Authors: Unknown
Back in the car, Crawford turned off the main road and drove slowly this time, through leafy lanes in the peaceful countryside. And it was a time of enchantment to Gerry just to sit back feeling the breeze ruffling her hair, and watch the trees and hedgerows sail by. Then they turned off the main road on to another road and then on to another that was no more than a track where Crawford found a shady part and turned off the engine. She gave him an anxious glance that wasn’t lost on him. It seemed to her that this out-of-the-way spot couldn’t be known to very many people, and she suspicioned he had the idea of bringing her to this isolated location from the very beginning.
‘Take that alarmed look off your face, Geraldine,’ she was bidden, ‘the driver has relaxation in mind—not seduction.’
‘I never thought you had,’ she replied quickly.
‘No?’
‘No.’
‘Then you haven’t been around as much as a girl of your age usually has.'
‘I’m only twenty-four, for goodness’ sake!' The way he was going on you’d think I was ninety, she thought, getting rattled when she didn’t want to. This was such a lovely spot.
‘Exactly,’ said Crawford, and she didn’t understand what ‘Exactly’ meant until he continued, ‘Not many twenty-four-year-olds are still starry-eyed virgins.’
‘You’d know, of course,’ she came back hotly, her colour rising.
He ignored that, and turned in his seat to give her the full benefit of his slate grey eyes that seemed to have darkened. ‘Didn’t Robin Preston ever try to seduce you— he was hoping to marry you?’
If he could ignore her comments, she could ignore his, though she was beginning to feel that fluttering sensation again. Needing some small action, she raised her hand and removed the bandeau from her hair. ‘Where did Robin go, by the way?’ she asked, thinking to turn the conversation. ‘He was in the room when I passed out—when I came to he’d disappeared.’
‘I sent him about his business—went back to his own office, I shouldn’t wonder.' Crawford sounded completely unconcerned with what had happened to Robin. Gerry could just see Crawford, taking in his stride that she’d dropped in a heap at his feet, picking her up without turning a hair and calmly ordering Robin out. Then the implication of what Crawford had just said came hurrying in.
‘You sent Robin back to his own office, you said—you mean Robin works at Arrowsmith Electronics?’
‘Didn’t you know?—Perhaps you didn’t.’ Crawford looked thoughtful as he answered his own question. ‘I believe he started with the company on the Monday you were working in London,’ he paused. ‘The day he came looking for you would have been the first chance he would have of seeing you.’ She had to admire Crawford for his deduction, but he was out with his guesswork with his next remark. ‘Is that the first time you’ve seen him since you broke your engagement?’
‘We weren’t engaged.’
‘Yet he thought he was going to marry you?’
‘I thought so too,’ said Gerry without realising she had spoken. Then could have bitten her tongue out, because Crawford already knew too much about her personal life without her volunteering any more.
‘What happened?’
He was too inquisitive by far. Why should he be interested in what happened? It didn’t matter to him at all, and she was damned if she’d satisfy his curiosity. Crawford’s look was piercing through her, so she deliberately turned her head away. Let him gather from that that she had no intention of answering any more of his questions. She was unprepared for the hand that came beneath her chin and forced her head round until she was looking at him.
‘You said in the office that day that it was over twelve months since you’d seen him, and I received a very clear impression that day that he didn’t think very much of Teddy.’ There was a pause while Crawford got all his conclusions neatly in order, then, ‘From what your sister has told me, it was around that time her husband died. Would I be right in thinking you gave Preston up in order to look after her?’
Gerry refused to answer him. She couldn’t turn her head away, but she didn’t have to look at him either. She looked down at the masculine column of his throat, saw the darker hair growing up from his chest through the opening in his sports shirt, and feeling decidedly agitated, closed her eyes.
‘That’s just the sort of misguided thing I’m growing to think you would do,’ he told her harshly when she refused to open her eyes. ‘It’s typical of you, isn’t it? To throw away the chance of making a happy married life for yourself because your sister’s marriage ended tragically—it wouldn’t occur to you to take your problem to someone else, would it? No, you have to take it all on yourself— you’d have killed yourself doing it too if I hadn’t decided I was going to see what this Teddy thought he was playing at letting you go around looking half dead.’
