A KIND OF MADNESS [070-011-4.0]

By: PENNY JORDAN

Synopsis:

Too hot to handle

Carter Macdonald oozed sex appeal.  He was the sort of man women
dreamed about.  But he wasn't Elspeth's type.  She preferred an orderly
life, with no highs or lows, no chaotic emotions.  And that was exactly
what safe and reliable Peter was offering her.

Carter had other ideas.  He knew that underneath Ms Turner's cool
exterior was a passionate woman waiting to be released--and he was the
man to do it!  But would he be able to handle her when she finally let
herself go?


ISBN 0263808572

MILLS &l B 0 0 Nfl-----------^^ Makes any time special'"

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A KIND OF MADNESS

BY PENNY JORDAN

MILLS <sl B 0 0 N'

CHAPTER ONE

"So you're leaving for Cheshire this evening.  Exactly when do your
parents sail?"  Peter asked.

They were having lunch at their usual restaurant, equidistant from
Elspeth's bank and Peter's chambers.  Both of them had agreed early on
in their relationship that it made much more sense for them to fix a
couple of days per week when they could lunch together, rather than
committing too many of their precious busy evenings to developing their
relationship.

That was one of the things that made their relationship so
harmonious:

they both had the same goals, the same outlook on life--the same firm
and practical outlook.  Not for them the heady, and so often
destructive and exhausting passion of others.  Which made it all the
more difficult to understand why her parents, instead of approving of
Peter, seemed almost to treat their relationship as a joke.

Of course, her parents and Peter were worlds apart; her parents were
her parents, but one had to admit they were a trifle unorthodox in
their attitude to the things that Peter considered important--one could
almost say a little careless and feckless in their outlook on life,
never treating it with the seriousness they should.  Look at the way
now that her father, having sold the farm and bought a small holding
instead of investing the remainder of the money in some safe manner
which would give them a good income, was insisting on taking her mother
off to Egypt and then the Greek islands for a two-month holiday.

Really, the pair of them could be as irrational and as irresponsible as
a pair of children at times.  It was a good job that she was around to
keep an eye on them.  When her father had first sold the farm, she had
heaved a small sigh of relief.  She loved her parents, of course, but
the farm and its demands had sometimes proved to be a small bone of
contention between Peter and herself.  The very first time she had
introduced him to her parents, he had generously tried to point out to
her father how foolish he was in trying to continue farming in the
outdated traditional method her father had favoured, when he could have
made the farm so much more profitable by using modern intensive
methods.  Peter had only been trying to help, and it had been
unfortunate that her father felt so strongly about retaining the
traditional methods of agriculture, and that Peter hadn't realised that
he had been treading almost on hallowed ground by arguing against
them.

When her mother had first told her they were selling the farm, she had
been pleased, envisaging a safe, comfortable life for them in a
pleasant, easily run house in one of the very attractive local Cheshire
villages, but to her shock what her parents had bought was a small and
extremely rundown small holding which they had told her with enthusiasm
and excitement they intended to use to raise organically grown
vegetable crops.

Her mother, Elspeth remembered, had been bubbling over with eagerness
for the project, explaining that they had already canvassed the very
popular local restaurants, with which Cheshire was well supplied, to
ensure that there was a ready market for their produce.

Elspeth had been dragged down to view the appalling wreck of a cottage,
which looked fit only for demolition, and the flat, overgrown paddock
that went with it.

She had tried to talk her parents out of such a crazy venture, her
heart sinking when she'd realised they had made up their minds.  The
frustration of not being able to make them see that their money would
give them a far better return if it was invested had sent her to live
in London with a pounding headache, and the unpleasant sinking
sensation that Peter would consider her to have failed in not
persuading them to change their minds.  Why couldn't her parents be
more like Peter's?  His father and mother had retired to a small south
coast town, where they played golf and bridge.  They had an immaculate
detached bungalow with smooth green lawns and well-disciplined
flower-beds.  No pets were allowed in the Holmes household, no cats
with unexpected litters of kittens, no rough stray dogs with large
muddy paws and hairy coats.  no parrots who called out the most
appallingly rude things when one was least expecting it.  She still
blushed to remember how, the first time she had taken Peter home, the
parrot which her mother had originally been taking care of for a
friend, and which had somehow or other lingered on to become a
permanent house guest, had flown on to Peter's shoulder and bitten
quite sharply at his ear before remarking in a voice which sounded
uncomfortably like her mother's, "Oh, dear, such a shame.

Pious Peter.  Pious Peter.  "

"Well, perhaps once they get back from this holiday they'll come to see
sense and sell up.  I must say, Elspeth, I do find your parents
rather..."  Peter frowned and studied his plate as though unable to
find the words to describe his reaction to her family, while Elspeth
hung her head in acknowledgement of his criticism.

It wasn't until she had come to live in London that she had realised
how eccentric and unusual her home life was.  Having a father who was a
farmer had caused a few amused raised eyebrows, but not too much other
comment in the high-powered world of merchant banking.  It was only
after she'd made the mistake of taking a colleague home with her one
Christmas that she'd made the humiliating discovery of how very odd and
amusing her family was to others.

She had reacted instinctively on learning that Sophy, the other girl,
had had nowhere to spend Christmas, inviting her to return to Cheshire
with her, knowing quite well that another body would hardly be noticed
in the crowd that her mother always drew around her.  Having produced
only one child, her mother had gone on to make up for this by
maternally adopting every chance waif and stray she could, both of the
human and animal varieties, and so it was that the farm had abounded
with pet lambs turned aggressive and demanding sheep, goats who could
never be milked, chickens too old to lay but whose necks could never be
wrung, sheep-dogs who only dreamed lazily of sheep in their old age as
they huddled up to the Aga, a collection of barn cats who never
hunted--although thankfully in those days the parrot had not been in
evidence.

Sophy had seemed to fit in so well with her family that it had come as
a double shock to walk into the staff-room behind her and discover her
entertaining a crowd of their fellow employees by telling them in her
high-pitched Sloane Ranger voice about the chaos of the Turner
household.

Elspeth had never felt so humiliated in her life.  She had resolved
there and then that, in the future, no one would ever be able to
humiliate her or laugh at her in that kind of way again.

When her mother had asked gently why she no longer brought any friends
home with her when she came back from London, she had quietly and
firmly avoided a direct answer.  From then on her home life and her
career were two separate things.

After that she had been cautious about where and with whom she made
friends.  She had swapped her room at the small, crowded flat she'd
shared with four other girls and had found herself a lone bed sitter

Having more time to spend on her own had given her the opportunity to
concentrate on her exams, so that when Sophy had been simpering over
the engagement ring she had managed to extract from an up-and-coming
bank clerk, she, Elspeth, had been quietly receiving the
congratulations of her management on the excellence of her exam
results.

While her colleagues had opted for the glamour and high-powered
pressure of the dealing-room, she had set her sights in a different
direction,

cautiously looking ahead to the future, and equally cautiously deciding
to leave the world of mainstream banking for the more specialised arena
of merchant banking.

Here it seemed she had found her niche.  She loved the meticulous,
quiet, thoughtful concentration needed for such work; she liked being
out of the public eye, working behind the scenes; and she was rewarded
for her diligence with a good salary which had enabled her to buy her
own small dockside apartment and to run a neat, economical car.

She had met Peter when he'd moved into an adjoining apartment.  They
had soon discovered how much they had in common.  Unlike other couples,
they had decided against moving into one shared apartment.  After all,
when they eventually decided to marry, by selling the two apartments
they would have sufficient profit to enable them to buy a sensible
London house which would be convenient for both their offices.

Later, when they had children, they might decide to move a little way
out of London, somewhere convenient for the M4 and healthy for bringing
up children.  Yes, she and Peter had their lives all properly planned.
Not for her the careless insouciance of her parents, who always left so
much to chance.

When she had once gently chided her mother for this, the latter had
replied firmly, "Elspeth, we like surprises, even the bad ones.  I
can't understand how you can bear to have your life so carefully mapped
out, every move planned.  My dear, think how boring it will be..."

She had subdued the small, rebellious voice inside her which had found
astoundingly that her mother had been right, reminding herself of her
humiliation at the hands of the insufferable Sophy.  That was never
going to happen to her again--nor to her children.  They would have
parents whom they would know would never do anything to embarrass them.
She would never forget the awful humiliation of that day.  the mockery
and laughter of her colleagues.  the cruelty of Sophy, who had
exaggerated her parents' soft Cheshire accents just sufficiently to
make them sound almost unbelievably bucolic, who had described in
loving, cruel detail the plethora of cats, dogs and livestock that had
run riot in and around the old farmhouse, who had mocked her mother's
somewhat casual attitude to the kind of housework that involved having
a home in which nothing looked as though it was ever out of place.

Even now it made her squirm to remember.  "I'll try to drive up to
Cheshire for your second weekend there," she heard Peter saying, and
automatically switched her thoughts from the past and back to the
present.

Three weeks ago, just before her mother had telephoned and dropped her
bombshell that she and Elspeth's father had decided more or less on the
spur of the moment to take a long holiday, Elspeth's boss had sent for
her, and had told her almost severely that it was time she used some of
the eight weeks of leave that was due to her.

Thoroughly alarmed that he might have been suggesting a fall in the
standard of her work, Elspeth had protested that she didn't need a
holiday, that she enjoyed her work so much.

"Yes, Elspeth, I know and I do sympathise, but the board has issued
instructions that, praiseworthy though they consider it that our staff
are so conscientious, in this day and age with so many stress- related
illnesses their staff must take their due allocation of holiday
leave.

Our personnel department tell me that it is over two years since you
had a break of longer than three or four days.

"The board has asked me to provide them with a list of all those
members of staff who have more than one year's allocation of leave
built up.

"The view of the board is that a healthy staff member with a
well-rounded attitude to life will in the long run serve the bank
better than, to use a current term, a " workaholic".

"I think you will agree that, in these circumstances, it might be as
well if you could find a way of using up some of your built-up leave.

I do sympathise, Elspeth, but the Livingstone contract is all but wound
up, and unless you have something very pressing to attend to.  "

Elspeth had shaken her head, her heart sinking, knowing that she had
had no possible excuse for not taking her boss's advice.

When he had added a further blow, telling her that he expected her to
take at least four weeks' leave, she had left his office feeling almost
as sick with shock as she had done on that never to be forgotten
occasion when she had overheard Sophy's malicious description of her
parents and home.

Had anyone told Elspeth that she was an extremely sensitive, almost
over-sensitive young woman, whose emotions and self-confidence were
easily bruised, she would have reacted with astonishment and dismissal.
She considered herself to be one of that new breed of women who had
managed to tame and control all those dangerously subversive feminine
traits which had told so badly against her sex in the past.

Not for her sentimentality and the weakness of allowing her emotions to
rule her head; not for her the folly of falling in love, of submitting
herself to the pain of allowing another human being to become so
important to her that he was the focus of her whole world.  No, she
preferred to put her faith, her trust in something far more
dependable--like her work.  Of course she wanted to marry, to have
children, and in Peter she considered she had found the perfect mate:
someone who felt about life exactly as she did.

They considered themselves an established couple, even though she
wasn't wearing an engagement ring, even though they were not as yet
lovers.  Peter was old-fashioned in such things, and she was glad of
it. These days, when one heard and read of the appalling consequences
of sexual freedom and promiscuity, it was reassuring to meet a man who
considered his health more important than the satisfaction of physical
desire.  There had been one previous serious relationship in Peter's
life, a girl at university, but that was in the past.  And as for her.
Elspeth moved uncomfortably in her chair.  Her virginity was something
she preferred not to dwell on.  It had been the source of enough mirth
among the other girls she had flat-shared with when the local office of
her bank had first transferred her to London, and she had been too hurt
and too proud to explain to the others that it was very difficult to
enter into a purely physical fling with the careless abandon they
seemed to favour when one lived and worked in a small country town,
where everyone knew everyone else, and where at the first sign of her
attempting to do any such thing the gossips would be having a field
day.

And then by the time she had moved to London she had felt too shy, too
self-conscious to remedy things.  After Sophy--strange how she always
thought of her life as before Sophy and after Sophy--she had curled up
into herself, not trusting herself to form any new relationships with
anyone, male or female.

But now there was Peter, and if she sometimes found his insistence that
they did not sleep together, his reluctance to touch her at all except
to give her the odd very chaste and brief kiss, somewhat lacking in
passion, she comforted herself with the knowledge that she would have
found a man who was far more openly and demandingly sexual very
off-putting indeed.

No, Peter was right for her, and once they were married of course
things would be different.  As it was, their careers took up so much of
their time that it was hardly surprising that Peter wasn't keen to rush
on their marriage.  After all, as he had pointed out to her recently,
the terrible events of the autumn of '87, when the markets had fallen
so drastically and so many of their peers had lost their jobs, had had
a disastrous effect on the property market, which had still not
recovered, and it would be foolish for them to make marriage plans and
to sell their flats until it had done so.

She had agreed wholeheartedly with him, but it had niggled her none the
less the last time her mother had rung up to have had to explain that
no, she and Peter had not made any wedding arrangements as yet.

It was the purpose of that phone call which was the subject of their
lunchtime discussion today.

Her mother had been thrilled about the planned holiday, but she had
been concerned about leaving her menagerie.

"Fortunately, Carter has offered to take over and look after things for
us... You remember Carter, don't you, Elspeth?"

She did, but wished she did not.  Carter MacDonald was her aunt's
stepson, but he had already been an adult when her aunt had married his
father, and his visits to the farmhouse had consequently been very
rare.  What she did remember about him was that she had found him
rather overpowering.  Almost eight years her senior, she had first met
him the summer her aunt had married his father.  He had just finished
university at the time and had been waiting to hear if his application
to work in scientific crop research for Third World countries had been
successful. Her feelings towards him had been so ambiguous that when
her mother had mentioned his name alarm bells had started to ring
wildly in her cautious brain, especially when she couldn't seem to
explain what Carter was doing in Cheshire when he was supposed to be
working in America.

Gently she had tried to caution her mother against leaving a man who
was after all almost a stranger to them in charge of the small holding
be cause, for all her own objections and fears, she had had to admit
that her parents were making an out standing success of their venture,
with the vegetables they produced being in constant demand from
prestigious local restaurants and hotels.  In deed, so successful was
it becoming that they were being pressed to expand, to erect more
greenhouse tunnels and to buy more land.  Their accounts, when they had
proudly shown them to her, had stunned her.  She had had no idea it was
possible to make so much money from producing organically grown food.

When she had said as much to Peter he had lectured her reprovingly,
pointing out that with the move to a far more 'green' environment it
was obvious that her parents' produce would sell well.

And now they were jeopardising the whole thing by lightheartedly taking
off for two months and leaving their precious business in the hands of
a man about whom they knew virtually nothing at all.

Not so, her mother had objected when she had pointed these facts out to
her.  In the past few months they had got to know Carter very well
indeed.  It was true that initially he had merely been looking them up
out of good manners, having returned to England after a spell working
in America.  But it seemed that now for some reason he was seriously
considering settling in Cheshire and that, moreover, he had plans to
enter a similar line of business to her parents', so that he had both
the experience and the inclination to take over the running of the
business while they were away.

Elspeth had found all this highly suspicious.  Her memories of Carter
were of a tall, thin male with a shock of overlong dark hair who had
seemed very adult to her teenage self, someone who had made her very
aware of her own immaturity.  Her mother was even talking
enthusiastically about him buying a small farm due to come up for sale
next to their own land, so that the two ventures could be run as one,
but her parents were so innocent.  so naive.  They couldn't see what
Peter had been quick to point out to her--something she had not
realised at first herself--that it might well be that Carter did intend
to start up a business, a business which would be in direct competition
to their own--and what better way to get a head start than by
destroying their business while they were away and he was in charge?

Of course, she had known immediately it would be useless to point this
out to her mother.  For one thing, she knew that her mother would only
laugh and dismiss Peter's suspicions as unthinkable.

She had talked the whole thing over with him and he had pointed out
further aspects of the situation which had not occurred to her:

namely, that not only might Carter not take adequate care of her
parents' venture, but that he might actually deliberately try to
undermine everything they had built up.

"After all, if he is serious about setting up in competition to
them..."  he had gone on.

Shocked, Elspeth had initially demurred, but Peter had insisted he was
right.  She had immediately wanted to warn her parents, but had known
that they would not take her warning seriously.  They seemed to have
taken Carter to their hearts, almost as though he were a long-lost son,
not someone who was barely related to them at all if one discounted her
aunt's marriage to his father.

A sensation which she had refused to admit as jealousy had struggled
for life inside her--a sensation which she had immediately squashed.

But then had come her boss's announcement that she must take some
leave, and she had immediately suggested to Peter that it might be as
well for her to kill two birds with one stone by taking her leave and
by spending it in Cheshire, where she could keep a firm eye on any
Machiavellian attempts by Carter to undermine her parents' business.

Peter had immediately agreed with her decision.  She had rung her
parents that evening, announcing that she had some leave due and that
she was free to stand in for them while she was on holiday.

At first her mother had seemed surprisingly unenthusiastic, almost as
though she didn't want her at home, and her are and suspicions had
grown when she had later learned that it was Carter who had told her
parents that that kind of sacrifice on her part was unnecessary, and
that he was sure she would much prefer to spend her leave with Peter.

Not so, she had returned firmly.  And in the end her mother had thanked
her and accepted her decision, although even then she had not seemed
very confident of Elspeth's ability to take charge.  Which was foolish,
surely.  After all, her parents had a small staff who did the
day-to-day routine work.  Elspeth was used to dealing with underlings,
having a small department under her at the bank, and surely a
well-educated, mature woman of twenty-seven would have no trouble at
all in run S ning one very small small holding for a period of one
month.

And so she had planned everything.  She would drive down to Cheshire
three days ahead of her parents' departure so that she could familia
rise her self with their routine, and make sure that Carter knew that
any interference on his part would not be welcome.

It was a pity that he was living in the area while he looked around for
a suitable property of his own, but if he turned up at her parents'
small holding she would make it more than plain to him that, in their
absence, he was not a welcome guest.

As she listened to Peter telling her about his latest case, she
smothered the uncomfortable feeling that if her parents had made Carter
welcome in their home as a member of the family, they would be highly
embarrassed if she refused to do the same.  She reflected crossly that
it was high time she overcame these rebellious and unwanted weaknesses
which more properly she ought to have left behind her when she'd left
home.

Her parents were a warm-hearted couple, whose naivete about the
realities of life and the human race were all very well in the context
of a small rural village where they had been known all their lives, but
the world had changed dramatically since her parents were young, and it
frightened her sometimes how little they seemed to realise that fact.

Take the time she had got off the London train in Chester, only to
discover that her mother had befriended a solitary and extremely hairy
young man who had got.  off an earlier train, and even worse that she
had practically invited him home for the weekend.  One only had to pick
up a paper to realise the danger of befriending strangers.

Not that Carter was a stranger precisely, but his motives were very
suspect, as Peter had wisely pointed out to her.  In fact Peter had
rather chided her because she herself had not seen that danger
immediately.

Truth to tell, she had been inclined to become more indignant about the
way Carter seemed to have wormed his way into her parents' affections
and become an established part of their lives--so much so that the last
time she had gone home, when mercifully he had been away visiting
friends for the weekend, the parrot had shrieked unrelentingly,
"Where's Carter?  I want Carter.  Now there's a man," accompanying this
statement with a barrage of wolf-whistles and other equally unsavoury
remarks.

It was not Jasper's fault, her mother had apologised.  The parrot had
had three homes before being dumped on her parents; one of these
being

Manchester pub, no doubt frequented by the kind of men who thought
nothing of whistling at women and making fulsome remarks about their
physical endowments.

Peter had remarked on their return drive to London that he sincerely
hoped the bird would have met its demise by the time their children
came along.

"It's that kind of thing that exerts the worst possible influence on
young children," he had informed Elspeth.

Even worse, as she cringingly remembered, had been the reaction of
Peter's mother when he had described the parrot's excesses to her the
following weekend.

Peter was scrupulous about making sure that they never visited one set
of parents without visiting the other, and if sometimes she had the
unnerving feeling that he was doling out these duty visits with more
parsimony than real emotion, she kept these unwanted thoughts firmly
subdued.

Peter's parents were nothing like her own.  Peter's mother was a
wonderful housewife.  Her furniture gleamed with polish, her kitchen
floor could literally be dined off, and if Elspeth sometimes noticed
the stiff formality of her visits there, the immaculate tidiness of the
small sitting-room with its furniture that was both uncomfortable and
almost too tidily arranged, she smothered her feelings and
concentrated instead on reminding herself that once they were married
Peter would no doubt expect her to maintain the same high standards
attained by his mother.

That would be a challenge, but Elspeth reminded herself that the modern
career woman thrived on such challenges, skilfully balancing the needs
of career, home and family, and in doing so winning the admiration of
everyone around her.

Mrs.  Holmes did not really approve of wives who worked.  In her day
making a home had been enough to keep any woman contented, but on the
other hand she agreed with Peter that the additional income Elspeth
earned would contribute welcomely to the family budget.  There had even
been a moment when Peter's mother had suggested that when their
children came along it might not be unfeasible for her and Mr.  Holmes
to move to London, so that she might be on hand to take charge of her
grandchildren's upbringing.

For no good reason she could understand, Elspeth had experienced a very
fierce and surprising shock of dislike for that suggestion.  Into her
mind had come mental images of her own childhood, of the farmyard and
its inhabitants, of her mother's kitchen with its good smells and its
untidy bustle, of laughter and sunshine, of love and warmth, and she
had known instinctively that she would never ever allow her prospective
mother-inlaw to bring up her own children.

Disturbing though these thoughts were she had managed to subdue them,
chiding herself for being over-sentimental, reminding herself of how
ill- equipped her own childhood had left her for the hard realities of
life and people.  And yet.  "Elspeth, you aren't listening to a word
I'm saying.  Really, I don't know what it is about your family, but
they do seem to have the most unsettling effect on you.  If it weren't
for the fact that someone ought to check up on what this man is
planning, I'd have serious doubts about the wisdom of your spending so
much time in Cheshire.

Both apartments need decorating.  You could have made a start on the
painting while you were off.  "

Elspeth focused on him, wondering why she didn't feel more enthusiastic
about his suggestion, why she felt an almost sneaking sense of relief
that she was committed to going home.

For no reason that she could readily discern, over these last six
months she had experienced more and more rebellious moments of
startling clarity, during which she had had the unnerving sensation
that her relationship with Peter, her life here in London, her work,
her scrupulous're tailoring of her personality, her appearance, even
her thoughts, were not an escape from the old childish, trusting
Elspeth and her naive country ways, but a trap--a trap which was
gradually but inexorably closing around her.

Which was totally ridiculous, and fostered, she was sure, in some odd
and indefinable way by her parents.  Not that they would be liable to
make those oh, so casual, but nevertheless pointed remarks about Peter
this time.  At least, not after the first three days, and she suspected
they would be far too excited about their holiday to even think of
remarking on how odd it was that she should choose to marry such a
man.

Elspeth had never quite dared ask what they meant.  She preferred to
assume that they were simply marvelling at her good fortune rather than
criticising Peter.

At precisely one-thirty, Peter summoned the waiter and paid the bill.

At the end of the month they would scrupulously divide up the total
cost of their total outings for that month, to make sure that such
costs had been shared equally between them.

And if just occasionally Elspeth wondered what it would be like if
Peter suddenly lavished her with expensive flowers or bought her
handmade chocolates, she told herself severely that she was not that
kind of dependent, childish woman, who needed to be bought such treats
by a man; that if she wanted flowers she could buy her own.  But
something inside her refused to be totally con S

vinced, making her cross with herself for yearning for such outdated,
meaningless gestures.

"Time to go," Peter informed her, standing up.  He said exactly the
same thing every time they lunched together.  Previously she had always
found his predictability soothing, reassuring--but for some reason
today it grated on her.  She wondered what it would feel like if Peter
suddenly behaved like her father, and announced that he had booked them
both a surprise holiday, that he was taking her away to somewhere she
had always wanted to go.  She told herself severely that he would never
do anything so thoughtless, that he would realise that it would not be
possible for her to drop everything to go to the other end of the world
with him.  No, if--when she and Peter took a holiday together, it would
be one that was meticulously planned and organised, which was just what
she would want.  She could think of nothing worse than being told that
she had less than three weeks in which to prepare for a two-month trip
abroad.

Of course her mother thrived on such announcements, throwing herself
into them with enthusiasm and as much excitement as a small child.  But
she was not her mother.  No.  She had recognised, the day when she'd
stood in the doorway to the staff- room of the bank listening to Sophy,
that for the rest of her life she would have to protect her parents
from people like that.  That she must never again subject them to the
kind of cruel mimicry employed by her supposed friend.

Just before they parted outside the restaurant, acting on some impulse
she couldn't understand, she leaned towards Peter, inviting him to kiss
her.

A look of shock crossed his face.  He drew back from her immediately,
glancing hurriedly over his shoulder as though to make sure no one had
witnessed her lack of self-control.  He cleared his throat, avoiding
looking at her.  He was embarrassed, she recognised, flushing hotly,
and no wonder.  What on earth had possessed her?  She knew quite well
that Peter hated public demonstrations of affection.

"Er--I'm afraid I shall be late in tonight--I'm seeing a client.  I'll
ring you at the weekend.  When would be a good time?"

Still flushed and angry with herself, Elspeth made an automatic reply,
and then, having exchanged slightly guarded smiles, they both went
their separate ways.

What a stupid thing for her to have done!  No wonder Peter had looked
so put out.  They simply weren't the sort of couple to indulge in that
sort of thing.  Really, she didn't know what had got into her.  It must
be because she was feeling a little edgy about confronting Carter.  She
had no real fears that she would be able to handle the situation and
ensure that he understood that she was well aware of what he was up
to--thanks to Peter.  Nevertheless-nevertheless, half of her wished
rather weakly that Peter were going with her, that perhaps.  Not to
deal with Carter for her--no, of course not--but just to be there as a
sort of back-up--or just to be there full stop, she realised suddenly
and rather disconcertingly, as the traitorous thought slid into her
mind that for Peter to have parted from her so unemotionally and
casually did not really suggest that his feelings for her were
particularly lover-like.

But how ridiculous.  What did she expect?  A passionate embrace in the
middle of the street?  Of course not.  Their relationship wasn't like
that.  They were far too sensible for that kind of thing.  Their
relationship was built of mutual aims, mutual respect, mutual goals.

Rather disconcertingly as she headed back to the bank she remembered
her mother once telling her nostalgically that she had fallen in love
with her father the moment she'd set eyes on him; that she had known he
was the one for her when he had rushed out into the road to rescue a
kitten from under the hooves of the milkman's pony, daring both the
milkman's fury and the amusement of onlookers when he'd presented the
rescued kitten to her with a courtly bow of his head and a whispered
confession that he rather suspected he had split his jeans during his
heroic dive to rescue the kitten, and would she please go and stand
behind him so that he could get to his feet without completely losing
his dignity.

To envisage Peter in such a situation was beyond the power of the most
inventive type of imagination.  Peter would have ignored the cat.  He
never liked getting involved in things which did not concern him.  He
would certainly never have bandied words with the milkman, and as for
wearing old and worn jeans in danger of bursting their seams.  A
complete and utter impossibility--thank goodness.  She would have been
mortified in her mother's shoes, to be aware of being the cynosure of
all eyes.  She shuddered and closed her eyes.  She and Peter were
perfect for one another--perfect.  She was a very lucky woman--very
lucky indeed.

