a forbidden loving
by
penny jordan

"Jordan's record is phenomenal' The Bookseller

A FORBIDDEN LOVING

BY PENNY JORDAN

MILLS &. B 0 0 1ST

DID YOU PURCHASE THIS BOOK WITHOUT A COVER?

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All the characters in this book have no existence outside the
imagination of the author, and have no relation whatsoever to anyone
bearing the same name or names.  They are not even distantly inspired
by any individual known or unknown to the author, and all the incidents
are pure invention.

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in
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MILLS & BOON and MILLS & BOON with the Rose Device are registered
trademarks of the publisher.

First published in Great Britain 1991 by Mills & Boon Limited This
edition 1998 Harlequin Mills & Boon Limited, Eton House, 18-24 Paradise
Road.  Richmond, Surrey TW9 ISR

Penny Jordan 1991 ISBN 0 263 80835 1 Set in Times Roman lO'/i on 13 pt
by Rowland Phototypesetting Limited Bury St.  Edmunds, Suffolk Printed
and bound in Spain by Litografia Roses S. A. " Barcelona cover
illustrator for the Penny Jordan Collector's Edition Erica Just is an
artist and illustrator working in various media, including water colour
pen and ink, and textiles.  Her studio is in Nottingham.

Her work is inspired by the natural forms, architecture and vibrant
colours that she has experienced on her travels, most especially in
Africa and India.

Erica has exhibited her work extensively in Great Britain and Europe
and has works in private and public collections.  As an illustrator she
works for a number of companies and also lectures on textile design
throughout the country.

Artwork copyright Erica Just 1997

CHAPTER ONE

hazel glanced nervously at the clock.  Only another half-hour or so and
they should be here.  A pretty, dark-haired woman of thirty-six, she
tried to hide her irritation as best she could when well-meaning people
described her as 'petite' and exclaimed that she looked far too young
to be her claimed age of thirty-six, never mind the mother of an
almost- nineteen-year-old daughter into the bargain.

But that was exactly what she was, and it was as the mother of that
very pretty, intelligent and popular nineteen-year-old that she was
fretting anxiously about the arrangements she had made for Katie's
first proper visit home since she had left for university at the end of
the summer.

It had been all very well to gulp, hold her breath and exclaim as
calmly as she could that there would be no problem when Katie had rung
up three days ago and announced breezily that when she came home for
the weekend she would not be alone, but would be bringing a friend with
her.  After all, she had had nineteen years in which to get used to the
fact that Katie was an inveterate people collector, but what she hadn't
expected was for Katie to continue excitedly, "I know you're going to
like Silas, Ma.  He's a very special person and I can't wait for the
two of you to meet."

Her heart had plummeted immediately Katie had finished speaking, and,
although she had successfully managed to hide it from her daughter, she
had been overwhelmed by a sharp sense of fear.

And yet Katie had had boyfriends before, of course; several of them in
fact; gangly, sometimes spotty young men, who blushed and stammered, or
adopted an unwittingly touching and amusing male machismo which sat
very uncomfortably on their as yet still boyish shoulders.  But this
time it was different.  This time.  This time she felt all the
apprehension and alarm of a mother who felt that her child was
threatened in some way.

She had sensed just from the way Katie spoke his name that this Silas
was important to her.  Too important.  She gave a tiny shiver, frowning
unseeingly around her small sitting-room.

She could never really understand those women who claimed that their
teenage daughters were their best friends.  She felt far too great a
sense of responsibility and awareness of life's cruelties and un
kindnesses ever to relax her maternal vigilance enough to make that
claim.

She hoped she wasn't a possessive mother.  All through Katie's growing
years she had worked hard at making sure that Katie never became
distanced from her peers or from other adults, or suffered the kind of
aloneness and isolation which she had suffered as a child.

The trouble was that Katie had been so vague about this Silas Jardine,
and she had not liked to question her too deeply.  All she knew about
him was that Katie had met him at the university and that she was sure
that he and her mother were going to get on like a house on fire.  It
sounded very ominous to Hazel.  She had been all too maternally aware
that, behind her insouciance and bright chatter, Katie was hiding
something.

Biting her bottom lip, Hazel checked round the sitting-room again.

A warm fire burned in the grate, and logs were heaped up in the basket
beside the fire, logs which had been supplied by Tom Rawlins from the
farm, about whom Katie was always teasing her by describing him as her
adoring swam.

It was true that she and Tom occasionally went out for a meal or to see
a show.  He was a widower with two grown-up children; she was.  Well,
she was the mother of an almost grown-up daughter and it was only
natural that they should have things in common.  But that was as far as
any relationship between them went.

Fortunately Tom was far too gentlemanly to make the kind of sexual
demands she so dreaded and detested receiving.

It had shocked her three years ago, when Katie had coolly announced
that it was high time that her mother stopped behaving as though she
ought to be punished and despised simply because she had given birth to
an illegitimate child, and started feeling proud of herself instead for
all that she had done for that child.

"Ma, every time a man looks at you, you shrink visibly.  You're a very
attractive woman.  Everyone says so; and I for one certainly wouldn't
object if you decided to provide me with a stepfather, providing of
course that I liked him."

"Well, for your information, I have no intentions of doing any such
thing," Hazel had retaliated sharply.

"Why not?  You should think about it," Katie had told her smartly,
adding critically, "Just look at you.  As long as I can remember it's
just been you, and me, and of course Gramps.  I know it must have been
awful for you, losing Dad like that in such an awful accident and then
finding out about me.  But I don't see why just because of that you've
got to spend the rest of your life hiding away from men.

You can't get pregnant just by smiling at them, you know," she had
added with typical teenage scorn.

"You can't want to spend the rest of your life alone.  With Gramps
gone..."

"It's all right," Hazel had told her shakily but drily.

"If you're worried about having a geriatric parent on your hands
cramping your style, I assure you that you need not be."

That had made Katie laugh and the subject had been dropped, but Katie
had resurrected it with uncomfortable frequency as the time drew nearer
for her to leave home and go to university.

"You're so young, Ma," she had expostulated more than once.  Then fancy
you.  I've seen the way they look at you, but you.  Well, you behave
like--like a shrinking virgin.  "

When Hazel had flushed and protested, Katie had grimaced and added,
"Look at yourself now and you'll see what I mean.  Anyone would think
you were totally sexually inexperienced, like... like a nun or
something."

"Katie," she had protested crossly, for once silencing her ebullient
offspring, but later, alone in her bedroom, staring out of the window
at the pretty Cheshire countryside which gave her so much inspiration
for her work as an illustrator of children's books, she had been forced
to concede that Katie had a point.  She did tend to shrink away from
unknown men.  She was shy and rather withdrawn, unlike Katie, who,
thank goodness, seemed to have much, much more self-confidence.

And as for her sexual experience.  Remembering this last conversation
with her daughter now, Hazel sighed to herself, automatically plumping
up one of the pretty needlepoint cushions she had worked the previous
winter, and settling it back on the old-fashioned brocade-covered
chair, which had been her father's.

Even now after five years it still seemed odd to her to look at the
chair and see it empty.

The stroke which had semi-paralysed her father four years after they
had moved north from London had meant that in the last years of his
life he had needed her in almost constant attendance.  It had seemed a
small enough way of repaying everything he had done for her and
Katie.

Left alone with a four-day-old daughter at the age of forty-two, he
couldn't have found it easy to bring her up alone.  His wife, her
mother, had died following complications with the birth.  As he had
once explained uncomfortably to her, neither he nor her mother had ever
expected to have a child.  They had married late in life, and her
arrival had come as something of a shock.

Nevertheless he had loved her and done his best for her.  His practice
as a solicitor had demanded a great deal of his time, but he had been
scrupulous about spending weekends with her, and a conscientious if
somewhat over-protective housekeeper had been hired to take charge of
the old Victorian house where she had grown up, and of her.

She had had a very protected and sheltered growing-up; a very lonely
and isolated one in many ways, attending a very small girls' school
from which she was picked up every day by Mrs.  Meadows, so that she
was not given much opportunity to mingle with the other girls and make
the friendships which might have drawn her out of her shell.

And then when she was sixteen she had met Jimmy.

He went to a nearby boys' school.  He almost ran her down on his
bicycle, and their friendship developed from there.

Jimmy was as ebullient and outward-going as she was shy and
introverted, which was no doubt where Katie got her lovely laughing
personality from.

Hazel adored and worshipped him, blindly following his lead in
everything he suggested.

He wasn't a cruel or unkind boy; far from it, but he had a resilience
which she lacked, and he was far, far too young to have the wisdom to
look into the future and see the risks they were taking.

Looking back now, it seemed difficult for her to understand how at
sixteen she could ever have believed she had fallen in love.  With
hindsight, she suspected that in Jimmy she had believed she had found
the answer to her loneliness and that he was in many ways the friend,
the brother, almost in fact the mother, she had never had.

Jimmy knew everything and everyone.  Jimmy opened her eyes to so many
things about life.  Jimmy encouraged her to take advantage of her
father's preoccupation with his work, to meet him illicitly in the
evening.  to spend long hours with him in the bedroom of the home he
shared with his parents and brothers and sister.

The Gamers were a large and very casual family.  Arm Gamer was an
actress.  Tony Gamer a director;

they were seldom at home, their five children left to the casual and
careless discipline of a transient population of au pairs and
relatives.

Arm Gamer smiled at her in a preoccupied and busy fashion whenever she
saw her in the house, but Hazel doubted if she even knew her name in
those days and she was certainly not me kind of mother to make
strenuous and exhaustive enquiries into her children's friendships.

She was there, and she was accepted, and that was all there was to
it.

But there was no point in trying to shift the blame, the responsibility
on to Arm Gamer's shoulders.

Hazel might have been naive, she might have been stupid, but she did
know what she was doing, did know the risks she was taking.

The first time Jimmy touched her, kissed her, she had been shocked--had
withdrawn from him.  She wasn't used to any kind of physical intimacy
from others.  Her father simply wasn't that kind of man, and Mrs.
Meadows had never encouraged what she termed 'soppiness'.

So she withdrew from him and Jimmy let her, watching her with curious,
amused eyes.  He was , only twelve months older than her, but, in his
knowledge of life, twenty years older.

"What's the matter?  Don't you like it when I kiss you?"  he asked her
cheerfully.

She shook her head, flushing.

"That's because you don't know how to do it properly," he told her with
male assurance.

"You'll soon get to like it."

And she soon did.  She also liked the sensation of being physically
close to him, of being held in his arms; of having someone special of
her own in a way that her father and Mrs.  Meadows could never truly be
hers.

The truth was that Jimmy filled a need in her life, healed a wound.
gave her a special sense of identity and importance that made it
impossible for her to think of refusing him anything.  Even when that
anything was the one thing she knew she ought to refuse.

But he was so tender, so coaxing.  And even if, afterwards, she was
forced to admit to herself that the experience had been more
uncomfortable and embarrassing than anything else, at least she had the
joy of knowing that she had pleased him.  She knew that because he had
told her so, kissing her with almost clumsy tenderness as he helped her
to dress afterwards, and then taking her home on the new motorbike
which he had bought himself with his birthday money.

His parents had been away for his birthday, his mother touring in the
first run of a new play, his father directing a TV movie in Greece, but
they had both sent him cards, and there had been a generous cheque to
go into his bank account.

That cheque had bought the motorbike of which he was so proud.  A huge,
powerful thing which privately Hazel didn't like, but which she was far
too loyal to criticise.  Jimmy loved the bike; she loved him;

therefore the bike was wonderful.

As he dropped her off outside her house that Saturday afternoon, he
teased her by dropping a quick kiss on her lips before she could turn
her head to look anxiously towards the house, terrified that her father
might have seen them.

Jimmy was vastly amused by this fear of hers that her father might see
them together.

"What if he does?"  he asked her, genuinely curious.

"Does it matter?

Has he forbidden you to go out with me?  "

She was forced to shake her head.  Boys and whether she might or might
not go out with them was simply a subject that could not be raised with
her father.  The thought of her even beginning to do so made her quail,
and yet her father was not overly strict, and was certainly not unkind.
Just the opposite; he was gentle, if somewhat remote.

So'why did she feel it was so impossible to tell him about Jimmy?

She had no real idea--she just knew that it was, just knew with
instinctive feminine wisdom that, to her father, she was still very
much a little girl and that that was how he wished her to stay.

Even though he had promised to telephone her, she didn't hear from
Jimmy that evening, nor all of the next day, and it wasn't until she
was back at school on Monday that she heard the gossip running round
the playground.

Jimmy was dead.  Killed in an accident when he had lost control of the
new motorbike of which he was so proud.  His sister wasn't at school.

A note had been sent to the headmistress hurriedly explaining the
facts.  Jimmy's parents had been sent for.  Everyone who ought to know
what had happened had been informed--apart from her.

Somehow or other she made it through the day, going home to be
violently sick in her bathroom, unable to take in what had happened.
unable to accept that she would never see Jimmy again.

She didn't go to the funeral--didn't feel able to intrude on the family
in their grief, even though she visited the cemetery the following day
herself to lay a small floral tribute there and to say a special prayer
for him.

It wasn't until almost four months after Jimmy's death that she
realised she was pregnant and even then it had taken someone else, one
of the teachers at school, to gently question her and elicit the
truth.

To their credit, both families took the news of her pregnancy very
well, and when she announced that she wanted to keep her baby, Jimmy's
baby, there were no attempts at forcing her to do otherwise.

Even so, despite his kindness and concern, she was sensitively aware
that she had shocked her father, and guiltily she felt that she had
somehow let him down; that her behaviour had not been what he had
expected in his daughter.

Her guilt was intensified when, within a month of Katie's birth, he
announced that he was selling "my his practice and retiring and that
the three of them would be moving away from London.

Despite the fact that he never once reproached her, even despite the
fact that he had already told her that she was still his daughter and
that her place and her child's would still be under his roof, she knew
intuitively that it was because he felt embarrassed and let down in
having an illegitimate grandchild that he felt compelled to make these
changes in their lives.

But she was still barely seventeen, and a very young seventeen at that,
far too young to even think of leaving home and living by herself even
if she had the means to do so.

There could be no question of her continuing at school, of course, and
once Katie was born she had no real desire to do so.  Her little
daughter became the focus of her whole world.

When Mrs.  Meadows, outraged to learn that she was pregnant, had handed
in her notice, she had taken over the running of the house, surprised
to discover how much she had learned from the older woman, who had not
been above insisting that she helped her out with the chores.  The
housekeeper, before she had left, had told Hazel in no uncertain terms
how fortunate she was in having so kind and generous a father.

Phrases such as 'if you had been my child', and 'your father, poor man,
I don't know how he car bear the disgrace', had been freely bandied
about and after Mrs.  Meadows had gone Hazel had swon passionately to
herself that from now on she woulc do everything she could to make
amends to her father for all the pain she was causing him.

Quite why her father chose to move to Cheshire he never actually
explained, but Hazel was beyond caring where they went.

As it happened, she liked the quiet Cheshire village with its pretty
fields and distant views of Alderley Edge and the Welsh hills, but when
her father suggested rather awkwardly that she migh prefer to pretend
to people that she and Jimmy hac actually been married, she
uncomfortably shook her head.

Not even to please her father could she live that sort of a lie.  She
knew now that there would always be those who would condemn and vilify
her for Katie's birth, just as there would always be those who would
reach out to her with understanding and compassion, generously
accepting that Katie's conception had been a pitiful accident rather
than the result of a depraved lifestyle.

But it wasn't until Katie was just five years ok that she fully
realised just how sensitive her fatfiei was about her unmarried
state.

Since it was something he never referred to, she had hoped that he,
like herself, had come to accept that, while Katie's conception was not
the best thing that could have happened to a sixteen-year- old, Katie
herself was a beloved bonus who more than made up for her mother's
disgrace in conceiving her.  But one afternoon, when she was collecting
Katie from school, she fell into conversation with another parent who
was also collecting his child.

Robert Bolton was an outwardly pleasant man, a few years older than she
was herself, whom she understood to be divorced from his wife, and who
had custody of two young sons.

The thought that he might possibly misconstrue their few moments of
idle conversation outside the school gates never even crossed Hazel's
mind, never mind the thought that, because of her unmarried state,
because Katie was illegitimate, he might jump to the assumption that,
having already had one lover, she might welcome another.

