‘You’ll have to direct me, I’m afraid,’ he told her, opening the car door for her. ‘How far is it to Gawsworth?’
‘Only about ten or twelve miles.’
Hazel sighed a little as she sank down into the luxury of the car’s leather upholstery, wondering a little enviously what it must be like to own such a luxurious marque.
‘It’s a beautiful car,’ she commented, as Silas got in beside her and started the engine.
‘Yes. I’m very pleased with it, although they’re vastly over-priced. However, when I’m doing the research on a book, I need a car I can rely on and one I can travel in in relative comfort, so something like this is an essential.’
They were almost at the small crossroads where they would have to turn off for Gawsworth, and Hazel directed him accordingly.
‘What made you decide to set your new book in Cheshire?’ she asked him hesitantly. She had no idea whether he would welcome questions about his work. She had heard that authors could be temperamental over such things, although a show of temperament was somehow the last thing she could associate with Silas. He seemed far too well adjusted, far too quietly self-confident of himself and his goals, but then, as she had reminded herself before, if he was as mature an adult as he had seemed, surely he wouldn’t need to support his male ego by choosing such a very young girlfriend as her daughter?
‘It all started with one of the characters in my last book, a knight by the name of Hugo de Lupus; a fictional character, related to the Earl of Chester—’
‘Yes, I remember him,’ Hazel interrupted him enthusiastically. ‘He was so well drawn, so interesting, that I found myself wanting to know more about him. And now you’re going to base a new book on him? That’s wonderful…’ She broke off suddenly, conscious of the quizzical look he was giving her, her skin flushing with mortification.
‘When Katie told me you read my books, I thought she was flattering me. I see that I was wrong. Yes, I agree with you. I found that Hugo was building into a far more complex and demanding character than I’d ever intended, and, to be quite honest, I hadn’t intended to start work on a new book quite so soon. I’d already committed myself to a series of lectures at the university, and I’ve found that Hugo has rather been getting in the way. Hence the urgency to find somewhere to live while I start my research. I’ve done quite a bit of reading up on the area; now I need to get down to some proper work. I thought of using a house similar to Gawsworth as Hugo’s home base.’
They talked for a few more minutes until Hazel directed him once again and then as though by mutual consent both of them became silent as Hazel settled back in her seat to enjoy the allure of the countryside, and the comfort of the car.
Gawsworth, when they reached it, wasn’t busy. The summer visitors were gone, and they almost seemed to have the house and gardens to themselves.
As they walked in silence from room to room, Hazel enjoying the pleasure of seeing familiar objects and rooms, Silas making their acquaintance for the first time, she was visited as she always was whenever she came here by the house’s very own special aura.
When they had toured the entire upper floors in almost total silence, she said hesitantly to Silas, ‘It isn’t a very grand house; perhaps you had something different in mind. We could—’
‘It’s perfect,’ he told her quietly. ‘And you’re the perfect companion to enjoy it with. So few people have the gift of silence, of allowing places, things to speak for themselves.’
‘Sometimes I think I’m very boring,’ Hazel told him shakily, too bemused by his compliment to hide what she was feeling. ‘I never seem to know what to say to people. Katie says it’s because I’m on my own so much.’ She pulled a wry face. ‘I don’t know so much about that—’
‘You aren’t boring at all,’ Silas interrupted her firmly. ‘The people who are boring are those who chatter endlessly about nothing until they make your eardrums ache.’
They were just about to go downstairs, standing together in the small enclosed space at their head, and, although another couple could have fitted between them with ease, Hazel suddenly felt as though she was standing far, far too close to Silas.
A dangerous sense of expectancy, of excitement, seemed to curl through her veins, gripping her muscles with an unfamiliar tension.
She heard herself saying in a husky, strained voice, ‘I think we’d better go down. We’ve still got the ground floor to see, and then there are the gardens.’
‘Yes.’
Was it her imagination or did Silas’s voice too seem faintly hoarse?
It was the house, she told herself quickly as they went downstairs. It always brought her a very intense awareness of how many, many generations had lived and loved within its walls, how many, many tears and smiles it must have seen, how many joys and how many tragedies. And it always made her feel vulnerable; aware of her own aloneness, her lack of someone with whom to share her life. Just as, for some reason, Silas himself made her sharply aware of what was missing from her life both emotionally and physically…of all that she had missed.
By choice, as well as by necessity, she reminded herself sharply. There had been moments, opportunities which if taken would have led on to inti
macy even if had only been a casual sexual intimacy. But that was not for her. Her body, never having known sexual pleasure or fulfilment, had no craving for it. Something inside her had always made her shrink away from the thought of sex for sex’s sake, perhaps because she simply wasn’t made that way, or perhaps because of Katie’s conception.
But now suddenly she was sharply, almost painfully aware that she was a woman; that she could feel desire, that her body could ache and torment her, that she could look at a man, at his mouth, at his hands, and ache almost feverishly to know what they would feel like against her skin.
That on its own was bad enough, dangerous enough, but when that man was her daughter’s lover… When that man was, as Katie herself had told her, someone very, very special, then there was no justification for what she was feeling, no pardon for allowing herself to continue to have these feelings, no excuse at all for allowing herself the self-indulgence and the danger of being with him.
If she had any sense, any loyalty, any love for Katie she should have refused outright to accompany Silas this morning.
But she did love Katie. Of course she loved her. And as for her being here with Silas… That had been at Katie’s insistence, and, after all what threat did she pose to Katie’s happiness? Silas was hardly likely to look at her with desire. No matter how much he might have implied this morning that he was enjoying her company, no matter how subtly he might have suggested that he enjoyed being with her, he was in all probability only being polite, being pleasant to her because she was Katie’s mother.
Yes, that was what it was: he was simply being pleasant to her for Katie’s sake.