So why did she feel so.  so on edge?  It was Carter's fault, of course.
If he hadn't come back into their lives, inveigling his way into her
parents' affections.  She had disliked him even as a teenager, feeling
intimidated by him.  He had teased her, she remembered, making fun of
her braced teeth and pulling at her plaits.

She at fourteen had been mortified by his reaction to her, and had
retaliated by whisking herself out of the room whenever he had walked
into it, and refusing to address more than half a dozen words to him
during his entire visit.

"Not like your ma and pa, are you, cuckoo?"  he had tormented her, she
recalled.

She had been hurt by that comment.  hurt and confused, although she had
not let him see it.

Well, this time it would be different.  This time she was an adult with
no need to feel intimidated.  This time he would see how very different
indeed she was from her foolish, too trusting parents.

CHAPTER TWO

not much further to go now.  Only a handful of miles--thank goodness.

There had been so many hold-ups on the motorway that the journey had
taken rather longer than Elspeth had allowed for.  It was still
light--just, the sky overhead remarkably clear, the moon and stars just
beginning to shine.  Thank heaven it was June, with its long, light
evenings.  She hated driving in the dark, especially down the narrow,
winding country lanes that surrounded her parents' home.

As she pulled up at a set of traffic-lights, another car pulled up
alongside her.

It was the sensation of someone looking at her, willing her to turn her
head, that made her react instinctively, glancing sideways at the
occupant of the other car--and immediately, angrily wishing she hadn't
been so foolish as its male driver grinned back at her.

Elspeth glared frigidly at him.  These traffic- lights seemed to be
taking forever to change, and she wasn't used to being grinned at in
that overly familiar fashion, especially not by strange men-especially
not by a very large, very brown strange man wearing a short-sleeved
shirt that was open almost to his waist, and a pair of disreputable
shorts which revealed a pair of heavily muscled and extremely brown
thighs.

At his age he ought to be beyond the stage of making unwelcome advances
to unknown women, she decided bitterly, firmly refusing to give in to
the temptation to cast him a second look, just to make sure he knew
exactly how angry she was at his familiarity.  He must have been closer
to thirty- five than fifteen, but then he was obviously a particular
type of the male species whom she most disliked: conceited,
over-muscled and boasting of those muscles by his state of undress and
driving one of those eye-catching, sporty little cars with its soft top
down, its paintwork a bright and vibrant red.  Just the sort of car
that drew attention to its driver.  Just the sort of car Peter would
never ever consider driving thank goodness.  The lights changed and she
waited hesitantly, giving him time to pull away.  His type always loved
to be first off the mark, and she was not anxious to draw up at the
next set of lights alongside him.  Thank heaven, after that she would
be turning off the Chester ring road and heading for her parents' home
village.

But as she waited for the bright red car to move the traffic behind her
signalled its impatience at her delay, and she realised that the red
car had still not moved.

Feeling uncomfortable and unnerved, she put her own small car in gear,
wincing a little as she underestimated the amount of clutch and shot
forward in an ungainly and thoroughly inexperienced manner, galling in
the extreme to someone who prided herself on her sensible, safe
handling of her car.

As she glanced automatically into her rearview mirror, she saw to her
horror that the reason the red car hadn't moved was that its driver was
now signalling to pull into her lane right behind her, and that the
traffic, caught off guard by her kangaroo- like leap forward, had
allowed him to do so.

Indignation rose in her throat.  How dared he?  Did he honestly think
she was the kind of woman to be impressed by that sort of idiotic
behaviour?  Hadn't he realised from the look she had given-that look of
freezing disdain she had soon learned to hide her real feelings behind
after that never-to be-forgotten occasion when she had walked into the
staff-room at the bank with her real emotions written all too clearly
on her face?  Did he actually think she would be flattered by his
obvious pursuit of her?

Things like this simply did not happen in London, where the drivers
were far too anxious to get to their destination to play these silly
games.

And she had never in her wildest imaginings believed that she would be
involved in something so juvenile.

Well, he would soon get tired of showing off and pursuing her, once she
had made it plain to him that she simply wasn't interested.  And once
he realised she was turning off at the next set of lights he would soon
return to the main stream of traffic.

By rights a man of that age ought to have far more serious matters on
his mind than pursuing unknown women.  If she had been of a less strong
disposition, nervous and easily frightened, she could almost have been
panicked into having an accident by his pursuit of her.

Men like that were a danger to the other traffic.  By rights she ought
to report him to the police, she told herself in annoyance as a peep in
her mirror showed her that he was still behind her.

At least he had some sense, she noticed reluctantly.  He was keeping a
good safe distance between them, not trying to crowd up behind her.

Just as she approached them the lights turned to red, and, on an
impulse she couldn't entirely analyse, instead of indicating that she
was turning right, she did nothing.  Let him think she was going
straight on.  That way she would make sure that he didn't pursue this
stupid game any further.  Although she was determined not to look in
her mirror, she found that she was doing so.  Simply out of habit, she
assured herself.  All good drivers kept an eye on the traffic behind
them.

He had pulled up right behind her, and as she glanced into her mirror
she saw to her fury that he was actually daring to smile at her a
second time.  A smug, self-assured smile, which said that he was quite
sure that his insulting behaviour would be admired and welcome.  She
had a good mind to get out of her car and give him a piece of her mind.
Arrogant, conceited creature.  Couldn't he see that she just was not
the type of woman to be flattered by what he was doing?  Surely her
immaculate, shoulder-length, straight red hair with its sophisticated
London sheen and elegance, her thoroughly city-groomed suit and blouse,
her discreet makeup, which emphasised her golden eyes and which was
delicately balanced on the right side of seriousness, told him that she
was a career woman, and simply not interested in flirting with strange
men in bright red cars.

A cold glare into her mirror should reinforce that message, if he was
so bone-headed that he hadn't already received it.

This time when the lights changed she was ready for them; deftly
turning the wheel and flicking the indicator, she pulled out and away,
giving the car just a little more acceleration than she would nor S

many have used, and discovering, as she turned into the quiet B road
that led eventually to the village, that rather disconcertingly she was
actually holding her breath.

Odious man.  His sort ought to be locked up.  He probably had a wife
somewhere and a family.  The poor woman no doubt doted on him.  She
could picture her now, a pretty, sad-eyed woman, with two quiet,
subdued little children, suffering already from their father's
outrageous behaviour.  No doubt he never took his wife anywhere but
preferred to flirt with other women, leaving his wife at home with his
children.  He probably kept her short of money as well, Elspeth thought
with a scowl. Otherwise how on earth could he afford to run a small
bright red car which had never been designed for family use?

Why, it hadn't even had a child- seat in the back.  That was how little
he thought of his family, that he didn't even make any provision for
their safety.

Carried away by her rising tide of anger on behalf of this fictitious
wife and children, it was several minutes before she looked in her
mirror again.  Not because she had any doubts about doing so-of course
not.  It was simply that there was no reason.  As her glance flicked
upwards, she braked instinctively in outraged reaction at the sight of
the now familiar red car on the road behind her.

He had actually dared to follow her!  The nerve of the man.  If the
road hadn't been so narrow, she would have stopped where she was,
leaving him no opportunity but to drive past.  She hoped when he got
home that his supper was burned and that his wife was justifiably
furious with him.

It was ten miles to the village, nearer to fourteen if one took the
narrow, meandering lane that only allowed for the single width of one
car and which involved a dirty and very damp fording of a local
river.

The last time she had gone down that lane, Peter had been furious.

There had been mud all over his newly polished car and, as he had
virtuously pointed out to her, if he had not had the windows closed the
inside of the car would have been wet and muddy as well.

Well, if the driver of the red car insisted on continuing his futile
pursuit of her, she would teach him a lesson that might make him think
twice about bothering another woman the way he was doing her.  She'd
like to see how he explained the state of his now pristine car to his
wife.

Far too angry to be afraid, as soon as the turning down the lane
appeared Elspeth turned sharply into it, gasping out loud in fury as
she realised that her tormentor had followed her.

Ignoring the fact that she was driving much faster than was normal for
her, and praying that she did not meet anything coming in the opposite
direction, she gritted her teeth, and hoped unkindly that the river was
full after the recent spring rains.  Her own car, a sturdy Volvo, would
have no problem at all with the ford, but his .  his .  bright red
plaything.  Savagely she decided that she hoped the river was high
enough to bring the thing to a complete standstill.

The mental image of him standing in the ford, having to push his car to
the nearest garage, brought her a good deal of satisfaction.  She only
felt piously sorry for his poor wife, who would no doubt receive the
brunt of his bad temper.  His kind of man always reacted with bad
temper when thwarted.  They were so obnoxious that it never occurred to
them that their advances were not welcome, that all women did not find
them instantly and irreversibly attractive.  Look at him now--still
daring to smile at her every time she looked in the mirror, although
now she noticed his smile was turning to a frown.

Did he realise what lay ahead of them?  She certainly hoped so, she
decided viciously.  It was certainly too late for him to turn round.

She saw the familiar sign for the ford and dropped down a gear in
readiness for it.  As she had known it would, her sturdy car splashed
through without any problems.

Safely on the other side, she watched in glee as the red car followed
suit.  The ford, muddy from her passage through it, came much higher up
the wheels of the red car than it had done her own, and as she had
hoped the muddy, gritty water soon marked the pristine scarlet of the
car's over-bright body work

Serves him right, she decided grimly as she pulled away, heading for
the village.

The lane ended a few miles short of the village, curving back on itself
to meet the main road.  As she emerged on to it, Elspeth saw the red
car pull up behind her.

To her astonishment, just as she turned out on to the road the creature
had the gall to flash her with his headlights.  Astounded at his
temerity, she missed her opportunity to pull out.  She could see a
heavy stream of traffic coming towards her and blocking her exit, and
as she sat waiting for an opportunity to move she suddenly heard the
unmistakable sound of a car door being slammed.

Looking into her mirror, she saw to her horror that the man was walking
towards her.  Heavens, he was huge.  She had guessed he would be tall,
but he was well over six feet--much taller than Peter, who was only
four inches above her own five feet six.  He was also broad, and the
shirt he was wearing looked even more disreputable at close quarters
than it had done at a distance.  As he headed towards her, plainly
intent on ignoring all her attempts to show him just how little his
advances were welcome to her, Elspeth was so incensed that she forgot
the cautious training of her adult years, forgot all the warnings
constantly given by the papers and police against lone women stopping
their cars and opening the doors to unknown men, forgot everything bar
the anger boiling up inside her, and just as he reached her car she
thrust open the door and got out, trembling with rage and
indignation.

"I don't know what you think you're doing," she told him, going
straight into the attack.

"But if you think for one moment that I'm flattered by your idiotic and
juvenile behaviour, then you're wrong.

And if you imagine that by following me and trying to get my attention
you're going to impress me, then think again.  I've a good mind to
report you to the police, but I suppose your poor wife has enough to
put up with.  Your behaviour must be embarrassing in the extreme for
her and for your children, but I don't suppose you ever think of that,
do you?  Men like you never do.  I don't suppose you ever give a
thought for anything or anyone but yourself.  If you want my real
opinion of you, I think you're detestable--detestable and contemptible,
and if you don't stop following me immediately I shall report you to
the police.  "

Having said her piece, Elspeth suddenly discovered that she was
trembling, as much with a strange sort of exhilaration as with anger.

He was standing in front of her in a most threatening manner, and she
wouldn't have been surprised if he hadn't reached out and taken hold of
her.  She could see the way he was clenching and unclenching his hands.
No doubt it had upset him to discover how little she welcomed his
pursuit of her.  Well, it would do him good to realise that not every
woman he chose to pursue was going to fall at his feet in gratitude and
admiration.  Even so, justified though her anger was she had perhaps
been rather foolish.  They were virtually alone, and he was a very
strong and now very angry man.  A tiny thrill of sensation ran through
her as she realised that if he did choose to take hold of her and, for
instance, actually dared to kiss her, there was very little she could
do to stop him.  Of course, ;yhe did she would make it immediately
clear to him just what she thought of such disgraceful behaviour.  She
would remind him that he had a wife and family.  Shocked by the
direction of her own thoughts, Elspeth suddenly realised that she was
standing there practically inviting him to make some sort of attack on
her, and that she ought to get straight back in her car and drive off
before he realised it as well.

As she did so, he took a step towards her, and said something she
couldn't quite hear as a huge lorry thundered past, but she was pleased
to note that when she eventually managed to pull out into the traffic
he turned in the opposite direction.  No doubt he had quickly realised
his mistake.  Well, she was glad of it.  Perhaps in future he would
think twice before subjecting some poor female to his arrogant and
unwanted behaviour.

She stopped in the village at the local garage, which she knew would
still be open, and which thankfully still had some milk for sale.

Despite all his efforts, Peter had still not managed to persuade her to
drink her coffee black, and since her mother was still valiantly
attempting to convince herself that both she and her father actually
preferred the milk produced by their goats, if she, Elspeth, wanted
anything like a decent cup of coffee, she would have to provide her own
milk.

Her stop at the garage delayed her longer than she had intended.  The
proprietor was a friend of her parents and wanted to chat, so that it
was fifteen minutes before she could get away, by which time dusk had
started to fall properly.

Never mind, she only had a very few miles to go, and there was
virtually no traffic.

Secretly, if she was honest with herself, she still enjoyed coming
home.  There was something about

Cheshire with its pretty countryside, so neat and clean, its fields
speckled with black and white cows, its crops growing on land which had
yielded harvests since before the Romans had landed and built
Chester.

As she turned off the main road and into the narrow lane leading to her
parents' home, security lights suddenly sprang into life at her
approach.

Automatically slowing down, Elspeth stared at them in a mixture of
surprise and approval.  Ever since her parents had moved here she had
been advising them to have these lights installed, reminding them
severely of their potential vulnerability to thieves, but her father,
while listening to her, had never, seemed to take her advice to heart,
and she had despaired of ever making her parents see the wisdom of her
suggestion.

Now it seemed that she had been wrong.  A further and equally pleasant
surprise was the discovery that her mother's goats, which normally
roamed the lane and the yard, providing a hazard for the unwary, were
safely penned up in the paddock.

She could hear the dogs barking as she approached the yard, and the
familiar feeling of anticipation mingled with anxiety gripped her
stomach.

Anticipation because, no matter how much she might dislike it, there
was still a part of her that missed this country environment in which
she had grown up, and which reacted to her return to it with an almost
heady sense of release; and anxiety because invariably she arrived home
to discover that her parents had got themselves involved in one or
other of the potentially dangerous situations they seemed to be
irresistibly attracted to.  Like children to water, she reflected in
affectionate exasperation as she turned into the yard and neatly parked
her car next to the mud-spattered red car, which must be the new one
her mother had told her she was buying.

The mud-spattered red car!

Elspeth froze in her seat and stared at it in a mixture of dismay and
disbelief.  It couldn 't be the same car--of course it couldn't.  It
was just a coincidence.  and besides, this one had its hood up-and
besides, how on earth could he have possibly known her destination?

Shakily she opened her door, reassuring herself that it was just
coincidence, but as she did so a man rounded the corner of the house;

a tall, broad shouldered, dark-haired man who paused when he saw her
and then looked at her.

It was the look that did it.  She found she was literally grinding her
teeth as she stood up, and she wished passionately that she was taller
so that she could look directly at him instead of having to look up at
him.

At close quarters the tanned face was not quite as suavely handsome as
it had seemed.  For a start the strong, high-bridged nose had been
broken at some stage and was now slightly crooked, but in some odd way
that imperfection seemed to add something elusively attractive to the
man rather than detract from his appeal, lending his face a strength
and character that a more perfect profile would have lacked.

As she stared at him, Elspeth even caught herself wishing almost
wistfully that it weren't quite so dark so that she could see what
colour his eyes were.  What did it matter what colour they were?  she
chastised herself furiously.  What did matter was that he had no right
to be here--none at all-and if he thought for one moment she was going
to be flattered by his presence.  Quickly, before she could weaken
completely and give in to the totally unfamiliar foolishness that
seemed to have caught hold of her, she told him as much, delivering the
words in the sharp, crisp tones of the modern woman she considered
herself to be;

a woman who knew exactly how to deal with his sort of man and who lost
no time in doing so, making it abundantly clear to him exactly what she
thought of his behaviour.

It was only when she stopped to draw breath that she realised
indignantly that neither of her parents had appeared to rescue her from
him and that, instead of looking thoroughly chastised by her
justifiable denunciation, he was instead watching her with a mixture of
mockery and disdain.

"I hate to stop you in mid-flood," he told her while she gulped in
air.

"I applaud your performance, by the way.  Your parents never said you
were into amateur dramatics.  A bit over the top, perhaps."

Elspeth was still staring at him.

"My parents?"  she demanded, confused.

"You know them?"

"Yes.  In fact... Look, why don't we go inside so that we can talk
properly?"

Go inside?  Talk properly?  Elspeth looked wildly at him.  Where were
her parents?  Why didn't they come and rescue her from this madman?

"Go inside..."  she stuttered, stupefied that he should actually think
she was willing to go anywhere with him.

"Mm.  I've just about finished out here.  I was going to wash down your
mother's car, but I suppose that can wait."

Her mother's car.  She looked from him to the mud-spattered vehicle.

"That ... that belongs to my mother?"

"Mm.  She was going to buy a small hatchback,

but she saw this in the showroom and fell in love with it.  She said
you'd be horrified and probably give her a long lecture.  "

Suddenly another emotion was added to her confusion.  This one was
sharp and painful--desolation mingling with a sense of betrayal that
her mother should discuss her with this.  this stranger.

Immediately another and potentially scorchingly humiliating thought
struck her, and she asked huskily, "When you followed--er--saw me on
the road, did you know who I was?"

She was praying that he wouldn't answer in the affirmative, and when
she saw him nod his head she felt quite sick.

"Oh, yes.  I recognised you immediately.  You haven't really changed.
Of course I was expecting you.  Stupid of me, I suppose, but I'd
expected you to recognise me too and when you didn't..."

He rubbed his hand along his jawline, and suddenly, and far too late,
she did.

"You're Carter!"

Impossible not to keep either the shock or the chagrin out of her
voice, and she realised as he looked down at her that the smile had
gone out of his eyes.

"Yes," he agreed curtly, 'and now that we've established that fact,
perhaps we can go inside.  I've had a long and tiring day, not made any
better by a half-hysterical woman accusing me virtually of attempting
to abduct her, not to mention my crimes against the wife and family I
do not happen to have.  "

As Elspeth stared towards the house, its silence suddenly made her
suspicious.

"Where are my parents?"  she demanded, frowning at him.

"That's what I wanted to tell you.  They decided to leave a few days
earlier and spend some time with some old friends en route for
Southampton.  They left this morning--said to give you their love and
to tell you you aren't to worry about a thing.  I promised them I'd be
on hand when you arrived to explain everything.  That's why I was
hoping to stop you earlier--I was on my way to drive over to Knutsford
with some provisions for a restaurant we supply there, but in the
circumstances..."

Several things struck Elspeth at once.  The first and most immediate
was that she had made an utter and complete fool of herself and that,
far from following her for the kind of nefarious and sexual purpose she
had assumed.  Carter was patently oblivious to her as a woman; the
second was that betraying and very worrying 'we'.  Had her foolish, too
trusting parents already been tricked out of what was rightfully
theirs?

Wishing desperately that they had waited until she arrived, she ignored
Carter, turning her back on him and heading for the kitchen door.

To discover that it was not unlocked surprised her, and, while she was
still staring at it in baffled fury.  Carter stepped in front of her
and inserted a key into the lock, deftly turning it and opening the
door for her.

"A small precaution I've persuaded your parents to take.  They're far
too trusting."

"Yes, they are, aren't they?"  Elspeth agreed through gritted teeth.

Why was it that this man was making her feel an outsider, an
interloper, a stranger almost in her own home, frustrating and
obstructing her at every turn she took?

Suddenly her head started to ache.  She felt dirty and tired, and she
longed almost ridiculously to see her mother come bustling towards her,
soothing her with the promise of a cup of tea and some of her home-made
bread.  Silly tears of anger and weakness clouded her eyes.

Fiercely she dashed them away.  Heavens, she hadn't cried since.  since
that episode in the bank's staff-room, and she certainly wasn't going
to do so now, in front of this horrible, horrible man.

Abruptly moving past him, she headed for the door and the stairs,
pausing only when she had opened it to say frostily to him, "Well, it
was thoughtful of you to be here to welcome me and a half-hysterical
woman accusing me virtually of attempting to abduct her, not to mention
my crimes against the wife and family I do not happen to have."

As Elspeth stared towards the house, its silence suddenly made her
suspicious.

"Where are my parents she demanded, frowning at him.

"That's what I wanted to tell you.  They decided to leave a few days
earlier and spend some time with some old friends en route for
Southampton.  They left this morning said to give you their love and to
tell you you aren't to worry about a thing.  I promised them I'd be on
hand when you arrived to explain everything.  That's why I was hoping
to stop you earlier I was on my way to drive over to Knutsford with
some provisions for a restaurant we supply there, but in the
circumstances..."

Several things struck Elspeth at once.  The first and most immediate
was that she had made an utter and complete fool of herself and that,
far from following her for the kind of nefarious and sexual purpose she
had assumed, Carter was patently oblivious to her as a woman; the
second was that betraying and very worrying 'we'.  Had her foolish, too
trusting parents already been tricked out of what was rightfully
theirs?

Wishing desperately that they had waited until she arrived, she ignored
Carter, turning her back on him and heading for the kitchen door.

To discover that it was not unlocked surprised her, and, while she was
still staring at it in baffled fury.  Carter stepped in front of her
and inserted a key into the lock, deftly turning it and opening the
door for her.

"A small precaution I've persuaded your parents to take.  They're far
too trusting."

"Yes, they are, aren't they?"  Elspeth agreed through gritted teeth.

Why was it that this man was making her feel an outsider, an
interloper, a stranger almost in her own home, frustrating and
obstructing her at every turn she took?

Suddenly her head started to ache.  She felt dirty and tired, and she
longed almost ridiculously to see her mother come bustling towards her,
soothing her with the promise of a cup of tea and some of her home-made
bread.  Silly tears of anger and weakness clouded her eyes.

Fiercely she dashed them away.  Heavens, she hadn't cried since . 
since that episode in the bank's staff-room, and she certainly wasn't
going to do so now, in front of this horrible, horrible man.

Abruptly moving past him, she headed for the door and the stairs,
pausing only when she had opened it to say frostily to him, "Well, it
was thoughtful of you to be here to welcome me and tell me that my
parents have left, Carter, but now if you'll excuse me I'm tired and
rather grubby.  I think I'll go straight upstairs and get ready for
bed."

Not waiting to see how he had taken her dismissal, she went upstairs.

All she wanted was for him to take himself off to wherever it was he
was living.  Tomorrow would be soon enough to try to come to terms with
the enormity of her own idiocy.  All right, so she had made a
mistake--a natural one surely in the circumstances.  He was lucky she
hadn't reported him to the police, hounding her like that.  She bit her
lip, wishing she wasn't able to imagine the scene at the police station
had she done so.  Carter she was sure would have relished revealing his
identity, making her look a complete fool.

Of course he must have known she wouldn't recognise him.  Why, it was
over ten yeras since she had last seen him.  Then he had had that
thick, bushy beard and that wild, unkempt hair which had made him look
unapproachable and rather dangerous.

He was still dangerous, to her parents anyway-but he was soon going to
discover that she was a very different proposition, that she could see
exactly what he was up to.  Thank goodness Peter had had the wisdom to
point out to her just what his motives might be.

Mingled with her exhaustion and her anger was another emotion, a sharp,
dangerous emotion that hurt and ached, an emotion that made some secret
place deep inside her heart feel sore and tender, and all because she
had seen the amusement in his eyes when he'd informed her just why he
had been following her, and she had known how much pleasure it had
given him to refute her accusations.  If he had said the words out
aloud he couldn't have made it plainer just how little possibility
there was of his finding her attractive or desirable.

Quite why that should hurt she had no idea--nor did she want to know.

She pushed open the door to the spare room.  The house had four
bedrooms, but as yet her parents had only got round to furnishing two
of them.  As it opened and she switched on the light, she stared at the
room in confusion.

A man's jacket hung on the back of the desk chair, a pair of trainers
on the floor beside it.  There were papers scattered on the desk, and
other articles of clothing on the bed.  male clothing.

"I'm sorry, I should have warned you," Carter's voice came from behind
her.

"Your parents asked me to move in while they're away to keep an eye on
things.  Your mother said that you'd probably prefer to use their room,
since it has its own bathroom."

"You're staying her eT She couldn't believe it.  It was all some horrid
joke.

"That's right."

"But there's no need.  I'm here--I mean, that's why I'm here, so that I
can take charge--care of things."

"Your mother seemed to think you needed a holiday.  I think she was
concerned that it might be too much for you, and, since your folks have
been good enough to offer me their spare room, until I find somewhere
of my own, offering to take charge-care of things for them while
they're away seemed the least I could do."

She couldn't believe it.  She wouldn't believe it.

Ignoring the man standing almost immediately behind her, Elspeth turned
on her heel and with as much dignity as she could muster walked blindly
into her parents' bedroom.

How could they have done this to her--and without saying a word?  They
must have known how she would feel.

She shuddered, trying to take a deep, steadying gulp of air.  It would
have been bad enough if she had simply arrived to find Carter already
here, but to have discovered that he was a man she'd thought was
pursuing her for a completely different kind of motive than he actually
had been, was so deeply humiliating for her that even now the knowledge
of her own folly was scorching her skin a dark and very hot red.

And Carter had enjoyed her embarrassment, just as he had enjoyed
telling her that her parents obviously did not trust her enough to
leave her in sole charge.  Oh, he might pretend it was out of concern
for her, but she knew better.  and so did he.  She discovered that she
was grinding her teeth again, a wild and bitter fury overtaking her.

Well, he might be laughing now, but he would soon discover that she had
his measure.

First thing in the morning, once she had had a good night's sleep and
felt more like herself, she was going to make sure that he left.  The
simple reminder that she was virtually an engaged woman and he a single
man should surely be enough to make him aware of the impropriety of
their both sleeping under the same roof, even if her foolish,
unrealistic parents had not done so.

And then, once she had got him out of the house, she would make sure
that whenever he came to the small holding she watched everything he
did.  He might think it was going to be easy, cheating her parents, but
she was going to show him otherwise.

On this satisfactory thought a huge yawn overtook her, reminding her
that she was very, very tired, and that tomorrow she was going to need
all her energy and guile.

She gave a faint sigh and smothered another yawn.  She was tired.  And
then she remembered that her case was still in the car.  The thought of
coming face to face with Carter now, when she was still feeling so
shocked and disorientated, made her stop halfway to the bedroom door.

For tonight she would borrow one of her mother's night dresses she knew
her mother wouldn't mind, and after all it was the least she could do,
having been a co-author to her present predicament.  How could her
parents have done this to her?  They must have known--and to have left
without telling her, without waiting to see her.  The suspicion
suddenly crossed her mind that they might have deliberately left ahead
of her arrival in order to avoid her angry reaction to Carter's
presence.

