Out of The Night

Today, Matt and Uncle John were lunching with the provost and then this evening they were dining with some fellow dons. Ordinarily Emily would have welcomed the chance to have some time to herself, but, when she ought to have welcomed it even more, finding release from the continual apprehension that stalked her whenever Matt was in the house, she found herself wandering restlessly from room to room until she abruptly realised that she was standing outside Matt’s closed bedroom door. What was the matter with her? When he had first arrived she had been panicked by his cold-blooded assumption that she would be willing to sleep with him; but now, as the days passed, she found it harder and harder to cling on to the anger and shock of that moment and instead her mind kept on returning to their first meeting, to the sensation she had had then that he was a man of strong character and compassion—a man with whom she could have had a good deal in common.

With each day that passed, he revealed another facet of his character to her—a character which she was gradually forced to accept was strangely at odds with the impression she had gained on their second meeting.

Or was she simply deluding herself? Was it all just a game to him—was he deliberately and cruelly stalking her, undermining her determination to stand aloof from him? If so, why? If all he wanted was a sexual partner, there must be any number of women who would be only too willing.

Grimly walking away from his door, she wondered if he had realised yet that his greatest ally was the traitor within herself: her own body, her own physical responsiveness to him. Or had she misjudged the situation entirely and had he grown bored with pursuing her?

Certainly, since that afternoon in her bedroom when he had kissed her so furiously and so passionately, he had made no further attempt to touch her. There were times, though, when she found him watching her with an odd brooding intensity that made her stomach churn.

Outwardly he was everything she had ever dreamed of in the man she could love: caring, compassionate, intelligent; and that night when they had made love he had been so tender, so gentle. But then afterwards, in the cold light of day, her own sense of self-revulsion and shock at her behaviour had warned her of the danger she had placed herself in and the folly of ever allowing such a thing to happen again. And yet here she was lying awake and aching at night, needing to be held in his arms, to reach out and touch him and be touched in turn.

Angry at her own weakness, she decided to go out into the tangled garden. They had had two days of sunshine, and now suddenly she felt the need to be outside in the fresh air. Ten minutes later, dressed in an old pair of jeans she had found at the back of her wardrobe and which she couldn’t remember wearing in years, the sweatshirt which belonged to her sister, and her wellingtons, she was heading for the kitchen garden.

There was something undeniably satisfying about pulling out weeds, she decided breathlessly half an hour later; perhaps because it satisfied the basic human instinct for destruction, she reflected gloomily as she tussled with a particularly deep-rooted specimen. As far as she knew it had been years since anyone had attempted to crop neat rows of carefully maintained vegetables in these plots, and she doubted if her own enthusiasm would last long enough to do more than make a half-hearted attempt at clearing this one patch. The kitchen garden was a good size and must have once delighted the eyes of the orderly with its neat paths and rigidly segmented plots, but now some of those paths were virtually obscured by undergrowth; in the fruit section the raspberry canes were a tangle of old and new, and here and there odd crowns of rhubarb had produced one or two sticks of fruit.

Time passed. Emily’s back began to ache, but she refused to give in—she was determined to clear this one plot. If nothing else, she would perhaps grow peas in it—fresh garden peas were next to impossible to buy these days unless one knew an enthusiastic gardener with a surplus and no freezer.

Hard at work, concentrating her mind on her plans for the bed once she had cleared it, refusing to allow herself the dangerous luxury of focusing her thoughts on Matt, she was oblivious to the return of the two men.

The Jaguar which Matt drove had a smooth, almost silent engine and he and John were inside the house without Emily having heard a sound. From his bedroom window, Matt had an excellent view of the back garden and especially the kitchen garden. He frowned as he saw her crouched figure, tugging fiercely, bent over her self-imposed task.

Was it his imagination, or was there genuinely something lonely and vulnerable about that slim, narrow back? As he watched, she paused, pushing back strands of hair. She had the kind of face that suited her sleek bob, but he much preferred her hair slightly tangled as it had been when… He found himself swallowing hard, unable to drag his gaze away from the small figure so far below him.

It was no use him telling himself, as he had done night after night since his arrival here, that she was just another Jolie, another cheat, even if this time he was the man she was cheating with rather than cheating against. He could not summon the fierce protective disgust that had enabled him to turn away from Jolie with his self-respect, if not his pride, intact.

He had tried telling himself that both Emily’s shock when he had arrived here, and her determination to make it plain to him that what had happened between them was something she preferred to pretend had never taken place, showed the kind of woman she was: a woman who was prepared to cheat on the man to whom she was really supposed to be committed, a woman who did not flinch from making love with a complete stranger. And yet, no matter how many times he told himself that that was the real Emily, his heart refused to listen and repeatedly tormented him with images and memories of their shared night, of her softness and warmth, her heart-touching mixture of innocence and frankness, her almost loving desire to give him pleasure as well as take it for herself.

