habitat.

‘A moment’s carelessness, and the bruising and root damage which can be caused can prove fatal.’

Sara found she was battling against a half-hysterical desire to start giggling. Here she was, worrying about that startling frisson of physical sensation being in Stuart’s arms had aroused within her, tensing herself against his answering awareness of it, only to discover that in her rescuer’s eyes she was simply a sapling he was carrying from one place to another; that he was neither aware of nor concerned about the physical intimacy of their bodies in any sexual way at all and that he was totally oblivious to that tiny shudder of sensation that had run through her, coiling the muscles of her stomach, making her aware of the disconcerting hardening of her nipples.

It had been a long time since her body had reacted like that, she recognised, as he balanced her against him and eased her into the passenger seat of the Land Rover. Once, all it had needed to set her body on fire with aching need had been for Ian to walk into the same room; simply to hear his voice, to register his presence had been sufficient. But just lately… She frowned, trying to remember just when it had last been that her body had reacted physically to his presence, to his sexuality, and acknowledged that she could not do so. Which was strange, surely, when she loved him…