‘You got a good, roasting blaze going, I’ll give you that!’ he grated in a driven undertone. ‘I warned you about the wiring—it must be fifty years old.’
‘You got me out,’ she grasped, eager to take him off the subject. ‘You risked your own—’
His eyes were fierce. ‘There was nothing heroic about it. I don’t remember getting out of the car. I don’t remember kicking in the window. The only thing I remember is thinking that I’d pulled out a dead body.’
A shudder slivered through her. ‘You shouted at me.’
‘It may surprise you, but the prospect of life without you didn’t enthrall me,’ he bit out jerkily. ‘And the shouting came later, after you had revived. I didn’t realise you were sick until you folded on me.’
‘I’m sorry,’ she said tightly.
Silence dragged. He sighed. ‘I’m not. I’ve got you under my roof.’
He settled down on the edge of the bed and pulled her confidently into his arms. With a shaky little sigh she subsided against him, having no objections to reassurance when it was forced on her. She rested her chin on a broad shoulder sheathed in fine wool. A feathery strand of black hair brushed her cheek. The familiar scent of his body, deliciously clean, gloriously familiar, enclosed her. She had a stark recollection of him shaking against her last night and her lips wanted to turn inwards to his cheek.
If she hadn’t been downstairs, he would have tried to go upstairs to find her. She knew that as instinctively as she knew that the sun would rise every morning. He wouldn’t have counted the possible cost to himself. For perhaps the first time she attempted to equate the fact that he would risk his life for her with that terrible rejection he had dealt her in the past. And it was like trying to bring two sides of a triangle together. Or match two radically different personalities. She wondered in frustration if there really could be some less obvious explanation for the way he had treated her, something he might have told her if she hadn’t stopped him in his tracks.
She parted her dry lips on a very leading question. ‘Is having me under your roof…important to you?’
He was so quiet, so very quiet, she stiffened. ‘It’s an absolute necessity for a husband and wife,’ he drawled just above her head.
She had a crazed mental image of her ears shooting out on stalks. ‘A husband and wife?’ she parroted.
‘You said you’d marry me.’
‘Did I?’ she muttered in a stupor.
‘Yes. You did. I knew you would.’ As he made the confirmation he held her back from him. Black lashes were narrowed over piercing dark eyes. ‘And you’re going through with it. I didn’t spend all of yesterday making wedding arrangements just so that you could decide to change your mind last minute.’
‘Wedding arrangements?’ she gulped. ‘Yesterday?’
The faintest colour highlighted his angular cheekbones. ‘I didn’t see any reason to hang around. You ought to be lying down.’ He settled her back against the pillows as if she were a rag doll and tucked the duvet round her slight frame. ‘What was your typewriter doing in your car?’ he shot at her abruptly.
‘How would I know? I don’t know what I was doing last night…yesterday!’ For some reason tears flooded her eyes and rolled down her cheeks in embarrassing rivulets as she turned her head away in desperation from him. ‘I wasn’t feeling well; I wasn’t myself.’
‘You were probably more yourself than you’ve been in a long time. You kept on smiling at me. Who am I to complain if it takes a temperature of a hundred and two to do it?’ Long fingers smoothly massaged the knotted tension from her spine. He told her that she was suffering from shock, that tears were quite normal, but she wasn’t listening. The fire preoccupied her jumbled thoughts less than the bombshell he had calmly dropped on her unprepared head.
Had she said she would marry him? Somewhere in that poppy field where there was no shadow of the past, no Grant to bulldoze her dreams back into the dust? Without Jake tomorrow and the next day and the day after that would be empty. She faced an inescapable truth that deprived her of choice and made decision superfluous. The prospect of those empty tomorrows stretching endlessly before her was too terrifying to contemplate.
‘Dr Cates, the family GP, checked you over last night. I assumed that you wouldn’t want to go to hospital unless it was strictly necessary. The Press would’ve been on to the story immediately,’ he pointed out.
She sighed. ‘News of the fire is bound to escape.’
He strolled over to the low, deep-silled window. ‘That’s possible, but there’s no real story to be had. Merrill’s husband, John, arrived at Lower Ridge before the police. At my request he drove your car over here, and the car was the only proof that you were, in fact, in the house at the time of the fire. You haven’t been bothered by the authorities because, as far as they’re concerned, you’d already gone off somewhere for a few days.’