For some reason that brought a resurgence of that odd pain in her
chest.  Angry with herself for being so silly, she pulled open one of
the drawers in the old-fashioned chest her mother had inherited from
her own parents, and removed the nightdress she found at the top of the
pile.

She and her mother were a similar height and shape, although her mother
was a couple of sizes larger than Elspeth.  In fact, her parents always
remarked when they saw her that they thought she was too thin, and
Elspeth had given up trying to explain to them that, in the
high-pressure world of business, a slightly lean and hungry look added
an extra sharpness to one's image.

And besides, without the constant temptation of her mother's wonderful
cooking, it was all too easy to fall into the habit of eating light,
nutritious meals.  Without someone to share a meal with, there was no
temptation to linger at the table; sometimes she found herself
remembering wistfully the meals of her childhood, especially breakfast,
when her father would come from his early morning farm chores and the
three of them would sit down together.

Her parents had never been the kind of couple with nothing to say to
one another; despite their rural life they had a keen interest in
everything going on in the world about them, and when she herself had
received her offer of promotion with the bank they had been the first
to encourage her to take it up, even though it had meant her moving
away from home.

She had missed them desperately at first, and sometimes she was ashamed
to admit that even now she woke up in the morning, confused by the
direction of the light coming into her room, wondering why she wasn't
in her familiar bedroom at the farm.

She prepared for bed in the pretty, but thoroughly practical bathroom
which her mother had had designed by local craftsmen, admiring the
solid-lined oak cupboards, and the skilful way in which every inch of
space had been utilised.

Outside the window the security lights suddenly went on, and as she
tensed she heard Carter calling to her father's dogs.

His voice floated up to her through the half- opened window.

"Come on, girls, let's go and check the greenhouses."

She found she was still holding her breath as she 6listened to his
footsteps dying away across the yard.

Why had this had to happen to her?  Why had fate seen it necessary to
lure her into making such an idiot of herself?  Why in fact had fate
seen fit to thrust Carter back into their lives, to be the source of so
much anxiety and irritation?

Sighing, she climbed into her parents' old fashioned high bed, with its
feather bolster and pillows, welcoming the coolness of her mother's
linen sheets with their faint scent of lavender.

Tomorrow she would deal with the problem of Carter.  Tomorrow.

CHAPTER THREE

distastefully Elspeth studied the clothes she had discarded the
previous evening, reflecting that when she had decided against braving
Carter in order to get her case, she had not looked far enough
forward.

She had heard him calling to the dogs ten minutes or so ago.  In fact,
shamefully it had been that sound which had wakened her.  Normally an
early riser, she had been shocked to discover it had been well gone
seven.

But now, with Carter out of the way, it might be a strategic time to
nip downstairs and retrieve her case.  Then she could get dressed and
confront him with her ultimatum that he must find himself some
accommodation elsewhere.  She was quite sure that once she had pointed
out to him the impropriety of their both sharing the same roof in her
parents' absence, he would have no alternative but to agree with her.

The early morning sun had warmed the flagstones of the yard, and
Elspeth's toes curled in sensuous appreciation of that warmth as she
darted from the kitchen door to her car, quickly tugging on the
driver's handle, only to discover that it wouldn't open.  The wretched
thing was locked, she realised frustratedly.  But by whom?  She knew
she had not locked it--on the contrary.  She gnawed worriedly at her
bottom lip, knowing how Peter would have reacted to that piece of
folly.  He was extremely security-conscious, so much so that sometimes
she almost found it irritating.

She was just mulling over this recognition when she heard the excited
yelps of the dogs.  Turning round, she fended off their affectionate
welcome, bending down to pet them both.

Peter did not approve of pets, especially not dogs.  especially hairy,
over-enthusiastic and slightly undisciplined dogs.  Perhaps once they
had children she might be able to persuade him to change his mind.  She
would hate her children to grow up without knowing the pleasure of
having a pet.

She was just about to stand up when she realised that the dogs hadn't
come into the yard alone.  Her breath hissed out of her lungs as she
saw Carter standing in front of her, looking down at her with an
expression she couldn't interpret.

This morning he was dressed in worn jeans, tucked into Wellingtons, and
a faded denim shirt that seemed to have shrunk as well as faded from
the way the buttons strained across his chest.

Suddenly, for no reason at all, she was acutely self-conscious of the
fact that her eyes were just about on the same level as his hips and
that his jeans, while not exactly skin-tight, were certainly old and
soft enough to make her aware that he was a man in a way that she was
never aware of Peter's body.

Angry with herself for her almost too prsdictable feminine reaction to
the sight of such a totally male and physically strong body, she
attempted to stand up, forgetting that one of the dogs was standing on
the hem of her borrowed nightdress.

As a result the neckline of the nightdress, while possibly perfectly
demure on someone of her mother's proportions, dipped alarmingly under
the pressure she was exerting on it, revealing, as she realised when
she looked down to see why she couldn't move, a good deal more of her
body than she had anticipated.

It wasn't her fault that, while her legs, hips and waist were enviably
slender, her breasts were unexpectedly, and to her, embarrassingly
voluptuous.  So much so that she normally deliberately chose blouses
and sweaters large enough to.  merely hint discreetly at their
curves;

her office suits had neatly tailored, pencil-slim skirts, but she
always teamed them with long-line, generously cut jackets.  This
nightdress though was not designed for such a function, and as she
stood there, trapped by Bess's paws and her own stupidity, trembling
with chagrin, she felt the slow burn of hot colour seeping up over her
skin.

To make matters even worse, as she bent down to free her hem, one
frilly shoulder of the recalcitrant and devious garment slipped down
her arm, so that she looked for all the world like some
seventeenth-century milkmaid, flaunting her body for the delectation of
her master.  A small shudder of horror gripped her; that she who was
always so modest, so coolly protective where her sexuality was
concerned, that she should be put in this kind of position.  All she
had wanted to do was to retrieve her suitcase.

She finally managed to eject Bess from her feet, and, while the dog
gave her a pathetic, ingratiating look, she managed to stand up,
clutching what was left of her dignity--along with the
nightdress-firmly around her to demand bitterly, "Did you lock my
car?"

"Yes.  I should have thought you'd have done it yourself," came the
reproving reply.

"After all, you live in London.  You must be aware of the incidence of
car thefts.  Just because we don't live in a city, it doesn't mean
we're safe from crime here."

Elspeth stared at him.  At another time she would have been very quick
indeed to reject his allegations, but right now she had more important
things on her mind.  Like her clothes.

"Well, if you wouldn't mind giving me my keys," she began acidly, but
he ignored her, frowning slightly as he came towards her.

For a moment she actually thought he was going to touch her, and she
shrank back against the car.  She could smell the clean soap scent of
his skin, her awareness of that scent an intimacy that made her mind
recoil in shock at her body's weakness.

"I shouldn't stay out here too long," he told her warningly.

"The sun can be surprisingly strong;

you're very fair-skinned and, by the look of you, you're not used to
exposure to strong sunlight.  "

Briefly Elspeth was lost for words.  What did he think she was?  A
child? She opened her mouth and told him freezingly, "Thank you for
your advice, but it really isn't necessary.  For one thing, it isn't
yet eight o'clock in the morning and the sun's hardly strong enough to
burn me at this hour, and for another, when I came out here it was
simply to retrieve my case from my car.  If it weren't for the fact
that you had seen fit to lock the car and remove my keys, I shouldn't
be standing out here now.  So if you would kindly tell me where they
are..."

She was conscious when she had finished speaking that her voice had
risen several notes above its normal, even, calmly pitched tone, and
that she was almost shaking with anger, while he--hateful, odious
man--was simply standing staring at her with the sort of frown that
made it plain that he thought she was overreacting.

"Your case--I brought that in for you last night.  It's in the hall.  I
realised when I saw it in your car, when I was doing my last round to
check on the greenhouses, that you'd most likely need it this
morning."

A brief but telling look at her borrowed nightdress immediately made
her uncomfortably aware of her nudity beneath it.

This was getting ridiculous, she told herself.  She must stop
over-reacting to the man in this totally inappropriate way.  Just
because, for half an hour or so yesterday, she had formed the totally
incorrect impression that he had been trying to pursue her, that was no
reason for her to be physically aware of him in a way that was so
totally unfamiliar and so completely out of place that she felt
burningly humiliated by it.

And that feeling was intensified by the realisation that, in her
anxiety to retrieve her case from the car, she must have virtually
walked past it in the hall without seeing it.

All her emotions, her humiliation, her anger, her feeling of helpless
fury rolled into a hot, tight ball that lodged painfully in her chest,
and for the first time in her adult life she experienced a sirong
desire not only to vocally tell her tormentor what she thought of him,
but also to either throw something or burst into tears.

The knowledge that Peter, had he known how she was feeling, would have
reacted with both horror and distaste did nothing to ease her feelings.
Peter hated emotional displays of any kind.

Knowing that if she didn't put some distance between Carter and herself
immediately she might well give in to the temptation to say or do
something she knew she was bound to regret later, she turned on her
heel and stalked furiously back to the house.  Or at least she tried to
stalk.  It was rather difficult when wearing a borrowed nightgown that
flapped round her bare feet, and with two dogs gambolling joyously at
her ankles, and in the sudden and horrifying knowledge that, with the
sun shining fully on her, the thin cotton of her mother's nightdress
had more than likely become completely see-through, thus affording
Carter ample opportunity to see the outline of her naked body.

When she got inside she discovered that she was trembling, her hands
balled into two tight fists, tension a physical band gripping her
forehead.  Why, when she could deal with any amount of difficult
situations at work, was she suddenly falling apart, and all because of
one impossible, scheming man?

In the kitchen, Jasper the parrot caught sight of her, and cackled
hideously, screeching in a leering voice, "Hold on to your knickers,
girl!"

It was the last straw.  Something seemed to snap inside her and, before
she knew what she was doing, she was advancing on the parrot to say
menacingly, "For your information, I'm not wearing any, and if you
don't keep quiet I'll wring that scrawny neck of yours, and bake you in
a pie, you... you chauvinist."

It was only when she heard stifled laughter behind her that she
realised Carter had followed her in.  As her head snapped round, two
dark patches of colour staining her cheekbones, he turned his laughter
into a hurried cough.

"Er--I wouldn't do that, you know.  Your mother's very fond of
Jasper."

"Well, I'm not," Elspeth gritted, glowering at both man and bird.

Having found her suitcase in the hall, she took it upstairs, showered
and dressed, trying to restore herself to her normal confident,
businesslike self by putting on a crisp cream shirt and a formal navy
pin-striped suit.  The suit was new, and Peter, when she had shown it
to him, had remarked cautiously that he felt the skirt was a little on
the short side.  He had warned her against wearing it when they had
visited his parents.  His mother apparently considered any woman who
wore a skirt that ended anywhere less than a good two inches bslow the
knee to be unladylike in the extreme.

Elspeth remembered that she had been very irritated by Peter's comment,
and had even been tempted to tell him that his mother's views were not
written in tablets of stone.  In fact, she had received a surprising
number of compliments from her male colleagues when she'd first worn
the suit.  Not that she was flattered by such things.  She left that
kind of weakness to the male sex, who everyone knew were hopelessly
vain. But even so, it would have been rather nice if Peter had remarked
on how well the skirt suited her slim hips and legs, and even nicer if
he had given those same legs the kind of long, lingering and very
appreciative look she had inadvertently caught one of the young men at
work giving her.  Which was ridicilous, of course.  She had long ago
recognised that there was far more to a stable male-female relationship
than mere physical admiration.  She and Peter were two of a
kind--everyone said so.  So why did she suddenly find the thought of
being two of a kind with Peter oddly depressing?

There was one thing for sure, and that was that Peter would not approve
of her living under the same roof as Carter.  Not that he would for one
moment suspect her of doing anything wrong.

No--of course not.  That would be unthinkable.  But Peter's mother
certainly wouldn't approve.  Periodically she came up to London,
'surprise visits' made so she said on the spur of the moment, but
Elspeth had the distinct impression that they were more in the nature
of a trap designed to ensure that she and Peter were still living
separately.

Peter's mother did not approve of couples living together before they
were married.  Men were weak in these matters, she had once told
Elspeth.  Invariably it was up to the woman to ensure that a man's
respect for her was such that he would not even dream of asking her to
move into his home.

Elspeth approved of respect existing between the sexes, but sometimes
she reflected rebelliously that her idea of respect did not accord with
Peter's mother's.  Sometimes--dared she admit it--there were even
moments when she actually wished that Peter would suggest that they
spend the night together.

That these wild, rebellious thoughts always seemed to occur just after
she had paid a visit to her parents and witnessed their still obvious
happiness together often made her reflect that Peter was perhaps right
when he claimed that her parents were a bad influence on her.  She knew
he strongly disapproved of their, to him, over-casual approach to
life.

When she had suggested that it seemed to work for them as they were
very happy together--one only had to listen to them, see them.  to
Elspeth it always seemed as though her parents' lives were full of
warmth and laughter--Peter rarely laughed, and nor, she realised, did
she--Peter had been so affronted that she should argue with him that
she had dropped the subject.

Reminding herself that it was Carter about whom she should be thinking
and not Peter, she blew her hair into its neat, stylish bob, applied
her rsual discreet make-up and almost-no-colour lipstick and then
headed for the kitchen.

Outside the door, she paused and took a deep breath.  Armoured now in
all trappings of her business self, she would surely be able to wrest
command of the situation from Carter, and make it plain to him that she
was not going to tolerate his presence in the house.  She was sorely
tempted to tell him that her parents had made a mistake and that she
could manage the small holding without his help, but, almost
scrupulously honest with herself, she was reluctant to do so.  After
all, what did she really know about running such a business?  It was
her parents' livelihood, and if anything should go wrong.  Taking
another deep breath, she opened the kitchen door.

Carter was just pouring coffee into two mugs.  He looked up as she
walked in and said casually, "Good, I was just going to come up and
tell you that breakfast is ready."  He checked and frowned.

"I hadn't realised you were going out this morning."

"Going out?"  Elspeth glowered at him.

"I'm not going anywhere," she told him aggressively, 'but you are.  "

He put down the coffee-jug, and ignoring the last provocative piece of
speech said incredulously, "You aren't planning to wear that outfit
here, are you?  I should have thought jeans--' " What I choose to wear
has nothing whatsoever to do with you," she told him crisply.

"All right, no need to lose your temper.  Especially not before
breakfast--it will ruin your digestion.  Come and sit down.

Everything's ready.  Your mother told me how you like your porridge. 
"

Porridge?  Elspeth's jaw dropped.

"I loathe porridge," she told him grittily, 'and I never.  ever eat
breakfast.  "

"Well, you should.  Your mother's right, you are too thin.  At least,
parts of you are," he added musingly, and humiliatingly, as she was
tormented by a vivid and unwanted mental picture of just how much he
must have seen of the voluptuous curves of her breasts out there in the
yard, a hot wave of colour crawled betrayingly up over her body,
spreading until even her face burned with the in tensity of it.

"I want to talk to you," she told him when she had recovered.

"Do you?  Well, come and sit down, then.  I want my breakfast, even if
you don't want yours."

He was holding out a chair for her, and rather than argue with him she
sat down in it and watched in revulsion as he tucked into one of the
two bowls of porridge on the table.

Why on earth had her mother told him she liked the stuff?  She knew it
revolted her.  Why had her mother been discussing her at all?

"What was it you wanted to talk about?"  he invited

Adopting her most brisk and businesslike air, she told him, "I want you
to find somewhere else to live.  At least while my parents are away.
You must see the sort of gossip and speculation it will give rise to if
we both stay here.  I suppose my parents left in such a rush that it
never occurred to them how potentially embarrassing your being here
might be to me."

"Embarrassing?"  he checked her.

"How?"

Elspeth glared at him.  Surely she didn't have to spell it out for
him?

' You are a single man.  / am an a virtually engaged woman.  "

"Oh, you mean your" --almost" fiance might object.  Doesn't he trust
you, then?"

"Trust me?  Of course he does," Elspeth retorted, incensed.

"Peter knows I would never..."

"Never what?"  Carter asked her helpfully, suddenly abandoning his
porridge to look directly at her, so directly, in fact, that the amber
stare of his eyes seemed to have an almost hypnotic effect on her,
making her forget every word she had been about to say.  They were
gold, she recognised in bemusement, a pure, clear gold.  Instead she
broke into a flustered and almost incoherent flurry of words, which
seemed to plunge her deeper and deeper into a morass of confused
admissions and accusations.

"I see," Carter said softly when she had finally stumbled into
silence.

"It isn't that this " almost" fiance of yours would imagine for one
moment that living under the same roof as me might incline you into any
kind of moral decline, but you are afraid that his parents wouldn't
feel the same way.  What kind of man is he?"  he asked her almost
gently.

"Whose opinion of you matters the most to him-his own or his mother's?
Come to think of it," he added, narrowing his eyes as he looked at her,
'why on earth are the two of you not actually engaged, or better still
married?  Believe me, if I'd found the woman I wanted to spend the rest
of my life with, I wouldn't take the chance of her getting away from me
by leaving her free to find someone else.  In fact, I'd fill her life
and her thoughts and her bed so completely that she wouldn't want to
find someone else.  "

Elspeth gaped at him.

"If you're suggesting that / want to find someone else," she accused
recklessly 'then let me tell you that you're wrong.  I'm perfectly
content with Peter.  "

"Content."  The dark eyebrows climbed steeply.

"Contentment, my dear Elspeth, is for old age, not youth.  No wonder
this " almost" fiance of yours doesn't mind your taking off and leaving
him for weeks on end.

If contentment is the best way you can describe your relationship.  "

"I suppose if you were almost engaged you wouldn't even let the poor
girl go away without you," Elspeth challenged back.

"If there's one thing I cannot stand it's possessive men."

"Oh, I'm not possessive.  When you're in a secure relationship founded
on mutual love, you don't need to be.  I was merely pointing out that,
to the outside observer, your relationship seems to lack a little
passion.  Still, if you're content " I am," Elspeth retorted, suddenly
realising how far she had been side-tracked off the main issue.

"However, it isn't my relationship with Peter I want to discuss.  It's
the fact that it's impossible for us both to live here under the same
roof."

She waited, while he drank some coffee and chewed a piece of
toast--maddening creature, he was deliberately trying to irritate
her.

Her stomach suddenly rumbled, contradicting her statement that she
wasn't hungry.  Chagrined, she bit her lip.  What was the matter with
her anyway?  She never normally ate breakfast.  But then she never
normally lost her temper, she never normally discussed her relationship
with Peter with strangers, and she certainly never normally virtually
exposed her completely nude body to unknown men.

When he had finished he studied her, and then said blandly, "So you'll
be going back to London, then?"

Her breath hissed out in outraged fury.

"No, I shall not," she told him.

"You are the one who will be leaving.  You must see the impossibility
of your staying on here."

"No, quite frankly I don't," he told her almost sharply, suddenly
dropping his casual, almost careless attitude, and staring at her
across the table in a way which was almost intimidating.

"And if you don't mind my saying so I think your objections are
positively Victorian, not to say almost paranoid.  You can hardly
really suppose in this day and age, and given the fact that your
parents know that the pair of us will be staying here, and that you're
virtually engaged, that anyone, apart from dear Peter's mother, is
going to give the fact that we're both staying here the slightest
thought?"

"So you won't leave?"  Elspeth asked him flatly.

"No.  I promised your parents I'd keep an eye on things while they were
away, and that's exactly what I intend to do.  If you want to stay,
then fine.  If you don't..."  As he shrugged powerful shoulders, it
occurred to Elspeth that he might be deliberately trying to get her to
leave, giving him a clear field to create whatever difficulties he
wished for her parents' business.

"I'm not leaving," she told him, tilting her chin and glaring at him.

The look he gave her was decidedly odd--almost triumphant in some way,
as though she had reacted exactly as he wanted her to, and yet that was
impossible.  He couldn't want her to stay any more than she wanted him
to do so.

"Good, I've got a couple of auctions to attend in the next two weeks
and, while I could have arranged cover for myself, it will be much
better if you're here to take over just in case I don't make it back
for any of the evening watering or deliveries."

His casual assumption that she would fall in with his plans and allow
him to dictate what she did further inflamed her temper, but she
decided that she wasn't going to allow him to provoke her.  She was
sure that he would enjoy doing so, no doubt hoping that she would take
umbrage at his attitude and leave.

Instead she asked as casually as she could, "These auctions--I take it
they're for land and property locally?  Mum said that you were hoping
to set up a similar operation to theirs."

"Yes, that's right.  There's more than enough business for both of
us."

He seemed to be reading her mind, Elspeth reflected, but she suspected
he was lying.  There couldn't be that many local restaurants wanting
organically grown produce.

"So it's agreed, then.  We're both staying, and if you have any
problems with Peter's mother you can always refer her to me.  I promise
I'll swear to her that you never so much as touched me, and that your
behaviour was impeccable throughout your entire stay."

Speechless with rage, Elspeth contented he self with turning her back
on him and pretending she hadn't heard.  It might amuse him to make fun
of her, and of course he would find her attitude amusing.  No doubt he
thought nothing of going to bed with whatever woman took his fancy.  He
looked that type--the kind of man who could never understand the needs
and motivations of her kind of woman.  It was just as well she was
immune to the attractions of the male physique and good looks.  The
fact that he was very virile and very handsome meant nothing to her; it
was a person's nature that was important.  Take Peter, for instance--he
certainly wasn't handsome, nor as revoltingly male as Carter, but his
personality, his nature, his love for her-She stopped suddenly,
realising uncomfortably that Peter's personality was sometimes
overshadowed by his mother's upbringing, that his nature could on
occasions be a little sharp and unfeeling, and as for loving her. 
Well, Peter believed that emotional and physical love between two
people were treacherous foundations on which to build a stable
marriage.  Even so. Even so.  what?  she asked herself a little
bleakly, unaware that Carter had got up until he announced, "John
should have arrived by now.  I promised I'd give him a hand breaking up
the soil on the paddock.  If you fancy a walk later on we'll be there
until lunchtime."

With a casual nod, he walked over to the door and opened it, leaving
her alone and feeling oddly forlorn.

CHAPTER FOUR

of course, she wasn't going to go down to the paddock, Elspeth assured
herself firmly, half an hour later, her things unpacked, the breakfast
dishes washed, her body suddenly and inexplicably filled with a
restless energy that took her across the kitchen to stand in front of
the window and then back again to the door.

There were plenty of things she could do to keep herself occupied up
here at the house.

Such as?

She valiantly tried to ignore the tempting inner voice that whispered
that outside the sun was shining and that it would do no harm to just
quietly and quickly take a walk outside.  After all, it made sense for
her to discreetly check on what her parents' two part-time employees'
routine was.  She had no need to go too close to the paddock.  And
wasn't it about this time in the morning that her mother normally went
out to open up the greenhouses when it was warm?

It struck her, as she stood frowning by the door, that she really had
very little idea of what actually was involved in the physical running
of her parents'

small business.  On her brief stays with them, she normally spent her
time trying to help her father unravel the complications of their
antiquated bookkeeping system, and in coaxing him to replace it with a
modern computer.

True, she did sometimes stroll through one of the greenhouses with her
parents, and she certainly enjoyed the fruits of their labours when she
sat down to a meal.  She knew that her parents had recently invested in
a series of polythene tunnels which would enable them to grow over a
longer period, and that they were hoping that this year their profit
would be large enough to warrant their taking out a bank loan for a new
greenhouse, but of the actual day-to-day physical work of sowing,
planting out and growing, she had very little knowledge at all.

Angrily she chewed hard on her bottom lip and then stopped, disgusted
with herself for this reversion to such an infantile habit.

It was almost eleven o'clock.  She couldn't spend the rest of the day
virtually a prisoner inside, and all because she didn't want Carter to
think that he had won and that he was in charge in her parents'
absence.

Come to think of it, perhaps he was a good deal more clever than she
had thought; perhaps he had deliberately suggested she go down to the
paddock, knowing that to do so was to be sure that she're S

mained well away from it.  And she had fallen for it.  Why, for all she
knew, he could right at this very minute be poisoning her parents'
land, be destroying it, or contaminating it with the very chemicals
from which it was supposed to be free.

Suddenly impelled by new urgency, she hurried across to the back door
and then hesitated.  She had no wish to arouse Carter's suspicions, to
make him aware that she and Peter realised that his motives in becoming
so friendly with her parents might not be entirely altruistic.

Her glance fell on the kettle and she smiled.

Of course.  If she were to take the two men a drink, under the guise of
proffering an olive branch.  She would have a much better chance of
discovering just what Carter was up to if he no longer thought that she
was hostile to him.

Berating herself for not having thought of this before, for perhaps
having aroused his sense of selfpreservation and caution, she started
to make some fresh coffee.

Much as it went against the grain to allow any man, but especially one
like Carter, to think that he had won and that she was prepared to be
subservient and obedient to him, sometimes one had to use a little
caution and diplomacy.  After all, this wasn't something she was doing
for her own sake, but for her parents.  They had worked so hard to
establish this small and potentially profitable business and they were
so proud of their joint achievement They would be desolated if they
were to lose what they had built up.  It was up to her as their
daughter to make sure that that did not happen.

Peter had been quite right to alert her to the danger posed by Carter,
and she quickly squashed the small and rather uncomfortably
disconcerting feeling that, in pretending she was now prepared to be
friendly to Carter, her behaviour was rather underhand.  Elspeth had
always prided herself on her honesty, and it rather irked her that she
should now have to adopt a less than truthful manner.

Frowning over things, she found a large flask and filled it with
coffee, and then, as though to compensate for that small fris son of
guilt, she found the tin containing her mother's home-made scones and
cut and buttered some.

Putting everything in one of her mother's baskets she opened the back
door, momentarily starting as the parrot shrieked unexpectedly, "Mind
how you go!  Mind how you go!"

He had been so quiet since Carter had gone out that she had virtually
forgotten his presence.

The age of her parents' house, its thick walls and small windows,
ensured that its interior was kept dark and cool even on the hottest of
sunny days,

and Elspeth blinked as she walked out into the yard and the brilliant
sunshine.

Only one of her father's dogs seemed to have accompanied Carter, the
other as though by some mutual canine agreement apparently having
decided to stay on guard, just inside the gate.  With the habits and
instincts of her breed, she was lying in the shade, just out of sight
of anyone approaching the house.  She turned and grinned at Elspeth,
thumping her tail on the dusty ground as Elspeth spoke to her,
reminding her endearingly of one of the wicked collies portrayed so
cleverly in a Giles cartoon.

She was less than halfway across the yard when she realised she ought
to have changed her clothes.  Her suit skirt was far too tight for her
to lengthen her stride to one comfortable for crossing even relatively
flat open land.  The heat of the sun made the jacket uncomfortably
warm, and her smart, low- heeled shoes were certainly nowhere near as
comfortable on a bumpy grass path as they were for city streets.

It was less than half a mile to the paddock; she had grown up on a farm
and virtually as soon as she could stagger had been familiar with the
countryside.  Whenever she came home, she always packed her sensible
walking shoes and a couple of pairs of well-worn jeans.

Her Wellington boots were still in the rack beside the back door along
with those of her parents--so why on earth was she behaving like an
idiot and trying to gingerly pick her way along a narrow, overgrown
path, in clothes that any fool would have known were completely
unsuitable for such an occupation?  Any fool--even one whose only
acquaintanceship with the countryside came from looking at the ads in
glossy magazines.

From here she could see the paddock, and the two men working in it
could see her, which meant that she could not go back and get
changed.