Abruptly Gerry opened her eyes, wrenching her chin from his grasp as angry sparks of fire leapt from her eyes, and for one of the rare times in her life, incensed by the hard way he was slating her, she lost her temper.
‘What the hell do you know about anything?’ she stormed. ‘Teddy’s husband wasn’t the only one to die in the car crash that killed him—my father died too. The house we lived in was rented at a sky-high rent—Teddy was left penniless—she would never have been able to afford to take on the tenancy. I would have been all right, wouldn’t I, starting out with everything rosy in my life— my marriage, with a destitute sister awaiting the arrival of her babies. Tell me what you would have done, Mr Arrowsmith. Go on, you just tell me what you would have done?’
Still angry, though her temper was spent, Gerry looked at him furiously. She was aware she was shaking uncontrollably, and as her anger began to simmer down, she knew she was near to tears.
For answer, Crawford leaned over and hauled her up against him, not saying a word until her trembling had lessened. Gerry wanted to pull indignantly away from him, but she felt too spent to move. Then very quietly, Crawford began to ask her questions, none of the harshness in his voice she had heard earlier. She hadn’t intended telling him another thing, but his very gentleness with her, so much a contrast from the way he had been, had her revealing that she and Teddy had moved from Gringham, a town which lay fifteen miles the other side of Layton from where they now lived. He was finding out how the landlord had someone else wanting to rent the house in Gringham and had offered them the cottage they now lived in. She didn’t tell him that even with the smaller accommodation, the rent was still quite high—but it had come more into line with her pocket when she’d been lucky enough to get the job at Arrowsmiths.
And then Crawford was apologising for goading her into losing her temper, while managing to sound as though he wasn’t sorry at all at having extracted from her in her anger what he had wanted to know. She had an odd sort of feeling he had deliberately goaded her into losing her temper so she would reveal things that normally galloping horses wouldn’t have dragged from her to an outsider. Yet was he such an outsider? From what he had said, it seemed he had made up his mind to have a look at her home conditions before he ever knew Teddy was not the male he had expected to see.
‘You think I’m pretty much of a monster, don’t you?’ Crawford questioned from above her head. His voice was gentle, and she knew she should pull away from him, but it was so comforting having his arms around her, her body wouldn’t obey what her mind was telling her.
‘I wouldn’t go as far as to say that,’ she replied, thinking perhaps she had over-dramatised what she had told him—for all it had been fact—and trying to inject humour into what for her had been an intense few moments. ‘Brute and bully perhaps—but monster, well...’ Her voice trailed off and she felt his chest move beneath her cheek in silent laughter.
Feeling calmer, her remark having lightened the tension between them, Gerry made to move away from him. But his hand on the side of her face held her against him, and as his hand began an absentminded caressing of her chin, and followed through up to her ear, she knew she would have to move away from him soon because there was a riotous jangling up her nerve ends that she had never experienced from a man’s touch before, not even with Robin. Pushing her left hand against his chest, she levered herself away, and felt a vague sense of disappointment at how easily Crawford let her go.
'I said you have beautiful bone structure,' he told her, his eyes lingering over her face. ‘I’ll bet you photograph superbly.’
Gerry had to give a nervous cough before she answered, and wished she hadn’t because now he was aware she was just that teeny bit unsure of herself with him. ‘What a pity you haven’t got your camera,’ she said airily, and watched as he grinned.
‘It would take a more professional cameraman than I to do you justice,’ he said, and the word justice made her remember she hadn’t yet taxed him with the unfairness of allowing him to pay for Mrs Chapman’s services.
‘Oh, by the way,’ she said, trying to make her voice sound casual, as if she had never fretted and worried for a moment on the subject. ‘I—er ' she lost the casual note as she sought for a tactful way to tell him kind though his gesture had been, the responsibility was hers. ‘Thank you very much for arranging about Mrs Chapman,’ she tried again, and was thankful she could bring the good lady’s name out without faltering. ‘It was very good of you, and Teddy and I both appreciate what you did—but I’ll pay Mrs Chapman from now on. I’ve calculated how much you’ve paid her to date ...’ She didn’t like at all the ominous silence that was coming from Crawford, but having got this far she wanted it over and done with. She reached her hand down the side of her in search of her handbag, and felt rather than saw Crawford’s hand snake across and grip her wrist in such a blood-stemming hold, she thought her wrist would break.