His speedy response to the threat of media interest in the chaos of the previous night astonished her. ‘They think I went off and left a fire burning?’
An expressive brow arched. ‘Stranger things have happened. In any case, the police lost interest once they were satisfied that there was nothing suspicious about the fire. But for the cover-up this house would be besieged by reporters, clamouring for an interview with you after your ordeal.’ He sent her a grim smile. ‘You might have enjoyed the attention, but I wouldn’t have. I don’t intend to get married on Wednesday with a pack of reporters on the church steps.’
Her lashes swept up on startled violet eyes. ‘Wednesday?’ she cried. ‘That’s only three days away!’
Her disbelief had no visible impression on him. He looked steadily back at her. ‘You have something better to do on Wednesday?’
‘Be serious,’ she urged weakly, certain he was teasing her. ‘When you said wedding arrangements, I never dreamt that you…’
‘Meant so soon?’ His sensual mouth twisted. ‘My uncle is a bishop. I saw him yesterday and I explained the situation. He completely understood our need for a quiet, quick ceremony. We’ve been granted a special licence.’
‘But Wednesday…’ she repeated helplessly.
‘At the village church at eleven. I don’t see the problem.’
She was not impervious to the warning edge of his intonation or the poised stillness of his stance. ‘I didn’t expect it to be so soon,’ she muttered.
‘We have only ourselves to please…don’t we? Unless you’re still keen to keep your options open…’
She glanced up, not mistaking his meaning, and her cheeks stained with colour. She was entrapped by the dark, unyielding force of his challenging appraisal and held by it to become equally sensitised to the electric sexuality he possessed. Her skin heated afresh, her pulse raced and rationality evaporated at a similar speed. Her head was starting to spin. He was so businesslike about it all. His no-frills-attached proposal had had a similar daunting practicality, but there was nothing cool about the leashed hunger of his stare.
‘I should be getting up now,’ she muttered, pushing back the duvet and finding herself unexpectedly plunged into sick dizziness as she sat up.
‘Doctor’s orders. You’re not fit to get up yet.’ Jake settled her back again, rearranging the bedclothes impatiently. ‘You’re underweight and you haven’t been looking after yourself very well. You’re not going to bounce back as quickly as Tina did.’
It was too much effort to argue. Jessie bustled in with a tray and Kitty did her best to eat the omelette that had been prepared for her. Afterwards she must have slept because when she wakened, drenched in perspiration from a nightmare, it was dark.
‘Are you all right?’ A finger of light left a path from the ajar door, silhouetting Jake.
‘I had a dream…’ Incredibly relaxed by his presence, she rested back again.
‘I know. You were shouting at the top of your voice.’ Amusement threaded his voice as he settled beside her. ‘Do you want me to get you a drink?’
‘No,’ she mumbled sleepily, reaching out a hand to find a lean thigh. ‘I didn’t know where you were.’
‘You’ll feel better in the morning.’
Drowsily she smiled and snuggled up against him. ‘I feel better now.’
He woke her up with a cup of tea. He was fully dressed, his dark hair still damp from a shower. He smoothed the pillow indented with the evidence that she had not slept alone and grinned, looking suddenly very young. ‘Jessie is not a liberated woman.’
‘But we didn’t…’
He captured her parted lips with drowning sweetness, driving out all coherent thought and straightened again. ‘Merrill’s coming over to see that you take it easy.’
‘Oh.’ She swallowed, fingering the elaborate lace bodice of the nightdress she had not until now had the presence of mind to examine. ‘Is this hers?’
‘It’s Sophie’s.’
Kitty stiffened. ‘Have you told her?’ she demanded abruptly.
‘Merrill?’
‘Your mother,’ she murmured.
His narrowed eyes glittered down at her troubled face. ‘Why? Do you think I needed to ask for permission? I made the announcement the day before yesterday when I was in York,’ he drawled with an ironic smile.
‘She must have been…shocked.’
‘If she was, she didn’t say so.’ A chilling aspect had tautened his dark, compelling features. ‘You don’t need to worry about Sophie. After all, she won’t be living here and that certainly won’t be a sacrifice for her.’