Authors: Unknown
'I'm going to hate it,' she said quietly.
'You'd rather see the place fall down?'
'Of course not.' She began to walk back along the corridor, tossing the words to him over her shoulder. 'It's just that the Manor was always such a part of village life.'
'It still can be.' His footsteps drew nearer so that he was close behind her. 'When I get the golf course laid out, I hope the village people will want to use it. I hope you'll use it.'
'I don't play golf.'
'What is the matter with you?' Once again he caught hold of her arm and pulled her to an abrupt halt. She swung around to face him, and the dimness of the passage shadowed his face intriguingly, making him seem mysterious and remote. 'I expect to find that some of the older people in the village might resent the changes,' he continued flatly. 'But surely you have the intelligence to see that a country club could be an asset here. Or are you too damn insular?'
The tension crackled between them like static electricity. Dani knew that her own arguments were weak, fostered more by the love of a nice old house than by practical reasons, but their differences were more than just the sum of two people seeing something from different sides. It had become a more personal clash, his will against hers, and Dani did not understand her own emotions. She felt anger; anger that was not so much directed against what he was doing as against the man himself. She felt threatened by him, overpowered by him, and her wish to fight him seemed to come from some part of Dani Robertson that she had never known before.
'Please let go of my arm,' she said steadily and with as much dignity as she could dredge up from her shaken emotions. 'You really don't have to manhandle me . . .' There, she was doing it again! Trying to needle him into a further sharp exchange of words. What was wrong with her?
'You'd rather have walked into that room?' he asked. 'Next time, I'll let you.'
'There won't be a next time.'
'Good.'
There were some people, Dani thought philosophically as she walked away from him, who just did not get along with other people. She and Prentice McCulloch were obviously two of them. She would avoid him in the future.
They walked down the stairs to the hall in a thick and tingling silence. Dani was aware of him with every step that she took, and the back of her neck prickled suddenly as she realised that she had taken a risk in coming to the house at all. She did not know him and yet she had calmly allowed him to bring her here and to show her around the empty rooms without a thought in her head that it could be dangerous. She must be crazy!
'Will you take me home now?' she asked, and she was proud that her voice did not wobble with her sudden misgivings. 'Or would you prefer me to walk?'
'I wouldn't dream of letting you walk.' His voice was a silken purr of politeness. 'Just come and take a look at the kitchens before you go.'
Not waiting for her refusal, he turned and strode through another door at the back of the hall and, reluctantly, Dani trudged after him. In the kitchen she glanced around her without much interest, and shivered as the chill of the room hit her.
'I've been here before,' she said. 'It isn't wonderful, I know that, but I've seen worse.' Casually she crossed her arms around herself and wandered over to stare into the old, deep sink under the window. A fat, black, long-legged spider stared malevolently back.
Dani could, not help the shiver of distaste that trembled through her, nor could she stop taking an instinctive step backwards as if the spider was going to come out of its resting place and crawl over her. The flagstones were uneven, and she caught her heel in one of the gaps, pitching sideways with a gasp of alarm.
'Too much wine?' His arms caught and held her and, for a moment, while she recovered her balance, she felt his lean, hard body taking her weight. What would it be like to. . .
Confused by a half-formed thought that Prentice McCulloch's arms had a strength that she had not suspected, and that she felt suddenly safe within them, she struggled to be free.
'No,' she said crossly. 'I have not had too much wine. There's a spider . . .'
'Oh?' Interested, he peered into the cracked sink. 'He's a big one,' he acknowledged. 'But he won't hurt you.'
'I know he won't hurt me!' Dani retorted. 'I just don't like them. I never have.' And if he was sadistic enough to pick it up and threaten her with it, she was sufficiently unnerved to have hysterics.
'Come back and see this place when it's finished.' He spared the spider one more glance and turned to her. 'Will you do that?'
'I don't think so.' Her heart was still pounding from that brief, disturbing closeness between them. 'I prefer to remember it the way it was when Mrs Desmond was alive.' And yet she also knew she would not be able to forget the forlorn emptiness of the house that she had sensed this evening.
