CHAPTER FOUR
‘THANK you for bringing me to Gawsworth.’
They were outside in the gardens, standing at the top of a steep incline admiring the view of the house, where it lay snugly in a hollow below them.
‘I love coming here,’ Hazel responded truthfully. ‘In the summer they have outdoor seasons of Gilbert and Sullivan, plus a small run of plays, using the floodlit house as a backdrop. People come early to picnic on the grass. There’s a wonderful atmosphere.’
‘I can imagine.’
Hazel gave him a quick, doubting look, wondering if he was mocking her—if he was comparing her lifestyle to his own and deriding her as a dull middle-aged woman whose life was so lonely and boring that a simple evening’s outing became something of immense importance and excitement, far more so than the event actually justified. But when she looked at him there was nothing other than sincere enthusiasm to be read in his eyes. But even so…
‘Katie loathes Gilbert and Sullivan. The last time she came with me, she complained that she was eaten alive by mosquitoes.’
‘I know the feeling. I experienced the same profound boredom and irritation when I foolishly agreed to accompany my nephews and godson to a pop concert.’
‘Katie likes pop music,’ she told him defiantly.
‘I expect she does. At her age so did I. She’ll grow out of it. We all do.’
What did he mean, he expected she did? Surely he must be aware of Katie’s tastes, her likes and dislikes? Surely he could hardly have failed to notice Katie’s love of the latest pop music, played so loud that it positively hurt one’s eardrums? As Katie’s lover he must be intimately aware of her likes and dislikes. Or was he the kind of man who had no interest in the woman in his life when they were not together in bed?
Her senses immediately repudiated such a suggestion. Because—or so she told herself—she could not bear to think of Katie, her clever, beautiful Katie being foolish enough, needing enough, to allow herself to become involved with a man, any man, who would treat her so badly.
No, that was more her role. She was the one whose inexperience, whose lack of knowledge, whose lack of self-worth, might dangerously lead her into such a relationship. Not that she had the intention of becoming involved in any kind of emotional or sexual relationship, much less one with…
She gave a small shiver. Her thoughts, her feelings, were rapidly escalating and getting beyond her control.
‘Cold? That’s my fault. I’ve kept you standing here far too long.’
She was smiling in denial, before she could check the foolish response of her unwary heart, acknowledging that even if she had been cold the warmth of Silas’s smile would have dispelled it.
They were standing so close to one another that if either of them took a single step it would bring them close enough for their bodies to brush lightly together, for him to lift his arm and put it around her shoulders, for him to take hold of her and turn her towards him and…
Her stifled gasp made him turn his head and frown at her. For a moment she thought that he had actually looked into her heart and read what she was so desperately trying to conceal.
He was her daughter’s lover, she reminded herself despairingly, praying silently for help, for someone or something to help her with the struggle which was rapidly outrunning her self-control.
She tried to concentrate on how humiliating it would be for her, and how painful and upsetting for Katie, if he should guess what was happening to her and tell Katie. Her daughter would have every right to feel shocked and disgusted with her. She felt both those emotions herself and more.
She could not understand why, after all the years since Jimmy’s death, when she had never felt the slightest sexual inclination or desire, when no matter how much she might have sometimes ached for emotional closeness with a man who might love and cherish her she had never once experienced anything like the fierce, sharp, painful splintering of sexual chemistry she was feeling now, it had to be for this man of all men.
Was it because he was Katie’s…because in some dark and hitherto unplumbed or suspected corners of her psyche, she was jealous or resentful of her daughter? Her soul cringed back from the thought in mute horror. She knew instinctively that it wasn’t so. But in that case what was the explanation?
Was it perhaps her age—her hormones? Wild theories and thoughts jumbled together in her head. She had read in magazine articles that sometimes women approaching middle-age were prone to what might be termed erratic behaviour. She was after all thirty-six.
‘Does your knowledge of the locale extend to knowing somewhere where we could have lunch?’
The quiet question had to be repeated before its meaning registered. She stared at Silas with panic-blinded eyes that made him frown and search her face, before asking softly, ‘What is it? What’s wrong?’
She had thought that intimacy between a man and woman began with physical touch, but she had been wrong, Hazel acknowledged sickly as her body, her senses responded violently to the sound of his voice, almost as though its cadences, its warmth, its male tones had thrown an invisible circle around them both, locking them within it.
‘I… I… Katie will be wondering where we are,’ was all she could manage to say.
Her throat felt raw and painful. She was embarrassingly aware that inside she was trembling with shock and emotion. She could never remember feeling like this in all her life. Not even when she had discovered she was pregnant, and certainly not when she and Jimmy…
‘I shouldn’t think so. She gave me the impression that she intended to spend most of the day with her friend. I may not know a great deal about young women of her age, but it seems to me that once two of them get together they appear to have an endless amount of topics to discuss.’
‘I…’ Why wasn’t she telling him firmly and plainly that she could not have lunch with him? Why wasn’t she reminding both herself and him about Katie?