Naive Awakening

‘Sit back down,’ he grated, and his words held enough of a command in them for her to reluctantly obey.

‘You can’t tell me how to run my life,’ she muttered mutinously.

‘I don’t need to,’ he said smoothly. ‘The mere fact that I’m here says it all, don’t you agree?’

There was very little that she could say to that, but the sheer logic of what he had just said didn’t stop her from feeling furiously angry. Angry at his arrogance, at his assumption that he could write off all her efforts with her brother without so much as an apology, and particularly angry at the way that he had somehow found precisely the right crack in her armour to render her defenceless.

Ever since Freddie’s arrest she had been plagued by self-doubts and by her anxiety at realising that her attempts to stabilise him after their grandfather’s death had clearly failed.

But the last thing she needed was Nicholas Reynolds reminding her of the fact in that patronising tone of voice.

‘Well, then,’ she said frozenly, ‘what do you suggest I do? Keep him chained to his bed as a lesson in discipline?’

‘I suggest,’ he said in measured tones, ‘that you leave Yorkshire.’

Mr Baird had brought them a plateful of home-made cakes, and she bit into one, eyeing him defensively over the pink icing.

‘What?’ she asked, not sure that she had heard correctly.

‘Leave Yorkshire.’

‘What a good idea,’ she bit out sarcastically, ‘perhaps we could rob a bank and spend the proceeds recuperating on the French Riviera. I hate to sound rude, Mr Reynolds—’

‘Nicholas, please. After all, it’s not as though we don’t know each other.’

She ignored his interruption. ‘But I resent you swanning up here with a bag full of good intentions and telling me how to run my life here. I have a good job at the library, and Freddie will settle down.’

‘And what if he doesn’t?’

Leigh almost choked on a mouthful of coffee. Just who did this man think he was anyway? Was he daring to tell her how to run her life? What right did he think he had?

Freddie was her responsibility, and she wasn’t going to have anyone preaching to her on her suitability as his guardian.

He clicked his tongue impatiently. ‘For God’s sake, stop acting as though I’m the big, bad wolf who has nothing better to do than pick on you.’

Leigh’s blue eyes stormily met his cool grey ones. She didn’t care for this man one jot, even as a boy he had managed to get under her skin, so why was she even listening to him as though she were being cross-examined in a witness box instead of sitting in Mr Baird’s coffee-shop?

‘What,’ he continued implacably, ‘do you, for instance, intend to do about Freddie’s education?’

‘He’s just sat his exams, and he’ll be leaving school…’

‘And do you think that’s fair? He’s a bright boy; what will he be leaving school to do? He told me that he would like to go on to specialise in cabinet-making, but that he didn’t know whether he would be able to or not.’

‘He told you that?’

‘Yes,’ Nicholas informed her.

Leigh surveyed him in silence. Right at this instant, it was a good thing that Freddie wasn’t around, because she could quite happily have strangled him.

She knew what he wanted well enough, but money was tight, and she had guiltily thought that he had accepted the fact. She had discussed it with him, and told him that he could do whatever he wanted after he had worked for a while and got some money together. It was the only thing she could think of.

How could he just go and pour out all their personal problems to a stranger?

God knew what else he had told this aggravating Mr Know-it-all.

‘There’s not much chance of that, not just at the moment. Maybe some time in the future.’

‘Because of your financial situation.’

Leigh nodded reluctantly. ‘Grandad’s money will really only help to keep the cottage running. It needs some pretty expensive repairs which we had all been putting off for a while, and which can’t be postponed for much longer. The roof needs work doing on it, I really would like to get some central heating put in, it needs repainting on the outside…’ Her voice trailed off.

‘The list goes on.’

‘More or less,’ she shrugged, hating the admission and thinking of all the other million and one things that still needed doing around the place, ‘but we can manage. With my salary, we should be able to muddle along.’

‘And what about you? Are you going to be happy just muddling along?’

There it was: that underlying criticism that made her feel somehow inadequate. If that was all he had to say, then she sincerely wished that he would just shut up. Did he really think she was depriving her brother of what he wanted through some perverted sense of enjoyment?

‘I don’t see where all this is leading, Mr Reynolds. Oh, sorry,’ she said with honeyed insincerity, ‘Nicholas. I can’t change the way things are at the moment, so if I have to accept us just muddling along for the time being, then I will.’

‘Have you thought about trying to change things?’

‘Have you thought about not sticking your nose into other people’s business?’

She felt a heel as soon as the words were out of her mouth, but she couldn’t take them back, so she looked down at her empty coffee-cup, refusing to meet his eyes.

‘I’ll choose to ignore that statement, though I’d like to remind you that I’m only here at all at my grand-father’s request,’ he said with silky smoothness, and she didn’t answer. She had known from the very first moment that she had set eyes on Nicholas Reynolds that he was a force to be reckoned with, but she had not known to what extent.

He was forcing her to face a few things which she would have been much happier ignoring for the time being, and she didn’t care for it one little bit

The fact that he was worlds apart from her only served to make things worse.

She glared at him, very tempted to tell him that he could choose to ignore it or not, it really didn’t matter to her. Instead she said in as controlled a voice as she could muster, ‘What do you suggest? I can’t change the way things are, I just have to cope the best that I can.’

She glared at him, highly annoyed that he had managed to nettle her when she should just have ignored everything he had to say. True, she was outspoken, but that was simply the way of the world around here. She was not normally given to shouting matches, and she found it infuriating that he was bringing out this side of her.

From behind the counter Mr Baird was looking in her direction with open curiosity. Now, she thought, it would be all around the village that she had had an argument with the lawyer from London, and what on earth could it be about?

She forced herself to smile at Nicholas.

‘When will you be heading back? You never said.’

It was an obvious switch in the conversation, and one which he ignored totally.

‘I’ve spoken with your solicitor about your financial state of affairs, and you’re finding it difficult to make ends meet, aren’t you? Admit it, that cottage of yours is falling down around your ears, isn’t it?’

‘That’s privileged information,’ Leigh gasped, horrified.