The trouble was that she had been so determined to check up on Carter
that she had forgotten that mad impulse when she'd got up this morning
to dress in something that would make it clear to him the type of woman
she was.  And, much as she longed to go back to the house and get
changed, or even to remove the uncomfortable weight of her jacket, she
stoically refused to give in to that need, firmly continuing on her set
course, and trying to pretend that she felt completely at ease in her
ridiculous and unsuitable clothes.

As she passed the greenhouses, she saw that all the windows had been
opened, and that the beds outside alongside them were filled with a
variety of young vegetables, all growing healthily and organically.

Her mother had told her on her last visit that she had been discreetly
picking the brains of some of the village's elderly residents, and that
she was keeping a note of all the gardening tips they had given her,
including a list of the various homemade remedies for various pests and
diseases likely to affect their produce.

The paddock was separated from the rest of the small holding by a
hawthorn hedge, its greenery now at this time of year liberally
sprinkled with wild roses, and as she approached it Elspeth drew a
faint sigh of relief.  Her calves were aching, and the basket had
suddenly grown rather heavy.  She had turned her ankles more times than
she cared to remember and she was only thankful that it was dry
underfoot.

And then she saw the stile, and frowned at it.  Surely the last time
she had come home there had been a gate here into the paddock?

The stile, although solidly constructed and perfectly safe, was not
going to be easy to climb in her straight skirt--at least, not unless
she hitched it up quite considerably.  For a moment the indignity of
having to climb the stile with her skirt somewhere up around the top of
her thighs made her stop and bitterly curse herself under her breath.

She was feeling too hot and sticky, and thoroughly unlike her normal
self; and certainly,

she was sure, the image she must be presenting must be far from the one
of cool elegance she normally showed to the world.  A gust of liot wind
teased her hair, blowing it on to her face so that she had to put down
the basket to push it out of the way.

Still muttering under her breath, this time it was Carter she cursed
and not herself.  After all, it was his fault that she had come out
here like this, that she had walked down that uneven path in these
totally unsuitable shoes, that she was feeling so hot and
irritable-"Need a hand to get over the stile?"

She was so engrossed in her angry thoughts that she hadn't even heard
Carter approach.

With the sun in her eyes, it was difficult to focus on him where he
stood at the top of the stile, casually pulling on his shirt, although
she could still see where his chest was streaked with sweat and what
looked like soil.  His hair was ruffled by the same hot wind that had
tormented hers, but at least he was properly dressed both for his
occupation and habitat.  While she.  Never could she remember feeling
at such a disadvantage to any man.  And it was especially galling that
it should be with this one that she should be making such an idiot of
herself.

Carefully shielding her eyes, she prepared to're S

fuse his offer, looking suspiciously into his face for the amusement
she knew must be there.  After all, in his shoes, she doubted that she
would have been able to refrain from having a good laugh at his
expense, but to her surprise he was simply watching her with what
looked like genuine concern, as though he actually had virtually walked
the width of the field simply because he wanted to help her.

As she contemplated this fact, the strangest sensation assailed her.

Elspeth was not used to men wanting to help her, to cos set and protect
her.  She had always told herself that those old-fashioned notions of
what had once been considered to be good manners went hand in hand with
a paternalistic attitude that had kept her sex in emotional and
financial chains for far too long, and yet, as Carter finished
fastening his shirt and came down towards her, she had an unwanted and
rather shocking bleak awareness of the fact that Peter would never in a
thousand years have done what Carter was doing.  That Peter would have
quite casually and calmly left her to struggle on her own without even
thinking that she might need the strength to lean on.

Had it been his mother who was crossing the stile, though.  Unaware of
how huge and shadowed her eyes had become, she stiffened when Carter
asked quietly, "Are you all right, Elspeth?  It's a hot day, and
although I'm delighted that you've decided to come down..."

He was going to make some comment about the unsuitability of her
clothes, she knew it, Elspeth thought, her whole body tensing as she
prepared to reject whatever it was he was going to say, but instead,
apparently oblivious to her tension, he simply went on calmly, "You
shouldn't have gone to the trouble of lugging that heavy basket down
here."

"I thought you might both like some coffee," she told him gruffly, too
grateful to him for not mentioning her clothes to prevaricate.

"That was very thoughtful of you.  Here, let me help you over the
stile.  No, you put the basket down.  I'll take care of that."

The heat must have had more of an effect on her than she had realised,
Elspeth thought dizzily as she weakly put down the basket and allowed
Carter to come so close to her that she could actually smell the hot
male scent of his skin.

Such an unexpected and intimate awareness of him as a man--earthy,
sweaty, vigorous and somehow or other, in the most startling way,
producing a shockingly erotic response within her own body, kept her
standing as tense and still as a statue, so stunned by her own response
to him that she had no intimation of what he intended to do, until he
suddenly swung her up into his arms and advanced towards the stile.

She tried to protest, but the unexpected sensation of being off the
ground, of being totally dependent on the physical strength of another
human being made her feel so vulnerable that she clung instinctively to
him, her protest that there was no need for him to carry her and that
she could quite easily walk shockingly smothered against the bare flesh
of his throat as he shifted her weight slightly so that he could mount
the stile steps.

It seemed he had heard her, though, because he replied casually, "It's
easier this way.  Saves you having to tussle with that skirt of
yours--or even worse, damage one of your ankles."

She stiffly tried to hold herself away from any contact with his
body--an almost impossible task, when he was insisting on carrying her
in such a way that she seemed to tilt into it in a manner that was
quite shockingly intimate.

Her heartbeat seemed to have accelerated to at least one and a half
times its normal beat; her chest, she suddenly discovered, seemed to
have trouble expanding enough to allow her to breathe normally.  She
closed her eyes dizzily, telling herself that if she could just blot
out the sight of Carter's body, so erotically filling her vision, these
unwelcome sensations would no doubt disappear, but immediately she did
so Carter stopped moving, causing her to open them again very
quickly.

She told herself it was the unfamiliar vulnerability of her position
that caused that odd ripple of sensation to shiver cares singly down
her spine as she found herself looking directly into the watchful
depths of his eyes.

"Are you all right?"

The words seemed to rumble from somewhere deep in his chest, so that
she felt as well as heard them.  Amber eyes should look cool and aloof,
not--not warm.  and--and concerned, she decided muzzily as she dragged
her gaze away from them and tried to focus on something safer, but
Carter had shifted her weight slightly and his forearm blocked her
view.

Odd how she had never realised before how very virile a man's arms
could be.  Carter's w&re wired with hard muscle, covered in firm,
tanned flesh and dark hair which shone silkily in the hot sun.  As she
stared at him, wondering why on earth her mouth had gone so dry, and
why she should suddenly suffer a deeply embarrassing and totally
unthinkable compulsion to reach out and run her forefinger lightly down
the hard curve of that forearm, the hairs on it suddenly lifted, just
as though she had actually given in to that compulsion and caressed
him, just as though he had looked into her mind and seen laid bare
there the confusion and shame of what she was feeling.

Shock made her turn her head as though in rejection of what she was
thinking, her gaze momentarily locking with his.  He was, she saw,
looking at her sternly, a tiny frown quilting his forehead, his mouth
suddenly hard with tension.

"You don't feel faint or anything, do you?"  he asked her abruptly.

She had been so convinced he had known exactly what kind of effect he
was having on her that it was several seconds before she realised he
had totally misinterpreted her reactions.  When she did, she seized
gratefully on the excuse he had unwittingly offered her and said,
"No... No, I'm fine.  If anyone's feeling faint it ought to be you.

There was really no need to carry me over the stile, Carter, I was
perfectly capable of climbing it for myself.  In fact, to be honest
with you I would have preferred to be allowed to do so.  The days are
gone when women found it flattering to be treated as helpless pieces of
china," she added for good measure, her voice almost tart, as he
completed his task and swung her carefully to the floor.

Not for the world did she want to admit to herself how much she missed
the warm contact of his flesh against hers; and she certainly did not
miss that odd breathless sensation that had swept through her .  nor
that idiotic awareness of him as a man, that unseemly desire to
actually reach out and touch him.  What on earth could have possessed
her?

Flushing guiltily as she remembered unwillingly all that she had felt,
she bent her head and made a pretence of dusting down her suit.

She was behaving ridiculously.  She had never reacted like that to the
sight of Peter's arms.  Reluctantly, she was forced to admit that poor
Peter physically was nowhere near in Carter's class.  His body, while
not precisely puny, was quite obviously that of a man who worked with
his brain rather than his body.  Peter burned in the sun, and for that
reason never exposed himself to it.  From what she could remember of
the odd times she had seen him wearing a short-sleeved shirt, his arms
were pale, almost hairless.  Certainly they 1 ad never aroused in her
the shockingly indecorous sensations that she had experienced just
now--thank goodness.  One thing she did know was that Peter would have
been as horrified as she was herself if they had done so.  Her reaction
to Carter had been so.  so primitive, so.  so shockingly intense, so. 
so out of character, she thought help essly, as she waited for him to
retrieve the basket and rejoin her.

When he did so he was looking rather grim, she noticed, and, forcing
herself to remember exactly why she had come out here, she told herself
that he was no doubt surprised and not very pleased to see her.

She saw that John was using a rotavator to break up the soil, and while
she watched, desperately focusing on the other man in an attempt to
appear totally oblivious to Carter's presence, she forced herself to
concentrate on the reality of what he was doing here.

No doubt that small piece of pseudo-gentlemanly by-play over the stile
had simply been a means of getting under her guard, of putting her off
the scent, and she--poor fool--had reacted to it as though she were
sixteen years old and never been held in a man's arms before--never
been kissed.

Kissed.  Suddenly, traitorously, her thoughts rioted out of control, as
she wondered what it would have been like if Carter had kissed her;

if, when he had looked into her eyes then when he'd been standing on
the stile, instead of looking away he had lowered his mouth to hers.

She discovered that her mouth had gone dry at the thought, that a nervy
tension was gripping her stomach, and that inexplicably her lips were
tingling slightly.  She ran her tongue over them in nervous exploration
as though she was terrified that, by some osmosis, she would discover
an alien male taste clinging to them.

"Look, are you sure you're all right?  This sun is very hot."

Instead of being grateful that he had mistaken her reactions, Elspeth
discovered that she was actually quite cross.

"I'm perfectly fine," she snapped back at him.

"And as for the heat, this is my home, Carter.  I might live in London
now, but I've spent all my growing years here in Cheshire--under the
heat of its sun," she added sarcastically, and then before he could say
anything she asked, "What is John doing?"

"He's preparing the ground for sowing.  Your mother wants to try
producing more soft fruits; one of the restaurants she supplies
specialises in a range of soft fruit desserts and they're very
interested in anything she can grow here organically.  We're having
trouble with the rotavator though.  We could do with one with a bit
more power."

As he spoke, almost as though it had heard him, the machine suddenly
coughed and spluttered to a halt.

"Excuse me.  I'd better go over and give John a hand."

Watching as he broke into an easy spring, Elspeth blinked once or twice
in the strong sunlight.  She did feel rather light-headed, she
discovered--perhaps that was the reason she had reacted so oddly to
him.  Much as she hated to admit that he might have been right, that
the sun might be too strong for her, it was a relief to discover that
there might after all be a perfectly mundane reason for her odd
reaction to him.

After all, one read about people going mad when they were exposed to
too much strong sun.

That, she reminded herself wryly, was in the desert, not in deepest
Cheshire.  Still, she clung to the comfort of the explanation Carter
had unwittingly offered her, and it was true that she did feel
extremely uncomfortable and hot in her suit.  She shrugged off the
jacket and set out doggedly across the field to where the two men were
kneeling over the silent rotavator.

It seemed unlikely that Carter could do anything to sabotage her
parents' work here in an uncultivated paddock, but it would do no harm
just to hang around for a little while and watch what was going on.

Not for the world did she want to admit that as yet the thought of
walking back to the house in her tight skirt, her hot, sticky tights
and now her uncomfortably tight shoes was not an appealing one, but,
after fifteen minutes of standing in aimless silence while the men
worked steadily on trying to repair their piece of machinery, common
sense told her that for the moment at least her parents' business was
at no risk.

Besides, if she stayed much longer Carter might get completely the
wrong impression and start to suspect that it was him she had come to
see and not the paddock.  Which was ridiculous, of course.  Nothing
could be further from the truth, but just to be on the safe side. 
Giving the two men a cool smile, she broke into their conversation and
explained that she was going back to the house.

"I'm sorry about this," Carter apologised, getting up off his haunches
and wiping his dirty hands off on his jeans, 'but we really ought to
make a push to get this done before the weather breaks.  The farmers'
weather forecast says there's a thunderstorm on the way for later in
the week.  "

A storm--Elspeth shivered.  She had always hated storms, not so much
because of the thunder-it was the lightning she dreaded.  As a very
small girl she had once witnessed lightning striking a tree, and the
shock of that occurrence had remained with her, buried deeply in her
psyche, so that no matter how much she told herself that there was no
need for her almost irrational fear, it was something she had never
been able to banish.

Carter frowned as he saw her shiver, but before he could say anything
Elspeth started to walk quickly away.

Not for the world did she want him to think she wanted to linger, to
stay in his company.  There were any number of things she could do up
at the house, starting with getting to grips with her father's
accounts.

"The stile!"  she heard Carter calling after her, but she shook her
head, indicating the gate at the opposite end of the field, and called
back, "It's all right!  I'll use the gate."

She would have a longer walk that way, but the last thing she wanted
was the experience of being held in Carter's arms a second time, of
feeling that irrational and far too intense awareness of him again.
Wasn't it?

CHAPTER FIVE

To Elspeth's chagrin, she discovered once she was clear of the paddock
that she had the beginnings of a stitch in her side.  She had always
considered herself pretty fit, and privately was inclined to be a
little scornful of those of her colleagues who countered the excesses
of their lifestyle by strenuous work-outs in fashionable gyms.

When she came home she unfailingly took the opportunity of indulging in
a long, therapeutic walk, but not normally clad in a formal business
suit and city pumps, she acknowledged to herself.  Crossly she blamed
Carter for this particular piece of folly, and therefore it followed
that the pain in her side was his fault as well.

Why had her parents been so foolish as to invite him into their home?

They were so naive at times, so in need of protection.  Thank goodness
Peter had been so quick to suspect what Carter might be up to.

Automatically she left the rutted lane to follow an overgrown path that
led back to the house.  It skirted a small coppice and then ran
alongside a pretty stream.  The soft gurgle of the water tempted her to
stop and stare into one of its shallow pools.  As a child she had loved
going with her father, when he could spare the time, to look for
tiddlers, and for some reason now the old temptation came over her. 
The water beckoned, exercising its ancient fascination.  It looked so
tempting and cool, and her poor feet were so hot and sore.  Behind her,
beyond the hedge which separated the paddock from where she was, she
could hear the staccato sound of the rotavator, proof that the men were
back at work.  There was no one to see her if she gave in to that
temptation and removed her skirt, tights and shoes.

Wriggling her toes, she sighed in the blissful pleasure of being free
of her constricting and totally unsuitable garments.  If her silk shirt
looked rather at odds with the ragamuffin, slender length of her bare
legs, well, there was no one to see her.  Unexpectedly, a tiny impish
smile dimpled her mouth as she contemplated Peter's reaction to what
she was doing.  He would have been horrified, and with good reason, she
scolded herself, but she still made no attempt to get dressed, instead
carefully stepping down into the water, shivering in delicious pleasure
as she felt its coldness against her skin, and the smoothness of the
pool's pebbled bottom beneath her feet.  As she waded carefully into
the pool, she felt the familiar and intoxicating pleasure she had known
as a child.  Pausing, she tried to remember how long it was since she
had last done something like this.

When she was twelve, perhaps.  After that she seemed to remember she
had begin to consider herself too grown up for, such childish
pleasures.

She sighed again, automatically perching on a large, dry boulder, her
chin sunk on one hand as she looked down at the clear water, as though
expecting to see there a reflection of her childhood self.

For a moment, contemplating the past, she had been aware of a faint
sense of aloneness, of melancholy, almost--and yet why?  She had
everything in life that every intelligent woman was supposed to want:

a fulfilling career, a good circle of friends, all of whom like herself
had high-powered careers, which meant that their friendships were
something which invariably had to take a back seat, a relationship with
a man who also understood the demands of her career, just as she
understood those of his, a future planned along meticulous and orderly
lines--so why did she suddenly feel as though she was not getting the
optimum satisfaction out of life?  Why had she suddenly started looking
around her, and seeing in the life she and Peter had chosen for
themselves a certain lack of something--something she could not
actually define, but which seemed to be epitomised by the sheer joy and
enthusiasm which overflowed from her parents' lives?  They had their
traumas, their bad times and troubles, but they were so happy, so ready
to take the moment and its transient joy and appreciate it.  Sometimes
when she was with them she felt as though they were the children and
she the adult.

Absently she reached across to the bank and pulled out one of the tall,
waving grasses, chewing on it consideringly.

It was only when she came home that she started thinking like this.

Cheshire had a very disruptive effect on her mind.  Perhaps because in
London she didn't have time to dwell on things which might be better
not dwelt upon.  Certainly she did not have time to sit on rocks
dangling her feet in six inches of freezing cold water, clad only in
her underwear and a very expensive silk shirt.  The very thought of
Peter's reaction if she ever evinced any desire to do so brought a wry
smile to her lips.  It lurked in the depths of her eyes, reluctant and
faintly unholy--an urchin's grin, all secret knowledge and
naughtiness--or at least that was how it struck the man watching her.

Elspeth hadn't seen Carter.  She was still deeply engrossed in her own
thoughts, still defiantly pushing away the one thing she knew she ought
to be considering, ignoring it and then returning to probe carefully at
its edges.

Now, here in this peaceful place, she should think calmly and logically
about the insanity of her outrageous reaction to Carter.  It had been a
reaction out of time and character, she had no doubts about that; but
she prided herself on her intelligence, and the mere fact that she had
experienced such an overwhelming sensual awareness of him pointed
unmistakably to the need for further exploration of certain shadowed
and vague areas of her relationship with Peter.  Why, for instance, had
she never felt like that with him?  Why had she been almost relieved
when she'd first discovered that Peter did not, as he'd put it in his
slightly pompous way, think it was a good idea for them to develop the
more intimate side of their relationship until such time as they were
both properly established in their careers?

She had accepted his decision so easily at the time, simply telling
herself that while they were both under such career pressure neither of
them had the time nor energy needed to devote to becoming lovers.

Why did she now suddenly feel that both she and Peter were hiding
behind the convenience of that excuse?  What new and irreversible
knowledge had she gained so suddenly in those few brief seconds in
Carter's arms to make her so fiercely convinced that there was
something essential and basic missing from her relationship with
Peter?

"You're looking very pensive."

At the sound of Carter's voice she almost fell off her boulder,
swinging round defensively and glaring at him as she saw him standing
less than four yards away, watching her.

"What do you want?"  she demanded, standing up, and then furiously
wishing she hadn't as she saw the way his attention was drawn to her
legs.

"I was concerned about you," he told her calmly.

"You looked a bit shaky, and once we'd got the rotavator going I
thought I'd better come after you to make sure you'd got back to the
house safely."

"I'm an adult, not a child," she told him acerbically.

"And now, since you can see that I am all right, perhaps you'd be kind
enough to go away and leave me alone."

She saw that his face had creased into amused laughter as he listened
to her.

"You know, you sound just like you did when you were a teenager.  You
told me to go away then too.  You said that the farm was your home, and
that you didn't want me there..."

Elspeth flushed crimson.  Trust him to have remembered that incident.

She remembered it too and knew quite well what had sparked it.  She had
just been at that very vulnerable age of changing from a child to a
woman and back again, sometimes in the space of less than an hour, and
she had seen in Carter's intrusion into their lives someone who was
taking her father's precious spare time so that there was none left for
her.

And she had resented that bitterly.

"I was jealous of the time my father spent with you," she told him
flatly, refusing to lie to him.

"Yes, I know."

Surely that couldn't really be compassion she could hear in his
voice?

She had made the ad mission more as a form of self-punishment than
anything else, and to hear that soft almost tender note in his voice
had startled her.

"I was having problems too.  My father and I had been on our own for so
long, I wasn't sure how I felt about his remarrying Now she really was
startled.

"But you were grown up," she broke in.

"At barely twenty-two?"  Carter asked her rue fully.

"I might have thought I was, but I was very immature in a good many
ways.  Being here with your folks helped me to get myself sorted out a
little bit... helped me to put things in perspective.  In fact, that
would have been a perfect summer, if it hadn't been for one very cross
and resentful young lady, who stood very much on her dignity against
me."

He was teasing her, trying to get under her guard, Elspeth warned
herself, steeling her senses against the rueful tenderness of his
words.

"I was following my instincts," she told him coolly.

She was becoming increasingly conscious of the coldness of the water,
and of the bareness of her legs.  Carter was standing right beside her
things and, much as she longed to demand that he go away, she knew it
would be ridiculous and dangerous for her to protest about the intimacy
of their situation.

Trying to appear careless and unconcerned, she paddled back to the
bank, only to find she was as embarrassed and as flustered as her
teenage self might have been when Carter remarked softly, "Well, one
thing certainly hasn't changed.  You've still got the best legs I ever
remember seeing."

For a moment she was too stunned to say anything, to do anything, other
than subdue the ridiculous flutter of pleasure that warmed her stomach,
and try to combat its insidious effect by saying acidly, "That is an
extremely sexist remark, and one I do not appreciate.  How would you
like it if I were to make a similar comment about you--if I were to
say, for instance, that I--that I found your arms very sexy?"

The moment she had uttered this challenge, she wished she had been more
cautious.  For a moment she thought he was going to burst out laughing,
but instead he turned his head away from her, so that all she could see
was the unexpected dark burn of anger along his cheekbones.

"You see?"  she told him, trying to sound triumphant.

"You don't like it.  It makes you angry."

"Angry?"  he demanded vehemently.

"You think I'm angry?"

She could understand why he might try to deny it.  No man liked being
bested by a woman proving her point.

"Oh, you can try to pretend now that you aren't.  I saw your face,
remember, and you were angry..."

His mouth thinned and the look he gave her suddenly made her feel as
though she were once again fourteen, a child in a world of adults.

"I don't know what kind of relationship you've got with this " almost"
fiance of yours," he told her roughly, 'but it certainly hasn't taught
you much about men.  And the first and most important lesson you can
ever learn is how to tell the difference between anger and arousal.

I'll give you a head start.  This is what happens when it's arousal. 
"

He moved so quickly she had no chance to escape.  One moment she was
still standing ankledeep in the water, the next she was in his hands,

pressed the length of his body as those same hands smoothed over what
seemed like every inch of her skin from her shoulders to the tops of
her thighs, stunning her so much by the sensations they aroused that
she never even thought to move; could in fact only stand there,
completely at the mercy of feelings she had never known might exist,
blind, deaf and dumb to everything but the message Carter's touch was
relaying to her as he held her against his body and brought his mouth
down on hers.

As she realised what was about to happen some latent sense of
self-preservation came to her rescue.  She tried to turn her head away,
but Carter was too quick for her, cupping her face with one hand while
the other gripped her waist.  How could it be that the pressure of a
man's hand against her skin could at once be both so tender and so
firm?  Her movements stilled automatically as though he had spoken
directly to her brain.  Her lips actually parted in breathless
anticipation of his kiss; even the water seemed to slow its flow so
that the music it made lulled and hypnotised her.

There had never been a kiss quite like it.  certainly not one she had
ever experienced.

Peter's kisses were tepid, safe affairs, reinforcing her own belief
that, as far as sex was concerned, she was one of those members of the
human race whose appetite in that direction was slender rather than
hearty.  This self-admission had never particularly bothered her; after
all, more and more City high-flyers, men as well as women, were now
'coming out', so to speak, and admitting that the stressful pressures
of their careers left them not just short of time in which to make
love, but short of desire as well.

It was the nineties' counter-revolution to the sixties, fuelled by the
dread of AIDS, and until this moment in time she had never really
paused to give her lack of any strong physical desire for Peter much
thought, simply accepting it as a facet of a modern relationship.

Theirs was a generation overdosing on high career achievement, burned
out by stress and helplessly addicted to the narcotic of work.

Beneath the subtle alchemy of Carter's mouth, her own softened, her
lips clinging, shaping themselves to the silent demands of his.

She had no thought of breaking away.  No thought of doing anything
other than hungrily absorbing this startling new pleasure that turned
her mind weak and sent her blood singing dizzily along her veins.

There was no past, no future, no Peter.  nothing to remind her of her
suspicions over this man, only this elementary, singing pleasure to
mystify and dazzle her, to lure her on to her own selfdestruction.

The shock of Carter's suddenly wrenching himself away from her was a
brutal reminder of reality.  As she stood, dazed and disbelieving,
unable to stop herself from pressing her fingers against her mouth, as
if by doing so she could capture the feeling of his against it, she
heard him curse under his breath.

"The rotavator's stopped again."  He still had his back to her.  He was
looking towards the paddock, but she knew humiliatingly that he didn't
want to look at her.

"I'd better go and see what's happening before John comes in search of
me."

Not a word about what had happened.  But after all what was there to
say?

As she watched him walking away, absently noticing the smooth
co-ordination of his body, achingly aware of a sense of tremendous loss
and misery, she shivered coldly in the advance wave of a vast sea of
guilt, confusion, humiliation and anger.

How could she have allowed him to kiss her like that?  she berated
herself as she quickly got dressed, pulling on her things with clumsy,
stiff fingers, while her body trembled under the lash of her own
destructive self-contempt.  She wasn't a child.  It had been up to her
to bring a swift and firmly rejecting end to what had been no more than
a very obvious piece of chauvinistic male by-play.  Carter had wanted
to torment her a little, and predictably had chosen a very obvious and
male way of doing so.  And she was largely to blame for that.  If he
hadn't found her paddling in the stream, half undressed, she doubted
that it would even have crossed his mind to touch her.  After all, he
didn't desire her, not her--the person, the woman.  He had simply been
briefly aroused by her physical presence.  There had been nothing
remotely personal in that arousal--she might have been any woman.  What
she ought to have done was to have let him take his kiss, to have stood
cool and remote beneath it, instead of which.  Instead of which.  She
stood still staring into space, a fine shudder of selfloathing rippling
through her as she remembered the way she had responded to him,
offering him no resistance at all, and even worse.  She trembled
visibly as she remembered how her body had moulded itself to his, how
her lips had softened and clung, how she had sighed and melted, and
how, even if he had made no move to do so, had he chosen he might have
caressed her far more intimately without her even thinking of stopping
him.

Was it only this morning she had wondered what it would be like to be
kissed by him?  Well, now she knew, and she wished to God she did not
have that knowledge, because she knew already, intuitively,
irreversibly, that the memory of that one kiss would remain with her
for the rest of her life.

And yet why--why should the touch of one man's lips affect her so
powerfully?  It wasn't even as though she liked Carter or admired
him.

It wasn't as though there was any kind of trust or respect between
them.

There had been a moment before he'd kissed her when she had been given
an unexpected glimpse into his past, when she had realised that the
tough and very grown-up male she remembered had been nothing of the
kind.  With that knowledge had come a second's fleeting sadness that
she had been too young to understand and know him better.  Was that why
she had responded to him, so shockingly?