'Judged and found guilty already.' White lines of temper appeared suddenly at each side of his nose. 'All right, Miss Robertson, that's fine with me. I can live without your narrow-minded prejudice.'
'Prejudice?'
'That's what I said.' He banged his hand suddenly against the wooden drainer next to the sink and Dani jumped. She prayed that it would not disturb the spider. 'I can live without your approval,' he continued frostily. 'I was simply trying to be reasonable, but that doesn't appear to be a word you've ever heard of.'
'Maybe I just don't like get-rich-quick schemes . . .' Her words died away as she saw, out of the corner of her eye, his hand moving on the drainer. For one terrible moment she thought he was going to hit her and took a half step backwards to avoid the blow, but as she watched in fascination, the fingers curled, themselves into a fist until the knuckles shone bone-white, and she sensed he was battling with himself to keep his temper. It was an awesome display of controlled power and Dani—knowing from her own experience the strength in those fingers— shivered a little and blamed the coldness of the room as she watched the fist tremble with the force being exerted. Then, suddenly, his fingers relaxed and stretched.
'I'll take you home now,' he said, and his voice was completely calm. 'Where do you live?'
'Above Brian.' She walked out of the kitchen ahead of him and made her way outside with yet another long, cold silence between them.
'Do you often pose for him?' The question was asked as the car slid slowly down the drive to the road.
Dani wanted to laugh. She could guess what he was thinking.
'Sometimes,' she admitted evenly. Let him think what he liked. He had accused her of being prejudiced and insular. Perhaps this would confuse his opinion. Not that she cared what he thought anyway.
'Put your seat belt on, please.' The same request had been made as they left Alder House, and Dani complied.
'I do know the law, you know.' She could not resist the tart comment.
'Good.' He seemed intent on his driving.
'I'm sorry I stood on your foot,' she said impulsively, nearly as unnerved by the quietness in the car as she had been by his controlled display of temper. 'It was an accident.'
'I'm sorry I knocked your knee,' he replied smoothly. 'That was an accident, too.'
So he didn't believe her, as she did not believe him. Sighing to herself Dani stared out of the side window, acknowledging that he was entitled to his doubts. One more minute and she would be free. She counted the seconds off in her mind, and had unbuckled the seat belt and opened the door almost before the car had stopped.
'Thank you for the lift,' she said politely. 'And thank you for the—guided tour.'
'My pleasure.' The formalities were being observed. His tone was quiet and even. 'I'll see you again some time.'
'Goodnight.'
'Goodnight, Miss Robertson.'
It had been a disturbing evening. Dani climbed the wooden stairs to her flat and unlocked the door, letting tiredness sweep over her. She felt as though she had fought some kind of battle and lost and when sleep would not come to her as she lay in her bed, she blamed Prentice McCulloch.
It was infuriating. Every time she closed her eyes, she saw him as if his face was imprinted indelibly on her brain. In her mind's eye she could recall him perfectly, as
though
she had been looking at him every day for a year, and she turned on to her side restlessly, trying to block out the image of his eyes, his mouth, his stubborn jaw and the long, oddly vulnerable, sweep of his throat.
What else could she think about? For once the progress of her small pupils failed to engross her as it usually did, and even her enthusiasm for a new class project waned as she tried to concentrate on it. She turned her mind into other channels and thought about a small, dark-haired baby girl whom she had never seen, but who had been described to her in a recent letter from her mother.
Jennifer Ann. Six-months old, placid and beautiful. Daughter of her ex-husband and his new wife. Dani had waited to feel jealousy when she had learned of the birth of the baby, but the emotion had never occurred. All she had felt was satisfaction that Keith had finally found what he was looking for, and a curious contentment, as though the arrival of Jennifer Ann had been the seal on the ending of that part of her life.
Dani moved restlessly. They had been so young, she and Keith. Young and wilful and unable to bear being apart from one another. It had seemed such a triumph to overcome the concern and advice of both his parents and her own and get married, and such a feeling of smugness to believe that they were right and that they would spend the rest of their lives on a candyfloss cloud of love and happiness.
