There was a blur of blue in the room, someone in a velvet dressing gown walked towards him, and suddenly he couldn’t breathe; he felt sick and famt.
She opened the door and stared at him, her eyes wide in surprise.
‘Ross!’
He was so relieved he put his arms round her, held her tightly, against his heart, his face buried in her sweet-smelling hair, reminded by the shampoo she had obviously used of the scent of his forest in summer, of pine and fern in sunshine.
She didn’t put her arms round him, but her body softened, leaned on his yieldingly, her face against his coat.
But then his mood swung violently. For hours he had been thinking the worst, his head awash with terrifying images of what might have happened to her. He had been rent by guilt and fear. There were so many horrific possibilities—she might have been seriously hurt in a crash, might lose the baby, be maimed, dead, or dying.
And while he was going through hell about her, out of his mind with panic, she had been safe, here, in this cosy house, all the time.
Angry blood rushed to his head. He reddened, pushed her away and stared down accusingly, shouting at her. ‘How could you be so stupid? What on earth possessed you to drive all this way, on one of the worst nights of the winter, in that silly little car of yours? It’s a sardine can, even if it is painted with flowers—just a flimsy piece of tin, that damned car! You could have been killed. God knows why you weren’t!’
‘Don’t yell at me!’ Dylan threw back, just as furious, just as flushed, and trembling because a moment ago she had been in his arms again, had felt his mouth moving against her hair with a tenderness he had not shown her for a long, long time.
‘What do you expect when you behave like a halfwit!’ he muttered, staring at her in that soft blue velvet which made her eyes look bluer than ever, the deep warm blue of summer skies.
She was round and swollen as a pumpkin, but she was still very beautiful: her curly hair tied back from her face with a blue velvet scrunchie, her fine features so mobile and expressive that you could read every thought, every emotion unless she deliberately hid them.
He remembered how, when she danced, her body reflected her face, mood and reaction flowing through her throat and breasts, down her arms to her delicate, elegant hands, down through waist, hip and thigh to the long, slim legs. Every inch of her had been eloquent. Then. Until she became pregnant, tethered to the earth, slow-moving, heavy.
He had done that to her. His face darkened with rage and pain and Dylan read his reaction and shivered, looking away. Did he hate her now? Huskily, she asked, ‘How did you find me?’
He swallowed, his throat moving visibly. ‘Pure coincidence. Jenny rang me in York, because you hadn’t arrived at her place, so I drove over here last night. We were up half the night.’ His dark grey eyes were glittering points of ice. ‘Jenny is out of her mind with worry over you, by the way.’
Her lower lip trembled. ‘Oh...poor
Jen... I tried to ring but the phone lines are down here.’
He ignored that. ‘At first light I started driving around looking for you, and I just happened to meet a postman who had noticed that crazy car of yours!’ His tone sharpened to a knife-point. ‘Which you had crashed into that wall up there—what were you trying to do, kill yourself and the baby?’
‘Don’t be so cruel! What a wicked thing to say . . . even think!’ Half in tears, half hating him, she turned on her heel and walked away into the kitchen.
Ross followed, banging the door behind him so that it rattled, but not doing so fast enough. Fred had got in, too, and was making for the heat of the range, standing in front of it, shaking himself.
He lowered his head to enjoy the warmth while showering the entire room with water from the snow that had been drenching his coat as if he had bathed in it. Maybe the stupid animal had rolled in snow, thought Ross, wondering how on earth they would get the goat out of the house.
‘Now look what you’ve done!’ Dylan wailed. ‘Shoo... Fred... you can’t come in. Go out. Shoo.’
Fred ignored her flapping hands and agitated cries, didn’t even glance at her.
‘He’s dripping all over the floor!’ she complained. ‘And so are you! Take those boots off, for heaven’s sake!’
Ross grabbed Fred’s leather collar and heaved him towards the door, with Fred wriggling and digging his heels in every inch of the way. Ross was stronger, however, he finally pushed Fred out, slamming the door behind him. Fred glared viciously over his shoulder, his yellowy-blue eyes homicidal, then charged away, up the garden, and butted the shed walls, making them shiver violently.
‘You just have to be firm with animals,’ Ross said.
Dylan grabbed a mop from a cupboard and dealt with the wet marks of Fred’s hooves and Ross’s boots. ‘If Ruth gets back to see her floor in this mess she’ll be furious. Fred isn’t allowed indoors; he eats everything, even dishcloths.’
Ross took the mop away from her and finished the work. ‘You shouldn’t be doing that, not in your condition... and who’s Ruth?’
Crossly, Dylan said, ‘I’ve been doing my housework all through my pregnancy—I’m not going to collapse because I mop a wet floor! And, will you please take those boots off?’
He rinsed the mop out in the kitchen sink, shook it, then put it away in the cupboard where she had found it, the wet head upwards. Then he pulled off his boots and stood them on the kitchen mat by the door.
Dylan sat down by the table, trembling and feeling sick. ‘This is Ruth’s house. After I crashed she took me in—she’s a very nice woman; she’s been very kind to me.’ Her blue eyes lifted to his face, dark with reproach, telling him silently that he had not been kind yesterday morning, before he left for York.