For One Night

Neither of them were to blame for what had happened; another time, and things would have been different. They had come together as strangers, he thought broodingly, and that was the way they must part—for both their sakes. He had enough problems on his plate with the farm, without involving himself with a woman who was grieving for another man.

He would be gone before she woke up. They would never meet again. He knew his decision was the right one, but some part of him was reluctant to let her go. Some part of him wanted to hold on to her and …

And what?

And nothing, he told himself firmly.

CHAPTER TWO

“WELL, DIANA, you know your own mind best, but I must admit that I’m surprised. You’ve always fitted in well here at Southern Television, and somehow I can’t see you living in a small country village, running a bookshop.”

“I trained as a librarian before I came here, Don,” Diana reminded her boss, “and my parents lived in the country.”

“Oh, I see.”

She was surprised to see that he looked a little nonplussed. “You want to be closer to them, is that it?”

Diana shook her head. Her parents had emigrated to Australia six months ago to be close to her elder brother and his children, and her decision to sell the London flat and start a new life for herself in a small and fairly remote Herefordshire town had nothing to do with them.

“No, not really, I just thought it was time I had a change.” As she spoke, she glanced instinctively into the mirror on the opposite wall. Her stomach was still quite flat, her body as reed-slim as ever; no one looking at her could possibly guess that she was three months pregnant.

A guilty twinge flared through her, and she bit nervously at her bottom lip. By rights she ought to feel horrified at the thought of her impending motherhood, but she didn’t—she couldn’t. Ridiculously, she felt as though she had been given a most precious and wonderful gift.

To go to bed with a stranger, and then to conceive his child, was so removed from the way she lived her life that even now she could hardly believe it had actually happened.

Indeed, when she had woken up that morning in her hotel room and found all trace of the man and his possessions gone, her first thought was that it had been a dream; only there had been that tiny betraying stain on the sheet, and the invisible, but unmistakable knowledge that her body had changed; that she had changed.

It had never occurred to her that she might have conceived, and for a while she had put her nausea and tiredness down to the after-effects of Leslie’s death. It had been Dr. Copeland who had somewhat diffidently suggested there might be another cause.

Diana knew that the doctor had expected her to be disturbed and displeased by her pregnancy; after all, she was a single woman, a career woman living alone; but what she had felt had been a thrill of pleasure so great that nothing else had seemed important.

Oddly, until now she had never even contemplated the possibility of having children, had never considered what role, if any, they might play in her life; but now she was as fiercely protective of this new emergent life within her as though she had lived her life with no further end in view than this act of procreation.

Her decision to give up her job and start life completely afresh had been an easy one to reach. She could not bring up her child the way she would wish in London. Leslie’s legacy made her independent; wealthy enough, in fact, not to need to work.

However, it was one thing to decide to have a completely fresh start, it was another to achieve it. On impulse she went to see Mr. Soames to ask for his advice.

He listened to her whilst she explained what she wanted to do.

“Hmm. I would not advocate complete seclusion from the rest of the world,” he commented when she had finished. “Perhaps a small business that you could run by yourself ….”

“I’m an archivist,” Diana interrupted him. “I have no training for running a business.” But Mr. Soames wasn’t listening, he was looking at her with a thoughtful expression on his face.

“My dear Miss Johnson,” he exclaimed with a beam. “I think I may have the ideal solution. Only very recently, a cotrustee came to see me on behalf of a mutual friend—now deceased, alas. I was brought up near Hereford, and have retained some ties there. My client owned a small bookshop in a Herefordshire market town.

“She died several months ago—both the property and the business are extremely run down—I am an executor of her estate, as indeed is the gentleman who came to see me.

“Since there is no one to inherit, it has been decided that the property will be put on the market. I must warn you, though, that since both the living and shop premises constitute a listed building, certain restrictions are imposed on their alterations and development.”

Diana listened to him in silence. A bookshop. It was something she had never thought of doing … But she had the contacts … and the knowledge … and her years with the television company had given her a keen insight into marketing and selling techniques.

A tiny glimmer of excitement flickered to life inside her.

