Second Time Loving

‘Stress, is it? Well, then, you’ll be needing a bit of peace and quiet.’

‘Yes,’Angelica agreed. ‘I feel I ought to move into Tom’s cottage and let Mr—er—Daniel get on with his own life.’

For some reason she could feel her face growing hot as she spoke, as much because of the thoughtful way the doctor was studying her as because of her discomfort at not even knowing her rescuer’s name.

‘I feel very guilty about the way I’ve been taking up his time,’ she added awkwardly. ‘I did think that perhaps a nurse—’

‘There’s not much Daniel doesn’t know about what it’s like to be ill,’ she was told calmly. ‘And as for taking up his time, well, I dare say if he hadn’t wanted to help you he’d soon have made some other arrangements, although out here people do tend to take it for granted that neighbours will help one another out.’

The doctor was standing up, his examination finished. ‘You’ll be feeling very weak for a few days yet,’ he warned her.

‘But I can get up,’Angelica pressed. She had already made up her mind that she simply could not impose on her host any longer. And besides, now that she was properly conscious, properly aware, well, she felt both uncomfortable and guilty about the way she had been so dependent on Daniel. Dependency wasn’t something she was used to, and since the débâcle of her relationship with Giles she had striven very hard to regain her former self-reliance. It had become very important to her that she was independent of other people, that she was able to function completely on her resources. She was never, ever again going to allow herself to suffer the kind of emotional trauma and pain she had suffered with Giles.

‘Yes, you can get up,’ the doctor agreed, frowning thoughtfully at her, ‘but I must warn you against trying to do too much too soon. You could very easily have a relapse. Salmonella is never something to be treated lightly and when it’s as severe as this bout you’ve just had…’ His frown deepened, and Angelica had the feeling that he was about to say something else, but obviously he must have changed his mind because after a few seconds’ pause he smiled at her and said kindly, ‘This isn’t London, you know. Here we take our responsibility to our small communities and to each other very seriously indeed. You mustn’t feel guilty about needing Daniel’s help. Just think of it as a good deed you’ve been “loaned”, and which one day you’ll have the opportunity to pass on to someone else.’

He gave her another smile, closed his bag and headed for the door before she could say anything else.

Angelica heard Daniel talking to him when he went downstairs, and sensitively wondered if it was her they were discussing. It was stupid to feel so vulnerable, so defensive, she chided herself.

Surely she was mature enough, sensible enough to realise that all men weren’t like Giles—that she had been unlucky and perhaps a little foolish, but that the pain she had suffered was no reason to turn her back on the entire male sex, mistrustful and afraid of every single one of its members.

Maybe not, but it would be folly to allow herself to fall in love again, to—

Fall in love? She frowned heavily. Who on earth was talking about falling in love, for heaven’s sake? What possible link could there be between her relationship with Giles and the very, very different relationship which circumstances had forced on her with Daniel?

Daniel. She tasted the name, testing it cautiously, acknowledging that in some way it suited him. It was a powerful name, a little awesome in some ways. Like the man himself? Did she find him powerful and just a little intimidating? Just a little bit too much the dominant male animal, supremely confident of himself, in a way she knew she could never be?

Was it an inbuilt flaw of her sex that it was so constantly vulnerable, so constantly aware of its failings and insecurities? Wasn’t it because of her own awareness of her personal, deep-rooted insecurities, her fear that her life was starting to revolve too completely around her work that she had been so dangerously open to Giles’s deliberate manipulation? Had she had a stronger, tougher, more male-based personality, she would have been too self-sufficient, too sure of herself and confident to fall for Giles’s rather obvious and facile charm.

Was she never going to stop feeling guilty for being such a fool, for not realising far sooner than she had just what Giles was? It still galled her to realise that, in the eyes of others, she must have seemed both stupid and laughable; a mature woman, so desperately craving love and reassurance that she had not been able to see the truth.

She was never going to allow herself to be deceived like that again. From now on her relationships with men were going to be strictly non-emotional, strictly held at a safe distance from her too vulnerable heart.

It still tore at her emotionally that, despite the success she had made of her business life, she still felt this emptiness, this yearning, this need to be fulfilled as a woman.

She shivered a little, all too well able to imagine how the man downstairs would laugh at that kind of vulnerability. Even Tom, great friend though he was, had not really understood this deep-rooted need she had to love and be loved in return. At times she didn’t even understand it herself, resenting its hold on her, wishing there was some way she could destroy it so that it never made her vulnerable again.

If she couldn’t destroy her own inner need, then at least she could ensure that no man ever got close enough to use it against her, manipulating her, deceiving her.

She moved restlessly, conscious of a sharp, biting anger that fate had decreed that she should be rendered so helpless and vulnerable that she had had no option but to accept Daniel’s help.

Why couldn’t it have been another woman who had found her there on the doorstep? Why did it have to be an unknown man—a man, moreover, who, despite his shabby clothes and generally down-at-heel appearance, seemed to exude power and strength in a way that only seemed to reinforce her own appalling weakness?

Despite what the doctor had said, despite his warnings, the sooner she moved into Tom’s cottage and away from Daniel, the better.

She said as much to Daniel himself half an hour later when he came upstairs, glibly omitting to tell him that while the doctor had said she might get up he had also warned her against overdoing things.

‘I really do feel I’ve trespassed on your time and hospitality far too long,’ she told him coolly, adopting her most businesslike manner and trying not to feel acutely conscious of the fact that all she was wearing was one of his shirts. ‘And the doctor agrees with me that I am now well enough to manage on my own.’