It must be, she tried to comfort herself as she finished dressing and
hurried back to the house.  After all, there had to be some kind of
explanation;

the man was only human for heaven's sake and not some kind of sorcerer
with the power to.  to what?  Make her desire him?  Uncomfortably she
recalled how peculiarly aware of him she had been well before he'd
kissed her.  It was just because he was so different from Peter, she
reassured herself; because she herself was so unused to men who were
so.  so male.  So what was she admitting?  That she had turned into
marshmallow in his arms simply because she was turned on by him
physically?

Little as she liked to admit that she was capable of anything so out of
character and extraordinary, it did seem to be the only feasible
explanation.  She firmly ignored the small voice that pointed out
dulcetly to her that all through her teenage years she had been
surrounded by well-muscled young men, and that she had never once felt
anything like that shocking desire for them which she had just
experienced with Carter.

It was a case of arrested development, she told herself tartly, and of
course it meant nothing; absolutely nothing at all, and just to prove
it she would telephone Peter when she got in and ask him if he could
manage to tag an extra couple of days on to his weekend so that they
could spend more time together.  That would show Carter just how little
that kiss had meant to her.

Heavens, from the way he had turned his back on her and been so
obviously eager to escape, anyone would think that he was terrified she
might try to turn that kiss into something far more important than it
had actually been.  Men were so vain--especially men like Carter.

And besides, he had no right to go round kissing women like that, when
it plainly meant nothing whatsoever to him.  It would serve him right
if she did allow him to believe that she was attracted to him.  If it
weren't for the fact that she had too much pride, too much self-respect
to invite any further humiliation, it might almost have been worthwhile
doing so, and watching him squirm as he tried to tell her that he
didn't want her.  And then of course there was Peter.  Of course, as an
almost engaged woman, she couldn't do anything so foolish.  But that
was what Carter had been banking on when he'd kissed her, she decided
scornfully.  Knowing that she was committed to another man, he had
thought it safe to kiss her.  By the time she was actually back in the
kitchen, she had managed to subdue the rebellious and disconcerting
sensations she had experienced in Carter's arms to such an extent that
she had almost convinced herself that she had never experienced them at
all.  Almost.

Sadly, when she went up to her borrowed bedroom to change into
something more suitable, as she stood in her parents' bathroom
stripping off her clothes she caught sight of her reflection in one of
the wall mirrors.  Her face was slightly flushed, her mouth surely a
deeper red than usual, her hair windblown and softly tousled.

She paused, and then on an impulse she didn't want to name quickly
removed her skirt, studying herself in the mirror as Carter must have
seen her as she'd stood in the stream.

A small shudder of shock went through her as she recognised how
provocative she must have appeared.  Her silk shirt, so respectable
when worn tucked into her skirt suit, somehow or other took on a
decidedly wanton allure when it was all that she was wearing, and when
furthermore it revealed the entire length of her legs virtually from
the top of her thighs.  Had the silk always clung so.  so lovingly
almost to the curves of her breasts, almost as though the fabric loved
its contact with them?  And why had she never noticed before how very
far from demure the neat row of buttons that marched up to her throat
actually was, almost visibly enticing a man to slide them free and lay
bare the flesh they covered.

A sudden startling awareness that within a few more seconds she would
actually be mentally visualising a male hand caressing her flesh
brought her abruptly back to reality.  It was Peter she had been
thinking of, of course, she assured herself feverishly as she turned
her back on the mirror and quickly dressed.  It had been the thought of
seeing him next weekend which had sparked off that sudden spiral of
heat inside her, that tiny aching, yearning of her suddenly restless
body.

This time when she dressed she took no chances, firmly donning a pair
of jeans and a workmanlike cotton shirt.

It was only when she went downstairs to telephone Peter that she
realised that she was going to have to insist on Carter's finding
somewhere else to stay the weekend of Peter's visit.  The house only
had two furnished bedrooms.  She would deal with that problem later,
she told herself uncomfortably.  After all, it was no concern of
Carter's whether or not she and Peter shared the same bed, and there
was certainly no reason for her to feel awkward and reluctant to let
him know that they did not.

It took her several minutes to get through to Peter, and, when she told
him why she was ringing, he seemed to hesitate before saying
cautiously, "Well, it should be possible, although I'd rather promised
Mother that I'd spend a couple of days with them next month.  She wants
to clear out the loft and I've promised her I'll lend a hand.  How are
you coping?"

Quickly she explained about Carter, stumbling a little over her
description of how astonished she had been to find him in residence and
how unsuccessful had been her attempts to get him to leave.

"In the end I thought it might be easier to keep an eye on him and find
out exactly what he's up to if I let him stay," she added lamely.

"You mean he's actually staying there?  Living in your parents' home
unsupervised?  Your parents're 7 ally are totally irresponsible,
Elspeth.  It's just as well you are there to keep an eye on him."

Wondering why on earth she should feel so irritated and angry that it
was her parents' business Peter was concerned for and not her, Elspeth
reminded herself that theirs was a relationship founded on mutual trust
and that the last thing she would have wanted was Peter breathing fire
and brimstone like a jealous lover, demanding to know what the hell she
was doing living under the same roof as another man.

"So you'll let me know, then, about next weekend?"  she asked him,
sensing his anxiety to conclude their conversation.

"Yes, of course; and Elspeth... Next time perhaps you'd ring me in the
evening at home.  You know how I feel about personal calls at my
chambers..."

Swallowing the small, rebellious spurt of resentment, Elspeth duly
apologised and replaced the receiver.  And then, for no reason she
could think of, she said very fiercely and out aloud, "Damn Carter."

"Let's have a nice cup of tea."

The sound of her mother's soothing, soft voice behind her made her spin
round in astonishment, but the room was empty.  Apart from Jasper the
parrot, she realised as she caught sight of the bird staring devilishly
at her.

"Good chap.  Carter," he told her, faithfully imitating her father's
voice and causing her to say peevishly, "No, he isn't.  He's ... he's a
snake in the grass," she told the parrot irately, but Jasper wasn't
listening to her any more.

CHAPTER SIX

carter hadn't returned for any lunch, which didn't bother her in the
least, Elspeth told herself firmly, as she made plans for how to spend
her afternoon.

It was tempting to pick up the new paperback she had found in the
sitting-room and spend the rest of the day sitting outside in her
mother's pretty garden; after all, officially at least, she was on
holiday.

With a start she realised how little thought she had actually given to
her work.  Normally whenever she was absent from the office she was
itching to get back, suffering something approaching withdrawal
symptoms, but this time Carter and his invidious behaviour had taken up
so many of her thoughts that there hadn't been any room to spare for
worrying about work.

And of course she wasn't going to idle away her time while she was
here.  Briskly she decided that she would spend the afternoon in her
father's office sorting out his paperwork.  Something she doubted he
would thank her for, but her orderly, efficient mind could not bear to
see the state in which he managed to reduce even the most simple
accounting procedures.

Firmly resisting the temptation of the sunshine outside, she made
herself a fresh cup of coffee and headed for the office.

Behind, Jasper was saying in her father's voice, "Is there any tea
going, love?"  and then somehow or other producing the sound of someone
pouring tea into a mug.

"Show-off," she criticised under her breath as she opened the door into
the office and stepped inside.

For a moment she thought she must have come into the wrong room.  She
stared at her father's desk, which was somehow smaller and less
familiar without its normal burden of scattered papers filed
haphazardly in a selection of cardboard boxes that meant nothing to
anyone but him.

Behind the desk on the shelves that normally held untidy piles of
out-of-date Field and Horse and Hound were a dozen or more neatly
indexed filing boxes.

But most astounding of all, sitting squarely on the pristine neatness
of her father's desk was a brand-new, up-to-date computer terminal
complete with screen and printer.

Elspeth literally could not believe her eyes.  She remembered the
number of occasions on which she had virtually pleaded with her father
to bring him 1

self into the nineties with the purchase of such equipment.

How he had argued, prevaricated, claimed that he had no use for such
newfangled nonsense, and even when her mother had wryly informed her
that it was his fear of the technicality of such equipment that was
making him stick so rigidly to his determination not to get one,
Elspeth had still not been able to convince him that he would master
the technique of using it within weeks.

She had even offered to teach him herself, to set up a series of easy
systems for him to use, and, when that failed, she had actually
threatened to buy him the equipment and book him on to one of the many
excellent computer familiarisation programmes run all over the
country.

Still he had remained obdurate, stubbornly so, almost to the point
where he had actually become annoyed with her.  Which was totally
unlike her gentle, mild-mannered father.  So much so that she had
reluctantly dropped the subject, even though nothing could convince her
that with a little patience he would not soon have mastered the art,
and that, as a result, the dreaded monthly chore of working on the
accounts could have been reduced to a task of manageable proportions.

After all that she had been through, to see the untidiness of his
office restructured into this model of modern technology neatness
almost took her breath away.  She blinked several times as though half
believing that she might be hallucinating.  To say that she was
flabbergasted came nowhere near describing what she was feeling.

What on earth had happened to persuade her father to change his mind,
and to have gone ahead and got the equipment without consulting her?

Like a tiny maggot gnawing away at her initial delight that her father
had at last seen sense was a brief flaring of chagrin that he had not
consulted her.  She dismissed it quickly as idiocy.  Of course it
didn't matter that he hadn't consulted her.  What mattered was that he
had finally done something about putting his book work in proper
order.

She walked round the desk and studied the computer more closely,
relieved to see that it was one of the most reliable models on the
market; that in fact it was the very model she would have probably
recommended herself.

She heard the back door open and turned around.  Carter must be back.

For some reason she suddenly felt extremely flustered and acutely
uncomfortable.  If anyone was feeling uncomfortable it ought to be him,
she reminded herself grittily.  He was the one who had instituted that
kiss, not her.

But he wasn't the one who had allowed it to get out of control, who had
encouraged and abetted it in getting out of control, she acknowledged
guiltily.

She had a moment's cowardly temptation to close the study door and stay
where she was, but it wasn't in her nature to run away from unpleasant
situations, and so, squaring her shoulders, she walked quickly towards
the kitchen.

After all, she was going to have to face him sooner or later, and she
wasn't going to have him thinking that she had been affected by the
kiss.  No, her best plan of action was to behave as though it had never
happened, to ignore the whole thing.  And if he should mention
it--should apologise, for instance--well, then she could simply say
airily that she had forgotten the whole affair.  All she had to do was
to remind herself that she was committed to Peter and that Carter knew
that fact.

As she walked into the kitchen she was stunned to hear her own voice
saying almost desperately, "But Peter, I need you."

It was several seconds before she realised that the parrot had
overheard her telephone conversation and was mimicking her.

Her colour high, she pushed open the kitchen door.  Carter was just
filling the kettle.  He was frowning, she noticed.

"Did you manage to get the rotavating done?"  she asked him, trying to
sound casual and normal.

"Most of it.  We had to knock off to come back and start the
watering.

Which reminds me, if you've got the time it might be an idea if you
came and watched.  It's too much for John or Simon to manage alone, and
since I'm not going to be here for a couple of afternoons.  "

That would be fine," she assured him, quite pleased with herself for
managing to sound so businesslike and detached.  That was the right way
to behave, to pretend he was simply a very distant acquaintance with
whom she had to be polite for form's sake, a stranger with whom she had
been thrown into unwanted intimacy but who would soon be gone from her
life.

"I was going to spend the afternoon sorting out Dad's accounts, but I
see that he's taken my advice at last and bought himself a computer."

It was a casual, throw-away remark, meant only to fill the yawning gap
of dangerous silence which she felt threatening, but instantly Carter
tensed, carefully turning his head away from her.  For a moment she was
completely puzzled, wondering what on earth it was she had said to
warrant that watchful, fragile silence, and then she knew.

"It was you, wasn't it?"  she demanded, abandoning discretion and
caution.

"You persuaded him to buy it.  Oh, I might have known," she added
bitterly.

"It doesn't matter what I say to him.  I'm only a daughter--a female.
But let some fellow male come along, some member of his own sex, and
suddenly it's all different."

"Look, it wasn't like that.  As a matter of fact your father remains as
obdurately convinced that computers are an alien species as he's always
been.  Actually, it's your mother who uses the equipment.  She's proved
remarkably adept at doing so."  He gave a warm chuckle.

"She says it's doing wonders to help her with her cataloguing."

"My mother!"  Now Elspeth was astonished.

"Why so surprised?"  She heard the faintly critical note in his
voice.

"Your mother's a very intelligent woman."

"Yes.  Yes, I know she is," Elspeth agreed, suddenly discovering that
she would very much like to sit down.  Her head was spinning with
shock. Why had she never realised that her mother was interested in
learning to operate a computer?  Why had her mother never said anything
to herf Why had she confided in Carter--a stranger?  Was no member of
her sex immune to him?  she wondered savagely.  What Machiavellian
power did he possess to make women so vulnerable to him?

She had always considered that she and her parents--both her
parents--were close, and yet here was this man, this stranger, telling
her things about them that confounded that belief.  Things like her
parents' plans for expansion, her mother's skill with the computer. 
Why had she not been a privy to these things?

She pushed these questions aside, not wanting to dwell on them, not
wanting to believe that her parents could have confided more readily in
Carter than they had in her.

"These auctions," she asked him abruptly.

"You never said exactly when they were to take place."

"There's one tomorrow afternoon, and the other's next week."

"Oh.  And the land--is it local?"

"Fairly," he told her noncommittally turning back to the boiling
kettle.

"You want to live locally, then?"  she pressed him, her suspicions
freshly aroused.

"But surely if your venture isn't going to compete with my parents' it
doesn't matter where you live?"

It was the closest she dared come to betraying her suspicions to him.

A warning shot across his bows, she decided, not wanting to admit that
the urge to fire it had somehow or other been caused by the knowledge
that it was he who was responsible for that gleaming computer, that
tidy office, that change in the familiar routine of her parents' lives
which had taken place without her knowledge.

"Perhaps not, but it's always pleasant to live somewhere where one has
friends, family.  I like this part of the world.  I always have done,
and your folks have been good friends to me.  Once I get my own place,
I know I'm going to be relying heavily on their advice and support."

And on their business?  The words were on the tip of her tongue, but
she suppressed them.  It was one thing to subtly warn him that she
wasn't like her parents, that she didn't trust him.  It was quite
another to openly accuse him.  No, when she made her denouement she
wanted her parents to be there to witness it.  How could he stand here
in front of her in their home spouting about how fond of them he was,
when he was planning to steal their livelihood?  Indignation flashed
momentarily in her eyes as she watched him.

"But you're a scientist," she pointed out.

"You don't have any experience of growing things.  You've lived all
over the world.  Can you honestly believe you'll be happy to settle
down in one small place?"

"I'm a biologist," he corrected her mildly.

"And I've always been interested in the production of the food chain. A
lot of people believe we've gone too far in interfering with nature,
and in virtually manfuacturing our food with chemicals.  There's an
increasing demand for food which is un tampered with."

"And you want to produce it."

"I'd certainly like to give it a try," he agreed blandly, ignoring the
cynical disbelief of her question.

"In the meantime, however, it's time I joined John and helped him with
the watering.  If you're ready...?"

Nodding brusquely, Elspeth walked towards the door, and said pointedly,
"I'll wait down by the greenhouses for you, shall I?"

The way his mouth tightened sent a tiny fris son of sensation crawling
down her spine, an awareness of excitement and danger--although how
could anger be exciting?  She had never found it so in the past.

As she closed the kitchen door behind her she heard the parrot saying
conversationally, "Nice chap.  Carter."

"Rubbish.  I detest him," she muttered under her breath as she crossed
the yard and headed for the greenhouses.

When Carter joined her there five minutes later, he was carrying three
mugs of tea.  For a moment she was tempted to refuse the one he offered
her, but with John looking on she was reluctant to make her animosity
towards Carter too obvious.

It had been almost three months since she had last visited her parents.
On that occasion, her visit had been a hurried one in the company of
Peter,

who had been anxious to remind her that they had promised to visit his
own parents the following week.  In fact he had reminded her of this so
often that she had actually begun to feel rather uncomfortable, as
though in some way Peter was trying to suggest that their forthcoming
visit to his parents was somehow of greater importance than this brief
one to her own.

Because of this, on that occasion she hadn't been able to concentrate
as much as she would have liked on her parents' talk of their plans fo:
extending their operation, but now, as she followed the two men into
the greenhouses, she was astonished to see how much had been done.

The area under glass, which she remenbered as rather small, now seemed
to stretch for three times its original distance, and the scent of
growing, ripening tomatoes in this first section under glass was
dizzyingly mouthwatering.  Her grandfather used to grow tomatoes, she
remembered, the scent suddenly transporting her back to her eaily
childhood and the quiet, elderly man who had nad such patience with her
small fingers and impatient questions.  He had died before her fifth
birthday, but she was surprised how strong those memories now were,
brought to the surface by the familiar and evocative scent of the
greenhouse.

"Your parents are hoping to inst al an automatic watering system in
here soon.  Luckily, between us we've managed to rig up something that
works almost as well for the moment.  Just as long as there's someone
here to turn on the tap.  Which is just here."

Reminding herself that she was here to learn and work, not to indulge
in childhood memories, Elspeth concentrated on what Carter was showing
her.  As a farmer's daughter she didn't need underlining what could
happen if these growing things were deprived of water.  She shuddered a
little inside, imagining the havoc which would be wreaked if someone
was careless enough to forget to water these precious plants,
especially in the present mini heat wave.

"Some of the big growers actually use computers to control their
watering and ventilation.  That's a bit beyond your parents' resources
at the moment, but some day...."

"What happens about ventilation at the moment?"  Elspeth asked him
sharply.  They weren't out of June yet, and despite the heat it was
still feasible this far north that they could have an overnight
frost.

"We've installed a system which rings a warning bell inside the house
if the temperature starts to drop beneath a certain point."

"Which means?"  Elspeth pressed.

"Which means that someone has to get out of bed and come down here,
close the windows, and if necessary light the heaters, although
hopefully we should be past that stage now."

By the time they had worked their way through the greenhouse, Elspeth
watching sharp-eyed while Carter worked.  She had to admit fairly that
he was scrupulous about everything he did, checking and re-checking.

But that was while she was here.  How did she know what he was doing
when she wasn't?  Even if he didn't destroy her parents' crop by
judiciously forgetting to water or ventilate, what was to stop him
giving the growing plant;; a lethal dose of some chemical or other,
which v/ould totally discredit her parents as providers of pure,
organically grown produce?  Once their reputation was gone, it would be
impossible for them to retrieve it; who would ever believe that a
competitor, especially one as plausible and seemingly as helpful as
Carter, could do such a thing?

By the time they had worked their way outside to where the open beds of
vegetables aid herbs were growing, the sun had gone from the t part of
the land, leaving it in shadow.

Quickly Carter showed her how to operate the sprinklers and sprayers
which carried the much- needed moisture to the growing plants, at the
same time thoroughly checking for any kind of infestation which might
destroy the crops.

"Mum told me that she was collecting as many traditional remedies for
dealing with bugs and diseases as she could," Elspeth commented, her
enthusiasm caught, her hostility fading despite her attempts to hold on
to it.  And besides, concentrating on the crops helped to divert her
mind away from the mesmeric sight of Carter's sinewy arms in his
short-sleeved shirt, of Carter's hard thigh, as he bent down to inspect
row after straight row of young green beans, picking one and holding it
under the sprinkler before handing it to her and saying with a grin,
"Go on, eat it--it won't poison you."

"It seems so cruel," Elspeth objected, and then flushed in
acknowledgement of the childishness of her comment as he laughed.  Not
at her, she noticed, unable to tear her gaze away from the small lines
fanning out from his eyes, the warm and generous curve of his mouth.

His mouth.  Where did it come from, this yearning to reach out and
touch it, to trace its contours with the tip of her finger and then
with the tip of her tongue?  A sensation like a jolt of lightning
twisted through her body.

Carter was still holding the vegetable.

"Come on," he coaxed.

"Just take a bite."

She reached out for the bean, but somehow or other her fingers closed
instead around his wrist, and she discovered that instead of it being
her hand that carried the tender vegetable to her lips, it was his, and
that, despite the tight grip of he- fingers, there was nothing she
could do to stop him.  She opened her mouth automatically, biting into
the firm flesh of the bean, and then tensing in surprise as she
discovered how wonderful it tasted.

"It makes all the difference in the world when it's the real thing,
doesn't it?"  she heard Carter saying, and for a moment she didn't
realist he was referring to the bean, but thought-Quickly she
swallowed, trying to pull herself together, trying to remind herself
why she was here and what Carter was.

It surprised her how long it took to finish all the watering, and that
was only a small part of her parents' day's work.  The neatly organised
beds had to be kept free of weeds, the growing vegetables constantly
checked, watched over.

"Your mother talks to them," Carter told her as they walked back to the
house.

"She claims that they like to feel loved."

Yes, she could imagine her mother saying that.  Her mother firmly
believed that everything and everyone needed love.

"So who's telling them that they're loved in her absence?"  Elspeth
asked flippantly, trying and failing to imagine Carter performing such
a task.

"No one as yet," he informed her so promptly that she stopped to give
him a suspicious and hard look.

"You're not suggesting that / should start talking to them, are you?"

she challenged him.

"Well, you have eaten one of them ... and in full view of the others,"
he reminded her seriously.

"They're probably too terrified of you to listen to you now.  Your
mother makes a point of never telling them where they're going.  She
says she doesn't want to frighten the little ones."

"You're making this up," Elspeth accused, trying not to laugh.

"That's better," he told her softly, thoroughly confounding her as he
added gravely, "Your mouth was made for smiles, Elspeth.  Smiles and
kisses."

What was he trying to do?  Flirt with her?  If so, then it was high
time she reminded him that she was committed to someone else--or was he
simply trying to make fun of her, to confound and deceive her?  Did he
really think she was stupid enough to fall into that kind of trap, no
matter how temptingly it was baited?

How temptingly'I What on earth was she thinking?  That it would be
heaven on earth to run her fingertip down that bared male forearm and
trace the shape of its muscles.  For a moment her imagination swung
crazily out of control so that she was mentally reliving this morning's
kiss.  Reliving it, and actually yearning for it to be repeated.

This was madness, she told herself.  Complete and utter madness.  She
had no idea how it had happened either.  One moment she had been
sternly and firmly reminding herself that Carter was a devious and
dangerous man, the next.  the next she had focused briefly on his body
and had suddenly been swept away into such dangerous and turbulent
waters that she was fighting to find a safe foothold.

Thank goodness she had always been 'he practical, sensible type, not
the type to give in to her own emotions, her own foolishness that side
of her nature was something she had brougnt firmly under control a long
time ago.

As they walked into the yard, the dcgs came bounding up to them, giving
her a welcorre excuse not to make any retort to his extraordinary
comment as she bent down to fuss them and asked him as naturally as she
could, "What about feeding these two?"

"Yes, I suppose we'd better, and the goats as well.  Do you know the
routine or should I do it?"

"I think I can manage," Elspeth told him, anxious to be free of the
dangerous potency of his presence.

"Well, if you're sure... I'll go in and shower, and then start on
supper.  Chicken salad OK for you?"

"Fine," Elspeth agreed, too surprised by his offer to make supper to
offer any objections.  That was something Peter would never have
offered to do.  In fact Peter's mother had already made it plain to
Elspeth that, despite the fact that she would continue to work after
their marriage, it would be her duty to take care of Peter as devotedly
as she, his mother, had always done.  That had irked her a little,
especially when Peter had smugly reinforced his mother's opinion.  But
she had decided that it was an issue she would take up with him later,
once they were married, gently making it plain to him that they were
partners in all things and that included their domestic duties.  Now to
hear such a male man as Carter calmly suggesting that he make their
supper made her blink and stare a little at him.

"What's wrong?"  he asked her quizzically.

"Had second thoughts about the chicken?"

"What?  Oh, no--I was just wondering about the goats," she fibbed
quickly.

"Who's going to milk them?"

"Oh, that's John's task," Carter assured her.

"There are a good many things I'm prepared to do for your mother, but
milking that precious pair is not among them."

He said this with such feeling that Elspeth laughed.  She knew how
troublesome and truculent her mother's spoiled pets could be.

As she heard the sound of her own laughter, she realised how long it
had been since she hac laughed so freely, since she had felt so.  so
unconstricted, so free to be herself and not to fall into line with
someone else's image of her.  And yet who was it who had forced those
images on her?  she asked herself frowningly as she left Carter to have
his shower and started to prepare the dogs' food.

It had been herself, surely.  She had been the one who had insisted
that she wanted a city life, a highprofile career.  She had been the
one to force herself into that mould, and no one else.  But why?

Surely not because a thoughtless, silly, empty- headed girl had made
fun of her parents' way of life.  Surely that wasn't what had made her
decide to prove to the rest of the world that, despite her upbringing,
she could be just as clever, ji st as career-orientated, just as
successful as someone from a different background.

Startled by the direction of her own thoughts, she stopped what she was
doing and stared emptily into space.

But she was happy with her chosen life, wasn't she?  Content with all
that she had achieved, all she would achieve, her job, her flat, her
relationship with Peter, the life they had planned together?

Would she really prefer to be living here with her parents, sharing
their haphazard lives, sharing their hopes and their disappointments,
their tears and their laughter?

Something quickened inside her, a feeling that was a combination of
joy, pain and regret, and with it came an unwanted recognition that
somehow, somewhere, she had perhaps allowed her life to take a wrong
turning, that the reason she always felt this odd reluctance to come
home, this defensiveness with which she sometimes deliberately shut out
her parents, sprang from a very real fear that if she stayed too long,
said too much, she might never be able to force herself to go back to
the life she had chosen for herself.

As clearly as though they were being spoken now beside her, she heard
the high-pitched, cruel words of that girl she had brought home with
her.

"Her parents are complete country bumpkins.  You wouldn't believe it,
honestly... And the house--my dears, I don't think her mother even
possesses a vacuum cleaner, never mind knows how to use it.  There were
actually animals wandering around in the kitchen--imagine!  The lack of
hygiene... And she's just the same, for all that she pretends not to
be.  One morning I actually found her feeding a lamb with a bottle. She
was nursing it on her knee while she ate her own breakfast at the same
time.  The germs!  My dears, my skin was positively crawling when I
left.  You just an't believe..."

And on and on it had gone, until she hadn't been able to endure any
more.  And yet now, leplaying those words, listening to them with the
ears of maturity, she heard more than their surface cruelty, saw more
of what might have lain behind them.  Sophy had come from a broken
home. Her parents were divorced, her father remarried with a much
younger second family, her mother living somewhere in America.  Neither
of them, it seemed, wanted to know about their shared daughter.

Sophy's background couldn't have been more different from her own, and
she, like the credulous fool she was, had been impressed by the other
girl's stories of her parents' seemingly exciting ives, not realising
until it was too late how little oi' that excitement Sophy herself
actually shared.  How much her own parents' love and care was to be
valued and cherished.

Was it really for that, for the desire, the need, the thirst to prove
something to someone who had been little more than a lonely child
crying out for love and attention herself, that she had redirected the
whole course of her life?

But she was happy, wasn't she?  Wasn't she?  She couldn't possibly want
to change things--could she?  No--no, of course not.  Of course she
couldn't, she told herself quickly.  What she was doing was just
indulging in a fit of nostalgia for the country.  It was a very
fashionable pastime these days.  Once she got back to London she would
laugh at herself for what she was feeling now.  Of course she would. 
Of course she would.  Wouldn't she?