But when he turned up at the house and asked her out, her father was so
disapproving and so upset that even though she had no intention of
accepting the invitation she felt compelled to ask her father why he
objected so strongly.

At first his response was evasive.

She had to be careful, he told her uncomfortably.  It wouldn't do to
have people gossiping.

"Gossiping about what?"  she asked him, genuinely not understanding.

For the first time that she could remember, he lost his temper with
her.

Did she not remember that she had an illegitimate child?  he demanded
tersely.  Did she not remember that the disgrace of that had driven
them away from London?  But that kind of disgrace could never be
totally evaded.  People talked, people knew.  If men started calling
here at the house for her.  And then Hazel understood, and quietly but
firmly she closed the door in her heart which might have led to an
adult relationship with a man.  The kind of relationship which might
ultimately have brought her true sexual and emotional fulfilment as a
woman, the kind of relationship she had sometimes yearningly daydreamed
of, the kind of relationship she had envied other women sharing with
their men, but which she now understood could never be for her.

In her father's eyes she would always be branded by Katie's birth.

Who knew how many other men might feel the same way, might feel that
she was sexually available and easy, because of that?

Because that was what her father had been trying to say to her, even
though he had been too embarrassed to put it quite so plainly.  As the
mother of an illegitimate child, she had a reputation.  Men approaching
her would only be doing so because of that reputation, because they
wanted sex from her.  And even if that was not true, she could not risk
hurting and upsetting her father again by inviting what he would see as
speculation and gossip about her morals.

She reminded herself that she was very fortunate, very lucky in that
her father was prepared so generously to house and support her.  That
without that support her precious Katie would never have had the
lifestyle she now did.  A lovely home, the security that was provided
by her grandfather's money, the lovely surroundings in which she was
growing up.  Without her father to provide these things for them, their
lives would have been so very different.  Hazel wasn't sixteen any
more.  She knew quite well how difficult life was for other single
mothers, how very fortunate she was.  The least she could do was to
repay her father by respecting his wishes.  And, after all, were they
so difficult to live by?  All right, so there was no man in her life,
no lover, no husband.  but she had her precious Katie.  She had her
father, she had her lovely home, and she was slowly making new
friends.

And if sexually she was still as unawakened as she had been when Katie
was conceived, well, was she really so very bothered?  She could barely
remember what it had felt like when Jimmy made love to her.  What
she could remember was that shi had not been particularly enthralled by
the experience; that she had not had a physical desire to repeat it.

What she had enjoyed, though, was the closeness it had brought between
her and Jimmy, the tenderness with which he had kissed her afterwards.
But these were very dim memories now, the memories of a child, not a
woman.  and if the price she must pay for Katie's security and her
father's peace of mind was her own celibacy, well, so be it Over the
years she had kept in contact with Jimmy's family, who had all accepted
Katie as his daughter.  She and Katie had spent several holidays with
Jimmy's mother, who was now divorced from Jimmy's father, and as the
rest of the family grew up, married and produced children.  Hazel made
sure that Katie knew her aunts and uncles and her cousins.

She didn't want Katie to suffer as she had done through being too
isolated and over-protected.  She didn't want Katie to repeat her
mistakes, to yearn, without knowing she did so, for contact with her
peers to such an extent, to yearn for love so much that she mistook a
healthy male teenager's natural desire to express his sexuality for
that love and responded to it with the same disastrous results as she.
Hazel, had done.

But Katie wasn't her, as Katie herself had gently pointed out to her
when she had first started going out on dates.  Guiltily Hazel had
acknowledged that she was glad in many ways that her own father had
died before Katie had reached this stage in her life, because she would
not have wanted him to inflict on Katie the mental and emotional taboos
he had inflicted on her.  It would not be right for her own sins to be
visited upon her precious daughter.  All she could do was to pray that
Katie was strong enough, mature enough, happy enough not to need to
make an intense emotional commitment to a member of the opposite sex
until she was old enough to handle any potential sexual consequences.

So far she had been lucky, she acknowledged, restlessly smoothing
another cushion.  So far none of Katie's relationships with the
opposite sex had been remotely serious.  But she herself had an almost
morbid fear of Katie repeating her mistakes.

She didn't want Katie's freedom, Katie's joy, Katie's life curtailed in
the way in which her own had been curtailed.  For Katie, she wanted
everything she had not had herself.

For Katie, she wanted the very best that there was: a good education;

the strength and selfconfidence that came from knowing she could
support herself.

A sad smile crossed her face.  Art had been her own best subject at
school.  She had once hoped to go on to college to study it further,
but Katie's arrival had put paid to that.  Nevertheless, she had found
a way of using that talent, even if she had discovered it rather late
in life.

After her father's death, and because she had felt so guilty, so
uncomfortable in the now empty house during the day, she had started
taking adult education classes.

Her art teacher had been so impressed with her skill that she had
recommended her to an agency she knew who specialised in supplying
illustrators for writers.

For the last two years.  Hazel had worked exclusively for one
particular writer, supplying all the illustrations for her very popular
younger children's books.

Had she discovered this talent when she was younger, who knew what
might have happened.  Given the freedom of financial independence, she
might have felt able to go out more, to meet people, to perhaps even
meet a man.  But then what would have happened to her father?  After
his stroke he had never fully recovered.  He had needed her then as she
had needed him after Katie's birth and she had always been grateful
that fate had given her the opportunity to show him her love and her
gratitude.

Now financially and physically she was free, but she was thirty-six
years old: far too old to be thinking of romance, of love.  And besides
these days when she looked around, when she looked properly at the men
around her, she saw with distaste that many of them, while smiling and
flirting with women who were not their partners, were hurting those
partners and seemed not to care that they were doing so.  That many of
them were weak and vain;

that others were like dependent children, greedily taking everything
their women had to offer and giving precious little back; and she had
come to the conclusion that, for every happy couple she knew, she knew
three who were not, and that perhaps after all fate had not truly been
punishing her in denying her the right to her sexual and emotional
fulfilment as a woman.

The very firm distance she had initially learned to keep between
herself and the male sex, to please her father, had become a defence
mechanism behind which she retreated for safety, causing Katie to tell
her sternly that she was behaving more like a woman of seventy than one
of half that age.

"You're really attractive.  Mum," Katie had told her fondly.

"Far too attractive to be living on your own."

"Hasn't it occurred to you that I might want to live alone?  " Hazel
had retaliated.

"Lots of womer do.  Take Jessy Finlay, for instance."

Jessy was a forty-year-old redhead, who owned a small cottage on the
outskirts of the village, am who worked as a freelance reporter for a
local T\ station.  She was outrageously extrovert, and verA popular
with all the local men, if somewhat less popular with their wives.

"Jessy might live alone, but she does not slee^ alone," Katie had
informed her mother brutally softening a little to add quietly, "It's
not natural Ma.  I know there isn't any man in your life.  I know you
don't have a discreet lover tucked away somewhere.  Has there ever been
anyone apart from Dad?"

Much as she longed to tell her that that was none of her business.

Hazel had found herself admitting that there had not.  What Katie did
not seem to realise and what she had no intention of telling her was;

that she herself was the result of her own single and un memorable
sexual experiment.  And, uncomfortable though it made her feel to
contemplate it, Katie at eighteen probably had a good deal more sexual
experience than she had at nearly twice that age.

Although she had always been scrupulous aboul making sure that Katie
was as well informed on sexual matters as she could be.  Hazel had
always felt lamentably aware of her own inability to convey to her
daughter that, exciting though sexual experimentation might be in one's
teens, true fulfilment, true sexual pleasure was something one could
only truly appreciate with maturity.

All she had felt able to say to Katie was that she must always do only
what felt right for her; that it was her own feeling of self-worth, her
feeling of self-respect that was important, far more important than
giving in to peer pressure or the importunings of some callow boy.

, But how could she discuss with her daughter adult sex, adult
emotions, a woman's emotions, a woman's needs, when she herself had no
knowledge of these things?

Since Katie had left school at the beginning of the summer.  Hazel had
gradually begun to feel that she was the child and her daughter the
parent.  Katie now seemed so grown-up, so mature, so much better able
to handle herself than Hazel.

Hazel had watched in awe and pride as Katie parried the over-fulsome
compliments of the older men among their acquaintance, who were
suddenly claiming that she was becoming very grownup, and very, very
attractive.  Firmly but pleasantly Katie had let them know that she
considered their interest to be avuncular.  Firmly she had made it
clear that she was not interested in their heavy handed flirtation.
And she was just as adept at dealing with her own peers.

Hazel had seen her off for university with a heavy heart, acknowledging
that the child had gone and a woman had taken her place.  She was so
proud of her daughter.  Proud of all that she was and all that she
would be, and she had prayed desperately that Katie would get safely
through university and launch herself in her chosen career before she
fell deeply in love.

Now it seemed as though in making those prayers she, her mother, had
brought down on her the very fate she had wanted her to escape.

True, Katie had said nothing about being in love with this Silas.

Silas.  what sort of name was that?  It was far too theatrical, far
too.  too male.  But the very way she said his name, the very
hesitation in her voice, the very fact that she.  Hazel, her mother was
so acutely aware of these things, made Hazel desperately anxious to
make the acquaintance of this man who, it seemed, had become so
important to her daughter.  And equally it made her extremely reluctant
to get to know him, as though in doing so she was acknowledging his
importance in Katie's life.

It wasn't just maternal jealousy either; it wasn't that she resented
someone else becoming more important to Katie than she was herself.
well, not entirely.

Guiltily she tugged at her own swollen bottom Up.

Upstairs two immaculate and comfortable bedrooms were waiting for their
arrival.

Two bedrooms.  Katie would sleep in her own bedroom, of course.  Her
friend, this Silas.  Gnawing on her swollen lip.  Hazel stared
unseeingly across the pretty sitting-room, for once not seeing the
charm of its exposed timbers, its low ceilings, and its deep
stone-framed windows.

The house was old, very old, and she had fallen in love with it the
first time she had seen it.  She suspected that if her father hadn't
been in such a hurry to move them out of London he would have waited
until something more modern came on the market, but as it was he had
bought this pretty half timbered Cheshire farmhouse with its large
gardens and its wonderful aspects over the surrounding countryside, and
gradually over the years Hazel had put her stamp on it, had brought it
to life with all her gentleness and artistic skill, so that people
coming into it for the first time caught their breath in pleasure as
they studied its colour-washed rooms with their faded chintzes and
brocades, its air of homeliness and comfort, its gentle warning welcome
to everyone who walked into it.

Perhaps she should have taken hold of her courage and asked Katie
outright if she expected this Silas to share her room, her bed.  But
then Katie's room still only had the small single bed she had all
through her teens.

That was no excuse, she told herself severely.  The house had five
bedrooms and two bathrooms.  The room she had made up for Katie's
friend was the smallest of these, right next door to her own room.

It had a tiny dormer window, and a polished wooden floor.  It also had
a large double bed.  All the rooms apart from Katie's and her own did,
and she could hardly have moved out of her own room, not without
causing Katie to make some comment.

So what would she do if Katie gaily announced that she would move into
the spare-room with their guest for the duration of his visit?

What would she do if this Silas chose to insist that Katie show her
mother just how committed she was to him by sleeping with him?

Hazel had heard enough horror stories from other parents, other mothers
confronted with just this sort of situation to feel more than mere
apprehension.  It wasn't that she didn't want to admit that her
daughter was an adult, a woman.  Of course she knew, of course she
accepted .  but it was one thing to accept that Katie was old enough to
have a sexual relationship with someone, and quite another to be forced
to witness that relationship, to be forced to have all her fears and
anxieties revived right under her nose.  It was bad enough worrying
about Katie when she couldn't see what she was doing.  If only they
would arrive.  Or, even better, if only they would ring and say they'd
changed their minds.  She was dreading meeting him, dreading it.  But
for Katie's sake she would have to pretend that she was happy for her.
She would have to pretend that she liked him.

Stop it, she warned herself.  He's probably a very nice boy.  He's
probably just as much in love as Katie is.  He's probably just as
vulnerable, and he's also probably got a mother somewhere dreading
meeting Katie as much as I'm dreading meeting him.

CHAPTER TWO

surely they couldn't be much longer?  About four o'clock, Katie had
said.  Now it was almost five.  Hazel's stomach knotted and churned.

What if there'd been an accident?  History repeating itself--Katie
dying as her father had died.  Once again she had to stop herself from
allowing her imagination to run away with her.

She had prepared Katie's favourite supper, including a pie made from
their own Bramley apples.  She had enough carefully stored to take her
over Christmas and into the new year.

Secretly she had been looking forward to Christmas, to having Katie
home, treasuring the thought of it like a child with an illicit hoard
of sweets, because she knew that after this first term, after this
first year, Katie would make her own friends and would naturally want
to spend future holidays with them.  So deep in her heart lurked the
knowledge that this coming Christmas could be their last together.

Now she wondered, shivering in the chill of the thought, if she would
be expected to share Christmas with this Silas, or, even worse, if he
would take Katie away from her completely, if the two of them would
spend their Christmas somewhere alone, while she.  As she heard the
sound of a car drawing up outside, her stomach muscles tensed and she
froze, and then forced herself to walk as calmly as she could towards
the front door.

As she passed the mirror hanging over the fireplace, she glanced
surreptitiously into it.  What would he see, this Silas, who threatened
her peace of mind so much?  She frowned at her own reflection,
wondering if he would notice or even care that she and Katie shared the
same heart-shaped face, and the same slightly almond-shaped eyes, but
where hers were an uncertain, hesitant greenybrown--hence her
name--Katie's were a brilliant laughing blue, just as her curls were
mere brunette, where Katie's were glossily and extravagantly black.

Katie's colouring, like her height, came from her father, but they
shared the same fine bone-structure, the same delicacy of wrist and
ankle.  One thing she did envy Katie, though, was her height.  Hazel
hated being so small, barely five feet two, and so slender with it that
there were still occasions when people called at the house and found
her dressed in jeans and a T-shirt working in the garden and, seeing
her from the back, made the mistake of assuming that she was still a
child.

Perhaps if she wore her hair in a different style, but it was so curly
and un tameable that there was little she could do with it other than
to have it go its own wayward way.

The front door of the house was wooden and solid.  She could see
nothing through it as she unbolted and then opened it, but already in
her mind's eye she could see her daughter: laughing, exuberant,
flinging herself into her arms, and almost knocking her over as she did
so--only when she did open the door, there was no sign of Katie.

Instead a man was climbing out of the car parked on her drive, smiling
slightly at her as he acknowledged her presence.

Disappointment mingled with relief.  Whoever this man was, he could not
be Katie's precious Silas.  He was too old, for one thing, closer to
forty-five than twenty-five.

He was probably a stranger who had lost his way.  Certainly he wasn't
anyone she knew she had ever met.  Had she done so she would have been
bound to remember him.  He was far too attractive, far too male for any
woman to be able to forget.  Her heart gave a tiny unsteady thump as
her brain acknowledged what her senses had already registered;

namely that this stranger walking towards her was an extremely virile
and masculine man, whose casual attire of well-worn jeans and soft
denim shirt revealed a body packed hard with muscle and male
strength.

Hazel could feel the most odd sensation burgeoning into life in the pit
of her stomach.  She wanted to wrap her arms tightly around herself as
though doing so would control this strange, unnerving feeling.

"Miss Partington?"  he queried, coming towards her.

His voice was deep and pleasant.  The way he spoke her name made Hazel
feel faintly dizzy.  Her name.  How had he known her name?

"Er--yes.  I'm afraid I don't know..."

He was extending his hand towards her, so that she automatically
reciprocated the gesture, her eyes registering the shock caused by the
brief physical contact between them.  What was the matter with her? She
had shaken a man's hand before, for heaven's sake.

Feeling thoroughly flustered, she looked uncertainly at him.

"I'm sorry.  I haven't introduced myself."  He smiled at her.

"I'm Silas Jardine.  I dropped Katie off in the village.  She said
something about wanting to buy something.  She told me not to wait,
said she might be a little while, and told me to come and introduce
myself.

She said something about wantinG to catch up on some gossip.  It
really is kind of you to put me up like this.  "

Hazel wasn't listening any longer.  She was staring at him in shocked
disbelief.

