Time For Trust

‘Quite a few City people have moved out this way recently, although we are a bit off the beaten track. It isn’t unknown for the village to be snowed in in a bad winter,’ she warned him, but he laughed and seemed unconcerned by the threat of not being able to reach the City.

‘What about you?’ he challenged her. ‘I’ve already heard all about your tapestries. In fact, I suspect that the marvellous creation I recently admired hanging on a friend’s wall was designed and made by you, but surely from a selling point of view you’d do better living somewhere, if not central to London, then, say, like Bath, where there’s a thriving interior decoration industry.’

‘I don’t like cities…or crowds,’ she told him shortly. The ache in her shoulder was nagging painfully. ‘I prefer to live somewhere quiet.’

‘And isolated?’ he probed skilfully, the golden eyes watching her as she looked at him in startled defensiveness. ‘It wasn’t so difficult to deduce,’ he told her gently, as though answering her unspoken question. ‘A very attractive and clever young woman living alone in a tiny rural village; a young woman whom it is obvious was not born and bred here, and whose skills have a much wider field of demand than her environs suggest. What happened?’ he asked gently.

Tears clogged her throat. This was the first time anyone had asked her about the past; the first time anyone had seen past her defences and guessed that there was more to her desire to live so quietly than merely a love of the Avon countryside. She wanted to tell him, and yet conversely was afraid to do so. Why? In case he dismissed her fears as trivial and foolish as her parents had done? In case he was embarrassed by them as her London friends had been? Or just in case he simply did not understand the trauma of what she had endured and how it had affected her?

Panic suddenly overwhelmed her, followed by the old dread of talking to anyone about what she had endured—a fear which her doctor told her probably sprang from an atavistic belief that, in somehow refusing to talk about her ordeal, she was succeeding in shutting herself off from it, and that her reluctance to talk about it sprang from a deep-rooted dread that, once she did, her old terror would mushroom and overwhelm her, growing beyond her control to the point where it dragged her down and consumed her.

Her throat muscles locked, her body suddenly tense as she sat crouched on the sofa, defensive and inarticulate, the half of her brain that could still reason knowing that he must be wondering what on earth he had said to spark off such a reaction, and dreading him withdrawing from her.

A sound beyond the room distracted him. He lifted his head, frowning, and then said quietly, ‘I think the doctor has probably arrived. I’ll go and let him in.’

Tactfully he offered to leave her alone with the doctor, but she shook her head, wanting his presence, feeling protected and comforted by it, and yet at the same time feeling guilty, because she was imposing on him.

When she tried to say as much he shook his head and then took hold of both her hands, saying quietly, ‘No, never…I want to stay.’

And then he smiled at her, and in the warmth of his eyes she saw a promise that dazzled and awed her. He shared her awareness of that instant and shocking recognition, that sensation of feeling inexplicably attuned to one another. She had heard of people falling in love at first sight. Was this what had happened to them?

But falling in love was an ephemeral, laughable thing that only happened to the reckless and impulsive, and she was neither of those. There was nothing shallow about the way she felt about him. No. This was more than a sense of recognition, of knowing that here was a man who seemed to understand, as though by instinct, everything there was to know about her—about her fears and apprehensions, about her weaknesses and strengths. Indeed, it was almost as though he possessed some deep inner knowledge of her that enabled him to recognise her every emotion and feeling.

He deliberately busied himself clearing away their china mugs and emptying the teapot while the doctor asked her to remove her sweater and examined her injured shoulder and arm.

Already both were painfully swollen, showing evidence of the bruising that was yet to come.

‘Mm…Nothing’s broken, but you’re going to find that arm painful and stiff for a few days, I’m afraid. I think it might be as well to rest it in a sling at least for the next forty-eight hours.’

It would have to be her right arm, Jessica reflected wryly as the doctor rummaged in his bag for an antiseptic pack containing the requisite sling.

‘I can leave you some pain-killers,’ he suggested, eyeing her thoughtfully. ‘Generally speaking, when a patient suffers extreme shock as you have done I can prescribe a mild sleeping tablet…’

Jessica shuddered and shook her head. She remembered the drugs she had been prescribed before, supposedly to help her sleep, but which in reality had doped and numbed her to such an extent that they had actually intensified her struggle to come to terms with her residual fear once she was without the crutch they offered.