CHAPTER SEVEN

'supper won't be long.  "

As she opened the back door, Elspeth saw that Carter was standing in
front of the sink washing a lettuce.  He had obviously had a shower
because, rather disconcertingly, he was barefoot and barechested,
wearing only a pair of clean, worn jeans, his hair still damp and
slicked back off his face, but the smile he gave her as she came in was
casual and easy, completely free of any kind of sexual undertones.

She wasn't sure she wanted to analyse why instead of reassuring her
this should make her feel slightly piqued.

"I forgot to mention it earlier," he added, 'but tomorrow is one of our
days for getting orders ready for collection, which means a very early
start, I'm afraid.  Watering at five, picking at six.  There's no need
for you to get up if you don't feel up to it, but I'm just warning you
in case I disturb you and you wonder what on earth's going or.  "

The moment he suggested that she neeij not get up, Elspeth felt her are
rising.  She wasn't a visitor here, to be cosseted and indulged.  She
was family.  He was the one who was the outsider, not she.

As the thought formed, she frowned suddenly, remembering an incident
from their first meeting, from that summer when her aunt had first
introduced him to the family.  She had rejected all his overtures of
friendship, she remembered; she had felt as though he was patronising
her and she had resented it resented him resented the fact that her
parents had treated him as an adult while they were still treating her
as a child, and that had been like gall to her fourteen-year-old
emergent pride.  Then too she had considered him an outsider only then
she had vocalised her resentment, and had received a lecture from her
parents for her pains.

"Pretty basic, I'm afraid," she heard Carter saying cheerfully as he
brought a bowl of crisp lettuce over to the table, 'but I doubt you'd
find anything that tastes as good in any of your fancy London
restaurants.  "

Elspeth suspected he was probably right, but in stead of agreeing with
him she said contrarily, "You'd be surprised.  All good restaurants
these days are conscious of their clientele's desire for healthier
eating."

Carter shrugged as though the subject no longer interested him,
indicating the table with its clean cloth and her mother's blue and
white china.

"Come and sit down," he instructed her.

Elspeth saw that in addition to the lettuce and other home-grown salad
ingredients, including some deliciously mouthwatering-smelling
tomatoes, there was some of her mother's home-cured ham, the bread
which she baked every week and a large bowl of fresh fruit.

"Your parents don't have the space for much fruit," Carter told her,
seeing her eyeing the fruit, 'but if I succeed at auction I'm hoping lo
experiment with fruit under glass.  "

"Won't that be very expensive?"  Elspeth challenged.

"Mmm.  But when I left the institute they gave me a generous pay-off.

Banks are mush more lenient these days about lending money to small
businesses.  With the vegetable side to cary me, I can afford to take a
small risk.  "

Especially if he already had the benefit of her parents' business,
Elspeth thought bitterly, as he pulled out a chair for her.  For a
moment she was tempted to ignore it and walk round to the other side of
the table, but to do so would be churlish and non-productive.  If she
really wanted to find out what he was planning, it would be far easier
if he didn't realise how suspicious of him she was.

He was so different from Peter, she reflected as she sat down.  Peter
would never have prepared a meal like this, nor taken it as a matter of
course that he should do so, and Peter would certainly never have sat
down to eat wearing only a pair of worn jeans.

She was sitting so close to him that it was impossible for her not to
be aware of the fresh, clean scent of his skin.  She recognised the
distinctive smell of the Pears soap her mother always used, but mingled
with it was the elusive and very disturbing fragrance that was his
alone.  It took on an erotic and dangerous allure that made her wish
that she was sitting further away from him.

Unlike her, Carter seemed totally undisturbed by any such awareness.

He might just as well have been fully dressed rather than virtually
naked, she reflected angrily, wishing she had the courage to put a
little more distance between them.  It was totally ridiculous, but the
harder she tried to ignore her awareness of him, the more intense it
became, until her shoulders and back were tight with tension, and she
was fighting not to look at him.  What was it about this particular man
that made it such a wanton pleasure merely to absorb visually the
physical reality of him?  But she didn't merely want to look at him,
she recognised on a tiny shiver.  She wanted to reach out and touch
him.  She wanted.  What on earth was happening to her?  she wondered
miserably, doggedly trying to concentrate on the food on her plate.

She was so deeply engrossed in her own bewildering emotions that it was
doubly unnerving to hear Jasper suddenly say mournfully, in a very
creditable impersonation of her father's slow tones, "Pity about
Elspeth... She needs a good man."

Horrified, Elspeth stared transfixed at the wretched bird, clenching
her hands so that she couldn't give in to the unbearable temptation to
get up and wring its neck.  At the same time, she was conscious of the
slow burn of colour heating her skin as anger and embarrassment filled
her with equal intensity.

It was one thing to know in her most secret heart that her parents,
while accepting her choice of Peter, could quite genuinely not
understand what attracted her to him--it was quite another to have that
appalling parrot voice their doubts in front of Carter.

For what seemed like an endless stretch of time she waited with pent-up
breath and feelings for him to make some mocking comment, and then,
when she realised that he wasn't going to do sci, that he was
diplomatically going to pretend that Jasper had never uttered those
betraying words, instead of being relieved, grateful to him for his
tact, all she felt was a growing, choking rage, which exploded
forcefully inside her, making her stand up abruptly, pushing her chair
back with a rough, scraping sound, her voice shaking with temper and
pain as she said bitterly, "Why don't you go ahead and laugh?  I'm sure
you want to--but / happen to love Peter and he loves me."

She stopped abruptly, knowing that if she said any more she was liable
to burst into tears.  What was the matter with her, why did she feel
this need to justify herself, her relationship with Peter, and to this
man who meant nothing to her, had no place in her life?  Had he been
there while her parents were discussing Peter?  Had he been privy to
their doubts and concern?  It hurt her more than she could bear to
think that he had.  It was almost as though it was a kind of
betrayal.

"Look, Elspeth..."

Was that pity she could hear in his voice?  Her body stiffened as she
rejected the hand he was placing on her arm.

"Don't touch me," she demanded chokily.

"And in future perhaps you'd be good enough to refrain from wandering
around half naked."

She saw his face change, his eyebrows lifting, something almost
approaching amusement lightening his eyes.

"Oh, come on.  You aren't trying to tell me that you aren't used to the
sight of a bare male chest.  After all, you and Peter are virtually
engaged."

"That's different," Elspeth told him fiercely, 'and besides, contrary
to what you seem to imagine, Peter and I are not--' She stopped
abruptly, her face suddenly bright with colour.

"Go on," Carter encouraged, marvellously selfassured where she suddenly
felt as gauche and miserable as a child.

"You and Peter aren't what?"

"Nothing," Elspeth said stubbornly.

"You aren't lovers, is that what you were going to say?"  he pressed,
ignoring her.

Suddenly it was all too much for her.  She had never experienced so
many contradictory and seesawing emotions in such a short space of
time. Never had her ideals, her beliefs, her feelings been challenged
so thoroughly nor so frighteningly, never had she felt them slip away
so far cut of her own control.

"There's no need to sound so amused," she told him bitterly.

"Not all men are obsessed with sex.  There are other equally important
aspects;

to relationships.  "

"I agree that sex on its own is never a good basis on which to form a
good relationship, bu; there is a difference between being obsessed
with sex and not having any interest in it at all.  If ]'.  were a
woman I think I should be a little concerned at the thought of
committing myself to life with a man who seemed not to find me sexually
desirable."

Elspeth felt the breath leak out of her lungs on a painful sob.  How
dared he say that?  How dared he suggest that Peter didn't want her?

And yet-and yet--wasn't it what she had sometimes said to herself alone
and awake at night, wondering a little uncomfortably why it was that
Peter should be so content to say goodnight with nothing more than a
chaste and hasty kiss, and why she herself should feel something almost
approaching relief that he should be?  She had thought then that it was
because she herself must only have a low sex-drive, that she and Peter
were both victims of the modern disease of overwork.  And yet when
Carter had kissed her in that brief, illuminating space of time, she
had recognised and felt all those things, all those emotions, all those
needs and desires, which she had been telling herself it was impossible
for her to feel.  Too late now to wish she had never gained that
knowledge, that she had remained safe in her illusion that she was
incapable of feeling such desire.

Now she went white with pain as she lied desperately, "Peter does want
me.  He's... He's just too much of a gentleman to--to force me
into--into something I'm not ready for."

Carter gave her a brief, hard look.

"So you're the one who doesn't want him.  And you still intend to marry
him.  Why?"

Elspeth was literally trembling now, not just with anger, but with
anguish as well.  How dared he challenge her like this, talk to her
like this.  hurt her like this?

"I don't think that's any of your business," she told him fiercely,
'and now, if you don't mind.  "

She started to turn away, but he caught hold of her, stopping her,
swinging her back round to face him.

"Oh, but I do mind," he told her grittily.

"And I want to know why, when you become all woman in my arms, when you
respond so passionately to my kiss, you're going to marry a man wha
you've just admitted can't turn you on."

Elspeth went rigid with shock at the brutality of his verbal attack,
totally unable to hide her reaction nor to silence the immediate denial
that choked from her throat.

"I thought you were Peter, she lied desperately.

"I didn't want you at all."

"Is that a fact?"

Suddenly he seemed very intimidating, very male and alien, and suddenly
she wished desperately that she were a million miles away from him, and
safe from the dark intent she could read in his eyes.

"Let me go.  Carter."

She tried to keep her voice steady, to inject a note of cool lightness
into it, to prove to him that she was completely unaffected by what was
happening, but her voice shook a little, and she knew quite well he
must have felt the tiny tremor that burned through her.

For a moment she actually thought she saw compassion soften his mouth,
actually felt that he might out of pity let her go--but suddenly his
grasp tightened, his mouth hardening as he looked down at her and said
softly, "Not yet."

She knew already that he was going to kiss her.

She had a handful of seconds, maybe less, in which to tell herself
frantically that this time it would be different, this time she would
be prepared, this time there would be no terrifying, unbelievable
awareness that under this man's hands, under this man's mouth, every
single one of her senses, every smallest nerve-ending flowered and
blossomed, and that with them the tightly close- furled bud of
sensuality she had never known she possessed burst into life inside
her.

A handful of seconds.  Such a small space of time, so why instead of
using it did she simply stand within his arms, trembling not with
apprehension, nor even with anger, but with a sensation which she dimly
recognised as being born of the quick, wanton heat that filled her
whole body?  The traitor within, she recognised dizzily as her lips
parted in instinctive response to the hare heat of his.

And yet it wasn't a violent kiss, nor yet even an angry kiss--not a
punishment at all're all despite the volcanic threat of his words.

She protested once as she fought agains': his sensual domination of her
body, and instantly his mouth lifted, but when she attempted to turn
her head aside he checked the movement, not aggressively, but with the
gentle strength of his open palm cupping her jaw, stroking the softness
of her skin, so that she looked at him with unknowingly tormented and
bewildered eyes, shivering beieath the explosion of emotions he was
generating, her senses obedient to the silent demand of hi?  " so that
this time when he kissed her she automatically moved closer to him,
instinctively and unknowingly slid her arms around his neck, and sighed
tremulously beneath the pressure of his mouth, inviting the male
possession of it in a dozen subtle and unintended ways.

People didn't kiss like this; not grown-up, adult people, she thought
hazily at some point.  This kind of kissing was for impossibly romantic
films and besotted teenagers.

Adults were intimate, made love, had ex, their kisses a brief tactical
opening-stage towards that goal; but this kiss .  this kiss was a whole
world of sensation and delight complete unto itself.

She couldn't remember that she hadn't wanted him to touch her, only
that now she couldn't bear him to stop; that each time he left her
mouth to nibble the soft flesh of her ear, each time he bit gently at
her bottom lip and teased her with the soft stroke of his tongue, she
grew more hungry, more desirous, more shockingly eager for the return
of his mouth to hers, clinging urgently to its possession.

When he finally set her free it was the sound of her own incoherent
denial of that freedom that shocked her back to awareness, her eyes
opening into his in bewildered pain, her body trembling and so weak
that she felt as though she had no physical strength at all.

From a distance she heard Carter saying in a strained voice, "I'm
sorry.  I never intended..."

And brutally she came back to reality and realised what she had done.

She felt quite sick with mortification.  No wonder Carter sounded so
embarrassed.  No wonder he was keeping his back to her.

Valiantly she struggled for something to say, for some light,
insouciant words that would somehow or other return everything to
normal.  She tried to imagine herself saying airily something or other
about missing Peter and apologising for getting a little carried away,
and knew helplessly that she could never make that kind of lie sound
anything like believable.

Now, when oddly enough she hadn't been particularly aware of it at the
time, her body was shockingly telling her how much it missed its
intimate contact with Carter's.  How much it longed for the sensation
of that hard male flesh in intimate contact with her own.  Frantically
she closed her eyes, trying to banish the shocking images dancing in
her head, but they refused to go away.

She heard Carter saying her name in ar; uncomfortable, strained
voice.

Instinctively she umed to look at him, and then wished she hadn't.

Heaven alone knew what he must have read in her expression to make his
own change like that, to make him look at her so blankly and so grimly,
as tliough he wanted to shut out the image of her forever.

It wasn't all her fault--she hadn't been the one who had initiated the
kiss, even if she.  She gulped painfully and bit her bottom lip to stop
its wild trembling.

"For God's sake."

The raw, furious male sound was like knives tearing at her flesh.

Unable to endure any more, she did something she had never in her life
magined herself doing; she swung round and ran betrayingly and
desperately towards the inner door, opening it before Carter could stop
her and fleeing for the sanctuary of her borrowed bedroom.

In the kitchen Carter stared after her, and then into the silence the
parrot, who had taken in the whole scene with avid curiosity, repeated
with unnerving accuracy and emotion something which neither Elspeth
herself nor Carter had even realised she had said, something so
emotional and betraying that Carter blenched as the bird whispered
emotively and pleadingly, "Carter."

There was nothing else but that one word--his name, repeated so exactly
as Elspeth had unknowingly whispered it when she had pleaded for the
return of his mouth to hers that the hairs on his arms stood sharply
erect and his body responded so savagely and so achingly that he took a
step towards the parrot and told him bitterly, "Don't you ever, ever do
that again, otherwise..."

"Nice chap.  Carter," the parrot told him palliatively.

"Like him very much.  Pity about Elspeth," he added mournfully,
strategically getting out of Carter's reach.

"Pity about Elspeth."

Upstairs Elspeth sat with her head in her hands, trying to come to
terms with what she had done, with what she had allowed to happen.

Useless to try to pretend any more.  Physically Carter aroused her as a
woman as she had never dreamed any man could arouse her.  If there in
the kitchen he had whispered to her that he wanted to make love to her.
If he had caressed her.  touched her, if he had slid the clothes from
her body and then touched her naked flesh with his hands and then his
mouth.  She trembled violently at the very thought.  Appalled by what
she was thinking, and y3t at the same time knowing a helpless, sick
longing for something far more tangible than the mere mental knowledge
of how she would feel if Carter had made love to her.

Now, when she was completely alone, when he wasn't touching her in any
way at all, when she ought to have been safely free of whatever spell
it was he cast over her, she was yearning, aching, wanting him in such
an earthy and elemental way that she could hardly comprehend that she
was actually having these feelings.

She wanted Carter to make love to her.  She said the words silently to
herself, half expect ng them to be followed by a rush of mental
denial--but nothing happened, apart from the fact that that dull,
unfamiliar ache way down in the pit of her stomach seemed to twist
fiercely and burn.

She shivered, suddenly feeling cold, sho;ked that she could feel like
this, and for a man who didn't desire her, didn't love her.  For a man
who had done nothing to encourage her to feel like this.

No, right from the start she had been the one who had for some reason
made his presence in her life take on a sensual significance.  Right
from the very start, when she had been so sure he had been trying to
flirt with her, when she had failed to recognise him, and in so doing
had--what?  --sprung the trap into which she had now fallen.

It would be different once Peter got here, she told herself firmly.

Once Peter was here, all this nonsense would stop.  She would be her
normal self again.  Perhaps she might even suggest to Peter that it was
time they set a formal date for the wedding.  Yes, perhaps that was
it.

Because she could not allow herself to think of Peter in such sensual
terms, her mind was playing tricks on her and transferring her
burgeoning desire to Carter.

She frowned.  Why couldn't she think of Peter as her lover?  They were
after all going to be married.  There was no reason why they should not
be lovers.  It was all very well being sensible, she decided forlornly,
but this evening, in Carter's arms, beneath Carter's mouth, her senses
had been awakened to such aching pleasures that the thought of being
sensible, cautious and pragmatic suddenly had no appeal at all.

She closed her eyes, and tried to visualise Peter behaving as Carter
had.  Sweeping her into his arms, kissing her with the same strong male
pass' on turning her body into molten heat, making her want him so much
that she began to make soft sweetly pleading noises beneath his
mouth.

Perhaps there was something wrong with her imagination, she decided
dispiritedly five minutes later, opening her eyes and bitterly
admitting that she just could not visualise Peter and herself in such a
situation.

But she did love him.  Of course she did.  And he loved her, and they
were going to be married.

And tomorrow morning she would pretend she had overslept and that way
with a bit of luck she wouldn't have to face Carter again until after
he came back from his auction.  By that time she was sure she would be
in a much more sensible frame of mind.  Back to her normal self.

It was only later when she crawled into bed, feeling more confused and
unhappy than she could ever remember feeling in her life, that 'he
wondered miserably if she would ever be her old 'normal' self again.

A vast chasm seemed to have appeared between the Elspeth with whom she
was so familiar and whom she thought she knew so well, and this new
one, whom she did not know at all, and wnom, she was beginning to
discover, that part of the old

 I

Elspeth which remained found extremely frightening J The trouble with
this new Elspeth was that she i had a whole set of emotions, a whole
range of | awareness and senses that the old Elspeth had never
experienced in her life.

The best thing she could do was to somehow or other banish this new
Elspeth before she began to get too much of a hold on her, Elspeth
decided tiredly.  Yes, that was what she must do.  Starting with
tomorrow, she must firmly force herself back into her familiar,
businesslike mould.  This new Elspeth must not be allowed to get a hold
on her.  She was far too disruptive, far too illogical, far too
vulnerable.  Far, far too vulnerable.

CHAPTER EIGHT

it was the warning burr of her parents' radio alarm that woke Elspeth
from her confused and painful dreams to lie disorientated and
unrefreshsd while she tried to grapple with why on earth she had ever
set the alarm for four-thirty.  Reluctantly she had to admit that, if
she had to wake up at such an unholy hour, she couldn't have chosen a
better morning on which to do so.

The rising sun shone in through the window from a clear pale blue sky,
as she discovered ance she had forced herself out of bed.  It was, she
recognised sleepily, going to be a perfect summer's clay.

Long ago memories of distant summers of waking early so that she could
help with some of the farm chores before setting out for schoal, came
back to her so sharply and nostalgically that for a moment, standing in
front of the window, breathing in the country-scented air, she forgot
how early it was, and remembered only that she had willingly swapped
all this to live in a city.

For years she had told herself stoically that she didn't miss the
country, that she preferred the hectic pace of city life, that those
who talked nostalgically and enviously of living in the country were
thinking only of a picture-postcard countryside which bore no
resemblance whatsoever to reality.  In winter, country lanes were
ankle-deep in mud, country gardens bleak, dank, empty spaces, country
houses damp and cold; and yet there were other mornings, crisp with
frost when the air was sharply scented with the promise of snow, autumn
days when the gales buffeted the trees and dared human beings to
challenge their strength, and days like these when a heat haze already
misted the distant hills and the air was already warm and scented.

She wasn't here to daydream about the weather, though--she was here to
work.  Last night she had told herself it would be the easiest thing in
the world to simply stay in bed this morning and so avoid having to
face Carter, but she had resolutely denied herself that escape route.

She was going to show him that no matter how bitterly she might regret
what had happened, no matter how self-contemptuous she might feel, she
was not afraid to face him.  Like a dose of nasty medicine, the sooner
it was over with the better, and hopefully they would be so busy
working that she wouldn't have to do anything more than distantly
acknowledge his presence.

She showered and then dressed quickly in a pair of ancient denim shorts
and a comfortable, loose

T-shirt--clothes which she would never have dreamed of wearing in
London, nor in the immaculate suburban garden that belonged t3 Peter's
parents.  In fact these clothes belonged to be years before she had
left home for London.

Quickly brushing her hair, and applying some protective moisturiser to
her face, she pulled on a pair of shabby trainers and opened her
bedroom door.

Was Carter still in bed?  Resolutely she walked past the closed bedroom
door and went downstairs.  As she opened the kitchen door she smiilled
the freshly made coffee and hesitated in the open doorway, but Carter
had already heard her.  He turned round, not quite masking his
surprise, and then frowning as he looked rather piercingly a) her.

She withstood his look as steadily as she could, but her voice wasn't
quite as easy to control as she said shakily, "You did say you wanted
an early start this morning!"

"Yes, but I didn't mean that you had to join us."

"That's what I'm here for," she told him grimly.  If privately she was
beginning to realise that three days would never have been sufficient
for her parents to educate her in all that needed doing just to keep
the business ticking over, she was rot going to admit as much to anyone
else.  And especially not to him.

The parrot, for some obscure reason, was whistling the "Marseillaise',
but as she approached the table he stopped to comment admiringly, "
Nice legs.  "

When Elspeth glowered at him.  Carter told her smoothly, "He's had a
rather cheque red career.  I believe he was about to become the victim
of a broken home when your mother rescued him."

"I'm not surprised," Elspeth retorted scathingly, still glowering at
the bird, who was now preening himself.

"I wouldn't even be surprised if he was the cause of the broken
home."

"Coffee?"  Carter invited, indicating the filter jug.

"I've had my breakfast, but if you'd like some toast--' " If I want
toast I'm perfectly capable of making my own," Elspeth told him
acidly.

Why didn't he just go away and leave her alone?  He must realise how
uncomfortable she felt with him now, how--how mortified and
embarrassed.  Just because he was behaving as though nothing out of the
ordinary had happened it didn't mean that she found it as easy to put
last night out of her mind.  She looked at him suspiciously, wondering
if he was deliberately baiting her by behaving so perfectly normally,
or was there a more sinister reason behind his apparent pleasantness?

Was he concerned that because of last night she might insist on his
leaving the house, and in doing so make it more difficult for him to
sabotage her parents' work?  She had every right to ask him to go, she
reflected bitterly, as she poured herself sorr e coffee, taking care to
give him as wide a berth as possible as she walked past him.

His behaviour towards her had been atrocious.  There was nothing she
would like more than for him to leave, but she dared not confront
him;

she was too frightened that he might retaliate by claiming that she
wanted him to go not because he had kissed her against her will, but
because she had wanted him to kiss her.

She knew if he made that accusation flat there was no way she could
deny it.  If he had been a gentleman he would have left without her
having to say anything, she thought, tight-lipped, but then if he'd
been a gentleman he would never have done it in the first place.

Peter would never in a thousand years have behaved in such a way.

She sipped her coffee and then tensed, as she realised in outrage that
it was not grat tude for Peter's reserve that was colouring her
thoughts, but a certain rebellious wistfulness that made her frown
angrily and curse her own stupidity.

She was just finishing her coffee when battered van pulled into the
yard, sending the dos into a frenzy of barking and scattering the
scratching hens.

"That will be John and Simon," Carter announced.

"I'll leave you to finish your breakfast in peace.  No need to
hurry."

No need to hurry because he didn't want her to see what he might be
doing, Elspeth reflected darkly as he opened the back door.  She was
suddenly discovering that she had an unexpectedly vivid imagination,
which relayed to her pictures of her mother's tender baby carrots and
peas, with all their careful organic nurturing, suddenly being
sprinkled with some hideous compound of chemical fertilisers designed
to ruin her parents' reputation and their business.  And it wouldn't be
that difficult--Carter had said something about watering the crops
before they picked them.

Ignoring the faint growling noises from her stomach telling her that a
piece of toast would be more than welcome, she finished her coffee,
grabbed a pair of her mother's gardening gloves from the basket beside
the door and hurried after Carter.

The yard was empty of dogs and men and, having automatically thrown out
a couple of handfuls of grain for the hens as she walked past, Elspeth
followed them.

As she approached the greenhouses and the long rows of vegetables and
salads growing out in the open, she saw that the sprinklers were
already at work watering the crops.  While Carter orened the greenhouse
windows, the other two men were steadily removing the tunnels of
protect he plastic from younger rows of crops.

Carter saw her arrive, and came out of the greenhouse towards her,
standing so close to be' that she was immediately aware of the warm
male scent of him.  His skin also carried the rich smell of the
greenhouse tomatoes, and she had a dizzying thought that if she were to
touch his skin now with her mouth it might taste of the warm, ripf;

fruit.

Love-apples, wasn't that what the Elizabethans had called tomatoes?

She felt her skin suddenly flushing hotly at the direction of her
thoughts, unaware of the quick, frowning look Carter gave her as she
suddenly stepped hurriedly back from him.

His urgent warning made her freeze, bu: she had already stepped back on
to the rake lying behind her and had started to overbalance.

It was only natural that he should reach out and grab hold of her to
steady her, an instinctive and automatically protective gesture that
anyone might have made, but the minute his fingers closed round the
smooth flesh of her arms she was aware of him so intensely and
intimately that she could hardly breathe for the choking ache of need
that flared through her whole body.

Her violent, "Don't touch me," was borne out of her own shocked fear
that he would see just how much she ached for exactly the opposite, but
he reacted to it immediately, letting go of her arm as though her flesh
burned him--or disgusted him, she thought tormentedly.

She felt sick and dizzy, oddly light-headed as though she had been
standing out in the sun for too long, filled with unwanted yearnings
and needs.

"Where do you want us to start.  Carter?"

Neither of them had heard John approaching, and Elspeth turned away
instinctively as Carter looked away from her; she hid her face in the
shadows, terrified of what anyone might read in it.

"Er--I think we'd better start with the carrots, and then there's the
peas."

"I'll do those," Elspeth offered quickly.  Anything, anything to get
away from Carter, to be somewhere where she didn't have to look at
him.

He gave her a brief nod in acceptance of her offer, apparently as
reluctant to look at her as she was to look at him.

As she walked away from him, she was conscious of a certain stiffness
in her movements, a deep and desperate tension within her body.

Picking peas might not be the most mentally challenging task in the
world, but it was certainly therapeutic, she acknowledged ten minutes
later, surprised and pleased by how quickly she had discovered the
forgotten rhythms of her childhood, the forgotten instructions of her
mother, so that; she was automatically discarding those pods that were
as yet too small, swiftly developing a skill which had her basket soon
filled and another started.

As she worked doggedly among the 3eas, refusing to turn round and look
for Carter, she tried to tell herself that what she was experiencing
was just some kind of aberration--a form of prs-marital nerves.

Only she wasn't the nervy type, and she and Peter had still not yet
finally set a date for the wedding.  So what was wrong with her?  Why
was she experiencing these unfamiliar longings, these disruptive needs
which had never previously featured in her life?

"Everything OK here?"

She tensed, her hand trembling as she heard Carter's voice behind
her.

Resolutely refusing to turn round or to acknowledge the soft, almost
caring note in his voice, she kept her back to him and said curtly,
"Yes."

She could still feel his presence behini her, as though he was waiting
for something.  The skin at the back of her neck prickled
dangerously.