Her eyes flew to his, and a gasp of alarm escaped her at the fury in his face. ‘For once in your damned life let somebody do something to help you!’ She flinched from the anger in him, and only sheer outrage as the thought came to her that it was only from pity that he wanted to help had her finding her voice.
‘We’re not charity cases yet, you know.’
At her words, the grip on her wrist tightened and she was sure he was going to break it in two. But she didn’t know suddenly which was the worst pain, the grip he had on her wrist or the bewildering tightness within her—the uncertain yet certain feeling that she was on the brink of some shattering discovery. Some of the pain she was feeling must have been showing in her eyes, for Crawford scanned her face as if seeking for the cause of her anxious look. Then he seemed to become aware of his bruising hold on her, and looked down at the wrist in his grip and slowly let her go, staring hard at the reddened flesh his hand had left behind.
‘You stretch my patience to the limit, Geraldine,’ he said tightly, which she thought was as much of an apology as she was likely to get as he recovered his control.
Why she felt the need to explain why she couldn’t accept his help, she couldn’t have said, but she felt torn two ways. She wanted to tell him she appreciated the thought behind his deed—Teddy had obviously needed some help since she herself was out of action; Teddy just wouldn’t have been able to cope with looking after her and the twins, and be able to fit the housework in as well. But he must see they had to be independent.
‘I don’t mean to appear ungrateful,' she began, feeling unhappy
that that was exactly what he was thinking—he'd already done far more than most employers in his position would think of doing, ‘It’s just that Teddy and I have to manage on our own.'
‘But you can’t manage on your own, can you?'
She didn't like the blunt way he was speaking. It told her he was still as mad as hell with her. 'We can—now that I’m better,’ she came back, refusing to admit defeat.
‘And how long will it be before you knock yourself up again?’ He didn’t wait for her to answer, but went on, ‘As I saw it, it was either get someone in like Mrs Chapman to relieve your sister so she could look after you, or get you admitted into hospital. Since your sister very nearly had hysterics at the idea of you going into hospital—though for the life of me I can't think why ...'
‘Teddy can’t be left on her own at night,' Gerry butted in, quick to defend her sister. ‘She has a thing about it...’ Her voice tailed off as Crawford looked at her, a frightening still expression on his face that she couldn’t find a reason for until she realised what she had just said.
‘What exactly, would you mind telling me,' he asked, enunciating every word clearly, ‘did dear Teddy do while you were staying with your aunt in London?’
She knew she had started to tremble again. The look on his face was fearsome, as if he was anticipating her answer. They were all alone in this secluded country lane, not a soul had passed, and she was beginning to think from the expression on his face that he was ready to commit near murder if she confirmed the suspicion that was growing in his mind
.
But, as thought chased after thought in her mind, she could come up with nothing but the truth if he was insistent on getting an answer—and she was sure Crawford Arrowsmith was a man who would insist on just that.
'I'm
waiting, Geraldine.’ Not with a lot of patience either, Gerry thought. Tell me now what your sister did for a night attendant while you were staying with your aunt in London.’
She was glad he was being sarcastic, it took some of the sting out of his murderous look. ‘I don’t have an aunt in London,’ she confessed quietly.
‘Then might I ask with whom you stayed the three nights you were there?’
‘I didn’t stay in London.’
There, it was out. She put her hands defensively behind her back in case he took it into his head to grab hold of her wrist again in that punishing hold.
‘You didn’t stay in London?’ he repeated incredulously, as if scarcely believing the words that had just sounded in his ears. ‘You’re not telling me you journeyed there and back morning and evening?’
She didn’t know what he was making such a fuss about. ‘You do it,’ she accused, not knowing for sure, but feeling he might have done sometimes.