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‘I’m just going down to the village to do some shopping and pick up your father’s prescription,’ Mary told her when Sapphire asked if there was anything she could do. ‘Want to come with me?’
‘No, I’ll stay here if you don’t mind.’ Sapphire frowned. ‘I would have thought the doctor would call every day, in view of Dad’s illness.’
Mary eyed her sympathetically. ‘There’s really no point now,’ she said gently. ‘Are you sure you won’t come with me?’
‘No … no thanks.’
‘Well I’ll be on my way then. I want to call at the butchers, your father loves shepherd’s pie and I thought I’d make one for him tonight.’
How could Mary be so matter of fact, Sapphire wondered, watching the other woman driving away, but then as a nurse she would be used to death; she would have learned to accept the inevitable. As she had not, Sapphire acknowledged, but then she had had so little time to come to terms with the reality of her father’s condition. Blake had broken the news to her almost brutally. The way he did everything. Unable to settle to anything she went up to her father’s room, but he was asleep. Not wanting to disturb his rest she left again. What on earth could she do with herself? Perhaps she ought to have gone with Mary. She wandered aimlessly into the yard, bending to pet the sheepdog that suddenly emerged from the field. Tam, the shepherd followed close behind, a smile splitting his weather-seamed face as he recognised her. Tam had been her father’s shepherd for as long as she could remember. He had seemed old to her when she was a child, and she wondered how old he was. He was one of a dying breed; a man who preferred the solitude of the hills, spending most of the summer in his small cottage watching over his flocks. The rich acres of farmland in the valley were given over to crops now, but her father still maintained his flock of sheep on his hill pastures.
‘Weather’s going to turn bad,’ Tam told her laconically, ‘Ought to get the sheep down off the hills, especially the ewes. Suppose I’d better get over to Sefton and see Blake,’ he added morosely, whistling to his dog.
Watching them go Sapphire realised the extent of Blake’s influence on Flaws Farm. No wonder he didn’t want to lose the land. He probably looked on it as his own already. She had wanted to protest to Tam that her father was the one to ask about the sheep, but instinctively she had known that Tam wouldn’t have understood. What she considered to be Blake’s interference would be taken as good neighbourliness by the old shepherd.
As she walked back into the kitchen the ‘phone was ringing, and she answered it automatically.
‘Sapphire, is that you?’
‘Yes, Blake.’
‘I forgot to mention it this morning, but I’ll be round about seven-thirty tonight to take you out to dinner, and before you say anything, I didn’t plan it. It was your father who mentioned it; he seemed to think some sort of celebration was in order, and I think he’s probably right. If we’re seen dining together, it won’t come as too much of a surprise to people when they know we’re back together.’
‘Surprise? Don’t you mean shock?’ Sapphire gritted into the receiver. ‘Especially where your female friends are concerned Blake.’
‘If I didn’t know better I might almost believe that you’re jealous.’
‘Funny,’ Sapphire snapped back. ‘I never realised you had such a powerful imagination. I must go now Blake,’ she lied, ‘Dad’s calling me.’
‘See you tonight.’
She hung up quickly leaving her staring at the black receiver. How could her life have changed so radically and so fast. One moment she had been looking forward to her holiday with Alan; to their relationship perhaps deepening from friendship into marriage, convinced that she had laid the ghosts in her past, and now, so swiftly that she could scarcely comprehend even now how it had happened, her life had somehow become entangled with Blake’s again, but this time she was older and wiser. She had been burned once—so badly that there was no way she was ever going to approach the fire again.
But fire has a way of luring its victims, she acknowledged, bitterly, just like love.
CHAPTER FOUR
SHE WAS READY when Blake arrived. He gave her black-clad body a cursory examination as he stepped into the kitchen and then drawled, ‘Mourning, Sapphire?’
‘It was the only dress I had with me.’
Again those golden eyes studied her body, but this time there was no mocking warmth to light their amber depths as Blake said coolly, ‘You should have told me, I’ve still got a wardrobe-full of your things up at the house, and by the looks of you you could still get into them.’
He made it sound more of an insult than a compliment, and Sapphire turned away so that he wouldn’t see the quick flush of colour warming her skin. Why was it that Blake seemed to possess this ability to put her in the wrong, even when she wasn’t?
