Second Time Loving

Which was why, on the insistence of her doctor, she was taking this enforced break. It had been Tom, her solicitor, and one of her closest friends, who had offered her the use of the Pembrokeshire cottage he had recently inherited from an uncle.

‘It’s virtually in the middle of nowhere, five miles from the nearest village, but the countryside is wonderful. I went down there never having even seen the place. I’d already made up my mind to sell, but once I did see it…Well, I’ve decided to keep it, and it’s yours for just as long as you need it, Angelica.’

She had wanted to protest that she wasn’t an invalid, that she didn’t need it, that she didn’t need anything or anyone; that was how raw and sore she still was inside, but she had known she would have been lying. She badly needed somewhere to crawl away into and hide, somewhere where she could lick her wounds and recover at her own pace.

She could leave the business in the capable hands of Paul Lyons, her second-in-command; she knew that.

She didn’t love Giles any more. How could she? The man she had thought she loved had never actually existed, but that didn’t stop her heart from thumping crazily every time she saw a man with fair, sun-streaked hair and blue eyes. It didn’t stop her from waking up alone at night with her face stiff from the drying salt of her tears. It didn’t stop her from feeling it was impossible for her to face the world, from feeling that everyone who looked at her knew what a fool she had been.

Tom was right—six weeks away from London, living simply and on her own, was probably just what she needed to get things back into perspective, to recoup her old energy and determination.

They had had lunch together yesterday, and then he had gone back to the house with her, to make sure that she had got the route clear, he had said, but she had known that he was worried about her. That knowledge had warmed her. She and Tom had been friends for a long time. Her mother adored him, and often hinted that they would make a good couple, but, close though they were, both of them had separately and mutually acknowledged that their relationship was more akin to one of brother and sister, that their emotional bonding was such that it precluded any possibility of sexual desire. Tom had recently fallen in love, and she liked his new girlfriend very much.

She had broken her journey in Ludlow to admire the pretty town and have something to eat, and had perhaps, she recognised, lingered there rather longer than was wise, because now it was dark; the country road was unlit, and she was glad of the absence of any other traffic, otherwise she suspected she would have irritated the other drivers by her hesitancy as she searched the roadside for the turn-off for the cottage.

She was becoming increasingly anxious to find it, not just because it was late and she was tired; for the last few miles she had been feeling increasingly unwell. Her stomach hurt, she felt sick, and she was pretty sure that the meal she had eaten in Ludlow was to blame.

She had lost almost a stone in the twelve months since she had parted from Giles. Her friends were beginning to warn her that there was such a thing as becoming too slender, and that her five-foot-seven frame was beginning to look a touch gaunt. She had been forced to acknowledge the truth of their remarks. She could see new hollows at the base of her throat, could feel a new prominence in the bones of her hips, a new slackness in the waists of her discreetly elegant skirts. There were shadows beneath her eyes turning them from grey to haunted violet, the soft black silkiness of her hair was beginning to lose its gloss, and she knew that the emotional devastation she had suffered was beginning to show its physical signs on her body.

She had promised herself that she would spend this break getting herself fit; walking, eating sensibly, living simply and wholesomely instead of picking reluctantly at meals she never seemed to finish and keeping herself closeted in the unhealthy stuffiness of her centrally heated office.

The cottage was spartan, Tom had warned her, but they were having a good summer, and she had felt a sharp relief at the prospect of living alone somewhere where no one would expect her to make any effort to keep up the appearance of the glossy, self-sufficient career woman.

That was the trouble with being a woman, she reflected muzzily; nature had not designed them to be self-sufficient. Nature had ensured that they would always inherit those genes which made them yearn to share and nurture. Nature was a fool and a cheat—just like Giles—and she was a bigger fool for having allowed herself to be deceived.