He supposed there was a certain macabre humour in the fact that she so obviously appeared to believe that he was the type of man who only wanted sexual contact with her. The pride in her eyes when she had told him that she was not going to make love with him again had touched something deep down inside him, and he couldn’t stop himself from feeling that she was almost like two completely different people: one was the passionate, loving woman he had held in his arms and felt his body and heart respond to in a way he had grown to think impossible; the other was the shallow, cold-hearted cheat who could make love with him while she was engaged to someone else. And then there was the fact that she had been a virgin. Was that why she had turned to him? Had she perhaps been afraid that her fiancé might reject her for her lack of experience? It seemed a far-fetched conclusion, and surely if this man loved her, truly loved her, he would not care what degree of sexual experience she did or did not possess. For himself…but no, that way only lay pain.

Travis—what kind of name was that? He was Australian, she had said. Didn’t the man realise what he was risking in leaving her on her own? Didn’t he care?

Down in the garden, Emily stood up stiffly, stretched her cramped muscles. She had cleared a satisfyingly large patch of soft brown earth; now she needed to find somewhere to dispose of her large pile of weeds.

As she stretched and her aching muscles complained, she grimaced, turning to look at the house, her eyes instinctively focusing on Matt’s bedroom window. The shock of seeing him standing there looking down at her robbed her of breath. She had had no idea that the two men had come back, even though she now realised that the angle of the sun ought to have warned her how long she had been outside.

Immediately she was conscious of her muddy, untidy state, of the wisps of hair clinging to her hot face, her mud-streaked jeans and the hot stickiness of her flesh.

Matt, watching her…why? Her heart was thumping too heavily; she felt dizzy…nervous. Why did she have to imagine that Matt had been watching her? He could simply have been looking out of the window. And yet she had felt, as she looked up at him, that he had been watching her.

Suddenly she felt exposed, vulnerable. She wanted to get inside. She wanted to sho

wer and tidy herself up. She hurried towards the kitchen door, tugging off her wellingtons in the porch and padding inside in her socks. As she opened the door into the hall, Matt was crossing the room. Both of them froze, each watching the other.

‘I didn’t realise you were back,’ Emily said jerkily. ‘I’ll just go and get changed and then I’ll make some tea.’

‘I can do that.’

How different he was from Uncle John; from her father, who, for all his belief in the freedom of the individual, nevertheless was quite happy to be waited on virtually hand and foot by their housekeeper.

He stood to one side so that she could walk past him, a courteous, good-mannered gesture that left her irritated with herself because of her own reluctance to get too close to him. It was ridiculous of her to imagine that he was going to reach out and grab hold of her. Why should he want to? Fiercely concentrating on the stairs, she made herself walk towards them, and then, just as she had placed her foot on the first stair, he turned round, placing his hand over hers. It was just as she remembered it to be: warm, the palm slightly callused, a man’s hand, firm, and yet gentle at the same time, as though he knew how vulnerable she was and wanted to reassure her that she had nothing to fear.

She could have pulled away; she could simply have carried on and walked upstairs and away from him, but for some reason she did neither. Instead, she stayed where she was, tense and slightly breathless, watching with large apprehensive eyes as he came closer to her and then lifted his free hand to brush his thumb lightly across her cheekbone.

‘Mud,’ he told her laconically, and she knew from the gritty, tight feeling of her skin that he wasn’t lying. She went scarlet with mortification. What a picture she must present: hair all untidy, face dirty, jeans and sweatshirt liberally flecked with the same dried mud he had just wiped off her face.

‘I’ve been working in the garden,’ she told him defensively.

‘I know. I saw you. Weeding’s very therapeutic, isn’t it?’

How could he have possibly known of the tensions and needs which had driven her outside in the first place—or the tormenting ache that was destroying her sleep and her peace of mind?

His hand was still resting against her face, and, as though he felt the tension that ran through her, his thumb stroked soothingly across her cheekbone—a gentling, tender touch meant to impart reassurance and caring. Not a passionate touch at all, but her senses were so starved of any kind of physical contact with him that immediately her body responded to his touch like dry timber to a flame.

She knew that he must have felt her tremble, but mercifully the other and far more betraying evidence of her desire for him was hidden by the enveloping folds of her sweatshirt. She knew that, beneath its thick weight, her nipples had peaked and tightened, pushing eagerly against the soft cotton of her bra—but Matt, thank God, couldn’t be aware of it.

It was bad enough that he had felt that sharp tremor, had monitored it with the light touch of his thumb against her cheekbone and the firm clasp of his fingers around her wrist.

He tightened that clasp now, lifting her unresisting hand from the newel post and carrying it palm upwards to his lips. The sensation of them moving softly along her skin until they rested against the frantic pulse in her wrist turned her bones to fluid.

She wanted to sink down to the floor where she stood, to simply dissolve and be absorbed by him so that she was forever a part of him—and then he said her name, releasing her from the thrall of his touch, enabling her to draw back from him and say shakily, ‘I must get changed. Uncle John will be wondering where on earth I am. Peter rang this morning.’

Immediately she saw Matt’s expression change, his mouth hardening, his eyes cool and watchful. ‘Does he know you’re engaged yet?’ he asked her savagely. ‘Or do you plan to wait until after you’ve been to bed with him before telling him?’