‘If you’re ready I think we’d better be on our way. I’ve booked our table for eight.’ He glanced at his watch, the brief glimpse she had of his dark sinewy wrist doing strange things to Sapphire’s stomach. She recognised the sensation immediately, and it gave her a sickening jolt. She had thought she was long past the stage of experiencing sexual appreciation of something as mundane as a male arm. As a teenager, the merest glimpse of Blake in the distance had been enough to start her stomach churning with excitement but that was all behind her now. Shrugging aside her feelings as an echo of the past she picked up her coat and followed Blake to the door.
To her surprise he hadn’t brought the Land Rover but was driving a sleek black BMW. Some of her surprise must have communicated itself to Blake because he glanced at her sardonically, his eyebrows raised as he waited for her to join him, opening the door for her as she reached the car. But then he always had had that air of masculine sophistication, a rare commodity in the Borders where most of the boys she had grown up with thought only of their land and their stock. But she had lived in London for long enough not to be overawed by Blake any longer, surely? Alan was always meticulous about handing her into his car, but his fingers beneath her elbow didn’t provoke the same jolting, lightning bolt of sensation that Blake’s did, her senses told her treacherously.
Ridiculous to feel so affected by such casual contact—no doubt she was over-reacting. She had had to guard herself against thinking about Blake for so long that she was almost hyper-sensitive to him. Yes, that must be the explanation Sapphire decided as Blake set the car in motion. Of course she was wound-up and tense, who wouldn’t be after learning that their father was close to death and that the one thing he wanted in life was the one thing she least desired. Marriage to Blake! She glanced covertly at his profile. He was concentrating on the road, his lips set in a hard line. Reaction suddenly shivered through her. What had she committed herself to? Despite the warmth from the car’s heaters she felt chilled, and yet her face seemed to be burning. She couldn’t go through with it. Her father would understand. She must talk to Blake, she …
‘If you’re having second thoughts, forget them, I’m not letting you back out now Sapphire.’ The coldly harsh words cut through her anguished thoughts like a whiplash. How had he known what she was thinking? He was right about one thing though, it was too late to back out now. Her father wanted their reconciliation too desperately.
‘Where are we going?’ She asked the question more to dispel the tense atmosphere inside the car than because she really wanted to know.
‘Haroldgate,’ Blake told her briefly.
She only just managed to catch back her protest. Haroldgate was a small village nestling in one of the valleys and as far as she knew it possessed only one restaurant. Blake had taken her there the evening he had proposed to her. She had been so thrilled by his invitation. ‘The Barn’ at Haroldgate was the most sophisticated eating place in the area and she had never been before. She could vividly recall how impressed she had been by her surroundings, and how tense. Shaking herself mentally she tried to appear unconcerned. ‘The Barn’ might have seemed the very zenith of sophistication to an awkward seventeen-year-old who had never been anywhere, but it could hardly compare with some of the restaurants Alan had taken her to. Alan was something of a gourmet and discovering new eating places was one of his hobbies. He also liked to be seen in the right places, unlike Blake who had little concern for appearances or being seen to do the ‘right thing’, Sapphire acknowledged. Neither did Blake make a sacred ritual out of eating as Alan did. Frowning Sapphire tried to dispel the vague feeling that somehow she was being disloyal to Alan by comparing him with Blake. They were two completely different men who could not be compared, and of the two …
‘We’re here.’
The curt comment broke across her thoughts. Blake stopped the car and in the darkness Sapphire felt him studying her. Her muscles tensed automatically and defensively, although she couldn’t have said why.
‘I won’t have you thinking about him while you’re with me,’ he told her tersely. ‘I won’t have it Sapphire, do you understand?’
She was far too taken aback by the tone of his voice to make any immediate comment. How had Blake known she was thinking about Alan? And why should he object? His attitude fanned the embers of resentment that had been burning in her all day.
‘You don’t own my thoughts Blake,’ she told him mockingly, ‘and if I choose to think about the man I love that’s my affair. You can’t stop me.’
‘You think not?’
The headlights from another car turning into the car-park illuminated the interior of the BMW briefly and Sapphire was struck by the white tension of Blake’s face. Did getting her father’s land mean so very much to him? Fear feathered lightly along her spine.
