So Close and No Closer

As desperately as she fought him, he refused to let her go, wrapping his arms tightly round her so that she couldn’t move hers, swinging her up and carrying her past the helmeted uniformed men who suddenly seemed to be everywhere.

Neil stopped in front of one of them, and Rue heard him saying tersely, ‘I don’t think there’s much you can do to save the outbuildings.’

‘No, probably not. How many people are there in the house?’

‘Just one. She’s here with me. I’m taking her home with me now.’

And then he swung her round in his arms and carried her towards his parked car. Just before he bundled her into the passenger seat, Rue begged hoarsely, ‘Horatio.’

‘In the back of the car,’ Neil told her harshly. ‘He seems to have a damn sight more sense than his mistress. What in hell’s name were you doing standing there like that? Don’t you realise you could have been burned to death?’

His words brought home the reality of her danger to her in a way that the flames had not. She shuddered and then sagged, sick with shock and reaction, shivering with cold, hugging her arms around her body, and realising abruptly what she was wearing.

‘I can’t go like this. I need something to wear.’

‘You’re not going inside that house. Not until the fire brigade announces that it’s safe,’ he told her curtly, starting the engine. ‘For goodness’ sake, Rue, what were you doing? You hadn’t even alerted them, had you? If I hadn’t seen the flames and rung them…’

‘You rang them…?’

‘Yes. I’d gone out for a walk…’

‘At two o’clock in the morning?’

A violent spasm of shaking seized her, and she closed her eyes, unable to pursue her questions. She felt sick with the realisation of the danger she had been in. A danger which Neil had rescued her from…only to carry her into an even greater danger. She could be burned just as traumatically and fatally by the flames of her love for him as she could have been by those devouring her home. And who would save her from those?

CHAPTER NINE

AS NEIL drove her towards the Court, she had a confused impression of the countryside flashing by. Hedgerows, a darker shade of grey than the pale grey of the fields, all of this silvered by the moonlight. The car tyres squealed protestingly as he turned sharply into the drive. Rue swayed sickly in her seat, wanting to tell him to slow down, but almost afraid to say anything at all to him as she looked at his face and saw the tension and anger in it. She saw the outline of the Court ahead of them at the end of the drive, familiar and yet in some ways unfamiliar to her.

Neil stopped the car and unfastened his seat-belt with jerky, uncoordinated movements. Before she could even reach for hers he was round at her side of the car, opening the door and reaching inside to do it for her, lifting her unceremoniously into his arms.

‘I can walk,’ she protested, but the words were muffled against his chest, drowned out by the fierce drum of his heartbeat.

Why was he so furiously angry with her? Because she had disturbed his walk? she wondered in confusion. Because he was having to help her out yet again, or because he was being forced into an intimacy with her that he didn’t want?

She realised with a small shock that the front door to the Court was standing wide open.

‘When I saw the flames, I came back here to telephone you. It was only then that I thought you might be stupid enough to try to tackle the blaze by yourself.’

He shouldered his way into the hall and switched on the lights. Immediately the familiar contours of the room sprang into view in front of Rue’s bemused eyes.

‘When you didn’t answer the telephone, I thought…’ Rue felt the shudder that went through him, convulsing his muscles, and making the hand that held on to her tighten almost painfully into her flesh.

‘For heaven’s sake, Rue!’ he demanded abruptly. ‘What the hell were you doing out there working at that time of night?’

A vein throbbed in his temple, and his skin, when she looked at it, was oddly flushed. A warm feeling of tenderness and compassion melted her bones.

‘I wasn’t,’ she told him huskily. ‘Working, I mean. Horatio woke me up. He was scratching at the door and barking. I thought there must be a badger out there, or a fox. He wouldn’t be quiet, so in the end I had to let him out and I went out with him. That’s when I heard the flames and smelt the smoke.’

‘You were in the house all the time.’ He put her down on her feet abruptly, and glared at her. ‘Then why in hell’s name didn’t you stay there?’ he demanded. ‘What on earth possessed you to go rushing off down there? Didn’t you realise the danger you were putting yourself in?’

‘I never thought about it,’ she told him honestly. She felt peculiarly shaky now that she was standing on her own two feet. ‘All I could think about was the flowers, the ones we picked before the storm. I had to get them out.’

‘You’re joking,’ she heard Neil saying tiredly. ‘Do you honestly mean to tell me that you risked your life and my sanity to save a handful of flowers?’

His vein was pulsing even harder now, his eyes almost black with fury, but Rue was angry herself now; too angry to care what she was risking or inviting as she lashed back at him.

‘A handful of flowers? That’s all they might be to you, Neil, but to me they are my living. I couldn’t let them be destroyed, not after all the hard work we’d put into saving them. There was almost a whole year’s profit in that drying shed. I had to get them out.’