Too late she saw the turning and had to reverse the car. Doing so made her feel horribly faint and sick. Her head felt as though it were stuffed with cotton wool, while her stomach…

As she drove down the lane between high, hedge-topped banks, she prayed that she would make it to the cottage before her stomach rebelled completely.

She could feel sweat breaking out on her skin, the kind of sweat that heralded a bout of sickness, and then mercifully as she turned a corner the car’s headlights picked out the low stone-built cottage. Longer than she had expected, and was her brain playing tricks on her or did it seem as though it had two separate front doors, and what was that hedge doing in the middle of the front garden?

As she stopped the car, she realised muzzily that it wasn’t one cottage but a pair of semis, in fact. She just had time to realise that Tom hadn’t warned her that the cottage didn’t stand completely alone before violent cramps seized her stomach.

Throwing open the car door, she virtually fell out of the driver’s seat, and was immediately and violently ill.

Shivering and shaking, her body doubled up with the intensity of the violent spasms racking her stomach, she prayed they would abate for long enough for her to make it to the privacy of the cottage. Not that there was anyone to see her. No lights shone from the windows of either cottage, no sound apart from the chattering of her own teeth spoiled the perfect silence. She was alone—completely alone…

Tensely she straightened up, relieved to discover that, while she felt appallingly weak, the pain and nausea had faded—at least for the time being.

Hurrying back to the car, she extracted her bag, and found the large, old-fashioned key to the cottage. Not bothering to lock her car, she opened the wooden gate and hurried down the path to the front door.

The effort of trying to control the pain in her stomach was making her feel positively light-headed, she acknowledged as she tried shakily to insert the key in the lock. A horrible sense of weakness overwhelmed her, the return of the unbearable cramping agony in her stomach bringing a film of sweat to her forehead, and nausea burning in her throat.

As the pain increased, she dropped the key, gripping her stomach, all her concentration demanded by the intensity of her agony.

As she cried out, and half collapsed on to the ground in front of the cottage, she was dimly conscious of a car engine fading into silence somewhere in the distance, but she was far too occupied with her own physical needs to pay it much attention.

She had just finished being violently sick, tears of pain and shock pouring down her face, her throat raw with the violence of her retching, her body still huddled on the ground, as she fought against the dizzying waves of agony beginning to build up inside her again when she heard an irritated male voice demanding from behind her, ‘What the devil’s going on?’

And then as she tried to turn her head, too exhausted and in too much pain to question either the man’s arrival or his anger, he obviously realised for himself how ill she was, because he made a sudden sound of enlightenment and then crouched down beside her, saying in a much kinder tone, ‘It’s all right. No, don’t try to move. What happened? Food poisoning?’

The cramping pains were increasing again. Angelica only had time to nod before they became so violent that she stopped fighting to stay conscious and let herself slide down into the waiting darkness, vaguely conscious of someone lifting her, carrying her, speaking to her before the darkness completely closed over her.

CHAPTER TWO

RELUCTANTLY Angelica opened her eyes, wincing as the light hit them, and closing them again, the mere effort of turning her head in the direction of the light so exhausting that it drained her.

She felt oddly light-headed…empty and fragile. She had a collection of hazy memories and impressions, the sharpest of them being a pain so intense that even to remember it made her stomach muscles tense defensively.

She had been sick, more violently sick than she could ever remember being in her life. So sick and in so much pain that she had honestly thought she was going to die—had even at times wished that she might…

She remembered saying as much, and she remembered another unfamiliar voice cautioning her against such folly, calming and soothing her, just as unfamiliar hands had dealt with the physical agony of her illness.

Who had they belonged to, those hands and that voice? A doctor? Her forehead crinkled in a frown as she tried to analyse why she should reject that thought so rigorously. Not a doctor, then who?