‘Don’t push me too hard Sapphire,’ he warned, as he unfastened his seat belt. ‘I am only human.’
‘You could have fooled me.’ She muttered the words flippantly beneath her breath, but he caught them, leaning across to grasp her forearms while she was still fastened into her seat.
‘Could I? Then perhaps this will convince you just how human I can be, and not to rely too heavily on your own judgment.’ The words carried a thread of bitterness Sapphire couldn’t decipher but there was nothing cryptic about the pressure of Blake’s mouth against her own, hard and determined as his hands pressed her back into her seat.
It was a kiss of anger and bitterness, even she could recognise that, and yet it called out to something deep inside her; some shadowing of pain she hadn’t known still existed and which suddenly became a fierce ache, leaping to meet and respond to the anger she could feel inside Blake.
The result was a devastation of her senses; a complete reversal of everything she had ever thought about herself and her own sexuality; her physical response to Blake so intense and overwhelming that it succeeded in blocking everything else out.
Without her being aware of how it had happened her arms were round his neck, her fingers stroking the thick softness of his hair, and yet it was pain she wanted him to feel—not pleasure, and it was anger she wanted to show him as she returned the fierce intensity of his kiss, and not love.
‘You want me.’ It was Blake’s thick utterance of the words that brought her back to reality. That, and her own bitter mental acknowledgement that somehow he had aroused her, had touched a deep core of need inside her that none of Alan’s gentle caresses had ever revealed.
‘I want Alan,’ she lied curtly, ‘but since he’s not here …’
Blake withdrew from her immediately as she had known he would. His pride would never allow him to be a substitute for someone else, but what did surprise Sapphire was that he believed her. But then he could not, as she could, compare her reaction to him with her reaction to Alan. She did love Alan. What she had just experienced in Blake’s arms; that bitter tension that had made her body ache and her eyes sting with suppressed tears was just something left over from the past, that was all.
‘Are we going to eat, or do you want to spend the rest of the evening in the car?’
The harsh words rasped over too-sensitive nerves. Sapphire pushed Blake’s hand away as he reached out to help her with her seat belt, and knew by the tension in his body that she had annoyed him. How on earth were they supposed to live together, supposedly as man and wife, preserving the fiction that they had been reconciled when they reacted so explosively to one another? If only she hadn’t made that stupid comment to her father, but he had looked so ill … and he had been so pleased, almost as though she had given him a reason to go on fighting to live. And so she had.
The restaurant was just as attractive as she remembered. The old barn had been sensitively restored, and while the atmosphere was not one of luxurious glamour there was something about it that Sapphire found more appealing than any of Alan’s favourite haunts.
The Head Waiter recognised Blake immediately and they were swiftly shown to a table for two.
The restaurant wasn’t a large one, the proprietors preferring not to expand and risk losing their excellent reputation. As they studied their menus, Sapphire glanced covertly round the room, wondering if she would recognise any of their fellow diners. A couple sat at one table talking and Sapphire stiffened as she recognised Miranda.
Four years ago this woman had been her husband’s mistress, and she was still as beautiful as ever Sapphire recognised, and still obviously bemusing the opposite sex if her table companion’s expression was anything to go by. Just as Sapphire was about to look away, she raised her head, her eyes narrowing as they met Sapphire’s. Conscious that she was staring Sapphire tried to look away and found that she could not. A familiar nausea started to well up inside her, and she fought it down. She was over all that now. She wasn’t going to let it happen again, and yet against her will her mind kept on relaying to her mental images of Blake and Miranda together, of Blake’s long-legged, narrow-hipped body making love to Miranda’s, in all the ways it had never made love to hers. The menu dropped from her fingers as she tried to stem the flood of images. She was over this; she had been over it for years … She knew now that most of her anguish sprang not from the fact that Blake and Miranda had been lovers, but rather from the knowledge that he had desired Miranda as intensely as he had not desired her. If Blake had made love to her she would not have suffered this torment; she and Miranda would have met as equals; as women, not as adult and child.
‘Sapphire?’
She realised that Blake was talking to her; watching her and her face closed up. How much had she already given away? She glanced desperately at him but he was looking at Miranda.
Sapphire followed his look, tensing as she saw the other couple stand up and head towards them.