This man could not be Katie's Silas.  This man could not be Katie's
boyfriend.  Boyfriend!  This was no boy.  Outrage mingled with her
shock.  How could he stand there, glibly carrying on a conversation
with her, when all the time he must know how shocked she was, how
stunned, how.  yes, how disbelieving that he could.  That he could
what?  Love her daughter?  She caught herself up on the thought.  What
was that feeling beginning, like a cold, sharp dagger in her middle?

That wasn't maternal protectiveness, was it?  That was.  That was.  It
was nothing, she told herself quickly.  It was nothing at all, and it
certainly wasn't an uncomfortable and impossible stab of something
almost approaching betrayal.

Her smile had turned to a frown now, as her shock registered all too
plainly on her face.  She could almost feel him withdrawing from her,
distancing himself from her with cool reserve.  Panic clawed at her.

This was a situation she simply could not deal with, did not know how
to deal with.  When she had envisaged Katie's Silas, she had envisaged
a younger man--a much younger man.  This man was far too old for Katie.
Far, far too old.

She started to tremble, suddenly feeling incredibly weak and sick.

Tears of shock blurred her eyes, causing her to clench her jaw and
hurriedly blink them away.

"I'm sorry.  I seem to have given you something of a shock."

He was too astute, saw too much, and suddenly she was desperately
frightened of him.  What if he should sense her anger, her shock, her
disgust, her outrage, and punish her for them by trying to turn Katie
against her?  Once she would have said that could never happen but then
once she would have said that Katie would never have any need in her
life that would lead her to imagine herself in love with a man old
enough to be her father.

"Look, I think we'd better get you inside.  Katie warned me that you
hate people saying you look fragile, but..."

Katie had told him that.  What else had she told him?  Hazel wondered
achingly as she stepped back into the hall, fighting to get her shock
under control.

She hated him, she decided fiercely as he followed her inside.  She
hated him already.  How could she not do when she looked at him and saw
in his face, in his eyes, all his years of living, and then compared
those years, that maturity with Katie's youth?

She knew all about men like him.  Men who were too insecure to love
women who could match them in terms of age and experience.  Their
vanity led them to feed off youth, like leeches.  Oh, yes, she knew the
type all right and she despised it, but she had never, ever envisaged
that Katie would fall prey to such a man, no matter how good-looking he
might be--and this man was certainly that, she acknowledged grudgingly,
trying to ignore the fris son of sensation that danced over her skin as
she looked up and discovered that she was being studied with gravely
thoughtful interest by Silas Jardine's disturbingly perceptive cool
grey eyes.

"Are you sure you're all right?"  he asked her quietly.

"Katie--' Whatever he had been about to say was forgotten as the front
door was flung open, and Hazel heard her daughter calling out
cheerfully, " Ma, Ma.  where are you?  "

"Noisy lot, aren't they, the young?"  Silas Jardine remarked easily as
she hurried towards the door.  His comment made her check and turn to
give him an indignant look.  What on earth was he trying to do,
aligning himself with her?  Did he honestly mink that she was stupid
enough to fall for such a ploy or that it would endear him to her, or
incline her to accept him as her daughter's lover?

The sickening sour scald of revulsion that burned through her at the
thought turned her indignation to self-disgust, and she turned away
from him quickly before her face could betray her.

She was becoming frighteningly aware that if he chose to do so this man
could drive a wedge between her and her beloved daughter that might
never be removed.

Hopefully, please God, there would come a time when Katie would open
her eyes and see him for what he undoubtedly was; a forty-odd-year-old
man who was bolstering his ego, his machismo by feeding off her youth.
And when that time came he would no longer have a place nor a role in
her life, but by then Hazel suspected that it would be too late to heal
the rift which he could cause between them.

She would have to be careful, so very careful not to betray to Katie
how shocked and distraught she felt, she acknowledged as she hurried
into the hallway and was immediately taken hold of and swung off her
feet as Katie gave her an enthusiastic hug.

"You've lost weight," she scolded her mother maternally as she set her
back on the floor and studied her critically, and then, turning to
Silas who had also come out into the hall, she demanded happily, "Isn't
she everything I told you she was?"  Without waiting for a response,
she turned back to Hazel and grinned at her.

"He wouldn't believe me when I told him I had a mother who looked like
a teenager and not a fully grown-up one at that," Katie teased.

To her intense mortification.  Hazel discovered that she was actually
blushing, something she'd thought she had successfully got under
control years ago.

Katie laughed and teasingly tousled her curls, telling her, "I stopped
off in the village to buy this.  I've got you a proper present, of
course, but I thought we could have this tonight to celebrate."

When Hazel didn't say anything, she added in a more gentle voice, "You
didn't think I'd forgotten, did you, Ma?  I shan't embarrass you in
front of Silas by mentioning the fact that you're thirty-six years old
today."

"Katie!"  Hazel expostulated weakly.  To tell the truth, she herself
had almost forgotten that it was her birthday in the anxiety of
worrying about her daughter, but now that Katie had reminded her of the
date she wished that she hadn't.  It wasn't the thought of adding
another year to her age that bothered her.  No, it was the quiet,
assessing way that Silas Jardine was continuing to study her that made
her feel so uncomfortable.  His mouth twitched a little as she removed
the bottle of champagne from Katie's exuberant grasp, and told her as
firmly as she could, "Katie, you know quite well that I gave up
celebrating my birthday years ago."

"You may have done so, but that doesn't mean that the rest of us have
to follow suit," Katie informed her, adding, "What time are we eating,
Ma?  I'm starving.  I wanted to stop off on the way, but Silas said
there was no way he was going to poison his insides with the stuff they
serve in motorway fast food outlets.  He's even worse than you," she
added grumbling, while Hazel gave a doubtful look in Silas's direction,
wondering how he was taking this criticism.

A little to her surprise he seemed more amused than annoyed, his manner
more.  that of an indulgent uncle than a passionate lover.  It seemed
oddly out of keeping, because this man would be a passionate lover.  A
tiny thrill of shock tingled down her spine, a sensation almost of
actually being touched.  She shivered under it, sensitively cringing
from the intimacy of her own thoughts.  Thoughts she had no right to
have, no right at all.  Silas Jardine was her daughter's lover and not.
Not what?  she asked herself shakily.  Not an exceptionally virile and
male man, whose simple presence in her home was making her feel as
nervous and on edge as though she were the one who was the teenager?

It was all his fault.  If he had arrived, as he had been supposed to
do, with Katie, she would never.  he would not.  She bit her bottom lip
hard.

What on earth was the matter with her?  She had seen good-looking men
before, talked to them, spent time with them, without going to pieces
like this.

And she was going to pieces.  She only had to look at him and she could
feel herself disintegrating inside.

This is ridiculous, she told herself firmly.  She had to pull herself
together.  What on earth was happening to her?  Surely--she could feel
herself going hot with self-disgust at the thought--surely she wasn't
about to turn into one of those dreadful women who in middle age seemed
to develop an embarrassing need to prove themselves by flirting very
desperately and very obviously with their daughters' boyfriends?

Desperately she tried to concentrate on what Katie was saying to her,
telling her nervously, "Well, I've made your favourite for supper:

roast beef with all the trimmings and apple pie.  "

She couldn't bring herself to look at Silas, and so, instead, she said
to Katie, "I should have checked with you that your friend--er--Mr...
doesn't mind such plain fare..."

When she had envisaged Katie's 'friend', she had been thinking in terms
of a much younger man with far less sophisticated tastes than the very
obvious man of the world who was now addressing her, telling her
smoothly, "Please call me Silas--and to tell the truth a home-cooked
meal will be rather a treat for me."

Katie gave him a dancing look of amusement.

"Don't listen to him, Ma.  He's got females queuing feet deep, just
longing to offer him all the home comforts."

She could just bet he had.  Hazel reflected acidly to herself, and she
doubted that it was just their cooking that they wanted him to
sample.

In Katie's shoes, she suspected that she would have felt far more
concerned than her daughter obviously did.

Despite the fact that there was nothing remotely lover-like about their
behaviour to one another, Katie must be very, very sure indeed of his
feelings for her if she could afford to treat the subject so lightly.
She looked at her daughter, rather wonderingly and wistfully, In
Katie's shoes, she doubted that she could have exhibited such
self-confidence.

It was all very well for her to tell herself that he was a very lucky
man to have the love of someone as precious and wonderful as her Katie,
but Katie was, after all, not quite nineteen years old, while he. Oddly
enough, he didn't look like the kind of man who needed to bolster his
ego by parading a much, much younger girl on his arm, but then neither
had she ever imagined that Katie would look for a relationship with a
man so much older than herself, a man more suited in age to be her
father than her lover.

Guiltily she wondered if it was her fault; if it was because she had
failed to provide Katie with a father that her daughter had now made
the dangerous mistake of falling for this man.

"How long will supper be, Ma?"  Katie pressed her.

"Oh, not long--about an hour."

"Great.  I'll just take Silas upstairs and show him his room and men
I'll come down and give you a hand and we can have a natter.  Which
room is he in, by the way?"

In the shock of discovering how much older than Katie her lover was.

Hazel had almost forgotten her anxiety over their sleeping
arrangements.

Now they came back to her abruptly, and she discovered that it was
impossible for her to look at Silas as she told Katie uncertainly,
"I've put your--er--Mr.-.er--Silas in the spare-room; the one next to
mine."

Why oh why was she blushing when she said that?  And why of all things
was she so intimately and so wrongly suddenly mentally presented with a
very disturbing and highly visual image of Silas's broad-shouldered and
very male form lying beneath the covers of her spare bed, his skin
tanned and sleek, his.

She swallowed visibly, weakly trying to dismiss such erotic and
unwanted thoughts.  Heavens, the man might not even have a tan, never
mind.  "The nursery, you've put Silas in my old nursery.  " Katie
grinned.

"If you can't sleep, Silas, you'll be able to entertain yourself
reading my old books.  Come on, I'll take you up."

Hazel was just about to go with them, and had even taken a couple of
steps towards the stairs, when she suddenly realised that they would
most probably want to be alone, and that even the most caring and
concerned of mothers could hardly play gooseberry for twenty-four hours
a day.

At least Katie had seemed to accept quite happily the fact that she had
not put them in the same room.

She couldn't help wondering if Silas himself had accepted this quite as
readily.

He was a mature man, long past the stage surely of sneaking kisses, or
anything else, behind the back of an ever-watchful parent.

She froze as he came towards her, and then flushed as she realised she
was standing between him and the stairs, hastily stepping to one
side.

The look he gave her unnerved her.  It seemed to see right inside her
skull and left her feeling as though he knew far too well just how
ambivalent her feelings towards him were.

As she went into the kitchen, determined not to stand there watching
them as Katie slid her arm through his and they went up the wide flight
of stairs side by side, she acknowledged miserably that the last thing
she had anticipated, when she had worried over the problems attendant
on this visit, was that she herself might be physically aware of
Katie's lover, and in such an intense way that it suddenly felt as
though her skin had become a little too tight for her body, as though
somehow her flesh had become over-sensitive and slightly sore.

She hated knowing that she was so responsive to Silas.  Hated realising
that in some awful, dreadful way she was almost jealous of Katie's
relationship with him.  And yet why should she feel like this?

There had been times in the past, it was true, when she had yearned,
ached almost if she was honest, for a man of tenderness and concern who
would love her, physically and emotionally, but she had quickly learned
to put such foolish daydreams from her and to concentrate on reality;
those men had never been real, they had merely been vague, fictional
characters--a focus for her needs.  There had never been a man, a
real-life man for whom she had felt the sharply dangerous stab of
desire she had felt this afternoon.  Perhaps naively she had never
imagined there could be such a man.  She had always imagined that, for
her, sexual desire could only follow on from a long-established
emotional rapport; and since she never allowed any man to get close
enough to her to form that kind of bond she had felt herself safe from
the sharp pangs of hunger which now clawed so shockingly at her.

She was standing stock still, staring unseeing into the Yorkshire
pudding batter when Katie erupted into the kitchen, exclaiming
excitedly, "Well, Ma, isn't he the most gorgeous man you've ever
seen?"

"He seems very pleasant," Hazel responded colourlessly.

Katie frowned and demanded scornfully, "Pleasant?  Come on, Ma.  He's
as sexy as hell and--' " Katie, I must get the Yorkshires in," Hazel
interrupted her frantically.  The last thing she wanted was a
blow-by-blow description of Silas's sexual prowess, and not just
because she felt he was totally wrong for her daughter.  She didn't
want to hear it because... Because she was mortally afraid that she
simply could not bear to hear it.

"Ma, what's wrong?"  Katie was frowning now, the happiness dying out of
her voice and her eyes.

She came over to the cooker, and removed the full tin of batter from
Hazel's hands, firmly putting it down and then turning her mother round
to face her.

"You don't like him, do you?"  she accused.

"No--yes.  Of... I... Oh, Katie, I've only just met him, and--' " Ma,
please," Katie begged urgently.

"Just give it a chance.  I know you're going to love him."

It was an unfortunate choice of verb to say the least, and part of her,
a strange, unfamiliar and totally unwanted part, cried out
rebelliously.  Why should I love him?  Because you do?  Can't you see
how wrong he is for you?

"What is it exactly about him that you don't like?"  Katie demanded
when she remained silent.

What could she say?

All she could manage was a strangled, "Well, it isn't that I don't like
him, darling; it's just that, well, he's so much older than I'd
imagined."

"Older."  Katie's frown deepened as she demanded almost aggressively,
"What on earth has his age got to do with it?  And anyway I think he's
just the right age."

Hazel bit her lip, mangling its already sore swollen ness between sharp
teeth as despair flooded her.  Already it was happening--already he was
driving them apart.  Of course Katie thought he was the right age and
she had been stupid to bring up such a contentious subject.

Desperately she tried to find safer ground, asking as casually as she
could, "You never said how long you intended to stay."

"Well, / can only manage a couple of days, but Silas will be here until
Christmas if that's OK with you."

"Until Christmas!"  Hazel gaped at her and discovered that she had to
lean against the units for support.

"But Katie, that's impossible.  I mean--' " No, it isn't," Katie argued
stubbornly.

"Why shouldn't he stay here?

When he told me that he was setting his new book here in Cheshire and
that he wanted to do some research in the area, I knew immediately that
this would be an ideal base for him.  He wasn't so sure at first.

It took me a while to persuade him that you wouldn't mind.  "

Hazel stared at her, unable to utter anything other than a rather numb,
"Really?"

Giving her a sharp look, Katie acknowledged, "OK, so maybe I should
have asked you first, but I know if I'd told you that one of your
favourite writers was giving a brief series of lectures to us, and that
I'd invited him up here because I knew he was looking for somewhere
local to stay while he researched his next book, I knew you'd throw
forty fits and raise all manner of objections, but you can't let me
down now, Ma, and he won't be any trouble I doubt if you'll even know
he's here," she added with supreme disregard for the expression on her
mother's face.

"I mean, he could have Gramps's old bedroom That has its own bathroom,
and he could work in Gramps's study.  He'll probably be out most of the
time anyway.  He said he wanted to vis il Gawsworth, and just think how
thrilling it will be when his book comes out, to know that it was
actually written here.

"You'll have to pin up a huge notice outside saying, " Charles Kershaw
wrote here"."

"Charles Kershaw?"  Hazel stared at her.

"But his name's Silas Jardine."

"Yes, that's his real name, but he writes under the name of Charles
Kershaw.  Kershaw was his mother's maiden name apparently, and Charles
is his middle name.  He told me that when he firs) started to write he
was still lecturing full-time and that that was why he chose to write
under a different name."

Hazel raised her hand to her forehead in an unconscious gesture of
confusion.

Silas was Charles Kershaw, one of her favourite authors, and Katie had
invited him to stay here while he researched his latest book.

Katie, her daughter, and Charles Kershaw were lovers.  She thought of
the subtle and skilled sensuality of the romantic passages in his
novels and was shaken by a surge of betraying envy for her daughter,
coupled with a shocking conviction that that skill, that subtlety was
completely wasted on someone as young as her ebullient, boisterous
daughter.

Immediately she clamped down on such destructive thoughts.  Thoughts
she had no right to allow into her mind.  Behind her she could hear
Katie saying in bewilderment, "What's wrong with you?  I thought you'd
be thrilled..."

Hearing the love and the anxiety in her voice, Hazel forced herself to
put aside her own feelings to exclaim wryly, "Just as you thought I'd
be thrilled when you brought all those snails in from the garden and
set them free on the kitchen floor."

