‘A whole year’s profit.’ He was breathing heavily now, glaring at her, making her feel rather like a vulnerable and very new matador faced by an extremely dangerous and maddened bull. She circled him warily, without taking her eyes off his face. ‘And just exactly how much is a whole year’s profit?’ he demanded thickly.
Her anger had died away as quickly as it had arisen, and she was too nervous to lie to him.
‘Somewhere about five or six thousand pounds,’ she stammered helplessly, hardly daring to look at him as she saw the rage engulf his features.
‘Five or six thousand pounds?’ he gritted, almost spitting the words at her. ‘You risked your life for five or six thousand pounds? Come here.’ He practically dragged her into the study and thrust her down into a chair. ‘Let me give you a lesson in economics,’ he told her. ‘If you invested the money I offered you for the land, it would bring you an annual income far in excess of five or six thousand pounds.’
Rue knew that it was true. She had no defence against either his argument or the look that he gave her. Right from the start she had known that the money both he and the builder had offered her for her land would enable her to live in comparative comfort and without the hard work she was now obliged to do; but to simply give up after everything that she had done, to put aside all the effort she had put into making the small business a success, had seemed to Rue in a way to be turning her back on everything she had learned from her disastrous mar
riage to Julian. It would have been as though in some way she was reverting to the spoiled, thoughtless girl she had once been.
She looked at Neil, almost without seeing him, unaware of the emotions reflected in the sombreness of her gaze.
‘Why?’ he demanded thickly. ‘Why the hell punish yourself like that?’
He reached out towards her and took hold of her hand, grasping her wrist and turning her hand first palm upwards and then nails upwards, making her look at them.
‘Think what you’re doing to yourself, Rue. For how many more years can you push yourself the way you’re doing now, working single-handedly almost every hour in the day—and for what?’
‘For something far more important than mere money,’ she told him, suddenly finding her voice again. ‘For self-respect, Neil. For the right to prove to myself that I can be both independent and self-sufficient.’
‘And that’s very important to you, isn’t it?’ he asked her cynically. ‘Has no one ever told you that no man, nor any woman for that matter, is an island, Rue?’
Of course they had, many, many times, she remembered—when warning her of the isolation she was turning her life into.
‘All right, so you were once hurt and badly, but surely that doesn’t mean you have to turn your back on the rest of the human race for ever?’
‘I haven’t,’ she told him, shivering a little beneath the force of his words.
‘Oh, yes, you have, Rue,’ he argued with her. ‘You’ve built a wall between yourself and the rest of humanity. You’ve told yourself that you don’t need anyone or anything, and you’re determined not to let anyone behind that barrier you’ve created to protect yourself.’
‘Stop psychoanalysing me, Neil,’ she interrupted him sharply. ‘Just because my life doesn’t fall into the normal pattern for a woman of my age, just because I don’t have a husband and two point four children, that doesn’t mean that there’s anything wrong with me.’
‘No, that doesn’t,’ he agreed sardonically, and the colour rushed up under her skin at the way he was looking at her.
Foolishly, recklessly, heedlessly, she ignored the warning signal hammering from her brain and said desperately, ‘What exactly are you talking about, Neil?’
‘I’m talking about the way you make me feel, and then back off from me,’ he told her curtly. ‘I’m talking about the fact that you let me get so close and then no closer. I’m talking about the fact that you wilfully and crazily risked your own life rather than ask for help. Doesn’t that tell you anything about yourself, Rue?’
She was quite proud of the steadiness of her voice when she answered him calmly, ‘Only that I like my independence, and I already knew that.’
‘You like your independence,’ he mimicked her almost savagely, half reaching out to her as though he meant to take hold of her and then wrenching himself away, pushing impatient fingers into his hair and turning to look at her, his face tight with anger and tiredness. ‘This isn’t getting either of us anywhere,’ he said grimly. ‘I think we’d both better try to get some sleep for what’s left of the night.’
Rue glanced involuntarily towards the window. Dawn was already beginning to lighten the sky. A tremor shook her as she realised that, since arriving at the Court, she had hardly given her own home a thought. As though he read her mind, Neil said quietly, ‘As soon as the fire service have anything to tell us, they’ll be in touch. I’ve given them my number here.’
Part of her told her that she ought to object to him taking charge in such a high-handed fashion, and yet part of her, the larger part, she recognised wearily, was only too relieved to have him do so. It had been a long time since she had had someone to lean on. Rue could deceive the rest of the world, but she couldn’t deceive herself. There was something within her, some flaw in her character perhaps, that had made her long to admit how willing she was for him to shoulder her problems, if only momentarily.
‘There’s no need to come upstairs with me,’ she said instead, ‘if you’d just tell me which room I’m to sleep in.’
He shrugged his shoulders. ‘You can take your pick, they’re all furnished. I bought the house with its contents.’
‘Where are you sleeping?’ she asked him quickly, and then her face glazed with hot colour as she saw the amusement leap immediately to life in his eyes.
‘At last!’ he said teasingly. ‘Although I’m not sure if there’s enough left of either the night or my energy to do full justice to your invitation.’
Rue didn’t know which was the greater, her fury or her embarrassment. He knew quite well that she had not asked which room was his because she wanted to share it with him; far from it. Mastering her anger as best she could, she said coldly, ‘If that was supposed to be a joke, I consider it to be in very poor taste.’
Immediately she wished she hadn’t been so rash as he came towards her and said smoothly, ‘Who’s joking? I’ve been wanting to share my bed with you from the first moment I set eyes on you.’ His voice suddenly seemed far too close to the sensual purr of a hunting animal. It made tiny hairs at the nape of her neck stand up on end, and her skin tightened with tension.