‘Sensible girl,’ the doctor approved. ‘A mild sedative isn’t necessarily addictive, but I don’t like prescribing them unless it’s absolutely essential. If you want my advice, perhaps a good tot of brandy in your bedtime cocoa is just as effective.’

And equally addictive, Jessica thought to herself, but he was an old-fashioned doctor, with his patients’ welfare very much at heart.

He closed his bag and turned to leave, pausing by the door to frown and ask, ‘You live here alone, don’t you?’

Jessica nodded, a cold finger of ice touching her spine, and she asked quickly, ‘What’s wrong? The man didn’t escape, did he? I thought…’

‘No, nothing like that,’ he was quick to reassure her. ‘It’s just that with that arm you might be better having someone staying here overnight with you. Just in case you’re tempted to dispense with the sling and overstrain the muscle. I could have a word with Mrs G—’

‘There’s no need,’ Daniel intervened unexpectedly. ‘I shall be staying here tonight.’

Jessica gasped, but the small sound was lost as the doctor nodded his approval and opened the door saying, ‘No…No, there’s no need to see me out. Nasty business altogether. Who’d have thought, in a small village like this…? Lucky thing you acted so promptly, young man…’

His voice faded away as Daniel ignored his protests and escorted him to the door. Jessica waited tensely as the door closed and she heard Daniel walking back to the kitchen.

‘Yes. I know,’ he said calmly as he came in. ‘I jumped in there without consulting you, but I thought you’d prefer my presence to that of Mrs G, good neighbour though she is. If I was wrong…’

Jessica shook her head. He wasn’t wrong at all, but they hardly knew one another. Until a few short hours ago they had been strangers, and, despite the fact that she felt drawn to him in a way she had never before experienced, the habits of a lifetime could not be so easily overthrown. She plucked nervously at her sweater with fingers that trembled a little, unable to bring herself to look at him in case she saw mockery in those too perceptive gold eyes.

‘You’re worried about what people might say about my staying here, is that it?’ he asked her quietly.

Instantly her head shot up, her eyes blazing with pride and anger.

‘Certainly not,’ she told him curtly. ‘I’m not so narrow-minded nor insular. I prefer to set my own standards for the way I live my life, not pay lip-service to other people’s.’

‘Then what are you afraid of?’ he asked her gently, dropping down on to the sofa beside her, sitting so close to her that she could feel the heat passing from his body to her own, an unnerving, vibrant male heat that made her body quicken and her muscles tense—in expectation, not fear. ‘Not me, surely?’

How could she tell him it was herself she feared, and her out-of-character reactions to him?

‘I’m just not used to sharing my home with anyone,’ she told him evasively.

‘I’m invading your privacy, and you’re not sure how you feel about it, is that it? Well, I can understand that. Like you I, too, prize my solitude. Like you I’ve always preferred to live alone. However, there comes a time…’

His voice had slowed and deepened. Without looking at him she sensed that he had moved closer to her, felt it in the warm vibration of his breath against her temple, and quivered in silent reaction to it.

When he reached for her hand she let him take it, even though she knew what her trembling would reveal to him.

With his other hand he cupped her face and turned it so that he could look at her. The warm grasp of his hand was somehow reassuring, as though he knew what she was feeling.

‘If I’m presuming too much…if I’m letting my own feelings and reactions blind me into believing that what’s happening between us is mutual, then tell me so, Jessica.’

An idiotic shyness swamped her, and it was as much as she could do to shake her head, her throat clogged with emotional tension.

‘There are so many things we still have to learn about one another…so many things we still don’t know or share, but there will be time for us to discover and learn all those things. For now shall we simply let it be enough that we’re here together at the beginning of a journey we both want to share?’

Gratefully Jessica nodded her head.

He was telling her that he wasn’t going to rush or pressure her. He seemed to know how unused she was to everything that was happening to her, how alarmed she was by it, at the same time as she thrilled to the knowledge that he shared her feeling; she who had never wanted this kind of involvement suddenly wanted it desperately.

As she looked at him, she wondered blindingly what it would be like when he kissed her, and as though he had read the question in her eyes his own suddenly darkened awesomely.