"Well, you complained because they were eating your delphiniums and
you'd said you didn't want to kill them.  Although I do seem to
remember you threatening to kill me instead."

Suddenly they were both giggling, the release from her earlier tension
bringing emotional tears to Hazel's eyes.

"Oh, Katie," she protested helplessly, sniffing them away.

"I can't--' I can't have your lover staying here, she had been about to
say, but just as she spoke Silas himself walked into the kitchen,
looking keenly at her and then just as keenly at Katie.

Conscious of her flushed face and tear-wet eyes, Hazel turned back to
the oven, quickly opening the door and ladling the batter into the now
almost over hot fat.

While it spat its aggression at her, she heard Katie exclaiming
brightly and falsely to Silas, "I've just been revealing your true
identity to Ma, Silas, and although she's too overcome with awe to tell
you so herself, she's thrill-d to bits that you're going to be staying
here.  She can't wait to boast to all her friends about you, can you,
Ma?"

"Katie," Hazel protested, flushing angrily as she closed the oven door
and rounded on her daughter.  Perhaps her father had been right after
all when he had accused her of being far too lenient and indulgent
towards her daughter.  Her indignation flashed brilliantly in her eyes
as she turned towards Katie, but once again she was forestalled as
Silas himself intervened pleasantly.

"I really am grateful to you.  Hazel.  I must admit when Katie first
suggested I base myself here with you while I worked on my new book I
was a little dubious.  Of course, it was marvellously kind of you to
offer to put me up, but writers aren't the easiest of people to live
with, especially when they're working, and I was afraid that Katie
might have unwittingly painted an over-glamourised version of what
having me staying here would be like.  But I must say that having met
you I realise how uncomplimentary those fears were.  It's obvious to me
that you are an eminently sensible lady, despite the rather contentious
comments to the contrary made by your daughter."

Hazel gaped at him, blinking in disbelief as she listened to what he
was saying.

"Great," Katie beamed happily.

"I'm glad that that's all settled, although you'll have to move
bedrooms, Silas.  I was saying to Ma that you'd be much better off
using Gramps's old room.  It's got its own bathroom for one thing and a
huge bed," Katie informed Silas breezily, turning away before she saw
the painful flood of colour that burned her mother's face.

Silas saw it though, and through the tremor that convulsed her, and the
tears of shame and self- dislike that stung her eyes, she could feel
his steady regard.

Dear God, don't let him guess what she was thinking.  Katie was too
young, too blind, too selfish as the young were selfish, to suspect
what she was going through, to guess at the bitter, envious thoughts
distorting her mind, to even think in the most fleeting fashion that
she, her mother, might feel the most acute despair at the thought of
Katie and Silas sharing the old-fashioned double-bed which had been so
well designed to accommodate the bodies of two eager lovers.

But her despair was not, as she had first believed, generated by mere
concern for her daughter's emotional safety.  No; it was generated by a
far less palatable and acceptable emotion.  It was generated by
jealousy.

There, she had admitted it!  Made herself confront it.  When she
pictured Katie and Silas together in bed, she was jealous of her
daughter.  She was envious of the fact that Silas desired her, that
Silas wanted her.  What was the matter with her?  Did she really want
to trade places with Katie?  Did she really imagine for a single second
that Silas would find her in any way attractive or desirable?  One only
had to compare her with Katie to realise the impossibility of that.

Katie was young, nineteen.  She was thirty-six, her body not a girl's
any longer, but a woman's.

She had given birth, produced a child.  This child, who now stood in
front of her, a fully formed and very beautiful young woman, poised on
the threshold of her most sexually powerful years, while she.  while
for her those years were over.  Her figure was still trim enough,
enviably so according to most of her friends, but it was not a girl's
body.  Her skin did not have the clear bloom of youth that belonged to
Katie's .  her face did not have the soft youthful plumpness that still
clung to Katie's bones.  No man in his right mind comparing them could
possibly prefer her physically to Katie, especially not a man who had
already made it obvious that he preferred the allure of young flesh.

Not even to herself was she prepared to admit that she wished Katie had
kept Silas's real identity to herself.  She had often wondered about
the man who had written the books she had enjoyed so much; now that she
was confronted with the reality, she was disappointed.

Physically, he might be the most exciting man she had ever seen, but
mentally, emotionally.  for all the confusion of her unwanted desire
for him, she could not help feeling let down by the knowledge that the
strength, the maturity, the compassion she had felt so powerfully in
his books were all simply an illusion and that he was weak and vain,
empty of all the strengths she had envisaged him possessing.

Perhaps it was just as well, she thought tiredly.  At least that
knowledge should help her to live through the next few months.

"You see, Silas, I was right," Katie was continuing happily.

"I knew the moment you told me that you wanted a base in Cheshire to do
your research from that you'd love it here with Ma.  She might not look
it but she can be quite a dragon when she needs to be.  She'll make
sure no one interrupt you."

Hazel checked her unproductive thoughts and gave her daughter a
considering look.

Katie looked so innocent and young, but she was still a woman.  Woman
enough, perhaps, to try to ensure that no one trespassed into her
lover's lift when she couldn't be with him by placing her own mother on
guard over him.  But then who was t( guard the guard?

She already knew the answer to that one.  She< must do it herself; she
must make sure that she kep so strict a control on herself that no one,
andes especially not Silas himself, ever guessed how treacherously
aware of him she was.

At least she could be thankful for one thing.  H( was hardly likely to
make a pass at her.  Hardly indeed.  She might be several years his
junior, but she was almost double her own daughter's age.

Stop it.  Stop it, she warned herself angrily.  Wha on earth was the
matter with her?  Normally the las thing she wanted, the last thing she
thought about the last thing that worried her was the knowledg< that as
an object of male desire she was perhaps past her prime.  No, indeed!
Since her father's death she had found herself quietly glad that she nc
longer had to put such a guard on her sexuality that she was now of an
age when men no longer felt compelled to flirt with her.

It was all very well for Katie to complain that she behaved like a
middle-aged woman when she was still amazingly young.  Katie had never
had to contend with the sort of male curiosity that sprang from their
knowledge of her past, their awareness of Katie's own illegitimacy and
the unflattering conclusions they tended to draw from these facts, and
she prayed that she never would.

While not for a moment would she have ever wished that her daughter's
life had never begun, she wanted far more for Katie than she had had in
her own life.  She loved her daughter, adored her, and hoped that Katie
too would one day know the joy that came from having a child, but not
until she was mature enough to carry the burdens that went with that
joy.  Not until she was in a position to share that joy and that burden
with a man who loved her as she deserved to be loved.

"Oh, by the way, Ma, I forgot to tell you.  Gran came up to see me the
other week."

Hazel focused on her daughter.

"Arm... How is she?"

"Blooming," Katie told her with a grin.

"And guess what?  She's got the most gorgeous boyfriend.  Well, man
friend I suppose he is really.

He's younger than her, at least ten years, but he obviously adores her,
and she's over the moon.  You should have seen the pair of them holding
hands and gazing into one another's eyes.  I felt quite de trop.

"They're spending Christmas and the New Year in Switzerland and she's
invited us both to go out there for the New Year.  She said she'd be in
touch with you and sent you her love."  Her face changed suddenly as
she added quietly, "You know, she told me that I look very like my
father.  She said that sometimes she almost forgets what he did look
like and then she sees me and it brings him right back to her.  Can you
remember him, Ma, I mean physically?"

Physically.  Hazel went poppy-red, and then realised abruptly that her
daughter was not meaning could she remember Jimmy in any sexual sense
but rather was enquiring if she could remember the way he looked.

"Yes and no," she told her quickly, acutely conscious that for all his
silence Silas was watching her very closely.  Did he think it was
amusing or merely rather pathetic that Katie had been conceived as the
result of two naive children experimenting with sex, rather like
playing with a box of matches, with equally disastrous results?

If she knew Katie, he would not have been spared any details of her
history.  Katie was all sunny openness about her family history, which
was her own fault, because she had been determined right from the start
that any burdens of guilt that were to be carried for Katie's birth
would be carried by her.  She had never pretended to Katie that hers
and Jimmy's had been the love story of the century.  Katie had grown up
knowing that her father was dead, and as soon as she was old enough to
understand the truth Hazel had gently explained to her how she had been
conceived.

She knew that Arm had been equally frank, and was grateful to Jimmy's
mother for the support she had given her in ensuring that Katie did not
make the mistake of glamour ising or ideal ising her father, but had
grown up knowing him almost as a sibling rather than a parent.

The Jimmy she could remember was a teenager, a child almost; the idea
of her loving him was totally ludicrous.  She mourned the loss of his
youth, yes, but if he had lived, if he had not had that fatal accident,
she knew that they would now be two strangers with nothing more in
common than the child they had brought into the world.

"Do you think if he'd lived you'd have married him?"  Katie asked her
curiously, unconsciously mirroring her own thoughts.

Instinctively gnawing her bottom lip as she always did in moments of
tension.  Hazel wished that Katie could be a little less forthright and
a little more tactful.  It wasn't a subject she wanted to discuss in
front of Silas, but then she supposed bleakly that Katie had no secrets
from him, and imagined, because of that, that her mother would have
none from him either.  She had forgotten at times how wonderfully
selfish and self-absorbed the young could sometimes be.

Because she had always striven to be honest with Katie, she said, as
matter-of-factly as she could, all too conscious of an intense desire
to look at Silas, to see how he was reacting to all this, battling with
an equally intense reluctance to reveal anything of herself to him, "I
don't honestly know, Katie.  I suspect that Dad would probably have put
pressure on us to do so, but we were far too young to even think of
marriage, and if we had married it would have been a disaster for us
and for you.  Jimmy was only seventeen."

"And you were only sixteen.  You could have had me adopted."

"I didn't want to," Hazel told her firmly.

"And I was lucky that Dad was prepared to stand by me and support me.
It was a terrible shock to him, I know."

"And to you?"  Katie suggested.

"I mean, you couldn't have intended to get pregnant... but then I
suppose the Pill wasn't as freely available in those days and anyway--'
" Er--I'm sure Silas isn't interested in all this, Katie," Hazel
interrupted her, wondering why on earth her daughter had chosen to
resurrect this of all subjects.

When Katie herself had been entering womanhood, she had spent many many
long hours discussing with her every nuance of her brief relationship
with Jimmy .  baring her own soul with painful honesty, admitting to
her daughter that she had been far too naive to think beyond the
immediacy of what she was doing, that she had not even particularly
desired Jimmy or sex, but that she had simply gone along with what he
suggested because it was what he wanted.  She had loved him, yes, but
with the same intense adolescent love she might have given to a best
friend or a close relative.  There had been nothing remotely sexual in
that love; she had been far too immature to experience such emotions
and needs.

"Oh, Silas knows all about your lurid past," Katie told her carelessly,
oblivious to her sharply indrawn breath, or the way her eyes darkened
with pain.

"He couldn't believe it when I told him how young you are.  I think he
thought you must have been altering your birth certificate.  Well, you
see for yourself now, Silas, that I wasn't lying."

"Yes, I can."

The terseness in his voice made Hazel glance worriedly at him.

Something had obviously upset or annoyed him.  He was frowning quite
intimidatingly, and she quailed inwardly for Katie's sake, hoping he
would not vent his irritation on her vulnerable head.  That was the
problem with such an unequal relationship--Katie would never, ever be
any true match for him and she was positive (hat he would make sure
that the balance of power in their relationship was always weighted in
his favour and that Katie always remained the adoring acolyte
worshipping at his feet.

And yet there was nothing remotely worshipful in the grin Katie had
given him as she too registered his curtness.

"You'll have to watch him, Ma," she warned Hazel teasingly.

"He's got a terrible temper, frightens us all to death in class."

Hazel frowned herself.  She didn't like the idea of Katie being
involved in a relationship with a man who was potentially violent,
although Katie herself seemed to have no such reservations.

If she was honest with herself, she did not like the idea of Katie
being involved with him at all.

While Katie chattered her way enthusiastically all through supper,
describing her new life as a student, Hazel remained almost silent.

She had so looked forward to this, her daughter's first visit home,
never imagining she would not come alone.

She put down her knife and fork, her meal virtually untouched, causing
Katie to chide her warningly, "Ma, you don't eat enough.  Men like
women with a bit of flesh on their bones, don't they, Silas?"

Eyeing her daughter's racehorse-lithe slenderness, Hazel found herself
envying her her sleek height and her long elegant bones.

She felt like a dwarf in comparison.

"No sensible man likes to see a woman starving herself into the kind of
hungry, bone-thin brittleness that makes her look as though she's
permanently hungry.  Tastes do vary, of course, but I must admit there
is something very appealing to the male ego about the kind of petite
fragility your mother embodies... Call it chauvinistic, or
old-fashioned-which I suppose in all honesty it is--but such women do
in general tend to bring out all the old protective male instincts in
filll force."

"But in your books your heroines are almost always positive Valkyries,"
Hazel protested without thinking, and then flushed wildly as she
realised that she had made the mistake of looking directly into his
eyes, and that he was looking back into hers, with the kind of
searching scrutiny that made her long to be able to close them and hide
herself away from him.

"Not always," he corrected her.

"Perhaps I've been trying too hard not to betray my own preferences.
Certainly I feel it's healthy for me as a writer to take the harder
path, to show that vulnerability need not necessarily always come
packed in a seven-stone female of under five feet four.

"After supper I wonder if you'd mind if I went straight upstairs and
made a few notes?  I've had something itching at the back of my mind
for the last couple of hours that I'd like to get down on paper, and
besides, I'm sure you and Katie have things you want to discuss.

"We haven't mentioned money yet.  Naturally I don't expect you to house
me at your own expense.  Normally when I do this kind of research, I
rent somewhere and hole up in it for six months or so, until I've
finished my first draft, and I have to admit that when Katie first
passed on your invitation for me to stay here I was a little dubious
about how it would work.  However, you've put all my doubts to
flight."

Hazel had no idea what to say.  She had to content herself with giving
Katie an accusing look, which her daughter resolutely ignored.

Although this less than lover like request should have pleased her, for
some reason she discovered that once he had excused himself and left
her and Katie on their own she actually missed his presence and had to
stop herself from listening for the sound of his footsteps on the
stairs.

However, now, while she had the opportunity, there were issues she had
to take up with her daughter, and she did so as firmly as she could,
demanding equably, "I know I am getting on in years, Katie, but I
hadn't realised I was suffering such severe memory loss that I don't
have the slightest recollection of having extended this invitation
Silas has decided to accept."

Katie grinned unrepentantiy at her.

"Well, I had to stretch the truth a little," she admitted cheerfully,
pulling a face as she added, "Silas can be so punctilious about some
things.  I suppose it must be his age or something."

While Hazel was still blinking at this unloverlike comment, Katie
continued quickly, "The moment he told me that he was setting his new
book up here in Cheshire and that he needed a base here to work from, I
knew it would be a great idea for him to stay here, but I know what
you're like."  She pulled another face.

"You'd never have suggested it to him on your own bat--' She broke off
and looked at her mother in surprise as Hazel told her grimly, "
You're right, I most certainly would not have done.  "

"There you are, you see," Katie continued blithely, ignoring Hazel's
exasperated frown.

"And I knew that Silas would never agree to come up here without a
formal invite so I--' " Lied to him?  " Hazel offered grittily.

Katie's eyes rounded in injured innocence.

"Only sort of.  You're going to love having him here, Ma, and I'm going
to feel so much happier knowing that you're not on your own.  I mean,
the house is rather remote, and you're here all alone now that I'm
away."

"So it was all done for my benefit, was it?"  Hazel asked her
acerbically.

"Very altruistic."  It was on the tip of her tongue to suggest to her
daughter that while Silas was staying here with her he
was--comparatively, at least--safe from other women, and to tell her
daughter that she had no intention of acting as a guard dog for her
lover, but weakly she knew that she hadn't the heart, and, to do Katie
justice, she knew that her daughter had been concerned about her living
on her own.

"Well, whatever your motives, I don't approve of the way you've
manipulated us both.  You're not God, Katie.  You can't go round
interfering in other people's lives.  What if I'd denied extending any
such invitation?"

"Oh, I knew you wouldn't do that.  You're too loyal.  Too
soft-hearted.

But you'll like having him here, Ma.  He'll take you out of yourself.
"

Hazel stared at her and said crisply, "Thanks very much."