‘Blake.’ Miranda’s companion held out his hand to Blake, who rose to shake it, but it was at Sapphire that he looked.
‘Sapphire.’ Miranda’s greeting to her was coolly mocking. ‘You’ve barely changed.’
The words were designed to hurt, but Sapphire chose to turn the barb back on its sender. ‘In four years?’ she murmured, ‘How flattering. I must confess I barely recognised you.’
A blatant lie, but she could always use it to explain away her too lengthy scrutiny of the other woman. And she had aged, Sapphire noted now. Although she was still very beautiful, she was now more obviously a woman well into her thirties. She must be a year or two older than Blake. Her companion was in his forties, and although he looked pleasant enough, physically he could not compare with Blake.
‘Sapphire, let me introduce you to Miranda’s husband.’ Blake’s words were a shock. Her husband? Her eyes went automatically to Miranda’s ring hand where a huge diamond solitaire nestled against an obviously new wedding ring.
‘Jim is the Senior Registrar at Hexham General.’ Blake told her. ‘He and Miranda got married a couple of months ago.’
‘What brings you back up here Sapphire?’ Miranda questioned her.
She stared to reply but Blake beat her to it, drawing her hand through his arm, pulling her into the warmth of his side as he said calmly, ‘We’ve decided to give our marriage another try.’
‘A rather sudden decision surely?’ Icy blue eyes swept over Sapphire, Miranda’s tone intimating disbelief.
‘Not really.’ Blake’s voice was as smooth as silk and for the first time, Sapphire was grateful for his ability to conceal the truth. ‘It’s been on the cards for some time. Sapphire just took a bit of convincing that’s all.’ His possessive smile was meant to indicate that he considered himself lucky to get her back, but Sapphire wasn’t deceived for one moment. There was a subtle tension between Blake and Miranda which suggested to Sapphire that getting her father’s land wasn’t the sole reason Blake wanted a ‘reconciliation’. Had Miranda married to spite Blake? To prove to him that if he didn’t want marriage then other men did, and was he now retaliating by announcing their reconciliation? Even worse, had he known that Miranda and Jim would be here tonight?
‘Well congratulations to you both.’ Jim smiled warmly at them, and took Miranda’s arm.
‘Yes indeed, better luck this time.’ The words were innocuous enough but Sapphire wasn’t deceived. She read the venom behind them, and knew that Blake had too.
When the other couple had gone she sat down and picked up her menu. Eating was the last thing she felt like but she was determined not to let Blake see how much seeing Miranda again had disturbed her.
‘I’m sorry about that.’ His terse apology stunned her and Sapphire looked up at him. There were deep grooves of tension running from his nose to his mouth. ‘I didn’t know they’d be here.’
Sapphire shrugged dismissively, ‘It doesn’t matter. I didn’t realise Miranda was married.’
‘Why should you?’ Blake was curt and abrupt, ‘I didn’t realise that …’ He broke off, his mouth grim. ‘Look I don’t think coming out tonight was such a good idea. Let’s leave shall we? I don’t think either of us is in the mood for the type of celebration your father had in mind.’
‘But what about Miranda?’ Sapphire objected. ‘If we leave now, she’ll never believe what you said about us being reconciled.’
Blake shrugged, standing up to come round and hold her chair as she got to her feet. ‘Does it matter what she thinks?’ He sounded tense. ‘As a matter of fact, what she probably will think is that we’ve decided we’d rather be making love than eating.’
‘Because that’s what you’d be doing if you were with her?’ The words were out before Sapphire could stop them. ‘Aren’t you forgetting something,’ she added bitterly. ‘Miranda knows exactly how undesirable you find me. You told her—remember?’
‘I told her nothing,’ Blake grated back. ‘She tricked that admission out of you, but if it worries you so much I can take you back to Sefton House right now and make you my wife in every sense of the word.’
‘Thanks, but no thanks.’ Somehow she managed to inject just the right amount of scathing indifference into her voice, but it was hard not to react to his words; not to shiver beneath the rough velvet urgency of his voice, nor to turn to him in blind acceptance of the pleasure it promised, but instead to simply precede him and walk out of the restaurant as calmly as though she were completely unaffected by his words.
Were he and Miranda still lovers? Somehow Sapphire didn’t think so; there hadn’t been the complicity between them she would have expected had they been. Instead there had been something almost approaching antagonism.