“Are you suggesting that I might buy the business and the building?” she asked Mr. Soames.

“Heppleton Magna is an extremely pretty market town, on the River Wye. None of my family live there now, but I have fond memories of the place, and I still have several clients there. If you are interested I could arrange for you to see the premises.”

Diana thought quickly and made up her mind before her courage could desert her.

“I’d love to see it, Mr. Soames.”

Before she left his office, she had arranged to visit the shop with him later in the week.

“I shall telephone you with the exact details. My coexecutor is out of the country at the moment—on business, buying bulls I believe. He is a farmer, so I shall have to accompany you myself, if that’s agreeable.”

THREE DAYS LATER they went, and Diana fell in love almost immediately with Heppleton Magna and its surrounds.

The town was more of a large village, with red brick Queen Anne buildings surrounding the town square, and narrow wobbly lanes leading off it, where Tudor houses with overhanging upper casements pressed closely together. The shop was down at the bottom of one of these lanes.

Inside, the rooms showed the signs of neglect that came from having an elderly, proud owner who, according to Mr. Soames, had refused to allow her friends to help her.

“She was in hospital for the last few months of her life, but she still refused to hand over the keys to anyone. You can see the results,” he added with a faint sigh, pointing out damp patches where water had seeped through the leaking roof.

The kitchen and bathroom in the living quarters were apallingly basic, and the bookshop itself, so dark and dim that Diana was not surprised to see from the accounts that over the last few years its takings had dropped drastically.

Even so she had fallen in love with the place; in a strange way it seemed to reach out to embrace and welcome her.

They would be happy here, she and her child.

The house was in the middle of a block of three and it had a long back garden running down to the river. Beyond the river stretched endless fields; and she had already ascertained that there were plenty of schools and other facilities in the area. She and her child could settle down here and put out firm roots. She remembered with love and gratitude her own childhood in the Yorkshire Dales. Engrossed in her own thoughts, she scarcely heard what Mr. Soames was saying to her. Not that it mattered a great deal. She had already made up her mind. Just as soon as it could be arranged she was going to move down here.

On the way back to London she found herself wishing that Leslie could have been here to share the excitement with her. Unhappiness shadowed her eyes momentarily; and then she reflected that had it not been for Leslie’s death she would not be making these plans, because there would have been no child to plan for. This child was nature’s way of compensating her for the friend she had lost. She felt no guilt or remorse about the way her baby had been conceived. She had shut the night and the man out of her mind. They had no place in this new life she was making for herself. They had met and parted as strangers. For the first and last time in her life she had acted out of character. Indeed, sometimes she wondered, rather fancifully, if a higher authority had perhaps directed her actions that night. Certainly it was not the sort of thing she had ever previously contemplated doing; nor would do again. And equally certain was the fact that she had had no deliberate intention of conceiving—but she had. She touched her stomach gently and turned to Mr. Soames.

“You will get everything sorted out as quickly as possible, won’t you?” she asked him.

“Well, if you’re sure, my dear. I’ll have to have the agreement of my cotrustee, of course. He should be back within the next few days. I’ll get in touch with him just as soon as he is.”

Diana wasn’t listening. The property would be hers; instinctively she knew it. It was just as meant to be as her conception had been ….

The move to Heppleton Magna was accomplished smoothly and easily. In anticipation of the baby’s birth and the life she would soon lead, Diana had traded in her small nippy runabout for a much sturdier and larger estate car.

The flat she and Leslie had shared had been sold, and with it the modern, designer furniture they had chosen together. All she had kept had been various photographs and keepsakes. She wanted her child to grow up knowing her friend.

She had already transported most of her clothes and bits and pieces down to Herefordshire, and she paused beneath the window of the flat to say a final goodbye to it, before getting into her car.

A shaft of sunlight caught the bright gold of the wedding ring she was wearing, and she touched it lightly, her mouth curling in a wryly amused smile.

Perhaps it was wrong of her to pretend she was a widow, but the country wasn’t London, where single parents were almost the norm. Heppleton Magna had a predominantly elderly population, and she had no intention of allowing her child to grow up under the shadow of their disapproval.