In actual fact she doubted if she would see much of Silas at all.  She
knew from her own experience that when she was working the last thing
she wanted was constant interruptions--which reminded her, she would
have to have a talk with her unexpected guest about mealtimes and so
forth.  She had just accepted a new commission herself, and, while she
was quite prepared to invite Silas to join her for his meals if he
wished, she had no intention of pandering to any kind of artistic
temperament by providing food and beverages on demand.  He must either
fit in with her routine or make his own arrangements.

"Just think how well it will go down at the WI," Katie teased her.

"They'll be asking you to give a talk on what it's like living with a
famous author."

"Hardly," Hazel told her repressively.

"We've far more important and interesting subjects than that to
discuss."  She gave her daughter an austere look.

"By rights I ought to march you upstairs and make you explain to your
to Silas just what you've done."

"Oh, come on, Ma.  You wouldn't do that, would you?  He'd be furious
with me..."

Furious with her?  Hazel gave her a worried look.  What kind of lover
was it who was furious with his partner?  Awful images of violence and
oppression flitted through her mind.

"He doesn't ... he isn't ... he isn't unkind to you in any way, Katie,
is he?"  she asked cautiously.

Her daughter was, after all, in her own eyes at least an adult, and it
wouldn't do to pry too much into her relationship with Silas.  And
besides, she was too much of a coward to want to be furnished with too
many intimate details of what went on between them.

"Unkind?"  Katie seemed to consider the question, and then responded
thoughtfully, "No, not really, unless you include giving me the most
grotty marks for my last essay."

Either Katie had totally misunderstood her, or her fears were
completely unreal.  Fervently hoping that it was the latter.  Hazel got
up to clear the table and load the dishwasher.

Til do that, Ma," Katie offered.

It was just gone eight o'clock when Silas came back downstairs, and
when Katie suggested that the three of them walk down to the village to
have a drink in the pub.  Hazel quickly made the excuse of having some
work to do, feeling that she ought to at least make the attempt to
allow the two of them some time alone together.  Katie might be quite
happy to include her mother in their company, but Hazel doubted that
Silas could share her feelings.  Although he certainly wasn't betraying
any antipathy to her company in his expression, but then he was very
good at concealing what he was feeling.  Too good, perhaps.

Hazel worried as she determinedly refused Katie's cajoling to accompany
them.

Modern lovers seemed to lack the kind of intensity she had always
imagined must go with being deeply in love, unless of course as
established lovers Katie and Silas no longer felt any urgency to be
alone together.

Katie still hadn't said a word about the fact that she had given them
seperate rooms, had seemed to accept it quite matter-of-factly.  She
felt the beginnings of a headache pressing against her temples and
lifted her hand to rub the tension away.

"Aren't you feeling well?"

The quiet question surprised her.  She turned round to find Silas
watching her.

"Just a bit of a headache."

"You should come with us.  The fresh air would do you good."

"I... I'm rather tired.  I think I'll have an early night instead."

Katie had run upstairs to get her coat, and for some reason she felt
the sudden burn of tears stinging her eyes.  It was all the tension
and shock, that was all.  That and the fact that she wasn't used to
people expressing concern for her, to being made to feel feminine and
vulnerable by the concern in a man's voice.  She was probably imagining
it anyway.

Why on earth should Silas be concerned about her?  Yes, she was
imagining it, she decided distastefully as she turned away from him.

She was turning into one of those silly middle-aged women, so afraid of
growing older that she had to fantasise that every male she met was in
some way attracted to her.  The thought revolted her.

She had been in bed for just over an hour when she heard them return.

As they came upstairs together, they halted on the landing a few feet
away from her door.

She tensed indignantly beneath the bedclothes when she heard Silas
suggesting quietly to Katie, "Perhaps you ought to go in and check on
your mother, she--' To her relief, Katie responded immediately, " Oh,
good heavens, no.  "

But she realised that Katie had obviously misunderstood the reason for
his question and had assumed it was concern for her which had prompted
it because she went on to advise him, "Ma hates anyone fussing,
especially when she isn't feeling well.  Besides, she'll probably be
asleep by now.  Night, Silas."

There was a brief silence during which Hazel tried not to imagine them
locked in a passionate embrace, but if it had been passionate it had
also been extremely short, because she had barely closed her eyes to
block out the unwanted vision of their entwined bodies, Silas's arms
wrapped firmly round Katie's slender, youthful body, his mouth--that
very male mouth with its sharply cut upper lip, and so much fuller,
softer lower one, caressing Katie's--when she heard the sound of
Silas's door opening and Katie's footsteps disappearing down the
landing.

Now she could sleep, she told herself, but of course she did not do so.
No--she spent virtually the whole of the night snatching at un relaxing
moments of sleep in between waking up to listen for the betraying sound
of creaking floorboards and doors.

What was she doing to herself?  she wondered bitterly with tears in her
eyes.  Of course she wanted to protect Katie, to prevent her from being
hurt, but the images dancing feverishly in her brain, the thoughts
whirling turbulently through her head, had nothing to do with those
emotions.

It seemed inconceivable that she, who had never wanted or imagined
herself wanting a lover should so suddenly and so embarrassingly find
herself in this confusing and unwanted state of frantic awareness of
and yearning for, of all the men, the one who was her daughter's lover.
It was degrading, humiliating.

CHAPTER THREE

of course, with her having had hardly any sleep at all, it was perhaps
understandable that Hazel should have fallen so deeply asleep just
before dawn that she had slept right through her normal waking-up time,
she realised grumpily, reluctantly opening her eyes.

Someone was knocking on her bedroom door, Katie no doubt, wanting to
know why she was still in bed, so she called out, "Come in'.

She was just lifting her head from the pillow preparatory to getting up
when the door opened, only it wasn't Katie who came in--it was Silas.

"Hope I didn't wake you," he was apologising, 'only I thought you might
like a cup of tea.  "

Hazel stared at him, completely lost for words.  He was dressed in
well-worn jeans and a clean shirt, unbuttoned at the throat.  His hair
was damp and as he came towards her she caught the scent of soap on his
skin.

He was carrying a china mug of tea, which he put down on the table
beside her bed.

"How's the headache?"  he enquired.

Hazel blinked at him.  What headache?  It was her heart that was
behaving oddly, not her head.  It was beating so erratically, so loudly
that she automatically placed her hand over it on top of the
bedclothes, trying to steady it.

"Er--it's gone."

What on earth was happening?  She wasn't used to men invading her
bedroom, bringing her cups of tea, enquiring about her health.
especially not men like this one.

She was suddenly mortifyingly aware of the shabbiness of the nightshirt
which had originally been Katie's, the untidy tangle of her curls, and
the fact that sunshine was streaming through her curtained window and
sending far too sharp fingers of light across her bed and her face. She
wondered if he had taken Katie a cup of tea, and, if so, if he was now
comparing her youthful freshness with the unattractive sight of her own
early morning paleness.

"Katie tells me you're an illustrator," he remarked conversationally,
apparently in no hurry to go.

"Er--yes... children's books."

"Are you working on a commission at the moment?"

Tm just about to start one," she told him truthfully.

She saw him frown as he exclaimed, "Won't it be inconvenient for you,
having me here?"

Honesty warred with loyalty to Katie and loyalty won.

"Not at all," she fibbed.

"I'm looking forward to it.  I expect they'll ask me to give a talk
about it at theWI."

What on earth was the matter with her?  She was behaving like a
complete fool.

"Ma."

She saw Katie coming in through the door with relief.

"Not interrupting anything, am I?"  Katie enquired archly as she
entered.

Hazel could feel herself flushing, protesting automatically, "Really,
Katie, I--' " Just teasing, Ma," Katie assured her.

"Mm--tea in bed.  You lucky thing.  Why didn't / get one?"

"Perhaps because you didn't merit one," Silas told her drily, causing
Hazel to stare at him in confusion.  What was he trying to do?  Make
Katie jealous?  Of her own mother?  Ridiculous.  Of course not.  "I
...I--er--think I'd better get up," she announced quickly.

"Good idea," Katie agreed.

"What shall we do today, Ma?  I thought Silas might appreciate a guided
tour of the area.  You know, Gawsworth and that sort of thing."

"That sounds like a good idea," Hazel agreed.

"Will you be gone all day or will you come back for lunch?"

Katie was frowning.

"Well, that's up to you.  What I meant was, why don't you take Silas to
Gawsworth?  I mean, it's much more your sort of thing than mine, you
know so much more about it, and you know that I'm not that interested
in history.  Besides, when I was in the off-licence I bumped into
Susie, and she's asked me round there today so that we can catch up on
all our gossip.  You don't mind, do you, Ma?  I mean, you love going to
Gawsworth, don't you?  You're always saying how much it inspires you
and how you never get bored with it."

Hazel had no idea what to say.  Katie was looking appealingly at her,
almost willing her to agree.  But why?  Surely she must want Silas to
herself?  Unless of course there was something wrong--unless perhaps
they had had a quarrel.  Perhaps over last night's sleeping
arrangements.  Maybe Silas had tried to insist that Katie spend the
night with him and maybe Katie had felt impelled to refuse because they
were under her mother's roof.  If that was the case and she was the
cause of their quarrel, then perhaps she owed it to her daughter to do
what she plainly wished her to do.

Swallowing down her reluctance, she began uncertainly, "Well, if
Mr....if Silas doesn't object to having me as a guide, I'd certainly
love the opportunity to revisit Gawsworth."  She had in actual fact
been thinking of paying the house a visit anyway.

It was true that she found endless inspiration in its black and white
faa de its homely collection of rooms, its history, but she was sure
that Silas could have no wish to visit the house in her company.  She
waited, expecting him to point out to Katie that it was her company he
wanted, that he would have plenty of time to undertake his research for
his new , book once she, Katie, was back at university, but to Hazel's
astonishment he turned to her and said with what appeared to be genuine
pleasure, "If you could spare the time to come with me, I'd really
appreciate it.  Katie's told me that you're a very keen local
historian, and I suspect I shall be picking your brains on more than
one occasion during the next few months.  I only hope you don't come to
regret your very generous offer to house me."

"Great, so that's settled.  Since I'm not to be offered a cup of tea
I'm going to get dressed," Katie announced cheerfully.

She headed for the door, leaving Silas to get off the bed where he had
been sitting.

As he got up his movements dislodged the duvet, which slid sideways
exposing, to Hazel's mortification, the upper half of her body in its
totally unsuitable covering of a pink and white candy-striped
nightshirt embellished with a large picture of a cat Hardly suitable
nightwear for a woman of her ma tare years, and, while the rest of her
body was extremely slender, she was not after all a girl of eighteen
and her breasts were far too clearly reve ale by the slightly too
close-fitting garment.

She made a dive to recover the duvet at the same time as Silas bent
down to do the same thing.  Their fingers touched briefly, her skin
burning as shi snatched her hand away, a wild flush of colour dyeing
her skin scarlet as Silas looked towards her.

Perhaps he had merely been going to apologise:

or perhaps he had not intended to say anything al all, but, whatever
his intentions were, they seemed to be forgotten as he tensed, so
obviously and sc unexpectedly that Hazel automatically turned her head
to see what it was that had compelled his attention.

When she realised that it was me soft swell of her own breasts on which
his gaze was transfixed.  and, even worse, that her nipples, those
delicate and normally exceptionally primly behaved indicator;

of feminine sexual arousal, were flaunting themselves -in rigidly taut
pinnacles that pushed wantonly against the soft, worn cotton of her
nightshirt as though deliberately begging to be touched.  kissed.

Hazel couldn't help it.  She gave a tiny shudder of self-revulsion and
closing her eyes, rolled over on to her stomach and through the
muffling thickness of her pillow whispered huskily, "Please go."

She was still shivering long after she had heard him leave.

How on earth could she get dressed and go downstairs now, behaving as
though nothing out of the ordinary had happened?  And what if Silas
chose to tell Katie what had happened?  She gave a small moan of
despair and self-contempt, longing to simply keep her eyes closed and
stay where she was, but she couldn't do that.  She was a mature woman,
not a child, even if she was not behaving as one.

And so she got up, showered in her own small bathroom, and then dressed
in a plain black skirt, a cream shirt, and a thick cardigan, which she
took great care to fasten all the way down the front, so that even if
her body did choose to betray her a second time no one other than
herself would be aware of it.

As she scooped the damp towels and her nightshirt up off the bathroom
floor, she made herself a promise that first thing on Monday morning
she was going to go out and buy herself something to sleep in far more
appropriate for her years.  Something sensible and middle-aged.

Something heavy and thick.  Something mat wouldn't give away the
over-stimulated state of her body, no matter how close to her Silas
chose to sit.

Which was stupid, because after what had happened this morning bringing
her further early morning cups of tea was the last thing he was likely
to do.  Nor would she want him to do so.  In reality it was all his
fault anyway.  He had no right to invadt the privacy of her bedroom. No
right at all.  Just because he was Katie's lover, that did not give
hicr the right to walk into her room and perch himselj on the end of
her bed.

And yet.  and yet, she acknowledged mournfully, there had been
something luxurious, something very special that made her feel pampered
and cosseted about being brought tea in bed by a man Perhaps, she
realised with a faint awareness of some deep inner pain, because no man
had ever done that for her before.  Just as no man had ever held her
breasts in his hands, stroking them, caressing their softness, and then
kissing them, teasing the erect nipples, until they were trembling with
excitement, until she was trembling with excitement.

Stop that, she warned herself, frantically, stop it right now.  She had
no right to have such thoughts No right at all.

When she got downstairs, she discovered that nol only was the table set
for breakfast, but that the kitchen was permeated by the delicious
smell of freshly filtered coffee.  Sniffing it appreciatively, she
enthused to Katie, who was just opening a cupboard door, "You are a
love.  Thanks for getting breakfast started.  I don't know what
happened to me this morning.  I overslept, I'm afraid."

She was praying that her daughter wouldn't turn round and see the guilt
and the misery in her eyes.  Silas belonged to Katie, and she was
betraying her own daughter in feeling so aware of him, so aroused by
him.

"Don't thank me," Katie told her, reaching up into the cupboard and
removing a packet of her favourite cereal.

"It was Silas's idea.  He's a real slave-driver, you have no idea. Said
I've been spoilt for long enough, and that it was time someone spoiled
you a little bit."

Hazel couldn't help it.  She felt her skin flush and her jaw drop as
she listened to this announcement.

What on earth was Silas playing at?  He hardly seemed the kind of man
who would ever be insecure enough with a woman to need to stoop to
those sort of ploys, but then a man of his age, who needed to boost his
ego with the company of a much younger girl, must have some serious
emotional problems.

And yet in other ways he seemed so mature, so.  so in control of
himself and those around him.

Perhaps that was it.  Perhaps he was one of those men who needed to
control the emotions of others and could best do so by preying on the
very young With a woman of her years, for instance, he would never be
able to do that.  Well, at least not with an) other woman of her age,
because she would have the experience to match his own, the knowledge
the maturity.

"Er--where is Silas?"  she asked Katie, trying to control her rioting
thoughts.

"Gone down to the village to buy some papers He's taken the car though
so he shouldn't be ver) long."

"Mm... are you making toast?"  she asked a Hazel picked up the
breadboard and removed a loi from the bread bin.

"And I wouldn't mind some scrambled eggs il there are any going."

"Then get up and make yourself some," a mal< voice suggested from the
kitchen door.

"You'v< spoiled this brat, you know," Silas told Hazel, as h< walked
into the kitchen.

"You sit down," he instructed her, removing the bread knife from her
hand before she could object.

Numbly Hazel did as she was told.  What on eartf was going on?  Silas
was treating Katie as through she were a child and not his lover.  She
knew it was true that she had tended to spoil Katie a little, but her
father had tended to be very demanding, especially when he had had his
stroke.  He had been the old-fashioned kind who took it for granted
that a woman should virtually wait hand and foot on a man, and somehow
or other Hazel had got into the habit of doing the same thing for
Katie, although she had made sure that her daughter did absorb the
rudiments of domesticity and taking care of herself.

"I'm sorry, Ma," Katie said now.

"Silas is right.  You do spoil me.

Oh, great--home-made bread," she enthused as she saw the loaf Silas was
slicing.

"Marvellous.  One thing I do miss about home is your cooking.  Ma is a
wonderful cook, Silas.  In fact she's wonderful, full stop," Katie
added, giving her a warm hug and dropping a kiss on the top of her
head.

