Forbidden Loving

Why was she behaving like such a fool? Just because he was offering to buy her lunch, it did not mean that he wanted…

What? To go to bed with her? Of course he didn’t. He was simply being polite. She was, after all, Katie’s mother, and if he hadn’t already guessed the state he reduced her to then her present behaviour, refusing to have lunch with him, and generally behaving like a green girl of sixteen, would pretty soon alert him to the truth.

‘I… Lunch would be very pleasant,’ she heard herself saying huskily, while her heart bounced around inside her ribcage like a rubber ball, and nothing she could say to herself about good manners and behaving with maturity could truly dismiss the tiny frantic pulse of excitement that refused to respond to all her exhortations to disappear.

They ended up eating at a very pleasant country pub, several miles away from Gawsworth, where they were given a table within a view of the huge log fire, and where the food was simple and very satisfying.

When Silas glanced at his watch and announced regretfully that it was time to leave, Hazel could hardly believe that over two hours had passed so quickly.

He had a way of drawing her out of her normal reserve, of getting her to talk about herself and telling her in turn about himself, that had made her realise how starved she had been of this kind of mental stimulation, how starved she had been of the company of an attractive, interesting man, who seemed to find her equally interesting and attractive.

But that was nonsense, of course. It had to be, she told herself as they left the pub. He was just being polite, that was all. And she, like the fool she was, was over-reacting. The trouble was that she was so unused to male company that she had forgotten how to respond to it.

‘Fancy a short stroll before we head back?’ Silas asked her, pointing out a footpath that led from the car park. ‘I could do with some fresh air, and some exercise to help me digest that lunch.’

Silently, Hazel nodded.

The path led down a narrow lane bounded by overgrown hedges, and then over a stile and across a field, dipping down towards what looked like the course of a small stream.

The stile proved a little difficult for her to navigate. One of its struts was missing, and as she struggled with it she cursed her lack of inches. Someone of Katie’s height would have made it with ease and elegance, while she, with her small stature, was having to clamber over it in a most unsophisticated and crab-like fashion.

She had just about made it when Silas realised her predicament and offered, ‘Let me give you a hand.’

Before she could protest he was turning back to her, sliding his hands beneath her arms as he leaned forwards and lifted her over the stile so easily that she might have been a child. Despite his age he was quite obviously extremely physically fit, she acknowledged as he lowered her towards the ground.

Although his touch was completely sexless on his part, she was acutely conscious, even through the thickness of her clothes, of the pressure of his palms against the sides of her breasts, and of the intensity and unexpectedness of their reaction to that pressure. And thankful that he could not see what she could feel: that her nipples had hardened and were pushing urgently against the constriction of her clothes as though willing him to become aware of her femininity and its responsiveness to him.

Shame coiled in her stomach and left a bitter aftertaste in her mouth. The moment he set her down, she moved quickly away from him, hoping he would put her heightened colour down to the briskness of the breeze.

Desperate to get herself back to normal, she rushed into nervous questions about his work as she tried to distract her senses away from her physical awareness of him.

He told her that he had always wanted to write, but that as a lecturer he had been well aware of the difficulties in establishing a career for himself as a writer, and had decided that his writing must always be a hobby and a self-indulgence when almost by accident he had been introduced to a publisher, through a mutual acquaintance, and had been encouraged to let the former see one of his manuscripts.

‘I’ve been lucky,’ he told Hazel, smiling at her when she automatically demurred, for once overcoming her own shyness and hesitancy, to assure him almost fervently that he was one of her favourite authors and that his historical sagas had that special something that made them outstandingly readable.

Suddenly aware that she was perhaps being overenthusiastic, she stopped abruptly, and said uncomfortably, ‘I suppose you must get tired of people telling you that.’

‘Never, when it’s genuinely meant,’ he assured her warmly. ‘Although I must admit I do feel rather embarrassed at being the recipient of such undeserved praise.’

‘It isn’t undeserved,’ Hazel insisted, stopping walking to turn and look earnestly at him. ‘Katie’s probably already told you how much I enjoy your work.’

‘She has mentioned it,’ he agreed gravely. ‘But I rather thought she might be dangling an extra carrot in front of me, so I didn’t pay too much attention.’

Not quite understanding what he meant, Hazel hesitated.

‘I’m very grateful to you for allowing me to stay with you,’ Silas told her quietly. ‘A writer isn’t the easiest person to have around at the best of times, but most especially when he’s working. We do tend to be a rather self-absorbed and selfish lot. I sometimes work quite late into the night. I hope the noise from my typewriter won’t disturb you…’

‘I’m sure it won’t,’ Hazel told him. She wondered sensitively if he was subtly warning her that once he was working he would expect to be left strictly alone. Well, she could understand that. Her own work as an illustrator could be mentally and sometimes even emotionally draining, and she too needed her privacy if she was to work successfully.

‘I expect you’ll want to be left strictly to yourself when you’re working,’ she said now, determined to make it clear to him that she wasn’t going to be forever popping in and out offering him cups of tea and food. ‘If you want to make yourself a drink or a snack then please feel free to do so, otherwise—well, I don’t bother much with breakfast and when I’m working I tend to have a sandwich or something light, and then in the evening we… I expect you’ll want to make your own arrangements.’

‘Meaning that that’s what you’d prefer me to do?’

His question was too blunt, too direct.

She blinked and wondered furiously what he expected her to say.