'Damn!' Dani turned her face into the cool cotton of her pillow and pulled the covers up closely around her ears, wincing from the teenager she had been.
Had Prentice McCulloch ever been married? Oh no, not him again! Once more Dani rolled on to her back, furious with herself for having allowed her thoughts to swing full circle. He was an attractive and fascinating man whom she had met twice. He was plainly not interested in her and she—Dani told herself crossly—was most definitely not interested in him. She gave her pillow an angry thump, closed her eyes determinedly and began to count sheep. But they all had jade-green eyes.
In the
weeks that followed Prentice McCulloch's purchase of the Manor, the village talked of little else. Dani understood and sympathised. The Manor had always been a focal point of community life, just as the church and the village hall and the school were. The PTA committee were worrying about where they could hold the annual fete this year, and Dani herself had suddenly realised that the nature rambles she had enjoyed with the children in the summer months through the more remote parts of the estate would now have to be curtailed.
The weather had turned much warmer on the morning Dani heard her alarm clock ringing. She rolled over to switch it off and then allowed herself the luxury of waking up slowly, yawning and stretching and then kicking back the covers in a sudden impulsive movement as she remembered that Brian should have left for an appointment in London half an hour before and she had not been awoken by the noisy engine of his old Morris 1000 Traveller.
In her skimpy nightdress and with bare feet, she padded over to the window that looked down on the yard where they kept their cars and, rubbing her eyes, she stared sleepily downwards. One Morgan 4/4, a car that Brian was renovating in his spare time, her own Ford Fiesta, and one Morris Traveller. Brian had not gone!
'Oh!' Angry with him for having overslept, and with herself for behaving like an anxious hen with one chick, she ran back to the bedroom and began to dress. She wriggled jeans up over the briefs that clung to her slender hips and dragged a T-shirt over her head without bothering with a bra. Four impatient sweeps of her hairbrush over her hair restored it to a sleek and shining cap, and then she was pulling on her running shoes as she hopped towards her door, frantic to get Brian up and on his way. Perhaps if she lent him her car he would make better time. This appointment was important to him, and from the silence under her feet, he did not even appear to have woken up.
. She took the last four steps of the flight of stairs in one leap, landing neatly, and then swung around to the front door of the barn.
'Brian!' Impatiently she hammered on the door and then opened it to peer inside. 'Oh, Brian!' On his couch-cum-bed, in the dimness of the room, the artist slept on, blankets pulled up almost over his head. From the bottom of the bed, from which the covers had been dragged, one bare foot stuck out. 'Brian!' She ran across the room, her rubber-shod feet making little sound. 'Wake up, will you?' She tugged at the outline in the bed.
'What?' It was an almost inaudible mumble of sound as the sleeper pulled away from her hands, hunching further down under the covers.
'Will you get up!' She made her voice louder and shook his shoulder more impatiently. 'Come on!' And then, with a mixture of anxiety and crossness, 'Brian!'
'Oh God!'
It didn't sound quite like Brian. What she could see of his hair that was not covered by bedclothes did not appear to be the same colour, and the shape did not seem bulky enough.
'Brian?' This time she made the name a question, but as the covers were slowly turned back and one eye stared balefully at her, she put her hand up to her mouth in an involuntary gesture of surprise and alarm. 'Oh,' she said lamely. 'Good morning.'
'Is it?' Prentice opened the other eye and glared at her. 'Do you make a habit of waking my brother up like this?'
'Of course not.' Dani took a step backwards. 'But he has an appointment in London, an important one, and he should have left half an hour ago.'
'He did.' Yawning, Prentice scrubbed his hands over his eyes and rolled over on to his back to stare at her. 'I lent him the Volvo. Thought he might stand a better chance of getting there in a decent car.' No wonder she had not heard the sound of Brian's engine coughing into life.
'Oh. I'm sorry. I didn't realise . . .' Dani was caught in the grip of unreasonable panic. This sleepy-eyed man was
nothing
like the Prentice McCulloch she had met those few weeks ago. Where was the confidence and the self-possession?
This
vulnerable stranger was catching at her heart and making her breath come more quickly.