Slid demy sweat broke out on her skin.  The heat of the sun, she told
herself chokily, even though before Carter's arrival its early morning
warmth had not bothered her at all.

"Elspeth."

Her muscles locked.  If he touched her now, if he placed his hands on
her shoulders and turned her round to face him, if he looked into her
eyes, searched her face.  if he bent his head until she could feel the
warmth of his breath against her skin.  He would taste of toothpaste
and coffee; his mouth would be warm and male and the taste of it would
make her go faint and dizzy with pleasure.

"Elspeth, are you all right?"

She realised sickly that she was actually swaying towards him, that her
body, already visibly aroused by her own thoughts, was yearning towards
him as though to the pull of a magnet.

"You shouldn't have got up so early.  There was no need," she heard
Carter saying roughly.

"You aren't used to this kind of life.  I should never..."

It was too much.  Something inside her suddenly snapped and she turned
on him and said shakily, "You should never have kissed me--is that what
you were going to say?  Well, you're quite right, you should not, and I
wish more than anything else in the world that you had not, but if you
think that just because you did kiss me that I'm incapable of doing
anything other than swooning at your feet in gratitude then think
again.  And now, if you wouldn't mind leaving me alone, perhaps, I
could get on with what I'm doing."

She saw that he was staring at her as though he'd never really seen her
before, and no wonder, she thought numbly.  She was behaving like ;i
virago, like a fool, like a woman in love.  A woman in love.

She felt the rush of sensation burn through her, heard the distant
sound of a car arriving, lieard the bark of the dogs and the confusion
of car doors opening, but it all seemed to be happening on another
level, in another place.  She was incapable of doing anything other
than standing fans fixed while she tried to grapple with her own on
fused thoughts.  A woman in love.  Well, that was what she was, wasn't
she?  She was in love with Peter.

Only she and Peter had always said seriously and firmly that they were
not 'in love'; that being 'in love' was not a state they desired.  They
were good friends, they cared deeply for one another, and when they
married their marriage would be successful because it was not confused
by motions that might ultimately fade.  People in love were people who
were suffering a kind of madness.

A kind of madness.  was that it--was she going mad?  She looked at
Carter with bewildered, anguished eyes, but he was already looking away
from her and saying quickly, "I must go.  Someone's just arrived."

Someone had, as Elspeth saw--a slender blonde woman was hurrying
towards them, her face breaking into a warm smile as she spotted
Carter.

"Carter, how wonderful to see you!"  she called out eagerly.

"You're very naughty, you know.  You promised to come over for dinner
and you still haven't done.  I'm dying to show off my new house to you.
I'm glad now that I offered to come over this morning and collect our
stuff.  Is it ready now or am I too early?"

Elspeth turned back to her peas, not wanting to watch Carter returning
the blonde's comments.  Not wanting to see what?  Carter taking another
woman in his arms, kissing her as he had kissed.  But no--she wasn't
going to allow her thoughts to stray down that road, not again.  It was
too painful, too self-revealing, too dangerous.

In the distance she could still hear the woman talking to Carter, her
light, flirtatious tones mingling with his deeper, very male voice.

She laughed, the sound setting Elspeth's teeth on edge.

They were coming towards her, she recognised, desperately trying to
lose herself at the back of the pea sticks.

"So you won't forget.  We're expecting you for dinner just as soon as
Kate and Richard get back."

"I'm looking forward to it," Carter assured her.

We.  Elspeth's heart thumped.  Did that mean the woman was married?  If
so, what was she doing flirting so outrageously with Carter?  she
wondered fiercely.

"Oh, and good luck with the auction this afternoon."

They were moving away again.  Thank goodness.  Elspeth didn't want to
see them together, didn't want to see the other woman's hand resting
possessively on Carter's tanned arm, didn't want to see Carter turning
towards her, smiling at her She bit her lip sharply, trembling with the
force of her own emotions.

Unwanted emotions, ridiculous emotions, emotions she had no right to
feel.

By eleven o'clock Elspeth was exhausted.  She had just watched what
Carter had said was the last of their customers drive away, and now the
men, apparently as full of energy as they had been at five o'clock,
were turning to study the depleted rows of produce, while Carter
arranged which seedlings were to be transferred from the nursery beds
to form fresh new rows.

"Why don't you go in?"  he suggested to her, when the two men had moved
away.

"It' i hot out here, and you aren't..."

"Aren't what?"  she demanded fiercely, her eyes daring him to suggest
that her strength was less than his.

"Aren't used to working outside in this kind of heat," he told her
calmly.

"At the very least you ought to be wearing a hat of some sort."  He
looked at his watch.

"Look, I've got to be at this auction at two.  Why don't we stop now
and have an early lunch?  You could come with me if you like."

Go with him.  Elspeth stared at him, wondering what on earth had
prompted such an invitation.

"I can't," she told him stiffly.

"I ... I

promised I'd ring Peter.  "

It wasn't true and there was no way he could know that she was lying,
and yet the way he looked at her made her feel that somehow he did.

"Besides," she added feverishly, 'you said you'd be gone for most of
the afternoon and everything will need watering, especially with this
heat.  "

"Not until later."

She turned back to her self-imposed task of checking the growth of the
new rows of peas, and said as casually as she could, "You go on
ahead.

I'm not hungry yet.  "

It was a lie--her stomach had been noisily reminding her for the last
hour that she hadn't had any breakfast, but the last thing she felt
capable of enduring right now was an intimate lunch with Carter.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw his mouth tighten as though he was
contemplating arguing with her, and then to her relief he turned on his
heel and walked away from her.

He had been gone less than half an hour when she was forced to
acknowledge that he had been right and that the combination of no
breaki'ast, hard physical work, and a very hot sun had produced not
only a poundingly sick headache, but also a weak, shivery feeling that
she very much feared heralded the onset of heat-stroke.  But much as
she longed to go back to the house and lie down in the coolness of a
shaded bedroom, her pride would not allow her to return while Carter
was still about.

The auction didn't start until two.  That Tieant he probably didn't
need to leave until one.  It was eleven-forty-five now, and the sun was
getting hotter and stronger by the minute.

She glanced across to where the two men were busily engaged in planting
out new rows of carrots and lettuce, their steady, purposeful movements
indicative of experience and skill.  The low murmur of their voices
seemed to buzz disorientatingly in her ears.  There was nothing she
wanted more than to lie down somewhere cool--yes, there was, she
acknowledged thirstily.  She wanted a drink.  ice- cold, clear water. 
The more she thought about it, the greater her thirst became.

All she needed to do was to stop work and to walk the short distance
back to the house.

That was all she needed to do.

But if she did that Carter would see her, and for some obscure reason
it had become extremely important to her that she stayed here until he
had gone.

But how could she?  The minutes seemed to crawl by, and she felt more
and more peculiar with every one of them, and then unbelievably, as
though in answer to a silent prayer, she suddenly heard the kitchen
door open, and turned round just in time to see Carter getting into her
mother's small red car which he then backed out of the yard.

He had gone.  She could go back to the house.  For several seconds she
stood where she was, watching the lane, holding her breath, half
expecting to see him come driving back.  But when five and then ten
minutes had passed without him doing so, she expelled a shaky breath,
and as slowly and carefully as though her body were made of fragile
glass she headed back to the house.

Once inside the kitchen she turned on the cold water tap, and leaned
heavily against the sink unit while she waited for it to run icy
cold.

She felt vaguely sick now, shivery as well, and the pain in her head
had intensified to the point where she could scarcely see.  Her hand
shook as she filled a glass with water.  She drank it greedily and then
drank another.  What she needed was to go and lie down for half an
hour. But first she had to find something to ease this headache.

She found some tablets in her mother's bathroom and took two of them
and then for good measure another two, before stripping off her clothes
and going to lie down on the blessedly cool eiderdown.

It was bliss not to move, and even more bliss not to have the full heat
of the sun pounding down on her unprotected head.  Dizzily she
acknowledged that she ought to have made herself some lunch, but the
thought of food was now totally nauseating.  All she needed was a
couple of hours' sleep--that would soon make her feel better.  She
wasn't used to getting up at five o'clock in the morning any more.  In
London there was no need for such early country rising.  She turned
restlessly on The large bed.  The bed in her flat was a small single.

For some reason her parents' bed seemed to intensify that nagging ache
of aloneness, of isolation, which seemed to shadow her constantly these
days.

As she drifted off to sleep she reflected that it would be nice to have
someone to shan: a large double bed with, someone solid and masculine,
someone with tanned, muscled forearms, and warm, teasing amber eyes.
Someone like Carter.  No, not Carter, she corrected herself drowsily,
but it was already too late--her imagination had furnished his image so
clearly for her that when she turned on her side with a sleepy smile it
was Carter she was mentally visualising next to her and not Peter, the
man it ought to have been.

She woke up with a start, conscious of cramp in her shoulder muscles, a
dull ache in her temples and the inevitable soreness and stiffness of
muscles unused to so much outside physical activity.

Moving reluctantly, she glanced at her watch.  Five o'clock.  Without
knowing how she knew, something about the quality of the house's
stillness told her that Carter hadn't returned.

She had no idea how much property was being auctioned and had not
thought to ask him when he would return, and as she cautiously climbed
off the bed, wincing as her sore muscles protested, she told herself
that it was a relief to have the house to herself, that she would be
more than glad if he chose not to return at all.

She had a bath rather than a shower, hoping the warmth of the water and
a generous handful of her mother's bath salts might do something to
release the ache from her body.

She still felt physically drained, and very hungry.  The dogs would
need feeding, she reminded herself as she dressed in a clean T-shirt
and her jeans, and so would the rest of the livestock.  Since Carter
had not seen fit to tell her when he was returning, she suspected she
would have to undertake these tasks herself.

It was only when she had finished feeding the goats and checked their
tethers that she noticed the newly planted rows of vegetables wilting
under the still hot sun.  Frowningly she studied them.  They needed
watering.  Carter had told her he would attend to this chore when he
got back, but she wasn't a helpless Victorian clinging-vine, incapable
of doing anything for herself.  She would show him that she was just as
capable of doing this task as he.  Purposefully she hurried over to the
greenhouse, fixing the hose pipe to the outdoor tap and carrying the
reel as far as the newly planted beds, where she fastened a sprinkler
bar to the pipe and set it firmly in the middle of the area she wanted
to water

Returning to the tap she turned it on and watched with some
satisfaction as cooling jets of water, glittering like diamonds in the
still-strong sunshine, fell on the thirsty plants.  She stayed for a
few minutes to check that the sprinkler was working properly and then
went back indoors.

There was still no sign of Carter, and she was far too hungry to wait
and see if he returned before having something to eat.  Besides, why
should she wait for him after all?  He meant nothing to her, nor she to
him.  Maybe he had asked her to go with him this afternoon, but he must
have had an ulterior motive--he couldn't possibly have wanted her
company.  Not when he had women like this morning's blonde breathlessly
hanging on his every word, she reflected sourly.

She took some eggs from the larder, and broke them into a bowl,
discovering as she beat them that she was doing so with a lot more
gusto than the task required.  Scrambled eggs on toast, a cup of coffee
and some fruit.  Wonderful.

As she made the scrambled eggs, she acknowledged wryly that Peter would
have shown scant enthusiasm for such fare.  If Peter had a vice it was
that he liked to be seen willing and dining in the right places, and by
'right places' Peter meant the kind of places where he could make the
right kind of prestigious business contacts.  Sometimes she winced a
little to hear him boasting of having dined at the next table to such
and such a person, although she had noticed that when he related these
incidents to his parents his mother always smiled approvingly, quite
plainly delighting in what she was being told.  Was it only her perhaps
too-critical ear that caught the note of almost pompous self- conceit
with which Peter related the over-rich menus, the variety of wines and
the highly inflated prices that went with them?  She herself much
preferred simple food.  There were even occasions when she actually
invented excuses to prevent her from accompanying Peter on some of his
many business dinners, she acknowledged guiltily as she spooned the
eggs on to her warm toast and carried the plate over to the table.

Her head was still aching threateningly, and although the sky was clear
outside she hadn't forgotten that Carter had said thunderstorms were
forecast.

If and when it came she hoped it was at night, when she could safely
bury her head under the bedclothes and cower there unseen.  It wasn't
so much the thunder that terrified her but the lightning.  Peter had
told her very caustically what he thought of this childish fear,
refusing to even listen when she had tried to explain that it was an
uncontrollable as it was irrational.

Her parents were far more understanding, and she knew that her father
tended to blame himself for it because he had had to leave her alone in
that long-ago storm when the lightning had struck and destroyed the oak
tree, while he'd rescued a cow which had got herself caught on some
barbed wire.

Her meal eaten, she washed up and poured herself a second cup of
coffee.  She still fel: drained and drowsy, her head tightly banded
with tension.  She wanted to rest, but her thoughts wouldn't let her,
driving her to pace the kitchen, stopping con S stantly to stare out
of the window, almost as though she was willing her mother's car to
suddenly materialise in the yard with Carter at the wheel.

Which was ridiculous.  All she had wanted from the moment she'd arrived
and found him here was for him to leave.  And now that he had done,
albeit only temporarily, she was so restless and edgy that anyone would
think she actually missed him.

She had just finished her second cup of coffee and was reluctantly
beginning to think that Carter wasn't going to return until later when
she heard the sound of a car and saw the bright red body work of her
mother's convertible coming down the lane.

For some obscure reason, instead of staying where she was in the
kitchen she hurried upstairs.  She didn't want to give Carter the
impression that she was hanging around waiting for him, she told
herself firmly.  Because, of course, she wasn't doing that.  It was
just that she had become so used to him being around that she was
conscious of his absence.

She heard the car stop and then seconds later the kitchen door open,
but when she heard Carter bel lowing her name like an enraged bull she
stared at the closed bedroom door as though unable to believe her
ears.

It wasn't until she heard him pounding upstairs that she actually
moved, opening the bedroom door at the same moment as he banged
impatiently on it.

"Oh, there you are," he said unnecessarily.  He was breathing hard and
he looked absolutely furiously angry, she recognised.

"Oh, dear.  Didn't you get the farm?"  she asked him, immediately
suspecting the cause of his fury, but to her surprise he gritted, "Yes,
I got it.  What the devil are you playing at, Elspeth?  I presume it
was you who put that sprinkler on, wasn't it?"

Elspeth stared at him, totally confused both by his anger and his
question.

"Of course it was me," she assured him.

"I went out, saw that those poor plants were wilting in the full heat
of the sun and naturally I put on the sprinkler.  You did say that you
would be back in time to do the watering, but--' " I am back in time,"
he told her gratir.gly, and then burst out as though completely unable
to stop himself, " My God, don't you know anything--and you a farmer's
daughter?  You never--repeat-never water anything when it's in full
sunlight.  "

Elspeth stared at him, the words of rejection burning on her tongue
until suddenly too late, from out of the past, she heard her mother's
soft voice explaining gently to her as a child why plants should only
be watered when they were in the shade.

It was a novice's mistake, inexcusable in someone of her upbringing,
and the thought of the potential damage she could have caused made the
colour leave her face.

"I'll go and turn it off," she muttered, too shocked to attempt to
defend herself, but Carter stopped her, putting his arm across the open
doorway to bar the exit.

"Oh, no, you don't.  That will only compound your stupidity," he told
her acidly.

"The sun's still on those beds, and if you turn off the water now...
The best thing we can do is to leave it on until the sun's gone and
then pray--and I do mean pray-that no harm's been done.  Turn off the
water now and we'll lose the whole lot with leaf-burn."

He was furious with her, scornfully, acidly, bitterly angry, and she
couldn't really blame him and yet.  and yet.  had she been this
morning's pretty, flirtatious blonde, she doubted that he would have
spoken to her so contemptuously.  He was right, though, she ought to
have remembered, to have known better, and she dreaded to think what
she would have cost her parents if the new crops were damaged.  As
Carter said, they would just have to pray that no harm had been done.

"I'm going out to put on the sprinklers in the greenhouses," Carter
told her shortly.

"I'll come with you," she said awkwardly, suddenly anxious to make
amends, to prove that she wasn't totally useless, and it hurt her far
more than she could have believed possible when he turned in the
doorway and told her scathingly, "Thanks" but no thanks.  "

She discovered when he had gone that she was perilously close to tears
and that, moreover, her headache had come back with a vengeance.  As
she went dispiritedly downstairs, somewhere in the distance she heard
the first warning rumble of thunder.

That was all she needed, she thought bitterly as she strained her ears,
hoping against hope that she had just imagined it.  Altogether it had
been a horrendous day, and she was only too thankful that it would soon
be over.  At least if she took herself off to bed with something to
read, no more disasters could overtake her, she decided miserably,
going into the sitting-room to look along the bookshelves for a
suitably soporific novel.

But as she was looking the telephone rang.  She picked up the receiver
automatically, surprised to hear Peter's voice on the other end of the
line.

"Bad news, I'm afraid," he told her, sounding almost nervous.

"I'm afraid I'm not going to be able to make it this weekend after
all."

CHAPTER NINE

elspeth stared disbelievingly at the receiver.

"But Peter, we arranged--' " Look, I know what we arranged.  " He
sounded harassed, petulant almost, as though he was both irritated by
her and nearly afraid of her.

"But something else has come up.  Mother rang me last night.  An old
friend of the family, my godmother in actual fact, is coming down from
Scotland for the weekend and naturally Mother wants me there.  She's
bringing her daughter with her and, as Mother said, it would almost be
an insult to them both if I weren't there, and of course it would
hopelessly upset Mother's dinner-table numbers.  She's invited the
Brigadier round to partner my godmother, and--' " And you of course
will be partnering her daughter," Elspeth supplied for him, her voice
suddenly acid.

"I see.  And this, of course, is far more important than being here
with me, despite the fact that we arranged this weekend weeks ago,
despite the fact that I need you here."

Silence.  She bit down hard on her lip, realising shockingly and
furiously that she had been betrayed that as far as Peter was
concerned his mother's wishes, his mother's needs, were far more
important than her own, that his loyalty and for all she knew his love
lay not with her, but with his mother.

It was a galling and extremely unpleasant realisation.

Swallowing her anger, she said as calmly as she could, "Peter, please,
I need you here.  I'm sure if you explained to your mother... After
all, we are virtually on the point of being married--surely my claims
on your time, on your--' She broke off.  She could almost see him
twitching, uncomfortably guiltily, shifting almost furtively in the
chair by his desk.

"It's only one weekend, Elspeth.  You know I'm not a country person.

Quite honestly I don't see why you needed to go rushing off to Cheshire
in the first place, especially since your parents didn't even have the
decency to delay their departure until your arrival.  If you ask me,
that stepcousin of yours or whatever he is has them completely under
his thumb.  If they lose the entire business it will be their own
fault. I tried to warn your father over the phone.  "

Elspeth stiffened.  This was news to her.

"You did what?"  she asked dangerously.

"I've just told you.  I tried to warn them, but of course your father
wouldn't listen."

"Peter, we agreed that nothing would be said about that until we had
some concrete proof.  We agreed."

"It was for their own benefit, Elspeth.  And look, about this
weekend--there's really nothing to stop you from coming down to the
south coast with me.  I'm sure Mother would be delighted."

"Really?  When my presence would put her dinner-table numbers out still
further?"  Elspeth enquired with acid sweetness.

"Peter, I've never asked you to do anything for me, but I'm asking you
now.  Please, please come up to Cheshire this weekend as we
arranged."

She told herself that she wasn't testing him or their relationship,
that this had nothing to do with Carter or that kiss, nor with the
deficiencies she was suddenly seeing in her relationship with Peter. 
It was simply a matter of knowing where she stood with the man she was
going to marry.  It was not that she wanted to be more important to him
than his mother, it was just--it was just that suddenly and sharply she
ached for a little less practicality and a lot more passion.

"Elspeth, don't be ridiculous."  He sounded testy and irritated.

"You know I can't.  I've already explained to you.  Look, once you come
back to London we'll--' " No, Peter," she interrupted ruthlessly.

"Either you spend this weekend here with me, or our relationship's
over."

There was a silence, and then he blustered, "Look, Elspeth, this isn't
like you, and I'm certainly not going to give in to that kind of
blackmail.  I can't let Mother down.  I can understand that you want me
with you."  Was he actually preening himself because of what she had
said?  Was he actually enjoying refusing her?

"We'll talk about it when you're in a less emotional frame of mind."

"No, Peter," she told him steadily.

"We won't talk about it, because I've just realised we no longer have
anything to talk about.  It's over.  Goodbye, Peter."

And she put the receiver down on him before he could say another
word.

It was over; she and Peter were no longer a couple.  She was no longer
almost engaged, committed.  Oddly, she felt neither pain nor relief,
only a numbing emptiness, an awareness of a great yawning gap where her
future had once been.  There would be time later to feel hurt,
betrayed, maybe even regret and remorse, but she knew already that
there was no going back.  That smugness she had heard in Peter's voice,
that sureness that he was in the right and that she would see it, that
refusal to be aware of her feelings or her needs, had said more than
any words.  Had there even been a touch of relief behind his smugness
when she had thrown that ultimatum at him?

She knew someone who would be pleased to hear that their relationship
was over.  Peter's mother had never made any secret of the fact that
she didn't think Elspeth good enough for her only child.  No doubt she
would far rather see Peter married to some timid, nervous girl whom she
could dominate in the same way she had always dominated her husband and
son.

She was shivering, Elspeth suddenly realised;

and more than that, she felt distinctly odd, quite faint and
lightheaded.

Somehow or other she made her way back to the kitchen, bumping
painfully into the table as she did so, making her way to the sink
where she turned on the cold tap and held her wrists beneath its icy
flood, hoping the cold water would revive her.

It was the approaching storm that was making her feel so unwell, she
told herself stoically, blinking away the tears which had suddenly
blurred her vision.  Tears of shock, and the pain of discovering that
someone she had believed would put her first in his life had actually
put her a very poor second.  And yet beneath those emotions ran a tiny
thread of something else.  Relief?  Surely not.  She had wanted to
marry Peter.  Less than three days away from him couldn't have changed
her so much that now she no longer did so.

Her head was aching unbearably, so much so that she could hardly think.
She raised her hand to massage her temples and stiffened with atavistic
fear as the distant hills were suddenly illuminated by a forked dart of
lightning.

The storm was coming closer.  She felt all her old childhood fear
returning, intensified by the emotional trauma of recent events, so
that her senses were pretematurally heightened and she was unable to
exert her normal firm control over her reactions.

She was actually trembling, she realised as she turned on the tap and
tried to pour herself a glass of water.

She felt physically sick from the pressure inside her head; every
instinct she possessed urged her to seek sanctuary somewhere safe and
dark, somewhere womb like she reflected analytically, somewhere where
she could escape from her physical pain and be safe from the storm.

Somewhere where Peter's defection would no longer hurt--not her heart,
she acknowledged sadly, but her pride.  It was her pride that was stung
by his refusal to put their relationship first.  Had she truly loved
him?  But then she had never.  She bit her lip.

Love had never really formed an important part of their relationship.
She had liked Peter, admired his determination to succeed in his chosen
career, had thought it would be enough for them to have similar goals,
similar purposes in life.  She had chosen him carefully and she had
thought intelligently, and yet the very first time their relationship
was tested he had failed her.  How would she have felt if she had not
made that discovery until after they were married?  What was it she
really wanted from a man?  She closed her eyes, wincing as the thunder
rolled closer.

"Close your eyes and think of something nice," her mother had once
urged her compassionately during a particularly bad storm.  Think of
being warm, safe and protected.  "

Out of habit more than anything else, she clung to those words now,
using them almost like a mantra, but instead of visualising as she
normally did somewhere safe and dark where she was protected from the
wrath of the storm, the only mental images she had were ones of
Carter's arms holding her, Carter's arms protecting her.  Carter's
voice comforting her.

"No."

The protest broke from her lips as she wrenched herself away from the
temptation of her own thoughts.  Her heart was thumping far too
quickly, and not just from fear--or at least not fear of the storm. 
Was this why she had felt that tiny thread of release at the ending of
her relationship with Peter?  Because of Carter?  Because of a man whom
she knew to be untrustworthy, and yet who nevertheless aroused her in
ways which she had thought in her ignorance belonged only to teenagers
and the fevered imaginations of certain novelists?

Carter--where was he?  Why didn't he come back?  The sky had filled
with black clouds, the thunder rumbled closer, drawn, she suspected, by
the awesome mystery of The Edge--that strange, magical place where
locals said no birds ever sang and where Merlin was supposed to haunt
the underground caverns.

She shivered violently, the tiny hairs on her arms lifting in
frightened awareness of the force of the coming storm.  She was
trembling so much she could hardly move.  When Carter came back-She
tensed, remembering how furious he had been with her, how contemptuous.
No doubt when he came in and discovered her standing shivering with
fright, and all because of a thunderstorm, he would be doubly
contemptuous.  She caught sight of a bottle of her mother's elderberry
wine standing on the dresser.

Perhaps a glass of that might steady her nerves a little.  She walked
across the kitchen and on the third attempt managed to pour some of the
pale liquid into her glass.  The glass she had picked up was the one
she had used for her drink of water, and she had perhaps rather
overfilled it, she recognised, taking a deep gulp.

The wine was instantly warming, relaxing the tensed muscles of her
throat, filling the empty space inside her with pleasant heat.  She
could almost feel it unlocking her over-tensed nerves, Elspeth decided,
carefully carrying both the glass and the bottle over to the table and
slumping into one of the chairs.

Common sense told her that she really ought to go upstairs and get into
bed, where she could bury her head under the bedclothes and blot out
the storm, but she felt strangely reluctant to leave the kitchen;

almost as though something was making her stay, making her wait--for
what?

For Carter.

She took another quick gulp of the wine, trying desperately to ignore
what her own brain was telling her.

Of course she wasn't waiting for Carter.  Why on earth should she be?

He meant nothing to her, nothing at all, other than the fact that he
might be trying to destroy her parents' business.  That was her only
interest in him, of course it was.  And if when he had kissed her she
had just happened to react.  well, then all that proved was that--that
he was an extremely seductive and dangerous man, she thought bitterly,
staring in some confusion into her almost empty glass.

Had she really drunk that full glass of wine?  She could only remember
taking the first two gulps.  Now the glass was virtually empty.  It was
true that there was a delicious warm feeling in the pit of her stomach,
she acknowledged, focusing with some difficulty.

It was also true that her headache had started to recede a little.

Perhaps if she had a little more wine it might go altogether.  It
seemed extraordinarily difficult to fill up her glass.  For some reason
it kept on moving.  In fact the entire room was swaying very gently
around her, almost as though they were at sea.  The threatening crash
of the thunder was getting closer.  The storm was going to pass right
overhead, Elspeth recognised, shivering as her fear broke through the
wine-induced haze. She heard someone moaning, a sharp, high-pitched
sound, and stared wildly round the kitchen, wondering if she had
imagined the noise--and then realised that she herself had made it.

In the corner, Jasper the parrot was whistling to himself, apparently
oblivious to the storm.  Elspeth winced as lightning tore jaggedly at
the sky, and quickly took another deep gulp of her wine.  It certainly
seemed to be helping; she certainly felt less terror than normal.  Her
fear was still there, but the wine had distanced her from it.  Was she
perhaps just a little bit tipsy?  she asked herself uneasily, suddenly
aware of how very uncoordinated her movements had become.  Surely not.
She very rarely drank, and she certainly never got--tipsy.  But perhaps
she had better not drink any more.  Peter didn't approve of women who
drank.  Tears of self-pity filled her eyes and slid down her face.  She
tried to brush them away and missed.