"By the way, Ma, may I borrow your car?  I mean, you won't need it,
will you?  Not if you're going out with Silas, and I could really do
with it, if I'm going to see Susie."

Grimacing at her.  Hazel nodded.

"But just see you treat her with me respect she deserves, and no using
all my petrol and leaving me with an empty tank, and--' " Put the seat
back when you get out," Katie chanted in unison with her, adding with a
grin, " Is it my fault I've got long legs?  OK, OK.  I hear what you're
saying.  "

"You hear it, but will you pay any attention to it?"  Hazel asked her
wryly.

"The answer to that question, if she's typical of her age-group, is
no," Silas supplied as he brought over a plate of delicious golden
brown toast.

"I have four teenage nephews," he added surprisingly.

"One of my sisters has twin boys of eighteen and the other has one of
fifteen and another of nineteen.  I suppose there must have been a time
when we were all equally selfish, but somehow as one gets older one
fails to remember it; hence maturity's lamented impatience and
exasperation with youth."

"Just listen to Grandpa there," Katie teased, adding curiously, "I
didn't know you had nephews.  Have you any other family?"  she asked
him, spreading butter generously on her toast and then licking it off
her fingers, for all the world like the little girl she sometimes still
was.

"Not really.  My parents are dead.  I've got the usual assortment of
second and third cousins and an aunt or so, but that's all."

"It's odd that you've never been married," Katie told him, ignoring
Hazel's faint gasp of reproach.  Tact, it seemed, wasn't essential to
modern relationships.

It was funny that when she had first realised how much older than Katie
Silas was it had been her daughter she had been desperately anxious to
protect Then she would have welcomed this albeit unwitting blow to his
ego, but now conversely it was Silas's feelings she felt the most need
to defend and she had to bite down hard on her bottom lip, still sore
and swollen from the previous day's mangling, to prevent herself from
objecting to Katie's tactlessness.

"Is it?  I suppose I've just never met the right person, at the right
time.  When I was young I didn't want to settle down; there were too
many things I wanted to do with my life first, before I committed
myself to a wife and a family, and then later... And then later...
Well, I suppose it's true that the older you get the fussier you get,
and the more reluctant to settle for anything but the very best."

A simple statement of fact, or a subtle warning to Katie herself that
she must not think in terms of permanency, of commitment, of
marriage?

She hated herself for the relief that she felt, and tried to tell
herself that it was purely on Katie's account and had no other
significance at all.

It was mid-mo ming before they were all eventually ready to leave.

Hazel sighed a little as she saw Katie coming downstairs dressed in a
multihued jumper, a pair of old jeans which clung lovingly to her long
slim legs, leg-warmers which clashed vividly with her jumper and a pair
of old trainers, and yet somehow still managing to look stunningly
pretty.

At Katie's age she had not had one tenth of the self-confidence of her
daughter.  What did she mean, at Katie's age?  she derided herself
inwardly--she didn't have one tenth of Katie's confidence now.  Wryly
she compared Katie's outfit to her own sensible, sombre-hued clothes.

She looked dull and boring, a plain sparrow standing next to a
tropically plum aged bird of far more exotic hue.

Was Silas comparing them as well, mentally berating Katie for deserting
him and leaving him to accompany her mother?  She writhed inwardly at
the thought, half inclined to announce that after all she could not go
with him, but good manners, the manners instilled in her by her father
and Mrs.  Meadows, prevented her from doing so.

And if Silas was annoyed by Katie's defection, he was certainly not
allowing it to show.

All the weather signs were that they were going to have an early
winter.  Certainly, after a dry warm summer, the sudden spate of frosts
and cold winds had come as an unwelcome shock at first, but Hazel had
always loved autumn.  There was something especially invigorating about
its cold crisp mornings, its pale blue skies, the pastel colours of its
pale sunshine against a landscape washed clean of the warm vibrant
colours of summer.  Soon the distant hills would be covered in their
first falls of snow;

soon the last of the leaves would be gone from the trees, leaving them
skeletal and bare.

"Brr ... it's cold," Katie complained, shivering as they stepped
outside.

"Roll on summer."

"Summer!"  Silas commented, watching as Katie folded herself into
Hazel's small car.

"Why is it the young have no appreciation of the truly wonderful things
in life?  Personally I prefer this time of year, when the landscape is
stripped back to its bare bones.  It gives it an austerity, a pride
almost that you never see in summer."

His words so closely mirrored her own thoughts that Hazel smiled warmly
at him, unaware of how much her sudden pleasure changed her whole face,
dispelling the tension and control she was always so careful to
maintain and instead revealing a much younger, more vulnerable woman, a
woman who in so many ways seemed almost younger and more innocent than
her own daughter.

Watching her, Silas wondered if she had deliberately chosen to efface
herself, to camouflage herself and hide away behind the barriers she
had erected against his sex, or if she had simply fallen into the
unconscious habit of doing so.

When Katie had first told him about her home and her mother, in her
artless, confiding way, he had been very dubious about accepting her
invitation to come and see both of them for himself.  Now.  He watched
as Katie drove off and then turned to study Hazel.  She was watching
her car disappear with an expression on her face that was almost
wistful.

"You'll have to direct me, I'm afraid," he told her, opening the car
door for her.

"How far is it to Gawsworth?"

"Only about ten or twelve miles."

Hazel sighed a little as she sank down into the luxury of the car's
leather upholstery, wondering a little enviously what it must be like
to own such a luxurious marque.

"It's a beautiful car," she commented, as Silas got in beside her and
started the engine.

"Yes.  I'm very pleased with it, although they're vastly over-priced.

However, when I'm doing the research on a book, I need a car I can rely
on and one I can travel in in relative comfort, so something like this
is an essential.  "

They were almost at the small crossroads where they would have to turn
off for Gawsworth, and Hazel directed him accordingly.

"What made you decide to set your new book in Cheshire?"  she asked him
hesitantly.  She had no idea whether he would welcome questions about
his work.  She had heard that authors could be temperamental over such
things, although a show of temperament was somehow the last thing she
could associate with Silas.  He seemed far too well adjusted, far too
quietly self-confident of himself and his goals, but then, as she had
reminded herself before, if he was as mature an adult as he had seemed,
surely he wouldn't need to support his male ego by choosing such a very
young girlfriend as her daughter?

"It all started with one of the characters in my last book, a knight by
the name of Hugo de Lupus;

a fictional character, related to the Earl of Chester--' "Yes, I
remember him," Hazel interrupted him enthusiastically.

"He was so well drawn, so interesting, that I found myself wanting to
know more about him.  And now you're going to base a new book on him?

That's wonderful.  " She broke off suddenly, conscious of me quizzical
look he was giving her, her skin flushing with mortification.

"When Katie told me you read my books, I thought she was flattering me.
I see that I was wrong.  Yes, I agree with you.  I found that Hugo was
building into a far more complex and demanding character than I'd ever
intended, and, to be quite honest, I hadn't intended to start work on a
new book quite so soon.  I'd already committed myself to a series of
lectures at the university, and I've found that Hugo has rather been
getting in the way.  Hence the urgency to find somewhere to live while
I start my research.  I've done quite a bit of reading up on the
area;

now I need to get down to some proper work.  I thought of using a house
similar to Gawsworth as Hugo's home base.  "

They talked for a few more minutes until Hazel directed him once again
and then as though by mutual consent both of them became silent as
Hazel settled back in her seat to enjoy the allure of the countryside,
and the comfort of the car.

Gawsworth, when they reached it, wasn't busy.  The summer visitors were
gone, and they almost seemed to have the house and gardens to
themselves.

As they walked in silence from room to room, Hazel enjoying the
pleasure of seeing familiar objects and rooms, Silas making their
acquaintance for the first time, she was visited as she always was
whenever she came here by the house's very own special aura.

When they had toured the entire upper floors in almost total silence,
she said hesitantly to Silas, "It isn't a very grand house; perhaps you
had something different in mind.  We could-- " It's perfect," he told
her quietly.

"And you're the perfect companion to enjoy it with.  So few people have
the gift of silence, of allowing places, things to speak for
themselves."

"Sometimes I think I'm very boring," Hazel told him shakily, too
bemused by his compliment to hide what she was feeling.

"I never seem to know what to say to people.  Katie says it's because
I'm on my own so much."  She pulled a wry face.

"I don't know so much about that--' " You aren't boring at all," Silas
interrupted her firmly.

"The people who are boring are those who chatter endlessly about
nothing until they make your eardrums ache."

They were just about to go downstairs, standing together in the small
enclosed space at their head, and, although another couple could have
fitted between them with ease.  Hazel suddenly felt as though she was
standing far, far too close to Silas.

A dangerous sense of expectancy, of excitement, seemed to curl through
her veins, gripping her muscles with an unfamiliar tension.

She heard herself saying in a husky, strained voice, "I think we'd
better go down.  We've still got the ground floor to see, and then
there are the gardens " Yes.  "

Was it her imagination or did Silas's voice too seem faintly hoarse?

It was the house, she told herself quickly as they went downstairs.

It always brought her a very intense awareness of how many, many
generations had lived and loved within its walls, how many, many tears
and smiles it must have seen, how many joys and how many tragedies. And
it always made her feel vulnerable; aware of her own aloneness, her
lack of someone with whom to share her life.  Just as, for some reason,
Silas himself made her sharply aware of what was missing from her life
both emotionally and physically.  of all that she had missed.

By choice, as well as by necessity, she reminded herself sharply.

There had been moments, opportunities which if taken would have led on
to intimacy even if had only been a casual sexual intimacy.  But that
was not for her.  Her body, never having known sexual pleasure or
fulfilment, had no craving for it.  Something inside her had always
made her shrink away from the thought of sex for sex's sake, perhaps
because she simply wasn't made that way, or perhaps because of Katie's
conception.

But now suddenly she was sharply, almost painfully aware that she was a
woman; that she could feel desire, that her body could ache and torment
her, that she could look at a man, at his mouth, at his hands, and ache
almost feverishly to know what they would feel like against her skin.

That on its own was bad enough, dangerous enough, but when that man was
her daughter's lover.  When that man was, as Katie herself had told
her, someone very, very special, then there was no justification for
what she was feeling, no pardon for allowing herself to continue to
have these feelings, no excuse at all for allowing herself the self
indulgence and the danger of being with him.

If she had any sense, any loyalty, any love for Katie she should have
refused outright to accompany Silas this morning.

But she did love Katie.  Of course she loved her.  And as for her being
here with Silas.  That had been at Katie's insistence, and, after all
what threat did she pose to Katie's happiness?  Silas was hardly likely
to look at her with desire.  No matter how much he might have implied
this morning that he was enjoying her company, no matter how subtly he
might have suggested that he enjoyed being with her, he was in all
probability only being polite, being pleasant to her because she was
Katie's mother.

Yes, that was what it was: he was simply being pleasant to her for
Katie's sake.

It was the house, she told herself quickly as they went downstairs.

It always brought her a very intense awareness of how many, many
generations had lived and loved within its walls, how many, many tears
and smiles it must have seen, how many joys and how many tragedies. And
it always made her feel vulnerable; aware of her own aloneness, her
lack of someone with whom to share her life.  Just as, for some reason,
Silas himself made her sharply aware of what was missing from her life
both emotionally and physically.  of all that she had missed.

By choice, as well as by necessity, she reminded herself sharply.

There had been moments, opportunities which if taken would have led on
to intimacy even if had only been a casual sexual intimacy.  But that
was not for her.  Her body, never having known sexual pleasure or
fulfilment, had no craving for it.  Something inside her had always
made her shrink away' from the thought of sex for sex's sake, perhaps
because she simply wasn't made that way, or perhaps because of Katie's
conception.

But now suddenly she was sharply, almost painfully aware that she was a
woman; that she could feel desire, that her body could ache and torment
her, that she could look at a man, at his mouth, at his hands, and ache
almost feverishly to know what they would feel like against her skin.

That on its own was bad enough, dangerous enough, but when that man was
her daughter's lover.  When that man was, as Katie herself had told
her, someone very, very special, then there was no justification for
what she was feeling, no pardon for allowing herself to continue to
have these feelings, no excuse at all for allowing herself the self
indulgence and the danger of being with him.

If she had any sense, any loyalty, any love for Katie she should have
refused outright to accompany Silas this morning.

But she did love Katie.  Of course she loved her.  And as for her being
here with Silas.  That had been at Katie's insistence, and, after all
what threat did she pose to Katie's happiness?  Silas was hardly likely
to look at her with desire.  No matter how much he might have implied
this morning that he was enjoying her company, no matter how subtly he
might have suggested that he enjoyed being with her, he was in all
probability only being polite, being pleasant to her because she was
Katie's mother.

Yes, that was what it was: he was simply being pleasant to her for
Katie's sake.

CHAPTER FOUR

'thank you for bringing me to Gawsworth.  "

They were outside in the gardens, standing at the top of a steep
incline admiring the view of the house, where it lay snugly in a hollow
below them.

"I love coming here," Hazel responded truthfully.

"In the summer they have outdoor seasons of Gilbert and Sullivan, plus
a small run of plays, using the floodlit house as a backdrop.  People
come early to picnic on the grass.  There's a wonderful atmosphere."

"I can imagine."

Hazel gave him a quick, doubting look, wondering if he was mocking
her--if he was comparing her lifestyle to his own and deriding her as a
dull middle-aged woman whose life was so lonely and boring that a
simple evening's outing became something of immense importance and
excitement, far more so than the event actually justified.  But when
she looked at him there was nothing other than sincere enthusiasm to be
read in his eyes.  But even so.  "Katie loathes Gilbert and Sullivan.
The last time she came with me, she complained that she was eaten alive
by mosquitoes."

"I know the feeling.  I experienced the same profound boredom and
irritation when I foolishly agreed to accompany my nephews and godson
to a pop concert."

"Katie likes pop music," she told him defiantly.

"I expect she does.  At her age so did I. She'll grow out of it.  We
all do."

What did he mean, he expected she did?  Surely he must be aware of
Katie's tastes, her likes and dislikes?  Surely he could hardly have
failed to notice Katie's love of the latest pop music, played so loud
that it positively hurt one's eardrums?  As Katie's lover he must be
intimately aware of her likes and dislikes.  Or was he the kind of man
who had no interest in the woman in his life when they were not
together in bed?

Her senses immediately repudiated such a suggestion.  Because--or so
she told herself--she could not bear to think of Katie, her clever,
beautiful Katie being foolish enough, needing enough, to allow herself
to become involved with a man, any man, who would treat her so badly.

No, that was more her role.  She was the one whose inexperience, whose
lack of knowledge, whose lack of self-worm, might dangerously lead her
into such a relationship.  Not that she had the intention of becoming
involved in any kind of emotional or sexual relationship, much less one
with.  She gave a small shiver.  Her thoughts, her feelings, were
rapidly escalating and getting beyond her control.

"Cold?  That's my fault.  I've kept you standing here far too long."

She was smiling in denial, before she could check the foolish response
of her unwary heart, acknowledging that even if she had been cold the
warmth of Silas's smile would have dispelled it.

They were standing so close to one another that if either of them took
a single step it would bring them close enough for their bodies to
brush lightly together, for him to lift his arm and put it around her
shoulders, for him to take hold of her and turn her towards him and.
Her stifled gasp made him turn his head and frown at her.  For a moment
she thought that he had actually looked into her heart and read what
she was so desperately trying to conceal.

He was her daughter's lover, she reminded herself despairingly, praying
silently for help, for someone or something to help her with the
struggle which was rapidly outrunning her self-control.

She tried to concentrate on how humiliating it would be for her, and
how painful and upsetting for Katie, if he should guess what was
happening to her and tell Katie.  Her daughter would have every right
to feel shocked and disgusted with her.  She felt both those emotions
herself and more.

She could not understand why, after all the years since Jimmy's death,
when she had never felt the slightest sexual inclination or desire,
when no matter how much she might have sometimes ached for emotional
closeness with a man who might love and cherish her she had never once
experienced anything like the fierce, sharp, painful splintering of
sexual chemistry she was feeling now, it had to be for this man of all
men.

Was it because he was Katie's.  because in some dark and hitherto
unplumbed or suspected corners of her psyche, she was jealous or
resentful of her daughter?  Her soul cringed back from the thought in
mute horror.  She knew instinctively that it wasn't so.  But in that
case what was the explanation?

