Beyond Compare

‘I’ve got a suggestion,’ Drew told her easily. ‘I can probably tow the car back here with the Land Rover. You could spend the weekend here, and I could give you a lift to and from the party tomorrow. Then on Monday morning I could drive you into Chester to get the train. When your car is fixed, I’ll give you a ring and you can come up and collect it.’

‘Oh, Drew! I couldn’t put you to so much trouble. Besides, I’m booked in at the Dog and Duck.’

‘Mrs Matthews won’t mind.’

It occurred to Holly that Drew could just as easily have suggested driving her into the village and then collecting her en route for the party tomorrow, but she suspected that he had very little free time, and she was reluctant to suggest it.

‘Well, if you’re sure I won’t be any trouble…’

‘Quite sure,’ he told her briefly. ‘Wait here, I’ll go outside and bring your stuff in, and then I’ll go and get your car. Oh, I’d better show you where you can sleep first. It’s this way.’

He walked across the room and opened a door, pausing when Holly hesitated.

‘Shouldn’t we… that is, will your mother mind?’

‘My mother?’ he frowned and then his frown cleared. ‘Oh, I see… My mother doesn’t live here any more, Holly. She remarried two years ago and she’s living in Chester now. But even if she wasn’t, I’m sure she wouldn’t mind.’

‘I see. And… and your brothers and sister?’

‘All away as well,’ Drew told her cheerfully. ‘Ah… I see what it is. You’re worried about being here alone with me.’

He sounded almost approving, but even so Holly hastily corrected him. ‘Heavens, no! Nothing like that. Men and women live together all the time in London now without… without being sexually involved.’

Even to her own ears her voice sounded overbright, although what she had said was perfectly true. True it might be, but that didn’t alter her own inner conviction that her own parents would most definitely not approve of what she was doing.

This was the nineteen eighties, she told herself firmly, and besides, she and Drew were doing nothing wrong. They were not lovers, nor ever likely to be.

‘Holly, if you’d rather not stay…’

‘Oh, no,’ she told him quickly. ‘If people choose to leap to the wrong conclusion, that’s their affair, isn’t it? I mean, you and I know that… well…’

‘That we’re not lovers,’ Drew supplied for her.

His head was turned toward her but, because of the sun streaming in through the window and blinding her, she was unable to see his face. Still, something about the soft way in which he said the words made her muscles tense slightly, as though they were preparing to ward off danger.

Seconds later she, Holly, was telling herself that she must learn to relax. What possible danger could she be in from Drew, of all people? Why, only less than half an hour ago she had been thinking how very safe and comfortable she felt with him. Just because she was going to spend a couple of nights alone with him, there was no reason for her to get all nervous and het up.

‘Have you made any other alterations?’ she asked him as he opened the door and she followed him into an inner hall.

An ancient oak staircase led upstairs, the wood worn by countless generations of hands and feet. It felt warm to her touch, and pleasantly smooth.

‘Some. I’ve installed two new bathrooms, and built some wardrobes in my own and the guest bedrooms. What I need now is a decorator, but somehow or other…’

Somehow or other he had lost heart, she thought sympathetically, and no wonder. He would have been modernising the house for Rosamund, and she felt a fierce thrill of resentment against the other woman for hurting him as she must have done. Drew was far too nice for a woman like Rosamund. She wanted to tell him as much, but she stopped herself just in time. He couldn’t help loving Rosamund any more than she could help loving Howard.

‘You know, I’m surprised he had the gall to invite you to this do,’ he commented, as he led the way down a long corridor linking the bedrooms together. On one side of it were a series of closed doors, and on the other windows which overlooked the fields. Holly paused and studied the landscape.

‘Oh, you’ve kept the water meadow!’ she exclaimed with pleasure.

The field in question was steep and marshy, with a small river running through it. Holly remembered that at one time Drew had seriously considered having it drained. She had pleaded with him not to, loving the wild flowers that grew among the rushes in springtime.

‘It would have been prohibitively expensive, and besides, I can sell the rushes now. Someone’s set up in business in the village, making traditional baskets, and chair seats, that kind of thing, and he comes and cuts the rushes when they’re ready. Why did you come, Holly?’ he pressed, returning to his earlier comment.

‘I had to.’ She turned to look at him, her eyes bright and defiant. ‘He’ll come back to me, Drew. I know he will. If I could just make him see how wrong Rosamund is for him. Jan—my boss—suggested I should find a man to bring with me. You know, to make Howard jealous.’

‘But you decided not to?’ he questioned, giving her a sharp look.

‘Well, I didn’t have much option. I don’t know any men, really, other than Howard,’ she admitted honestly.

‘Mmm.’ He turned away from her and opened a door.

Sunlight flooded the pretty room through the dormer window set into the sloping roof.

‘Oh, Drew, it’s lovely!’

‘Bathroom’s next door,’ he told her laconically. ‘It isn’t exactly en suite, but you’ll have it to yourself, since I use the one off my own room which is at the other end of the house.’

How tactful and considerate he was. Impulsively, she reached up and kissed him on the cheek. He went as still as a statue, and dark red colour flooded her face as she realised what she had done.

‘I’m sorry, Drew,’ she apologised falteringly. ‘I never thought…’

Of course, being kissed by any woman was bound to remind him of Rosamund. She felt exactly the same way and she ought to have realised.

‘I’d better go and get your car before it starts to go dark.’

CHAPTER TWO (#ulink_ec731da3-5e80-5e3b-b09b-9e82a0c545a7)

‘DREW, I’M SO nervous. I don’t think I want to go.’

Holly was standing in the kitchen, wearing her new dress, her hair freshly washed, her face made-up, but all her courage had deserted her, and she didn’t think she was going to be able to face Howard and Rosamund.

‘You’ve got to,’ Drew told her bluntly. ‘Too many people know you’re here.’

It was true. Only this morning the postman had given her a cheery welcome, saying that he had heard from Mrs Matthews about her car and that she was staying at the farm. Knowing him, by now all her old friends would have heard she was home.

The party was going to be very formal, and initially she had been rather stunned by the sight of Drew in his dinnersuit. For one thing she hadn’t expected him to own a dinnersuit, but, when she had naïvely said as much, he had gravely informed her that he had had to buy one in order to attend the local Young Farmers’ ‘dos’.

He was even wearing a fashionable wing-collared shirt, so crisply laundered that it could have rivalled one of Howard’s. However, as she glanced downwards Holly forgot her doubts about attending the party and exclaimed, ‘Drew, you’re wearing green socks.’

‘Am I?’ He looked completely unperturbed. ‘I’d better go up and change them. It would help if you came with me and supervised.’ He saw her face and said quietly, ‘I’m colour-blind, Holly. Don’t you remember? Or at least, partially colour-blind. I could spend the rest of the evening up there trying to find the right pair.’

Of course, now that he mentioned it, she did remember him once saying to her about his inability to differentiate between certain colours.

‘To tell the truth,’ he confided as they went upstairs, ‘that’s one of the reasons I’ve hesitated about redecorating. I’m terrified of choosing the wrong colours.’

‘Oh, but surely Rosamund would have chosen those?’

At her side Drew heaved a sigh that lifted his chest and made her wonder absently how wide it was… certainly much wider than Howard’s. Howard’s chest was inclined to be uncomfortably bony, but then Howard didn’t have the benefit of working outside, she told herself loyally.