They drove back along the road they had come in a silence which remained unbroken until Sapphire realised that Blake had taken the turning for his own house instead of carrying on to her father’s farm.
‘Don’t worry, I’m not kidnapping you,’ he told her sardonically as she turned to him in protest. ‘It’s barely ten o’clock. If I take you home now your father will think there’s something wrong.’
‘And he’d be right.’ Sapphire muttered the words under her breath but Blake heard them.
‘This isn’t easy for me either you know,’ he told her grittily, ‘but why should I expect you to realise that? You were never any good at seeing the other person’s point of view.’
‘Meaning what exactly?’ The anger that had been burning inside her all evening burst into destructive flames. ‘That I should have played the “understanding” wife and turned a blind eye to your affair?’
Light spilled out into the cobbled courtyard as Blake pulled up outside his house. He stopped the engine and Sapphire saw him tense almost as though he were bracing himself to do something. ‘Sapphire, look, my “affair” as you call it never …’
‘I don’t want to hear about it.’ She cut across him quickly. She didn’t want to exhume the past; it was far too painful. Talking about his relationship with Miranda forced her to remember how intensely she had once longed to have those brown hands touching her body, exploring its contours, giving her the pleasure her feverishly infatuated senses had told her she could find in his arms. ‘It’s over Blake,’ she reminded him determinedly. ‘We’re two different people now.’
‘If you say so.’ He unfastened his seat belt and opened his door. ‘Hungry?’
Sapphire shook her head.
‘Come inside and have a cup of coffee then, I’ve got a mare waiting to foal in the barn, I’ll check up on her and then I’ll take you home.’
He didn’t invite her to go with him, and Sapphire stood forlornly in the immaculate kitchen of Sefton House listening to the sound of his footsteps dying away as he crossed the yard and entered the large barn.
Once she had been part of this world, and he would have thought nothing of inviting her to join him. Together they had shared the miracle of birth on many occasions in the past, but now she was deliberately being excluded. It baffled Sapphire that the anger she sensed churning inside him should be directed against her. Blake had no rational reason for being angry with her: had someone asked her she would have said he was incapable of feeling any emotional response towards her whatsoever.
More to keep herself occupied than because she wanted any she started to make some coffee. The kitchen was immaculate, but somehow impersonal. Presumably he had his own reasons for not replacing his aunt with a housekeeper. At least that was one complication she wouldn’t have to face this time. Sarah Sefton had never made any secret of the fact that she considered her far too young for Blake. She had disapproved of her right from the very start, Sapphire mused, watching the aromatic dark-brown liquid filter down into the jug, and breathing in the heavenly smell.
‘That smells good.’ She hadn’t heard Blake return, and she swung round tensely, trying to mask her automatic reaction to him by asking after the mare.
‘She’s fine. This will be her third foal, and we don’t anticipate any problems, but like any other female she needs the reassurance of knowing someone cares.’
He said the words carelessly but the look in his eyes was far from casual as he added softly, ‘Does Alan let you know he cares Sapphire?’
‘All the time.’ She managed a cool smile, ‘I’ve made us some coffee, I hope your “help” won’t mind my rummaging in her cupboards.’
‘I’m sure she won’t,’ Blake responded equally blandly, ‘but when my aunt retired I decided I preferred having the place to myself. A woman comes up from the village to clean; apart from that I’m self-sufficient.’ He saw the assessing glance Sapphire slid over the immaculate kitchen, and said softly, ‘I don’t spend enough time here to make it untidy. In fact recently I’ve been eating as many meals at Flaws as I have here.’
‘Yes, I haven’t thanked you yet for taking on the responsibility for the farm.’
He smiled sardonically at her, as though he knew just how hard she had found it to mutter the words.
‘That’s what neighbours are for. Your father would have done the same thing for me had our positions been reversed.’ He pulled off his jacket, dropping it carelessly on to the table, and then checking and picking it up again. ‘One special licence,’ he told her withdrawing a piece of paper from an inner pocket. ‘Special dispensation from the Bishop of Hawick. I went to see him today.’
‘So we’ll be married …’
‘The day after tomorrow,’ Blake told her. ‘In Hexham, everything’s arranged, the vicar …’
