Storm Force

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‘They can wait there till tomorrow.’

‘They can indeed.’ He went upstairs and came back with the whisky. He had put on a sweater, she realised, before he had come to look for her, but in a strange way he still didn’t look any more dressed. Or did she just think that because she had been forced to see him so blatantly undressed?

She watched him open the cardboard container and pour milk into a saucepan, then put it on to heat.

‘You didn’t spill any,’ she said.

‘I’m housetrained. I used to live with a woman who was fussy about things like that.’

‘One of your many conquests, no doubt.’ And of course he would have to brag about it.

‘No,’ he said. ‘My mother.’

She was taken aback. That sounded altogether too cosy and domestic for someone like Jay Delaney. He was a jungle creature, a predator.

She watched him fill two beakers, add a measure of whisky to each, and bring them to the table.

‘Here.’ He passed her one.

‘I don’t like whisky.’

‘Tough. Drink it, or I’ll pour it down your throat.’

She sipped, shuddering elaborately. Jay seated himself opposite, and watched her sardonically.

‘Nice performance,’ he commented. ‘Are you in our profession?’

‘No, I’m in publishing.’

‘Let me guess.’ He pretended to think, then snapped his fingers. ‘Virago Books.’

She gave him a stony look. ‘Munroe and Craig, actually. We’re a fairly new imprint.’

‘Presumably, you’re neither Munroe nor Craig.’

‘No. I’m Maggie—Margaret Carlyle. I’m an editor.’

‘And an editor who should be in Mauritius.’

She bit her lip, and drank some more milk. In spite of her dislike of the taste she had to admit that there was a new warmth stealing through her veins, dispelling the trembling and the cold.

‘So,’ he went on. ‘What are you doing here, Maggie Carlyle?’

‘This is my house,’ she said curtly. ‘I don’t owe you any explanations.’

There was a silence. Then he said, ‘Let us agree that under normal circumstances, neither of us would wish to spend even five minutes in each other’s company. Yes?’

Maggie nodded, staring down at her beaker.

‘But circumstances are not normal, and whether we like it or not, we are stuck here together under the same roof, maybe for an indefinite period, so we may as well be civil to each other. Right?’

‘Not necessarily,’ she objected. ‘This storm won’t last forever. You can leave tomorrow.’

‘On foot?’ He gave her a steady look. ‘Lady, you aren’t even trying to be reasonable.’

She put down the beaker. ‘Is that how you’d describe some of your conduct tonight?’ Her voice sounded aggravatingly breathless suddenly. ‘Reasonable?’

‘I was just teaching you a much-needed lesson, sweetheart,’ he said levelly. ‘Don’t give it out, if you’re not prepared to take it. Maybe you’ll think twice next time before slagging me off about my supposed sins.’

‘There isn’t a great deal of supposition involved,’ she said coldly. ‘They’ve been fairly well documented.’

Jay leaned back, tilting his chair, surveying her through narrowed eyes. ‘You really like to live dangerously, don’t you, darling? Be warned, the next lesson will be administered to your backside, with the flat of my hand.’

‘Very macho,’ Maggie said with contempt. ‘Are you really pretending, Mr Delaney, that you don’t like your hard-won reputation as a hell-raiser?’

‘You deal with works of fiction every day of your life,’ Jay said with a shrug. ‘So how is it you believe everything you read in the newspapers?’

‘There’s no smoke without fire.’ She really couldn’t believe she had said that, and by the look of unholy amusement on his face neither could he.

‘That’s a novel thought,’ he said. ‘Did one of your authors write it?’

‘No,’ she said shortly. ‘It probably came from one of your television series.’ She pushed her chair back, and stood up. ‘And now I’m going up to bed, in my own spare room.’ She paused. ‘The door locks, and I don’t wish to be disturbed on any pretext.’

‘Don’t flatter yourself,’ Jay drawled. ‘If you’d really been following the reports of my private life, you’d know my taste doesn’t run to under-developed redheads.’ He got to his feet. ‘Before you go, do you have a first-aid kit around?’

‘Of course,’ Maggie said curtly, still smarting from ‘under-developed’. ‘Why, do you want to splint your broken toe?’

‘No, I’m thinking of taping over your mouth,’ he said with a certain grimness. ‘As it happens, you’ve cut your forehead. It needs cleaning up.’

‘Cut?’ Maggie remembered the sharp pain after the collision and put up a hand, encountering a faint stickiness. ‘Is it bad?’

‘Plastic surgeons can do miracles these days,’ he said gravely. ‘But for now, let’s see how we go with some antiseptic and a sticking-plaster.’

‘Oh, stop it.’ She glared at him. ‘It’s all a big joke to you—but this has been one of the worst days and the worst nights of my life.’