Was it perhaps her age--her hormones?  Wild theories and thoughts
jumbled together in her head.  She had read in magazine articles that
sometimes women approaching middle-age were prone to what might be
termed erratic behaviour.  She was after all thirty-six.

"Does your knowledge of the locale extend to knowing somewhere where we
could have lunch?"

The quiet question had to be repeated before its meaning registered.

She stared at Silas with panic blinded eyes that made him frown and
search her face, before asking softly, "What is it?  What's wrong?"

She had thought that intimacy between a man and woman began with
physical touch, but she had been wrong.  Hazel acknowledged sickly as
her body, her senses responded violently to the sound of his voice,
almost as though its cadences, its warmth, its male tones had thrown an
invisible circle around them both, locking them within it.

"I... I... Katie will be wondering where we are," was all she could
manage to say.

Her throat felt raw and painful.  She was embarrassingly aware that
inside she was trembling with shock and emotion.  She could never
remember feeling like this in all her life.  Not even when she had
discovered she was pregnant, and certainly not when she and Jimmy.  "I
shouldn't think so.  She gave me the impression that she intended to
spend most of the day with her friend.  I may not know a great deal
about young women of her age, but it seems to me that once two of them
get together they appear to have an endless amount of topics to
discuss."

*I.  " Why wasn't she telling him firmly and plainly that she could not
have lunch with him?  Why wasn't she reminding both herself and him
about Katie?

Why was she behaving like such a fool?  Just because he was offering to
buy her lunch, it did not mean that he wanted.  What?  To go to bed
with her?  Of course he didn't.  He was simply being polite.  She was,
after all, Katie's mother, and if he hadn't already guessed the state
he reduced her to then her present behaviour, refusing to have lunch
with him, and generally behaving like a green girl of sixteen, would
pretty soon alert him to the truth.

,"!... Lunch would be very pleasant," she heard herself saying huskily,
while her heart bounced around inside her ribcage like a rubber ball,
and nothing she could say to herself about good manners and behaving
with maturity could truly dismiss the tiny frantic pulse of excitement
that refused to respond to all her exhortations to disappear.

They ended up eating at a very pleasant country pub, several miles away
from Gawsworth, where they were given a table within a view of the huge
log fire, and where the food was simple and very satisfying.

When Silas glanced at his watch and announced regretfully that it was
time to leave.  Hazel could hardly believe that over two hours had
passed so quickly.

He had a way of drawing her out of her normal reserve, of getting her
to talk about herself and telling her in turn about himself, that
had made her realise how starved she had been of this kind of mental
stimulation, how starved she had been of the company of an attractive,
interesting man, who seemed to find her equally interesting and
attractive.

But that was nonsense, of course.  It had to be, she told herself as
they left the pub.  He was just being polite, that was all.  And she,
like the fool she was, was over-reacting.  The trouble was that she was
so unused to male company that she had forgotten how to respond to
it.

"Fancy a short stroll before we head back?"  Silas asked her, pointing
out a footpath that led from the car park.

"I could do with some fresh air, and some exercise to help me digest
that lunch."

Silently, Hazel nodded.

The path led down a narrow lane bounded by overgrown hedges, and then
over a stile and across a field, dipping down towards what looked like
the course of a small stream.

The stile proved a little difficult for her to navigate.  One of its
struts was missing, and as she struggled with it she cursed her lack of
inches.  Someone of Katie's height would have made it with ease and
elegance, while she, with her small stature, was having to clamber over
it in a most unsophisticated and crab-like fashion.

She had just about made it when Silas realised her predicament and
offered, "Let me give you a hand."

Before she could protest he was turning back to her, sliding his hands
beneath her aims as he leaned forwards and lifted her over the stile so
easily that she might have been a child.  Despite his age he was quite
obviously extremely physically fit, she acknowledged as he lowered her
towards the ground.

Although his touch was completely sexless on his part, she was acutely
conscious, even through the thickness of her clothes, of the pressure
of his palms against the sides of her breasts, and of the intensity and
unexpectedness of their reaction to that pressure.  And thankful that
he could not see what she could feel: that her nipples had hardened and
were pushing urgently against the constriction of her clothes as though
willing him to become aware of her femininity and its responsiveness to
him.

Shame coiled in her stomach and left a bitter aftertaste in her mouth.
The moment he set her down, she moved quickly away from him, hoping he
would put her heightened colour down to the briskness of the breeze.

Desperate to get herself back to normal, she rushed into nervous
questions about his work as she tried to distract her senses away from
her physical awareness of him.

He told her that he had always wanted to write, but that as a lecturer
he had been well aware of the difficulties in establishing a career for
himself as a writer, and had decided that his writing must always be a
hobby and a self-indulgence when almost by accident he had been
introduced to a publisher, through a mutual acquaintance, and had been
encouraged to let the former see one of his manuscripts.

"I've been lucky," he told Hazel, smiling at her when she automatically
demurred, for once overcoming her own shyness and hesitancy, to assure
him almost fervently that he was one of her favourite authors and that
his historical sagas had that special something that made them
outstandingly readable.

Suddenly aware that she was perhaps being overenthusiastic, she stopped
abruptly, and said uncomfortably, "I suppose you must get tired of
people telling you that."

"Never, when it's genuinely meant," he assured her warmly.

"Although I must admit I do feel rather embarrassed at being the
recipient of such undeserved praise."

"It isn't undeserved," Hazel insisted, stopping walking to turn and
look earnestly at him.

"Katie's probably already told you how much I enjoy your work."

"She has mentioned it," he agreed gravely.

"But I rather thought she might be dangling an extra carrot in front of
me, so I didn't pay too much attention."

Not quite understanding what he meant.  Hazel hesitated.

"I'm very grateful to you for allowing me to stay with you," Silas told
her quietly.

"A writer isn't the easiest person to have around at the best of times,
but most especially when he's working.  We do tend to be a rather
self-absorbed and selfish lot.  I sometimes work quite late into the
night.  I hope the noise from my typewriter won't disturb you..."

"I'm sure it won't," Hazel told him.  She wondered sensitively if he
was subtly warning her that once he was working he would expect to be
left strictly alone.  Well, she could understand that.  Her own work as
an illustrator could be mentally and sometimes even emotionally
draining, and she too needed her privacy if she was to work
successfully.

"I expect you'll want to be left strictly to yourself when you're
working," she said now, determined to make it clear to him that she
wasn't going to be forever popping in and out offering him cups of tea
and food.

"If you want to make yourself a drink or a snack then please feel free
to do so, otherwise--well, I don't bother much with breakfast and
when I'm working I tend to have a sandwich or something light, and then
in the evening we... I expect you'll want to make your own
arrangements."

"Meaning that that's what you'd prefer me to do?"

His question was too blunt, too direct.

She blinked and wondered furiously what he expected her to say.

"Er..."  He was plainly waiting for some sort of response, so she began
uncertainly, "Well, I..."

"You have a very busy social life which precludes us from having dinner
together in me evening, much as I would enjoy spending a relaxing hour
or two in your company, unwinding from the day's stresses, is that
it?"

Was he making fun of her?  He must know surely from Katie that her
social life was very limited indeed: that she rarely went out, even
though her friends were always complaining that she was in danger of
turning into a hermit.

Deciding that he must be teasing her, she told him stiffly, "I was
simply trying to say that I wouldn't want you to feel you were under
some kind of obligation to eat your meals with me."

She started to turn away from him, determined to bring what was turning
out to be a very dangerous conversation to a close, but as she did so
she heard him saying softly, "Who says it would be an obligation?  I
was thinking of it more as a pleasure--an indulgence..."

Hazel could feel herself starting to tremble inwardly.  If she didn't
know better she might almost have believed that he meant it--that he
was actually subtly flirting with her, that he was actually trying to
imply that he found her attractive and desirable.  Which of course he
could not possibly do.

He was involved with her own daughter, for heaven's sake, and that
knowledge, plus her own response to it, was making her feel physically
sick.

She prayed desperately that Katie wasn't too deeply in love with him,
because she was almost certain he could not reciprocate the intensity
of her feelings, and the last thing she wanted was for her precious
daughter to be hurt.  And sooner or later she would be hurt.  With a
man like this one that was inevitable.  Sooner or later there would be
someone else, a someone else, who, unlike her, would not think twice
about responding to his overtures, to his warmth, to his sensuality,
and when she did.  She shivered visibly, causing Silas to frown.

"You're cold.  Perhaps we'd better go back."

Go back.  If only she could go back to before she had ever met him.

She had known him hardly more than twenty-four hours, and yet those
twenty-four hours had changed her life irredeemably.  Had changed her,
showing her facets of her nature, of her innermost emotions and
feelings, that she had never known existed.  If she had known more
about him before she had met him, if she had had time to prepare
herself.  but she suspected that nothing she could have done could have
defended her from the enemy that was within herself.

Her father had been right to insist that she live a life of rigorous
celibacy.  Had he perhaps in some way seen within her what she had
not.

And yet if for all these years she had had this vulnerability, this
aching, welling need for physical contact, for--to put it in its
bluntest and cruel lest form--sex, then why had it never manifested
itself before?  Why had she never felt like this with anyone else?

It was a question she was far too confused to know how to answer.

Silas had already turned back in the direction they had come and she
fell into step beside him, waiting as he mounted me stile ahead of her,
and then freezing when instead of crossing it he turned round and held
out his arms to her.

As she looked at him, she knew that she had already hesitated too long;
that her body was already quivering with excitement and fear that if he
picked her up now, no matter how remote and non 9 sexual his touch
might be, there was nothing on earth that would stop her body from
responding to him.  Even now, standing here looking up at him, between
one heartbeat and the next, she could already feel the heat of his body
against her own, could already hear the fierce drumming of her own
heart, could already sense how her body would melt and yield, silently
urging his to respond to its wantonness.

Terrified of what would happen, of how she would humiliate herself and
betray Katie if she so much as took one step towards him, she told him
raggedly, "It's all right, I can manage."  She gave him a tight painful
smile.

"I am a woman, you know, not a child."

It was the wrong thing to say.  The look he gave her slowly encompassed
every inch of her, making her feel as though she were slowly melting
inside.

"Yes," he told her gravely, before he turned away from her.

"I do know."

And as he stepped down the other side of the stile, she was sure she
heard him adding acidly under his breath, "After all, I am a man and
not a boy."

But she told herself she was imagining it.  That she was letting her
own feelings, her own needs put words into his mouth which he most
probably had not uttered.

Later she told herself that it was because she was so engrossed in her
own thoughts, her own guilt, that, while she managed to negotiate the
stile fairly easily, once she was down on solid ground for some
unfathomable reason she managed to trip over a totally non-existent
bump in the ground.

Her small cry of apprehension was automatic, and so was the speed with
which Silas turned round and caught hold of her, dragging her up
against his body so that she was locked against him with far more
intimacy than she would have been had he merely been helping her over
the stile.

This could not be happening, she told herself despairingly as she felt
the frantic thud of her heart and breathed in the warm, intimate male
scent of him.

The wind had tousled her curls, blowing them across her cheek, and
perhaps initially it was simply in automatic response to this that he
lifted his hand and gently brushed them back, tucking them behind her
ear, while he looked gravely into her eyes as though he was searching
for something, waiting.

Later she told herself that this was when she ought to have pushed him
away, ought to have made some move to let him know that his intimacy
was unwelcome, when she ought to have remembered Katie, but instead she
simply stared back at him, her lips parting slightly as she tried to
breathe in enough oxygen to satisfy her cramped lungs, her ribcage
lifting abruptly as she tried to breathe deeply, flattening her breasts
against his body.  With both of them wearing so many layers of clothes,
it was impossible surely for him to feel their softness, much less be
aware of the swollen, aching hardness of her nipples, and yet, she
acknowledged painfully, he must have felt something, must have read
some kind of invitation in her eyes if not in her body, because the
hand resting against her curls suddenly became caressing, his thumb
stroking her gently behind her ear, rather as she might have fondled a
soft-furred cat, she thought dizzily, trying to fight against the
sensations his touch engendered.

She knew she was breathing far too rapidly, that she was foolishly
betraying things that should have been kept hidden.  Another woman, a
more experienced, accomplished woman, would never have reacted so
immediately, nor so embarrassingly to so light a caress.  Not even a
caress really, more a subtle question, a suggestion.  something from
which both of them could quite easily have withdrawn and dismissed as a
mere accidental brushing of his fingers against her skin, if she had
not over-reacted so wildly to it, her body trembling, her eyes
widening, her breath coming in tiny, frantic little gasps, that were
surely as much of an invitation to him as though she had spoken the
words out aloud.

Certainly he seemed to have no difficulty in correctly interpreting
their message, because before she could even think of fighting, to
check what she was feeling, his hand had cupped her jaw.  turning her
face up towards his.  His body had somehow moved subtly closer to hers
so that she was intimately aware of its strengths, and its weaknesses,
although she tried frantically to deny the knowledge that the pulsing
hardness she could feel so intimately had any existence outside her own
overactive imagination.

Perhaps if she hadn't been so desperately fighting that battle she
might have managed to anticipate his kiss and to evade it, but as it
was all she could do was to stare helplessly into the depths of his
eyes like a mesmerised teenager, knowing that he was going to kiss her,
knowing that she should stop him, and at the same time knowing that she
was not going to do so.

For twenty years the only kisses she had known had been those of a very
shy and reserved father, those of an exuberant and loving daughter,
those of friends, brief female pecks on the cheek, and occasionally,
very occasionally, when she had not been able to evade or avoid them,
the unwanted and unwelcome and totally un arousing kisses of certain of
her male acquaintances.  Her only memories of Jimmy's kisses were vague
and unreal.  He had bit 3 ten her lip once and it had hurt her.  He
had also scoffed at her reluctance to indulge in what he had termed
"French kissing' which to her at the time had seemed a distasteful and
wholly unappealing activity.

And yet for all her lack of experience, for all her years of celibacy,
somewhere hidden deep inside her and un recognised by herself must have
lurked some kind of inner knowledge and instinct, because the moment
Silas's lips touched hers, her mouth seemed to swell and soften, her
lips clinging eagerly to his, her eyes closing, so that when he almost
immediately broke the tormenting contact of his mouth on hers, her
eyelids lifted, heavy with arousal and need, her eyes dark with
confusion, her lips still parted so that when his returned to caress
them again she felt it could only be because her own had begged him to
do so.

Three times or maybe four he repeated the light caress, and each time
as she reluctantly opened her eyes, convinced that it was over, that he
was about to push her away from him and let her go, she was confused by
a question she seemed to read in his eyes but was unable to answer.

It was almost as though he was waiting for something, but what?

Her lips felt swollen and sensitive.  She touched them with the tip of
her tongue exploratively and then tensed as she heard Silas's explosive
bread and felt his hand slide from her jaw into her hair his fingers
tangling in her curls.

He said something under his breath.  She though it might have been her
name, but she wasn't sure and then as she looked uncertainly up at him,
h( bent his head and covered her mouth with his.

This time his kiss was neither brief nor gentle This time.  It felt as
though her heart were literally turning over inside her.

It felt as though every single on of her muscles had turned to cotton
wool, and her blood to liquid heat.  It felt.  it felt like nothing she
had ever experienced in her life, nor expected t( experience, and if
Silas had chosen to remove ever} item of clothing from her body and
from his and t( lie her down right where they stood, among the coo soft
grass and the falling autumn leaves, and to possess her body as no man
had possessed it since Jimmy's awkward and youthful taking of it, she
would not only have not stopped him, but woulc have actively and very,
very eagerly have helpec him to do so.

Fortunately he did not choose to do so.  Fortunately he chose instead
to lift his mouth from hers and to press tiny biting kisses along her
throat, and even more fortunately when he reached her ear he chose to
whisper raggedly into it, "We shouldn't be doing this."

They most certainly should not She froze immediately, sickened and
disgusted by her own behaviour, wrenching herself out of his arms so
determinedly and so speedily that he automatically let her go.

"No, we shouldn't," she told him bitterly.

She was shaking so much that he had to be aware of her reactions.  How
could she have done this.  How could she have allowed it to happen?

And why had it happened?  He was obviously a man with not just a high
sex drive, but a virtually uncontrollable sex drive--he had to be,
otherwise he would never, ever have attempted to touch her.  She was
Katie's mother, for heaven's sake.