Was there just a suspicion of a betraying tremor in her voice as she spoke this small fib? Was she tilting her chin just a little too much as though defying him to argue with her, and, when he didn’t, when he simply continued to regard her thoughtfully, was that really a tiny thread of disappointment that tangled with her relief, increasing her anxiety to escape to the security and privacy of Tom’s cottage?

‘If you’re sure you can manage,’he said at last.

‘Yes. Yes, I am,’ and then, aware that it might seem as though she was not aware of all that he had done for her, she added quickly, ‘I’m very grateful to you of course, and if there’s anything I can do to repay you…’

The smile he gave her almost seemed to mock her as though he knew exactly how desperate she was to escape from him.

‘I still don’t even know your name,’ she told him fretfully, hating the way she felt at such a disadvantage. Now that she was fully conscious again, she was acutely aware of her unmade-up face and tousled hair, her borrowed and unconventional nightshirt, while he stood watching her armoured in the secure protection of his jeans and shirt. Now when it was the last thing she wanted to do, she had a series of illuminating and embarrassing mental memories of hazy moments of consciousness when she had called out for help, and he had been there, his hands holding her, soothing her, his movements calm and sure as though he had known instinctively what to do.

No nurse however professional could have cared for her so conscientiously. She was overwhelmingly grateful to him, and at the same time she was intensely self-conscious and embarrassed about the intimacies which had passed between them; intimacies which, even if she had been only half conscious at the time and in no fit state to do anything other than submit thankfully to his care, had remained uncomfortably sharply etched in her memory.

She remembered after one particularly gruelling bout of sickness how he had stripped off her clothes, and gently sponged her skin, almost seeming to know how intensely she longed to feel the clean coolness of fresh water on her body washing away the smell and heat of her nausea.

Looking at him now, it seemed impossible that he had shown such care, such…such tenderness. She felt her face grow hot with guilt and anger. What was the matter with her? He had simply done what he had felt necessary. In this part of the world neighbours helped one another, the doctor had told her that. There was no reason for her to feel so intensely aware of him—so intensely aware of him in fact that it was as though her flesh had somehow memorised the touch of his hands to such an extent that it now—

She swallowed hard, reining in her runaway thoughts, and almost blurted out, ‘I can’t stay here any longer.’

She saw the way his eyebrows drew together, and bit her lip. What on earth was the matter with her? She was behaving like a fool. Like a woman suddenly terrified of intimacy with a man for whom she felt a dangerous sexual awareness, and there was nothing like that about this situation.

There had been nothing remotely sexual in the way he had helped her. There was nothing in his manner now to indicate any degree of sexual awareness of her as a woman. No, the awareness was all on her side, she acknowledged bitterly. And yet why should she be aware of him? He wasn’t good-looking in the fairhaired, smooth way which Giles had been. He was too rugged, too roughly hewn, too powerfully male to have that kind of appeal. And even if there was nothing outwardly aggressively sexual about him, she had an instinctive knowledge that he was the kind of man that women would find strongly sexual. Not the kind of man who appealed to her at all. She had always avoided that particular type, finding them slightly intimidating, and they had normally avoided her, obviously realising that she was not the intensely sexually responsive type.

It was her relationship with Giles that had left her so vulnerable, so bruised and so lacking in self-worth that she had become acutely conscious of this man as a man. When he took a step towards her she found she was actually trembling. He saw it and frowned.

‘You’re still too weak to get up yet,’ he told her curtly. ‘You’ll stay here tonight and then in the morning, if you’re feeling up to it, we’ll see about getting you moved into the other cottage.’

She ought to have objected, to have told him that she was the one making the decisions, that it was her right to make them, that she was an adult woman and had no intentions of allowing him to dictate to her in any way, but she was still trembling inside, still desperately conscious of the fact that she wished he would move away from her.

‘I came up to see if you could manage some home-made broth,’ he told her, changing the subject.

Home-made broth. She stared at him as though he read her mind; he gave her a brief smile and told her, ‘No, I haven’t made it myself. The farmer’s wife gave it to me when I went to get the milk and eggs. She’d heard that you weren’t well.’

‘The farm—is it far?’ Angelica asked him.

‘Not really; a couple of miles, that’s all. I walk over every other day or so.’

A couple of miles. She swallowed hard. In London the furthest she ever walked was a hundred yards or so. The thought of walking a couple of miles in her present condition made her all too glad that she had her car. And then, without meaning to do so, she glanced automatically at Daniel’s lame leg.

‘The exercise is good for it,’ he told her curtly, so obviously following her train of thought that she flushed with guilt and embarrassment.

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I was just—’

‘You were wondering how I managed to walk that far,’ Daniel supplied carelessly for her. ‘It wasn’t easy at first, but it’s like everything else: something you eventually get used to. It helps to strengthen the damaged muscles—or so they tell me.’

Was that bitterness she could hear underlying the harsh words? She wondered what had caused his lameness. Had he been injured in an accident? She found herself shivering at the thought and then was angry with herself for being so concerned. What business was it of hers what had happened to him?

‘Well?’ Daniel prompted, while she battled with her wayward emotions, and stared at him in confusion. ‘The broth,’ he reminded her. ‘Would you like some? Mrs Davies has sent some of her home-made bread as well. I’ve got an Aga here in the kitchen and I’ve been trying my hand at baking some, but I must add as yet I haven’t had any success.’

He’d been trying his hand at baking bread. Angelica gulped as she stared at him.