‘Whereas my own existence is just perfect at the moment, of course.’ His mouth twisted. ‘But if you want to spend the next few days wallowing in gloom and self-pity, it’s all right with me. Shall I attend to that cut first, or would you prefer blood poisoning in your present mood?’

She stood for a long mutinous minute, eyeing him, then trailed into the pantry and came back with the first-aid box. He was filling a basin with hot water from the kettle.

‘Thank you,’ she said stiltedly.

‘Don’t go overboard with the gratitude,’ he advised. ‘I promise this is going to hurt you far more than it hurts me.’

She endured his ministrations with gritted teeth.

‘Does it need a stitch?’

‘Well, it certainly isn’t going to get one.’ He applied a small piece of plaster. ‘The bandages can come off in a fortnight.’ He emptied the basin. ‘And, by the way, I’m not going to add to your list of grievances against me by turning you out of your bed. I’ll sleep in the spare room.’

She said quickly, ‘It’s all right. I don’t mind. Anyway, it’s rather too late to start changing sheets.’

‘Yours having been hopelessly contaminated by my fleeting presence, I suppose,’ he said, too evenly.

‘Not at all,’ Maggie protested unconvincingly, a betraying blush spreading up to her hairline.

Jay gave her a bleak look. ‘You, lady, are something else,’ he said.

He turned away and went up the stairs, and presently she heard the bedroom door bang.

She went round the living-room, tidying things, extinguishing all the candles except the one she would take upstairs with her.

And in spite of Jay’s avowal, she would still lock her door, she thought defiantly.

She supposed grudgingly that he had been kind enough, after the accident, but it didn’t change a thing. She still despised him and everything he stood for. And although she might be obliged to give him sanctuary tonight, there was no way she was going to share a roof with him again tomorrow.

Another fierce gust shook the house, and she shivered. Always supposing, she thought wryly, that there was any roof left to share.

She paused as a further thought occurred to her, then crossed to the sink unit. Opening the drawer, she extracted the sharpest long-bladed kitchen knife she possessed. He had already shown he couldn’t be trusted, she told herself. And she was entitled to protect herself.

She went slowly and gingerly up the stairs, protecting the candle-flame. Her room—his room—was in darkness, and she paused for a moment at the door, listening, wondering if he was safely asleep, anaesthetised by whisky.

His voice reached her, quietly and mockingly, ‘Goodnight, Maggie Carlyle. Pleasant dreams.’

She started so violently she nearly dropped the knife, and the candle-flame wavered and went out.

Cursing under her breath, she felt her way along the landing to the spare room. She found a match and relit the candle, putting it on the small chest of drawers, before turning the key in the lock.

The narrow single bed looked singularly uninviting. And there was a small solid hump in the middle of it.

Maggie pulled back the duvet and found herself staring down at the stone hot water bottle. For a moment she stood, motionless, then she sat down on the edge of the bed, buried her face in her hands, and began to cry.

It was an uncomfortable night. The noise of the storm was unabating, and several times Maggie was terrified that the window was going to blow in.

In spite of the reassurance of the knife under her pillow, she was still uneasily on tenterhooks, wondering what she would do if he forced an entry to her room and she was actually obliged to use it.

She was still debating the issue when she fell into an exhausted sleep just before dawn.

It was daylight when she finally opened bleary eyes on the world. The sky outside the window looked grey and angry, she realised shuddering, and the wind was still blowing fiercely.

She crawled out of bed and dragged on the trousers and sweater she had been wearing the previous night. Along with her bed, she had also sacrificed the washbasin, she realised crossly. She would have to perform her morning ablutions downstairs in the sink.

She had a lot to do today, she thought sombrely. She would have to notify Mr Grice about the fallen tree, and get him to phone the local garage to take her car away. She would also need to contact her insurance company.

And taking absolute priority over all these was the necessity to get Jay Delaney out of the cottage, and out of her life.

He wasn’t in the living-room when she went downstairs, and she seized the opportunity of the unexpected privacy to wash her face and hands and clean her teeth. When he had gone, she decided, she would lock the door, draw the curtains and get out the tin bath.

She was ashamed of the crying jag she had embarked on last night, she thought, as she filled the kettle and set it to boil, but in a way it was understandable. She had built such hopes and such dreams on that trip to Mauritius—and on her first night alone with Robin—that the situation at World’s End seemed a brutal anti-climax.

And if she was honest, finding the hot water bottle like that had been the final straw. An unlooked-for kindness from an unexpected source. An unwanted kindness, too, she reminded herself. If Jay Delaney thought he could creep into her good graces by such means, then he could think again.

He said from the doorway, ‘Have you got any weedkiller?’ making her jump all over again.