‘You did great,’ he said, but it was automatic. ‘Cory, you’d tell me if something was wrong? If someone’s upset you?’
How could she say that she knew she wasn’t really wanted, by his mother at least? That Margaret was destined for him? It would look as though she was criticising Catherine for a start and she wouldn’t want to do that. She didn’t blame Nick’s mother for wanting the best for her son, and Margaret, with her stunning looks and superintelligent brain, had more to offer him than she did. ‘Nothing’s wrong.’ She had to defuse the tension. She reached out and touched his hand. ‘I had a lovely time last night and it was great to meet everyone.’
I love you so much. I don’t want to be a ship that passed in the night in a few years.
She couldn’t bear to look at him a moment more without saying something they would both regret. She took her hand away and reached for her coffee cup instead, beginning to make light conversation about his sisters and their children. Nick fell in with her mood, making her laugh about some of the antics of the twins in particular.
After breakfast Nick loaded the dishwasher while she wiped the table in the breakfast room, and then they went for a stroll in the grounds to work off the breakfast.
The tennis court and croquet lawn were immaculate, and the trees in the small orchard were gently basking in the summer sunshine, but it was when Nick led her to the walled garden that Cory became absolutely enchanted. It was set behind the orchard and clearly very old, as the ancient walls, mellow and sun-soaked, proclaimed. Nick opened the gate which creaked as they stepped inside, and Cory just stood and stared for a moment.
The stone walls were brilliant in places with trailing bougainvillea—purple, red and white flowers all jostling for space beside the green and red of ivy. There were a host of scents in the air, a winding path meandering past squares and circles of raised flower beds, old trees, borders of hollyhocks and marigolds and secluded bowers with seats surrounded by climbing roses.
‘Nick.’ She clutched his arm as she spoke but continued to feast on the scene in front of her. ‘This is just the most perfect place in the world.’
He smiled, his voice soft as he said, ‘It was neglected and overgrown when I bought the house but still beautiful. My gardener is an old guy with a great deal of soul. He gentled it all back to perfect health by letting the garden tell him what it wanted.’
She looked at him, surprised. He’d sounded almost poetic.
He caught the look and his smile widened, crinkling the corners of his eyes. ‘That’s what he says, anyway. Come in and have a wander.’
The path led them past sweet-smelling shrubs and bushes specially chosen for their individual fragrances, an old statue of a little girl with a puppy at her heels cast in bronze and weathered by time, the odd fountain or two tinkling their music into ancient stone troughs and crumbling stone bird tables all bearing traces of seeds. ‘Albert loves the birds,’ Nick said as he caught her glancing at the seed.
‘I like Albert.’
The garden was an oasis of peace and tranquillity, the only sound the gentle hum of bees going about their business and the twittering of birds in the branches of some of the old trees above their heads. There were butterflies galore, bright and colourful as they fluttered from one sweet-smelling bush to another. It was a magical place. A place she’d remember all of her life.
‘I would spend hours just sitting if I owned anything like this,’ Cory said dreamily. ‘Sitting and watching and letting the garden talk to me.’
‘You’d get on like a house on fire with Albert,’ Nick said wryly. ‘He takes it as a personal insult that I don’t inhabit the place twenty-four hours a day.’
‘How often do you come in here when you’re home?’
He shrugged. ‘Not often.’ And as she continued to look at him. ‘Rarely.’
‘What a waste.’
‘Albert enjoys it.’ They had reached the gate again, having done a full circle, and now they stood together looking at the colour in front of them. ‘And I’ve been tied up with the business the last umpteen years. There hasn’t been any time for sitting and watching and listening to gardens talk.’
‘That’s a shame,’ she said quietly. ‘To work as hard as you do just for other people to enjoy what you have.’
He stared at her, clearly taken aback. ‘It won’t always be that way.’
‘When won’t it be?’ she asked directly. ‘When is enough, enough?’ And then she turned away. ‘But it’s nothing to do with me, of course.’
For a moment he didn’t speak. Then he said, ‘You of all people should understand how it’s been for me. You said yourself your career is your life and that you don’t want anything else to come before it.’
Had she said that? She supposed she had. But since she had got to know this complex individual at the side of her it had gone out of the window. There were other things which could work alongside her career, things which ultimately could come before it. In a strange sort of way she felt she had been sleeping the last twenty-five years and had only just woken up.
She kept her eyes on an exquisite red admiral butterfly sipping nectar from a profusion of scarlet and white lilytype flowers. ‘Perhaps I was wrong,’ she said softly. Perhaps she had been wrong about a lot of things. She might appear to be sure about where she was going and what she wanted from life, but the self-analysing she’d done since getting involved with Nick had shown her she was still the shy, nervous little girl who had been programmed never to reach out to anyone. And she didn’t want to live the rest of her life like that. Whatever happened between her and Nick, she didn’t want to carry on the way she had been. It was a startling bolt of self-discovery.
‘Perhaps you were.’ He touched her mouth tenderly with his finger, his voice deep and holding a note she couldn’t quite discern.
She glanced at him, her eyes narrowed against the brilliant sunlight dappling the garden as she searched his face. But before she could say anything, he turned, pulling her out of the garden and shutting the gate behind them. ‘It’s twelve o’clock,’ he said practically. ‘We’ve half an hour to get changed and make it to my mother’s.’
‘Oh, my goodness.’ She hadn’t realised how late it was; the time had flown. It always flew when she was with Nick.
But instead of rushing her off, he took her into his arms, kissing her hard until she relaxed against him. ‘I want us to talk when we get back tonight,’ he said, raising his head and stroking her mouth with his lips as he spoke. ‘We can’t go on like this. You realise that, don’t you?’