The storm was getting closer--too close.  She was just beginning to
feel the old familiar terror gathering force inside her, when the back
door suddenly opened and Carter came in.

She tried to stand up, which she told herself later was her first big
mistake.  Why on earth she thought she ought to stand up, she had no
idea, only that it seemed as though Carter was towering over her,
glowering down at her, as he looked first at her tear-blotched face and
then at the glass and bottle.

"What the devil...?"

Sensitive to his anger, Elspeth immediately flared up.  What right had
he to dictate to her what she could or could not do?  She told him so
in a husky, confused sentence which somehow or other became very
jumbled and which she hastily concluded, saying crossly, "And anyway,
why shouldn't I have a glass of wine if I want one?"  Not for anything
was she going to tell him why she had drunk it.

"A glass," Carter retorted scathingly.

"You've damn near drunk the whole bottle.  Have you no idea how potent
that stuff is?  My God.  What would your precious Peter say if he could
see you now."

To her own horror Elspeth felt huge tears start to roll down her
face.

"He isn't mine any longer," she choked back at him.

"It's over."

There was a moment's silence, and then Carter demanded grimly,
"What?"

"You heard me," Elspeth told him recklessly.

"It's over.  Peter and I are no longer.  It seems that his mother's
wishes are more important to him than mine; that he'd rather spend the
weekend with her, entertaining her friends, than here with me.  And he
knew how much I wanted him here.  How important it was to me."  She
sniffed and then winced as lightning forked across the fields, her
whole body stiffening as she stared outside, unable to drag her
terrified gaze away.

"Elspeth."  Carter's voice suddenly changed, lost its impatient, angry
tone and instead, incredibly, be came gentle, tender almost.

"It's all right, the storm won't hurt you.  You're safe in here.
Look..."

Elspeth turned her head and tried to focus on him, struggling to bring
her thoughts to some kind of order, trying to clear the drink-induced
miasma from her brain.

"I know you're frightened of storms," Carter was saying quietly.

"Your mother told me."  He saw her expression, and his own mouth
suddenly became very grim.  Tor God's sake, what kind of man do you
think I am?

Don't you think I have any compassion, any understanding?  It's been a
bad day all round for you, hasn't it?  First Peter, and now this.  " He
reached out and touched her face gently with his fingertips and she had
an insane desire to lean into him and on to him, to simply let him take
charge, to... " Look, why don't you go upstairs and get into bed.  I'll
bring you up a cup of tea.  I can understand why you did this," he
added wryly, picking up the wine bottle.

"But it really isn't the answer."

Did he actually think she had deliberately got drunk?

"It was a mistake," she told him huskily.

"The glass.  I didn't realise..."

Her thoughts had become extremely muddled-chaotically so, and she was
finding it impossible to concentrate on anything other than how
wonderful Carter looked, and how much she would like him to take her in
his arms right now and kiss her the way he had done before.  He was
looking right at her and with such a strange expression on his face
that for one moment she thought she had actually given voice to that
desire, but then she heard him saying curtly, "I think we'd better get
you upstairs, and then--' Just as she was protesting that she could
manage, the thunder rolled noisily overhead, followed by the
unmistakable sound of glass breaking.

"Damn--that must be one of the greenhouses.  I'd better go out and
check the damage.  You stay right where you are," he told Elspeth as
she tried to get up.

"I'll be as quick as I can."

He heard her gasp as lightning forked brilliantly outside and turned to
look at her.

"Elspeth."

She shook her head, fighting to clear her fogged brain.

"I'm all right," she lied huskily.

"You go and check on the greenhouse."  She'd never forgive herself if
more damage than necessary was caused through her inability to cope
with her stupid fear.  She could see that Carter was reluctant to leave
her, but they both knew that the greenhouse was more important than her
dread of the storm.

"Well, stay right where you are," Carter told her a second time, as he
opened the back door.

"I'll be as quick as I can."

But once he was gone, she couldn't stay in the kitchen any longer--and
besides, what did she need his help for?  All she needed was to be
somewhere dark and safe.  Somewhere where the storm couldn't reach her
and where she could give in to the need to dose her eyes.

It took her quite some time to weave her way across the kitchen and to
open the door, but at last she managed it, climbing the stairs with
slow precision and then making her way very carefully along the landing
to her bedroom.

She found the bed without having to switch on the light, and then
paused, hesitating before dropping down on to it, frowning in
concentration as she fought with the zipper on her jeans, finally
managing to struggle out of them and to remove her top.  Her underwear
quickly followed and was left to lie carelessly on the floor, something
she would never normally have dreamed of doing, but her head was
spinning so much and she felt so very, very tired.

In fact, in the act of searching for her nightdress she stopped and
yawned hugely, promptly forgetting what it was she had been about to do
as she half climbed and half stumbled into the middle of the bed, only
just managing to push back the duvet, and then quickly burrowing
beneath it, pulling it right up over her ears and using it to blot out
the sounds of the storm outside.

"Elspeth.  Elspeth, wake up."

Someone was shaking her, trying to wake her up,

when she didn't want to be woken up.  She said as much, protesting
sleepily, and then abruptly making the delicious discovery that the
hands firmly trying to shake her awake were attached to arms, and that
those arms felt absolutely wonderful beneath her exploring fingertips.
smooth, hard, and so very strong, she could even feel the muscles in
them contracting beneath her tentative exploration, an awareness that
made her feel extremely powerful and rather triumphant until she
realised that they were being moved away from her.

She muttered a protest and clung, wriggling closer.

"Elspeth."

This time the voice was right in her ear, making her wince and frown.

It was a very nice voice, she decided, refusing to open her eyes, even
if it did sound rather cross, and the sensation of it so close to her
ear was sending the most delicious spirals of sensation over her
skin;

so delicious in fact that she felt it only fair to show her
appreciation, which she promptly did by burying her face in the lovely
warm angle between Carter's neck and shoulder, experimentally nibbling
at his bare skin.  It tasted even better than she had dreamed, so very,
very good, in fact, that she couldn't resist nibbling her way up to his
ear, where she told him sleepily, "Mmm... Carter, this is really nice.
I wish you would hold me properly though and kiss me," she added
reproachfully.

She felt the hiss of his indrawn breath and then the tension invade his
body.

tom are drunk," he told her flatly.

"And what's more you're in my bed."

Now she did open her eyes, propping herself up on one elbow as she
withdrew from him in affronted dignity.  He was, she saw with some plea
sure, undressed, and was obviously about to get into bed.

Her bed.  She had been right about that.  She recognised the shadowy
shape of the room and the position of the window.

She told him as much, virtuously keeping her eyes on his face instead
of letting her gaze wander, as it very much wished to do, over the
exposed expanse of his chest.  It was a pity, she decided regretfully,
that the room's shadows cloaked the rest of him, because she was sure
that he had the kind of body that she would find it very pleasurable
indeed to look at.

Oddly, it didn't strike her as the least bit strange that she should be
thinking of behaving in such a way, and as for Carter's allegation that
she was drunk.  Impossible, she never drank.  She dismissed a hazy
recollection of her mother's elderberry wine and a very large tumbler
and instead concentrated on her victory.

"This is my room," she reaffirmed.

"Yes," Carter agreed grimly.

"But at the moment / happen to be sleeping in it.  You are sleeping in
your parents'."

Elspeth's forehead furrowed.

"Not.  I'm not--I'm sleeping here, or at least I was until you woke me
up."

"Well, now that you're awake, do you suppose you could get out of my
bed and go and sleep in your own?"  Carter rasped, patently
unmollified.

Elspeth blinked owlishly at him.  He really was getting rather cross,
and as far as she could see there wasn't any need.

"It's all right.

Carter," she told him in a kind voice, patting the empty space beside
her.

"There's plenty of room in here for both of us."

"What?  Oh, for God's sake don't be so stupid.  I can't sleep with
you.

I don't want to.  "

Elspeth froze.  No, of course, he didn't want to.  Just like Peter
hadn't wanted to.  She wasn't desirable enough, attractive enough.

She said as much to him, sitting up in bed, her chin firming proudly,
completely oblivious to the fact that a watery moon had broken through
the clouds and was shedding a faint silver light into the room so that
her body was illuminated in its trans S

lucent gleam, her breasts pale and full and tipped with small, hard
nipples.

"Elspeth," Carter groaned despairingly.

"No, please don't make me go," she whispered.

"Please, Carter, let me stay.  I don't want to be on my own.  Not
tonight."

"If you stay I'll make love to you," Carter warned her savagely.

"I want you to," Elspeth told him shakily.

"In fact I think I've wanted to ever since--ever since you kissed me
down by the stream."

"This is madness--complete madness," she heard him saying thickly, but
it didn't stop him from leaning towards her, and slowly, so slowly that
it was more of an adoration than a mere caress, he ran his hands up
over her body, from the curve of her hips to the softness of her
breasts, pausing briefly there, while her breath locked in her throat
and her heart pounded with sledgehammer beats and then his hands moved
on, cupping the rounded ball of each shoulder.  He leaned forward and
kissed her, a questioning, delicate kiss that did little more than
brush the softness of her lips, but she trembled so violently under it
that both of them stilled.

"You really want this?"  Carter demanded against her lips.

She couldn't speak.  Could only nod her head, her eyes huge and
brilliant, her body achingly aware that, with his, it could learn
pleasures so intense that they would never be forgotten.

He kissed her again, his mouth hard, the kiss brief, and then again and
again, until their mouths fused in hot, eager need and this time when
his hands touched her body it was with the sure, knowledgeable touch of
a lover, stroking, enticing, exciting, making her gasp beneath his
mouth and arch under his hands as they kneeled body to body in the
moonlight.

Her own hands, more skilled, more knowing, more wanton than she had
ever dreamed they could be, stroked him, told him how much they
delighted in the pleasure of this intimacy with him.

When he buried his mouth in the soft curve of her throat, she arched
eagerly against him, her breasts pressed flat against his chest, her
nipples sensitised by the quickening movements of his body.

When he laid her down on the bed, she gazed at him in wondering
delight, aching to be able to find the words to tell him how he made
her feel.

But it seemed that words were unnecessary and that her trembling flesh
silently conveyed to him its pleasure in his touch by responding
quiveringly to the exquisite sensations aroused first by his hands and
then by his mouth.

When his tongue-tip traced the aureole of her breast she shuddered
wildly and clung to him, gasping his name, her whole body tensing in
spasms of white-hot pleasure when he responded to her need by opening
his mouth over her tight, hard nipple and then by suckling on it with
increasing urgency.

Elspeth had never dreamed herself capable of such wild abandonment, of
such fevered, aching need, of such instinctive, overwhelming
sensuality, as she opened her body to him, and wrapped herself around
him, her mouth trembling, burning where it touched his skin, eager to
absorb the taste and texture of him.  Gone were the restraints of the
past.  This was where she wanted to be--where she needed to be.

She felt no self-consciousness, no guilt, no hesitation.  only an
overwhelming knowledge of the rightness of what she was doing.

It was as great a pleasure to touch Carter, to stroke and taste him, to
feel his body shudder with reciprocal desire when she did so, as it was
to have him touching her.  It was like having a banquet of delights
spread out in front of her, she thought dizzily, nuzzling his throat
and then his shoulder, exploring the indentation of his spine and then
the hard, flat plane of his buttocks, her body thrilling with awareness
of the aroused heat and weight of him against her.

"Elspeth, you don't know what you're doing to me," he told her thickly
in between kisses.

"I know what you're doing to me," she whispered shakily, watching his
eyes go dark as his hand stroked her body and felt its betraying
tremble.  He was touching her so gently, so intimately, so pleasurably
that there was nothing she could do other than give herself up to the
voluptuous, velvet darkness of that pleasure, unable to stop him even
when she felt the mind-destroying lap of his tongue against the most
intimate part of her body and knew shockingly that there was nothing
she wanted more than to return the intimacy of that caress, unless it
was the fully aroused heat of him deep within her body, easing that
tormenting ache that the soft stroke of his tongue was deliberately
arousing.

She told him so, unaware of the jumbled litany of praise and pleas that
left her lips, knowing only that his arousal, his desire were suddenly
tumultuously urgent and that he, like her, seemed to know instinctively
that her quivering body needed to feel him deep within its softness.

The sensation of him being there, the careful tenderness with which he
controlled his body's powerful surge, the way in which he held her,
gentled her and held back his own pleasure while he shepherded hers,
filled her with such emotion, such joy--such love, she recognised, her
mind and flesh suddenly free of any kind of self-deceit--that she
opened herself willingly and eagerly to him, and the passage of his
flesh within her own was so acutely pleasurable that she met each
thrust with trembling eagerness, letting the forces inside her gather
and coalesce until they couldn't be contained any longer.

She cried out in the first white heat of shattering release, felt
herself fall through space into the safety of Carter's arms as the
initial sharp dazzle of pleasure left her boneless and fluid.

She could hear Carter breathing heavily, feel his body trembling
slightly in the aftermath of his own release.  He was still holding
her, stroking her damp skin, whispering soft words to her that she was
too exhausted to hear.

All at once she felt hugely tired, so physically relaxed that it was
impossible to move, impossible to do anything other than turn into the
warmth of Carter's body, nuzzle his throat appreciatively and then fall
deeply asleep as she snuggled deeper into his embrace.

CHAPTER TEN

'i've brought you a cup of tea.  "

Elspeth shuddered wildly as she recognised Carter's voice.  Her head
was pounding, her mouth felt sour and dry, her stomach was churning
nauseously, but worst of all the sound of Carter's voice had brought an
effortless and total recall of the events of the previous night.

The fact that she was now in her parents' bed and not her own did not
provide any reassurance that she had simply dreamed the whole appalling
incident.  For one thing, she doubted that her imagination was that
good.  For another, every time she moved there were unfamiliar aches
and tensions within her body which she was quite sure had nothing to do
with the pounding in her head or the nausea in her stomach.

Tea.  It was the last thing she wanted.  No, Carter's presence in her
bedroom reminding her of what she had done--that was the last thing she
wanted.

She wished there were some way she could block out forever her all too
vivid memories of the way she had seduced--there really was no other
word for it--Carter.  A faint moan escaped involuntarily from her tight
throat.  She opened her eyes just in time to see Carter hurriedly
putting down the cup and advancing towards the bed.

Foolishly, in view of what had happened, she clutched hold of the
bedclothes as though in terror of having them ripped from her,
shrinking back under them, while Carter came to an abrupt halt, his
face blenching.

"I've got to go and check on the greenhouses, see if there's been any
more damage."

She nodded her head, her throat too tight to allow her to speak.  She
wished he would go and leave her if not in peace, then at least in
privacy to digest the unappetising memories of her wanton behaviour.

It was the drink, of course.  There could be no other explanation, and
everyone knew that strong alcohol could have the strangest effect on
those not used to drinking it.  Which was why, of course, sensible
mothers advised their teenage daughters to treat it with great
caution.

Carter seemed strangely reluctant to leave her room.  He had walked
over to the window and was standing staring out of it.  This morning he
was dressed in jeans and a long-sleeved cotton shirt.  He turned round
abruptly and where the collar lay open she saw a small dark mark, like
a bruise, just above his collarbone.  She stared at it like someone
transfixed, her colour coming and going.

Had she done that?  Vague, unnerving images filtered through her aching
brain.  She remembered clutching on to Carter's arms, digging her nails
into his hard muscles, telling him in frantic whispers how much she had
wanted to touch and taste him.

A small whimper of protest bubbled in her throat.  Numbly she pulled
the be clothes over her head.

She heard Carter sigh, a small, explosive sound.  Of what?  Anger?

Irritation?  Amusement?  After all, he hadn't stopped her, had he?  Oh,
no, he had let her go right ahead and make a complete fool of
herself.

And he could have stopped her.  couldn't he?  He could have refused.

Refused to what?  Allow her to arouse him?  Would she have wanted
that?

Would she have been feeling any better this morning if she were
confronting the knowledge that he had rejected her?  At least last
night had proved to her that she was capable of arousing a man to
desire, that not all men were as cold as Peter.  But to have made love
with a man--no, she corrected herself sharply, not with a man, but to a
man--for no other reason than to prove she could arouse him to desire.
How truly appalling.  But no more appalling surely than to have got
drunk and then made sexual advances to a man with whom one was secretly
and very desperately in love.

In love.  She, in love with Carter.  How ridiculous how impossible.

Anyway, she didn't believe in falling in love.  She was far too mature,
far too sensible.  Mature a woman of her age who made love without even
stopping to think of taking any kind of precautions against pregnancy
or any thing else.

"Elspeth," she heard Carter saying urgently.

"We've got to talk."

Talk.  That was the last thing she wanted to do.

"Go away," she moaned from beneath the bed clothes.

"Please, just go away."

Perhaps he could hear the hysteria she was only just keeping at bay, or
perhaps he was really as appalled by the whole thing as she was herself
and eager only to escape, to make it plain to her that last night was
an aberration, that it meant nothing.  Well, there was no need for him
to reinforce that truth to her.  She was quite prepared to take the
blame, to admit that the whole thing had been her fault.  And if he
thought that she was the kind of woman who believed that just because
he had been her first lover, just because she might be carrying his
child, just because she was quite despairingly and hopelessly in love
with him, it meant that he owed her anything at all, she would soon
show him that she wasn't.

She waited until she was sure he was gone before peering over the
bedclothes.  Outside the sky was a soft grey.  The storm was over--her
whole life was over, she thought mournfully, getting out of bed and
staggering sickly as she felt the full impact of last night's bottle of
elderberry wine.  Elderberry wine--what on earth had possessed her?

It wasn't even as though she didn't know how strong it was.

In the bathroom, she suppressed a strong desire to be extremely unwell
and searched feverishly through her mother's cabinet for something to
subdue the riot in her head and stomach.

Finding nothing, she made do with cleaning her teeth with enough vigour
to make her head ache even further, having a shower, washing her hair,
acknowledging that it was too likely that she wouldn't even be able to
keep an aspirin down and making herself a promise that the first thing
she was going to do was to drive to the village and buy herself some
Alka Seltzer.

Driving her car down the bumpy lane was a form of self-inflicted
torture that made her vow she would never touch another drop of alcohol
in her life.  She parked her car in the village and climbed out
cautiously.  The pain in her head had reached catastrophic proportions,
and she was only thankful that her poor eyes weren't forced to endure
the bright light of the sun.

She had almost reached the chemist when someone stopped her, a bright
female voice calling her name.  She turned round, recognising one of
the girls she had been at school with.

She had two small children in tow and she grinned happily when she saw
Elspeth.

"My goodness, what on earth's the matter with you?"  she asked
anxiously, seeing Elspeth's white face.

"Hangover," Elspeth admitted unwillingly, wincing as Louise laughed.

"You?  I don't believe it.  Weren't you the one who virtuously refused
to join in when we all drank that bottle of cider behind the bike
sheds?"

"Yes--more's the pity.  If I had done, I'd have had more sense than to
get myself in this state."

"Did--er--Carter join you in this revelry?"  her friend enquired
dulcetly.

Elspeth shot her an acid look.  She and Louise had once been close
friends, and still kept in touch.  She had been Louise's senior
bridesmaid when she'd married Alien, and she was godmother to both her
girls.

"Carter?"  she repeated with what she hoped was convincing
disinterest.

"Yes.  He is staying at your folks' place, isn't he?  Alien said he was
bidding at yesterday's auction.

He got the old Thatchford place, didn't he, and those fields next to
your parents?  Which reminds me--did seeing him again stir up any of
those wanton teenage yearnings?  " She giggled conspiratorially.

"Remember how both of us used to drool over him that summer your aunt
first brought him here?"

Elspeth, who had been concentrating solely on the news Louise had just
given her, looked at her friend and snapped defensively, "You may have
drooled--I never did.  I disliked him.  I always have."

"Oh, come on.  I know that was what you liked to pretend, but we both
know the truth.  Remember how I caught you writing his name all over
the front of your maths rough-book, and drawing hearts all over the
place with his initials on them.  You were crazy about him.  We both
were.  Remember how we used to wonder what it would be like if he
kissed us.  My God, when I look at these two and remember what I've got
to go through I start thinking I ought to lock them up in a nunnery.

How's Peter, by the way?  You two set a date yet?  "

"No--nor are we going to," Elspeth told her shortly, ignoring her
friend's surprise and pressing her hand to her aching head.

"Look, why don't you come back with me and have a cup of coffee?"

She wanted to refuse but Louise refused to let her, and there was
something rather comforting about letting Louise bully her
affectionately, treating her almost in the same way as she did her two
small daughters.

And besides, if she went home with Louise it would mean that she
needn't face Carter--at least not yet.

She spent an hour with Louise and her family, at the end of which the
Alka Seltzer Louise had given her had started to take effect.  She felt
decidedly better, and having resolutely refused to acknowledge Louise's
teasing comments about her teenage crush on Carter, she realised now
that even if she had deliberately forgotten it and even denied it,
Louise was quite right.  She had had the most mammoth crush on Carter,
had indeed dreamed and drooled over him and had even, she blushed to
recall, written his name all over her maths book.

You might be able to deceive yourself, she reflected grimly, as she
drove home, but you certainly couldn't deceive an old friend,
especially not one who had shared your growing years with you.

But she had more urgent things to dwell on than her own folly.

Louise's revelation that Carter had bought those fields had really
jolted her.  She had managed to push to the back of her mind Peter's
allegations against him, but now suddenly she was forced to confront
them.

She drove slowly down the lane and then into the yard.

As she did so the back door opened and Carter erupted into the yard.

He looked furiously angry, so angry in fact that for a moment she
almost decided not to get out of the car.  And then she're minded
herself that this was her home well, at least her parents' home that
Carter was the intruder and that, even worse, he was deliberately
setting out to ruin her parents, and that gave her the strength to push
open her door and get out.

She had scarcely put one foot on the ground be fore Carter suddenly
grabbed hold of her and virtually yanked her out of her car.  He was
almost shaking her as he demanded to know where she had been, and yet
oddly instead of feeling frightened she experienced a strange, dizzying
sense of exhilaration.

"Just where the hell have you been?"  he was demanding as he shook
her.

"If you think I'm going to let you walk out on me and back to him after
last night " I didn't walk anywhere," Elspeth interrupted him.

"I drove to the village to buy some Alka Seltzer."

"You drove in your condition?  Are you mad?

Don't you realise you could still be over the limit?  My God, have you
no sense?  "

For a moment Elspeth was too stunned to speak, and then she fired back
bitterly, "I might not have any sense, but at least I have some morals.
At least I'm not trying to destroy someone--at least I'm not trying to
steal from them.  How could you buy those fields when you know my
parents need them?  Peter was right--you've been out to cheat my
parents all along.  You bought those fields so that you can put them
out of business."

Ridiculously she was suddenly close to tears, unbearably hating knowing
that after all Peter had been right.  It didn't stop her loving
Carter--nothing could do that, she recognised dismally.  Carter stared
at her, his mouth thinning.

"Are you crazy?  I don't believe I'm hearing any of this.  I bought
those fields, not for myself, but for your parents--on their behalf, in
fact.  My God, how could you suspect...?  And to think that last night
I actually thought you were finally beginning to realise.  But it's all
Peter with you, isn't it?  Nothing else--no one else exists," he
demanded bitterly.

"Well, I don't know what kind of rules you live by, Elspeth, but the
ones I live by don't include onenight stands.

When I make love to a woman, even when she's doing the asking," he
added mercilessly, 'it's because I've already made some kind of
emotional commitment to her, because I want far more from her than the
brief pleasure of her body.  OK, so now you're going to tell me that it
only happened because you've lost Peter, that you were using me as a
substitute for him, but let me tell you this: no woman makes love to a
man the way you did to me without feeling something, and you knew damn
well it wasn't Peter you were holding in your arms last night.  You
knew damn well it wasn't Peter you wanted to kiss and hold you.  It
wasn't Peter's body you wanted--' " Stop," Elspeth demanded huskily,
and then asked, " Did you really buy those fields for my parents?  "

He gave her a hard look and said tersely, "I'm not after their
business.  I'm thinking of a much larger market than theirs--supplying
supermarkets.  I've already had some interest shown and I believe I can
make a go of it.  The reason I chose Cheshire was because of you--you,
Elspeth--you!  Yes, but if you don't believe me--' She shook her head.
Too much was happening too quickly.  She felt as though she were
falling helplessly through space with no one to help her.

"Last night," she began huskily, but Carter wouldn't let her finish.

"Last night," he told her ruthlessly, 'you asked me to make love to you
and I did what any man any normal man who's spent far too many years
crazy about a particular woman would do when that same woman whispers
to him that she wants and needs him.  I lost control.  And you may as
well know that I don't regret a moment of it.  All right, so it doesn't
matter to you that I've wasted years of my life just aching for a
chance to show you how I feel about you, it doesn't matter that it was
me who held you last night, who pleasured you, loved you.  What the
hell is it that he's got and I don't have, Elspeth, apart from your
love?  I love you, for God's sake, while he.  "

Elspeth swayed giddily.

"You love me?"

"Of course I do, dammit!"  Carter bellowed.

"When your parents told me that they thought you were getting tired of
your high-profile city life, that they felt that you wanted to come
home, I thought, at last, here's my chance.  I was on the verge of
leaving the institute anyway, and I thought, where better to settle
down than in Cheshire, so that I could be near you, so that I could
have a chance to show you--' He broke off, shaking his head.

"When we first met you were too young, just a girl.  I couldn't tell
you."

"Carter," Elspeth demanded shakily.

"Can you think of something you could do to prove to me that I'm not
imagining all this?"

Something in her voice must have alerted him to the truth.  He looked
at her and tensed.  A muscle twitched briefly in his jaw and then he
was coming towards her, taking hold of her, wrapping her in his arms,
his voice husky and just a little bit uncertain as he asked against her
mouth, "How about this?"

Hours, or was it only seconds later, Elspeth drew away from him,
convinced now beyond any doubt that he loved her just as compulsively
as she was beginning to realise she loved him, and probably had loved
him for a very long time, if she had only had the wit to realise it.

"Carter?"  she asked him, fiddling with the buttons on his shirt.

"Last night, did you really...?"  She whispered something into his ear
and blushed as he looked at her and said softly, "Yes.  Why?"

"Nothing.  Well, it's just... my memories of last night are a tiny bit
hazy, and I was wondering.  Do you think you could do it again?"  she
asked him breathlessly.

"I see.  Some lover, aren't I, if you've forgotten what it felt like
already?"  he said drily.

She smiled dreamily at him.

"Oh, no, I haven't forgotten.  I just wanted to see if it was actually
as wonderful as I remember."

"Well, Mrs.  MacDonald, is it still as wonderful as you remember?"

Carter teased his wife of exactly fifteen months as she lay contentedly
in his arms, in the shadowed peace of their bedroom.

Their two-month-old son had been taken firmly in charge by his
grandmother, who had announced that it was time that his doting parents
had a little time to themselves.

"Mmm.  I'm not sure."  Elspeth wriggled blissfully closer to him,
pretending to consider, laughter gleaming in her eyes as she suggested
thoughtfully, "I don't suppose you could do it again, could you?

Carter!  Carter!  " she protested, laughing, as her husband proceeded
to show her that he most assuredly could.

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