‘Don’t,’ he warned her huskily, and then added, ‘Once I start touching you I shan’t be able to stop.’

Shockingly, her body responded to his warning so intensely that for a moment she was almost tempted into reckless incitement of the desire she saw burning in his eyes. She looked at his mouth and felt her body tremble. She reached out to touch her fingers to the male texture of his lips, to explore their shape and form, and then sanity prevailed and she drew back, her face betraying her own bewilderment.

Fighting to master the temptation flooding her, she said unsteadily, ‘Tell me about your house. How did you find it? What do you plan to do with it?You’re our first really local migrant from London, you realise. There are others, but they live on the other side of Blanchester. What brought you out as far as this?’

She was desperately trying to distract herself, to bring herself back on an even keel, and so missed the sudden tension of his body, the brief hesitation as he replied, ‘Chance, really. I’d been looking for a house outside London for some time, and then someone mentioned this village.’

‘Someone mentioned it?’ Jessica looked at him, frowning, and then her frown cleared. ‘Oh, you mean your estate agents. Well, they must have been relieved to have sold the Court. It’s been empty for almost two years, and it’s been badly vandalised.’

‘You don’t have to tell me that,’ Daniel told her wryly. ‘When you feel up to it, I’d like to have your views on how best to redesign the kitchen. My existing builder is a bit short on imagination, and I want to avoid the stereotyped blandness so prevalent among kitchen designers. It will be a good-sized room: two rooms, really, since I’m having the wall between it and what was at one time the housekeeper’s room knocked down.’

Gradually the sexual tension was easing from her body, to be replaced by a genuine interest in his plans for the house. When he glanced at his watch and informed her that it was almost seven o’clock she could hardly believe it.

‘Will you be OK if I leave you for long enough to go and collect a few things?’ he asked her. ‘I could ask Mrs G to sit with you…’

Jessica shook her head. ‘I’ll be fine. Really, you don’t need to stay overnight. I—’

‘I’m staying,’ he told her gently. ‘And don’t you dare move from that sofa until I get back. Remember what the doctor said about not straining the muscles.’

It wasn’t very difficult to obey him; in fact, it wasn’t any hardship at all to simply sit there and give in to the luxury of day-dreaming about the promises that had been implicit in almost everything he had said to her.

She had never believed this would happen to her—that she would meet someone and fall in love so quickly and intensely that within a few short hours it would be impossible to imagine her life without him—but it had happened, and not just to her, but to him as well.

She closed her eyes and gave in to the temptation of imagining what it would feel like to have his mouth moving on hers, his hands touching her skin, exploring her body with all the delicate skill his touch had already promised.

A rash of goose-bumps broke out under her skin, a tense, coiling sensation invading her lower stomach.

Physical desire…Up until now she had been a stranger to such feelings, so what was it about this particular man encountered in such harrowing circumstances that had led to its birth now?

Were the feelings, both emotional and physical, which she was experiencing genuine, or were they some kind of by-product of her fear?

Deep within her a part of herself recognised that alongside her burgeoning happiness ran a fine thread of cautious reluctance, as though that part of her was unwilling to allow itself to be committed to what she was feeling for Daniel.

She was too exhausted to dwell on the matter. Upstairs in her workroom, the phone rang. That was her business line, and by rights she ought to go up there and answer it. She was doing quite well now, but not so well that she could afford to turn down business.

Daniel had been so kind to her. So caring. Surely far more so than she, as a stranger to him, merited, and it struck her that he himself must be a very well-adjusted human being to be able to reach out so readily and warmly to a stranger, disregarding the possibility of their rejection. She realised that in similar circumstances she would most probably not have offered the same Good-Samaritan-inspired kindness, not because she would not have wanted to, but because she would have been afraid, as she suspected many people were afraid, of having her offer misconstrued or, even worse, resented. If she had spurned Daniel’s kindness and retreated into the prickly sharp shell she normally used to conceal her true self from strangers, she suspected that he would have treated her reaction with equally considerate and thoughtful kindness.

He was plainly a man of intense generosity of spirit, and it humbled her that he should choose to treat her as his equal when she knew that inwardly she was nothing of the sort. She tended to hold even people who knew her at a distance, deliberately refusing to let them trespass too far.

Daniel was the first person in a long time whom she had actually wanted to draw into her life.

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