Past All Forgetting

Colin was right, of course, she thought miserably. The house had everything to recommend it. If it had been any other house anywhere in the locality she would have shared his enthusiasm. She had always known that it would be part of her duties as his wife to entertain his guests and have foreign buyers to stay, and she had looked forward to it.

But the house—that house—did not belong to them and never could, no matter how much money Colin’s father might put up. It was the Tempest house, and it belonged by rights to Rian Tempest, and it was her fault and hers alone that Rian had not inherited it. Her fault that it had stood empty for all these years. No one had ever accused her, but she knew it just the same, knew that Rian had left his uncle’s house seven years before in bitterness and disgrace because of her, and that the Colonel had died without forgiving him.

And the fact that the knowledge of her guilt was confined to her and only one other person in the world now did not ease her conscience in the slightest.

Faintly in the distance, she could hear the bell for afternoon school begin to ring, and she turned and began to walk up the drive. Over in the playground, the children were being lined up by the teacher on duty, and Janna turned slightly to watch, not noticing where she was going.

She did not hear the sound of the car’s engine. The first warning of its presence was the blare of the horn, and she stepped hurriedly out of its way, flattening herself against an adjacent wall with a word of apology on her lips. She glanced at the driver’s seat, wondering incuriously who the owner of such an exotic vehicle might be and what business brought him to a small country school in the middle of the day. She couldn’t think of any of the parents whose finances would run to a supercharged machine like that. The half-smile died on her lips. For one incredulous moment, she thought she must be dreaming, that it must be an image created by her overcharged emotional state.

The car braked softly beside her, and the driver’s window rolled noiselessly downwards, at the press of a button, she thought hysterically, digging her nails into the palms of her hands. A pair of dark eyes met hers expressionlessly, then moved slowly and consideringly downwards, lingering on her white face, and the trembling limbs she could neither control nor dissemble.

‘Hello, Janna,’ said Rian Tempest.

Then the car accelerated forward, with a low, fierce growl like some huge menacing beast, and he was gone.

CHAPTER TWO (#u54a68daf-c6c9-5abc-b874-52549b12fd99)

JANNA shut her bedroom door and sank down on the bed with a heartfelt sigh of relief. Her head was throbbing painfully, and her confused state of emotion, coupled with apprehension, had made her feel physically sick.

She did not know how she had managed to get through the afternoon with a semblance of normality. She had sat in the darkened hall with her class, watching the film show with unseeing eyes, laughing obediently when everyone else did at the technicoloured cavortings without the slightest realisation of what was going on. Luckily the Walt Disney adventure and the cartoons which preceded it had occupied everyone else’s attention, so Janna’s wan appearance and tightly gripped hands passed unnoticed.

Her mother, however, was not so easily to be put off. She had watched with puckered brows while Janna pushed her evening meal, uneaten, round her plate, but had accepted her halting explanation that she thought she might be starting a migraine. Mrs Prentiss had been a migraine sufferer all her life and was always eagle-eyed to detect incipient signs of it in anyone close to her. She had tutted distressedly over Janna, pressed some painkillers on her, and recommended that she lie down in her darkened room. Janna was thankful to accept the medicine and the advice.

Now that she was alone, at least she did not have to pretend any more. She turned and lay full-length on her stomach across the bed, pillowing her chin on her folded arms.

Rian Tempest was back in Carrisford. After all these years without a sign, a word even, he had returned, and now her peace of mind had gone for ever.

She closed her eyes, trying to erase from her mind the memory of that long look he had given her before he had driven off. It had emphasised more clearly than words could do that he had not forgotten anything which had passed between them seven years before. Not forgotten—and not forgiven either. But what else did she expect? What she had done to Rian was unforgivable. She had always known that.

She shivered, pressing her body further into the yielding softness of the eiderdown as if she was seeking some kind of sanctuary. When she had been a child, and there had been some small disaster to be faced, it had always been a comfort to drag the bedclothes round her—even over her head—and tell herself that no one would ever find her now.

Yet Rian had found her, she thought, as she had always feared that he would even with the false sense of security the passing years had given her.

But why had he come back? she asked herself almost despairingly. Now that his aunt and uncle were both dead and he must know for certain that the house and estate were not his, what was there to draw him back to Carrisford? The possibilities that suggested themselves were too disturbing to contemplate.

She turned restlessly on to her side, wishing for the first time in her life that she had a sleeping tablet. Something that would blot out thinking and reasoning—and above all remembering for a few hours. The adult equivalent of drawing the bedclothes over one’s head, she told herself wryly.

What did he intend? she asked herself, but no immediate answer was forthcoming. Rian had always been totally unpredictable, she thought. That was why she had continued to pursue him, confident that he was not as impervious to her as he had tried to maintain. She had the memory of his reaction to her while she had been in his arms to buoy up her hopes as well. He might have spoken of his own indifference, but his body had betrayed him with its instinctive response to her proximity. And there was an element of challenge in the affair now. She would make him admit that he wanted her, in deed as well as word. She would make him grovel.

Janna gave a groan and buried her face in her hands. Why, oh, why had she been so sure she could do so, when all the evidence suggested the contrary? God knew she had received fair warning, so she could blame no one for what had happened subsequently but herself.

She had seen little of Rian in the week following the dance, do what she might. It had been during this time that she had paid her abortive visit to Carrisbeck House with the parish magazines, she recalled with a pang. But he seemed to be avoiding his usual haunts, or at least avoiding her while she was there, and she had to be content with a couple of unsatisfactory glimpses of him driving his car, once with Barbara Kenton’s blonde head conspicuously close to his dark one.