A stranger almost certainly, and yet oddly she had found the fact that he was a stranger comforting rather than intimidating, as though had she known him in some way she would have been obliged to put up a pretence of not needing the assistance he was giving her, instead of sinking weakly and gratefully into his care, allowing him all manner of intimacies with her pain-racked flesh that would have been intolerable had she actually known the owner of those capable, clinical hands and that calming, knowing voice that somehow assured her that he knew exactly what she was enduring, how much it frightened her, how vulnerable and weak it made her…How little she wanted to be beholden to him or anyone else.

Her mind felt cloudy and confused; the more she tried to focus it, the more woolly her thoughts became. She didn’t even know where she was…

But, yes, she did—she was in Wales—Pembrokeshire. She had come here to rest…Her mouth twisted slightly. Surely only she could start off what was supposed to be a period of complete rest and recuperation with a bout of food poisoning so intense that her memories of the last few days were no more than vague wisps of uncertain flashes of reality mingled with long periods of cloudy uncertainty, the whole time sharply delineated by her memories of the agony of her illness.

She remembered arriving at the cottage, and that must be where she was now, surely? This bedroom with its sloping eaves and its view of the distant hills; this old-fashioned, iron-framed bed, so high off the ground that it was impossible for her feet to touch the floor.

She frowned. How did she know that? She had a vague memory of desperately wanting to be sick, of trying to clamber out of the high bed and find the bathroom, only to be stopped, and then firmly carried there…

Strange how, in recollecting the incident, she should feel consumed with the very natural embarrassment she could quite clearly remember she had not felt at the time. Almost as though somehow he, whoever he was, had been so clinical and detached, so assured and firm in his handling of the situation and of her that she had felt nothing other than an exhausted desire to simply give in and let him take control.

It shocked her to realise that she had shared an intimacy with this stranger that she had never shared with Giles. Not the intimacy of lovers of course, but an intimacy which in its way made her feel even more vulnerable. And yet she had not felt vulnerable at the time…had not felt anything other than a weak, shaky gratitude. She even remembered now trying to thank him at some stage, but he had brushed her thanks aside. Where was he now? Had he gone? Left her alone?

For some reason that thought panicked her. Without thinking what she was doing she pushed back the quilt and the heavy linen sheet, swinging her legs to the floor, and discovering as she did so that she had been quite correct in remembering that the bed was too high for her to reach the floor, and also that, instead of one of her own long, sensible nightdresses, she seemed to be wearing a man’s shirt.

A man’s shirt with just enough buttons fastened for decency, as though whoever had fastened her into it had known that when she woke up she would remember the intimacies they had shared, and who had taken pains to reassure her that, no matter what he might have done to help her in the extremity of her need, he both understood and respected her desire to recover her privacy. As though he was reassuring her that there had been nothing voyeuristic or lustful in his intimacy with her flesh. As though he had known how shocked she would be when she remembered how he had helped her, carried her, bathed her.

Her body suddenly grew hot, her face flushing. She didn’t want to remember anything like that. He had helped her and she was grateful to him, whoever he was, but now that she was herself again…

She slid her feet on to the floor and stood up, or rather she tried to stand up, her eyes widening in surprise and disbelief as her legs refused to support her.

As she crumpled to the floor, she only just had time to grab hold of the side of the bed.

The next thing she knew the bedroom door was being flung open and a man strode in, limping slightly as he made his way to the bed. He was frowning down at her, his dark hair damp and untidy as though he had just been towelling it dry, his jaw shadowed with an overnight growth of beard. The jeans he was wearing seemed a little loose on the waist and the hips, as though he had recently lost weight.

When he bent down to help her she caught the scent of his soap, clean and masculine, and realised that he must have been in the bathroom.

‘It’s all right. I can manage,’ she told him self-consciously, trying to pull away from him as he picked her up bodily, depositing her back on the bed.

The look he gave her spoke volumes and made her flush guiltily. She owed him far too large a debt of gratitude already without compounding that debt.

It seemed unfair that fate should have decreed that this should happen to her just when she had made up her mind that henceforth she would live her life as independently and free from emotional commitment as she could.