It was a cruel, uncalled-for remark, as Matt knew quite well, just as he knew quite well that it was the apprehension in her eyes which had sparked it. He hated the fact that she seemed to be so afraid of him. What did she think he was going to do, for heaven’s sake? Force her to go to bed with him? His stomach clenched in revulsion. Didn’t she know that that was the last thing he would do? Couldn’t she tell that—that what? he asked himself bitterly as he watched her almost run upstairs. That he loved her… Impossible—how could he? She was everything he most despised in her sex. Another Jolie.

Upstairs, in the privacy of her room, Emily refused to allow herself to dwell on what Matt had said, quickly pulling clothes off hangers and hurrying into the bathroom. Once there she stripped off her filthy things and stood under the sting of the room’s old-fashioned shower.

How dare Matt suggest…imply…did he really believe that she would? She bit her lip in anguish. Of course he believed it—and why not? After all, as far as he was concerned, she had had sex with him while engaged to someone else.

She had never felt so confused in all her life. Her nights were tormented by memories of tenderness and sharing so strong that she couldn’t believe they were just an illusion; but then, with daybreak, and the cold, clear light of day, she was forced to acknowledge that, if their lovemaking had meant something more to Matt than merely a one-night stand, he would have made some attempt to get in touch with her, to trace her. And nothing could eradicate the damning knowledge that when they had met again it had been a cold-blooded resumption of their sexual relationship that had concerned him and not the establishment of any emotional bonding.

Tired and confused, she found herself wishing that she were a thousand miles away from Matt. And all the heartache his presence was causing her.

The truth was that if Matt actually chose to try to persuade her to go to bed with him again, she didn’t think she would have the willpower to refuse. She shivered inwardly. What was happening to her? It was almost as though, somewhere on that drive back from her parents’, her lifelong habits of caution and self-preservation had given way to a dangerous recklessness which, once given life, refused to be safely locked away again. Somehow or other, in meeting Matt she had exposed herself to some dangerously rebellious aspects of her own personality, aspects which had hitherto been hidden from her. Either that or she had quite simply fallen instantly and deeply in love with the man. And that, of course, was impossible. Wasn’t it?

Of course it was. It must be. It had to be.

CHAPTER EIGHT

IT was almost six weeks now since Matt had moved into the house, and every day Emily’s ability to distance herself from him seemed to wear a little thinner. She had tried keeping herself as physically apart from him as she could, even going to the extent of inventing work she just had to do in the office so that she could avoid eating with the two men.

Uncle John, vague and totally wrapped up in his own affairs, barely seemed to notice whether she joined them or not. But Matt did, and seemed to take a perverse pleasure in deliberately seeking her out, in deliberately invading her solitude; always with a perfectly legitimate excuse—some papers her uncle needed, a cup of tea he had just made, a message he had to give her. And Emily had no idea how on earth she was going to get through the remainder of his six-month stay.

She had learned from snippets of conversation at the dinner table that Matt was filling in temporarily for another don before considering whether or not to take over the post on a full-time basis. Uncle John was urging him to accept, pointing out the advantages of such a post.

During one such conversation, Matt agreed quietly, ‘It would be an excellent career move, and I’d be entering a very privileged world—but there are other universities, other students…’

‘Not like Oxford,’ Uncle John had protested, and unwillingly Emily had felt herself drawn even more to Matt. He embodied so many of the virtues she had once invented for her fictional heroes—but there was another side to him, as she had already discovered.

She had virtually forgotten about Travis’s parents’ impending visit to Brit

ain until she received a letter from her sister. Reading it, she gnawed anxiously at her bottom lip, wondering how on earth she was going to maintain the fiction of being engaged to Travis himself when his parents were bound to refer to the fact that he was actually engaged to her sister.

Initially, when she had lied about being engaged to Travis, she had not thought beyond the immediate situation. Then Matt’s stay with her uncle had only been intended to last for six weeks; now it had been extended for the full term of his six-month contract—something which she had had no control to veto. The house was, after all, her uncle’s.

Now, reading Gracie’s letter, she wondered frantically if she could possibly arrange for Travis’s parents to stay somewhere else. But where? Uncle John’s house was large enough to accommodate half a dozen extra guests, and was ideally situated for exploring that part of the country they were most anxious to see. Added to that was the fact that Travis’s parents were almost family, and Emily’s most deep-rooted instincts rebelled at the thought of being so inhospitable as to turn them away.

When she approached Uncle John to ask him if he would mind having two extra visitors, explaining evasively who they were, she was half hoping that he would refuse, thus taking the responsibility away from her; but, as she had known at heart he would, he had simply said vaguely that it was up to her. Uncle John was a natural bachelor, even though he had actually been married; he was the kind of man who much preferred to leave the running of his household in female hands and to have as little to do with it as possible. All that he required were clean clothes, good, wholesome food and somewhere quiet to work undisturbed, and there were many times when Emily wondered why on earth he kept on the large house when he would probably have been far more comfortable living in his rooms.