Her obsession was beginning to be noticed by her friends, and a few sly hints were dropped, which she ignored in spite of the feelings raging inside her. Geoff Christie, whom she had been dating in a desultory manner before Rian’s return, soon became peeved at her indifference and began taking out one of her friends. From being the centre of attention, Janna began to find that she was now becoming an outsider among her contemporaries, but she told herself defiantly that she did not care. If she was lonely, then she had chosen to be so, and anyway nothing mattered except Rian.

Her schoolwork began to suffer, and she found herself the target for tart remarks from her teachers, who could not understand why such a previously bright and interested girl had suddenly become such an introspective dreamer. She could not sleep either. Many nights she lay awake for hours, tormented by feelings that she could only dimly comprehend. It was a warm summer, so she was able to blame the heat for her sleeplessness and shadowed eyes. There were even nights when she let herself quietly out of the sleeping house and walked through the silent streets, through the town and up into the hills, encountering nothing more than a few startled sheep. Except once.

Janna rolled on to her back and stared up at the ceiling as she remembered that particular night. As it happened, she had not been for one of her solitary walks. She had been visiting a girl friend whose parents owned a farm a few miles up the dale from Carrisford, and she was cycling back rather later than she had intended. She was not worried about it. Her parents would probably think she was spending the night at Marion’s as she had done in the past, she reassured herself.

She came across the Carrisbeck bridge and slowed for the bend, when she noticed a car pulled off the road and into the shelter of the trees which crowded to the edge of the highway. She recognised it instantly, even though its lights were off, and checked.

Her first thought was that Rian might be in the wood with Barbara, and she had to suppress a pang of jealous anger, but reason prevailed, pointing out that this particular clump of trees was hardly an appropriate place for a lovers’ tryst. It was far too near the river for one thing, and invariably damp. So what was he up to? she wondered. She got off her bike and wheeled it to the side of the road, depositing it near Rian’s car, then set off down the narrow muddy track which was all that constituted a path. There was no sound of voices, however hushed, just the distant murmur of the river and closer at hand the heart-thudding cry of an owl just above her head.

Janna expelled her breath in a slow sigh of sheer fright, then went cautiously on.

She paused as she emerged from the trees where the ground fell away sharply to the river bank below, and a mischievous smile curved her lips. The river at this point was wide, and the current deep and sluggish. It was one of the places recognised locally as being safe for bathing, and Rian, she saw, was taking full advantage of the fact. Against the silvery sheen of the water, his hair looked black and gleaming, and she could see the long lithe turn of his body as he moved easily through the water.

She slithered down on to the bank, found what she was looking for—his clothes in a neat pile—and sat on them demurely, waiting for him to notice her. But somewhat to her pique, he was obviously too absorbed in his own pleasure to notice he had company, and eventually she was obliged to draw his attention to the fact by clearing her throat noisily.

He dived under the water and came up a few feet from the bank, treading water, and shaking the drops from his face and hair.

‘Janna,’ he said resignedly. ‘What the hell are you doing here?’

‘You’re not the only person who gets the urge to go moonlight bathing,’ she said sweetly. ‘Wouldn’t you like some company?’

‘No, I wouldn’t,’ he said with an air of restraint. ‘Be a good girl and push off—please.’

She pouted, triumphantly aware that she had the whip hand for once. ‘It’s a free country,’ she pointed out. ‘And this is one of my favourite spots. Nor is it part of your uncle’s estate. You can’t make me go.’

‘No, I can’t,’ he acknowledged. ‘I hoped I wouldn’t have to, and that asking you nicely might be enough.’

‘Oh, but it isn’t,’ she said, and smiled. ‘Now if you asked me nicely to stay—that might be different.’

‘Indeed it might,’ he said drily. ‘And what’s my next line? Come on in—the water’s fine?’

‘Thank you for the kind invitation,’ she said, studiedly polite. ‘But it may have escaped your attention that I haven’t brought my swimsuit with me.’

‘No.’ He swam in a wide circle. ‘Just as I’m sure it hasn’t escaped your attention that I haven’t brought mine either.’

Not for the world would she have admitted that it had not occurred to her.

‘Oh, but that doesn’t matter,’ she said with assumed nonchalance, thankful that the darkness hid her warm cheeks. ‘And—and I do know what a naked man looks like, you know.’

‘In practice, or merely in theory?’ The gleam of his smile mocked her. ‘Janna Joins the Permissive Society, and other titles. I suppose it makes a change from the Pony Club.’

‘Very amusing,’ she said calmly. ‘Have you heard the one about having the last laugh? It can’t be getting any warmer in that water, and I happen to be sitting on your clothes. All of them.’

‘Right on all counts,’ he agreed reflectively. ‘The situation is a little one-sided, I must admit.’ He swam round again, this time coming right up to the bank. ‘All right, Janna, I resign. Why not join me? It’s a very warm night, and I promise to turn my back like a gentleman if that’s what you’re waiting for.’

She wasn’t altogether certain what she was waiting for. She moistened her lips rather nervously. Dreams and imaginings were one thing; having them translated into quite such realistic terms as a moonlight bathing party for two in the nude, quite another.

‘What’s the matter, Janna?’ She couldn’t see the expression on Rian’s face, but the taunt in his tone was unmistakable. ‘Chicken?’

‘Certainly not,’ she said untruthfully. ‘It—it just looks a bit cold, that’s all.’

He laughed softly. ‘I’ll think of a way of keeping you warm, sweet witch.’

There had to be an answer to that, but Janna couldn’t think of it for the life of her. Her mouth was suddenly dry, and she was trembling violently inside. One part of her wanted, childishly, to run, but another, more insidious voice was persuading her to remain.