And yet.  and yet nothing about him had suggested that he lacked
self-control.  But then neither had anything about him suggested that
he had the kind of ego and lack of maturity which forced him to bolster
himself up by seducing teenage girls.  Perhaps that was it.  Perhaps
his vanity was massaged by the thought of having them born, mother and
daughter.

Perhaps.  Wild thoughts followed one another like hounds after a fox,
out of control and eager to cause destruction.

She was trying desperately to control her emotions, her breathing, the
tumultuous beat of her heart and the body that still ached for him so
much that she could hardly believe it was her body, her emotions, that
were reacting like this.  She felt stupidly close to tears, and tears
were something she simply never allowed herself.  She had learned years
ago the futility, the danger of becoming lachrymose and self-pitying.

Now she felt more vulnerable, more afraid than she could ever remember
feeling in her whole life, and all because of this man, she reflected
bitterly.  all because of this man who had no right to make her feel
such things.  This man who was supposed to be committed to her
daughter.  This man with whom she had just betrayed that commitment and
Katie herself.

She couldn't bear the burden of her own guilt.  She wanted to demand to
know if he had any thought at all for Katie, if he realised what he had
done, if he, like her, was suffering any feelings of guilt, of anguish,
but she simply could not bring herself to utter her daughter's name.
Not so soon after she had been in his arms.  She had been responding to
him with such abandon, such eagerness.  She had been the one to partner
him in that betrayal.  To mention Katie's name now would be like
betraying her daughter a second time.

Instead she had to content herself with a low-voiced, "How could you?
How could you behave so... so vilely?"

As she turned away from him, she saw him frown.

"You're over-reacting a little, aren't you?"  he demanded curtly.

She held her breath, tense with bitterness and self-loathing.  Another
second and he would be telling her, "It was only a kiss."  Well, she
might be inexperienced, but that had not been 'only a kiss', and as for
overreacting.  , She gave him a fiercely condemning look and said
angrily, "Over-reacting?  I don't think so.  Not in the
circumstances."

His frown deepened.

"I see.  It seems I totally misread the situation."

Caution and self-preservation warned her not to respond, but she was
being driven by her guilt and her pain and so she ignored caution and
demanded icily, "What do you mean?"

The look he gave her was level and thoughtful.  Not the look at all of
a man consumed by guilt or ego.

"I think you know what I mean."  He said it almost gently, almost in
the manner of an adult to a wayward child.

"No, no, as a matter of fact I don't," she told him, her voice too high
and pitched too sharply.

Still he was regarding her with that gravely ques turning look that was
beginning to unnerve her s< much.

"Very well," he said slowly.

"I imagined-thought--that what happened between us was no something to
which you were, shall we say averse?"

It took several seconds before his meanin seeped in and, when it did,
she saw red.

"You mean it was all my fault?"  she demande furiously.  7 tempted
you?

I suppose you're the kin of man who'd.  who'd rape a woman and mei
claim that it was what she wanted.  "

She was too overwrought to know what she was;

saying, to realise how offensive she was being, unti his face changed
and he said sharply, "Now, just minute..."  He took a step towards her
and when she shrank back, thoroughly frightened of what she saw in his
eyes, he seemed to take a deep breath and force back whatever it was he
was feeling befon saying more calmly, "I wasn't for one se com
suggesting that you were to blame ... that either o:

us was to blame.  I don't even think it was some thing that involved an
emotion such as blame.  I was merely trying to say that when I kissed
you :

thought.  felt that you weren't averse to what was happening between
us, or rather what I thought was happening between us.  "

His voice had become faintly hard again, and i hardened still further
as he told her unequivocally, "And as for your comment about rape, let
me assure you that me thought of forcing a woman, any woman to have sex
with me is something I find totally barbarous and revolting.  I cannot
understand what motivates any man to force himself on a woman who
doesn't want him, and, if I've given you a different impression, then I
must apologise for it."  His voice had become extremely clipped, the
revulsion he was feeling so obvious that Hazel felt a 'fresh surge of
self-dislike rise up inside her.

What she was trying to do was to blame him for something for which she
knew she had been at least fifty per cent to blame.  She wanted to cry
out to him to understand that it was her guilt, her horror at what she
had done that had made her react so badly, so childishly, that of
course she knew that.  That what?  That he had been quite right to
imply that she had wanted him.  Wasn't that after all the simple
unvarnished truth?

It might be the truth, but there was nothing simple about it.  nothing
at all.

"If it helps to ease your mind, to assure you that I shan't make the
same mistake a second time, then please let me give you my word that
while I'm living under your roof you will be completely safe from any
further ... misunderstandings of a similar nature."

What he was saying was that he wouldn't touch her again, and she ought
to be thankful for that, instead of feeling as though a dark cloud had
suddenly descended on her.  And what did he mean, while he was living
under her roof?  Surely after what had just happened he must have
changed his mind about using her home as a base while he worked in the
area?

But it seemed he had not, and she felt too exhausted, too drained, too
vulnerable still to challenge him on the subject and to demand that he
find somewhere else to live.  If she did, who knew what he might say?

He might even accuse her of wanting him to leave not so much because
she didn't trust him to keep his word, but because she could not trust
herself.

They had almost reached the car when she asked him in a stilted voice,
"You won't ... you won't say anything about this to Katie, will you?"

She felt dreadful having to ask him such a question, but she could not
bear it if her folly was revealed to her daughter.  if Katie were to
turn against her because of it.

The look he gave her was compounded of astonishment and, she was sure,
contempt.

"Why on earth should I?"  he demanded in a clipped voice.

There was nothing she could say to that.  Why indeed?  His response had
certainly put her in her place.  He was as good as telling her that
what had happened between them the kiss which had had such an intense
effect upon her meant absolutely nothing at all to him.

She ought to have felt comforted, and reassured, but instead she felt
achingly empty, bitterly hurt, and more alone than she could remember
feeling at any other time in her whole life.

CHAPTER FIVE

white-faced, her head pounding with tension and anguish.  Hazel
wondered how on earth she was going to make it through the evening.

Katie wasn't a fool.  She must be aware of the grim silence between
Silas and herself, even if, please God, she could not realise the cause
of it.

They had driven back to the house in that same silence, which had
persisted even when Katie had returned full of happy chatter about her
own day, and it had gone on through dinner and beyond.

It was not that she was sulking, or in any way trying to punish either
herself or Silas, although God knew they both deserved to be punished.
It was simply that she could not, dared not speak to him because she
was petrified of what she might betray if she did.  Just as she was
petrified of going to close to him in case her idiotic body did the
same thing.

And so she had kept her distance and her silence, responding to those
comments he did put to her in monosyllabic words.

Telling herself that it was the least she could do, she announced that
she was going to have an early night, ignoring Katie's plaintive
comments that she would be leaving first thing in the morning and that
she had barely seen her.

She couldn't bring herself to make the obvious comment which was that
unless she and Silas had made plans for him to visit Katie at
university over the weekends it was going to be quite some time before
the two of them were likely to be alone again, and that in the
circumstances she would have thought that Katie would have welcomed the
opportunity to spend some time in private with him.

She was finding it increasingly difficult to force herself to
acknowledge that Katie and Silas were lovers, and no wonder, she
reflected bleakly as she prepared for bed.

Just what kind of mother was she, she who had always prided herself on
putting Katie's needs first?  Was it putting Katie's needs first to
allow Silas, Katie's boyfriend, to.  to.  To what?  To kiss her?

She shuddered sickly.  She had never felt more confused or unhappy in
her whole life.  Why on earth was she reacting to Silas like this?  Why
on earth had her body chosen to show her that it could feel desire,
that it could feel yearning and want, that it could be so sexually
responsive, that even now .  yes, even now, merely to remember Silas's
kiss was to reactivate all the emotions and sensations she had
experienced in his arms?

It wasn't as though she was a teenager or even a young woman any more.
It wasn't as though.  As though what?  an inner voice demanded
rebelliously--as though she was still a woman?  Of course she was.

All right, she admitted painfully.  So she was still a woman, and a
very foolish one at that.  But why on earth did she have to want Silas?
She knew other men, plenty of them, and she had never reacted to them
the way she did to him.

She wandered restlessly round her room, knowing that if she got into
bed she would never sleep, and then when she heard someone knock
briefly on her bedroom door she tensed, the blood roaring in her ears,
her pulses pounding.

Silas!  But he couldn't .  wouldn't.  She didn't know whether to be
relieved or disappointed when the door opened and Katie came in.

"You OK, Ma?"  she asked with some concern.

"You look dreadfully pale."

"I'm tired, mat's all."

Still watching her, Katie sat down on her bed, stretching luxuriously
and then demanding with a grin, "Well, wasn't I right?  Isn't Silas
gorgeous?"

Hazel felt as though someone had opened all her veins and her blood was
running hotly and painfully out of her body.

"He... He... seems very pleasant," was all she could manage, as she
turned away so that Katie wouldn't see her face.

"Pleasant!"  Katie laughed out loud.

"Ma, how could you?  Personally I think he's just about the sexiest man
of his age I've ever seen.  Of course he's not my type.  He's far too
old, for one thing, and anyway he makes it pretty obvious that he isn't
interested in immature students.  Very politely and nicely, of course.
You should see the way he handles his over-enthusiastic female
students.  It's a wonder to behold... " Ma, what on earth's wrong?  "
she asked anxiously as Hazel stifled a shocked sound in her throat and
turned a too-white face towards her.

"Katie, what on earth are you saying?"  Hazel demanded frantically.

"I

mean, it's not as though you have to pretend for my benefit, you know.
I guessed immediately what you meant when you described Silas as being
very special, although I must admit I had expected him to be younger. I
mean, he must be forty.  "

"Forty-one, actually," Katie told her.

"Ma, what on earth are you trying to say?  You couldn't possibly have
thought that Silas and I..  that we..."  Katie started to laugh.

"But that's absurd.  Heavens...!

can't imagine what on earth made you think.  Now I understand what you
meant when you made such a big thing of which rooms we were sleeping
in.  Oh, Ma.  " She came over to Hazel and gave her a fond hug.

"Surely the moment you saw Silas you must have realised...?  He's old
enough to be my father."

She paused and gave Hazel a very searching, thoughtful look.

"Is that what you thought?  That I'm looking for a father figure?"  She
shook her head.

"Ma, you've brought me up far too securely for me to have those kind of
needs.  I don't need a father, and when the day comes when I do need
and want a lover it will be someone whom I can meet on equal terms
someone with whom I can share, not someone with twenty more years'
experience of life than me.  Not someone who's going to treat me as a
child, a little girl.  Oh, Ma ... just wait until I tell Silas what you
thought..."

Hazel reacted immediately, grabbed hold of Katie's arm and saying
huskily, "Katie!  No, please, promise me you won't discuss this with
him."  She saw Katie's bewilderment and told her, "I'd feel such a
fool, and so embarrassed..."

"I should just think you would.  I don't think from what I know of him
that Silas would be too pleased at being condemned as the kind of man
who needs to bolster his ego with a teenage lover."

"No," Hazel agreed hollowly.

"I still can't imagine why you ever thought that he and I could
possibly be lovers in the first place," Katie was saying as she shook
her head, as though still finding it hard to believe her mother's
folly.

"You did say he was someone very special," Hazel pointed out
defensively.

"Well, yes, but that was because---' Abruptly Katie stopped speaking.

"Because what?"  Hazel pressed her.

"Er--because... because he is special, and because... because I know
how much you enjoy his books..."

"But you didn't tell me who he was," Hazel pointed out.

"Er--no ... I wanted to surprise you."

"You certainly did that," she agreed grimly, and then added as a fresh
thought struck her, "But Katie, you know I'd never have agreed to have
him staying here if I hadn't thought that it was important to you.  I
mean--' " What?  What difference does it make knowing that he and I
aren't lovers?  "

All the difference in the world.  Hazel wanted to tell her, but she
knew she couldn't.

She shivered suddenly, wondering what difference it might have made
this afternoon if she had known then.  But what difference could it
have made?  Better that things had stopped right where they had.  She
might have behaved like one, but she wasn't a complete fool.

A man of sophistication and experience like Silas could never be really
interested in a woman like her.  Oh, he might flirt with her, kiss her,
even have sex with her if he thought she was willing, but that kind of
liaison wasn't for her.  She was too vulnerable as it was.

Now that she was over the initial shock of discovering that Katie and
Silas were not lovers, the relief she should have felt, the relaxation
from tension and self-disgust, were swamped by other new fears and
doubts.

She reminded herself that she had often comforted herself in her
darkest hours with the thought that nothing ever happened without a
purpose.  perhaps it had been intentional that she should deceive
herself into thinking that Silas was involved with Katie so that she
would protect herself from what was undoubtedly a very selfdestructive
and potentially dangerous attraction to him.

After all, what better barrier could there be between them than that
she should believe Silas and Katie were lovers?  And now that that
barrier had been removed she would be a fool to try to ignore the
warnings of her own common sense.

It was obvious that a man like Silas, a man who was of his age and
experience, of his standing, must have had many women attracted to him
over the years.  The fact that he was not married must surely tell its
own story.  Despite the fact that he was intelligent, mature, and good
company, there must be within him a reluctance to truly commit himself
to a relationship or a person.

But maybe like her he was simply choosy, had simply never found the one
person to whom he wished to commit himself, a treacherous inner voice
whispered tormentingly.

Even if that was the case, it was ridiculous to suppose that she might
be that person.  That she might have that special something that would
cause him to.  To what?  To fall in love with her?  Now she was being
ridiculous.  And what was more, she was behaving like a fool.  What she
was feeling for him, what she had experienced this afternoon, was plain
old-fashioned lust.  It had to be.  One simply did not, at thirty-six,
fall in love in the space of half a dozen minutes.  One met someone,
liked them, got to know them and then perhaps.  perhaps grew to love
and trust them.  That was the sensible way to do things.

"Ma, are you sure you're all right?"  Katie questioned her worriedly.

"What?  Oh, yes ... yes, I'm fine."

"Well, you don't look it," Katie told her forthrightly.

"Oh, and, while we're on the subject you've made me promise I won't
tell Silas what yo thought and I'm going to demand a promise fror you
in return."

"What?"  Hazel looked blindly at her.

"Wha promise?"

"That you won't go all prim and proper the moment my back's turned and
ask Silas to find some where else to stay."

Hazel stared at her.  How on earth had Katif guessed what was running
through her mind?

"You were going to, weren't you?"  Katie accused.

"Honestly, Ma, just think how that wouk make me look.  There I am
assuring Silas that no of course my mother won't object, and that she'i
love to have him staying here, that it was her idei her invitation, in
fact.  And then you go and ask him to leave."

"But Katie--' " No.  You were happy enough to have him her when you
thought that he and I. well, when yoi thought what you did.  "

"I thought you wanted him to stay here so that could keep an eye on him
for you," Hazel admit to helplessly, flushing with mortification when
Kati burst out laughing.

She said wickedly, "Oh, did you?  Well, let me tell you something, my
naive, innocent mama... I I truly wanted to ensure that a man's eyes
didn't stray then you can be sure that I would not introduce him to
you."

She saw Hazel's face and laughed again.

"Oh, come on, surely you must have seen how gaga every boy I've ever
brought home has gone over you?"

"Katie, that's an outrageous thing to say," she protested huskily.

"They were boys..."

"And Silas is very much a man?"  Katie asked her spftly.

"You'll be perfectly safe with him, you know.  If I thought
otherwise... and if it's gossip that's worrying you--' " Gossip?  "
Hazel gave her an outraged indignant glare.

"Don't be ridiculous.  Who'd want to gossip about me?  I am thirty-six
years old, Katie."

"Even if you don't even look twenty-six," Katie agreed teasingly.

"Even if you do have half the males for miles around gazing at you like
dogs at a juicy bone."

"Katie," Hazel protested, genuinely startled.

"That's not true."

"Of course it is," Katie contradicted her cheerfully.

"It's just that you don't see it.  That you don't want to see it.  Now,
come on, I want that promise, otherwise I go right downstairs now and
tell Silas--' " All right, all right, I promise.  "

Perhaps Silas himself would decide to leave now that she had made it so
plain to him mat she wasn't .  that she wouldn't.  As she recalled
exactly what she had said she bit her lip miserably.  No wonder he had
reacted so angrily to her comments.  And thank goodness she had not
made any direct reference to his supposed relationship with Katie.

If she had.  She swallowed nervously.  What had happened this afternoon
had been completely out of character for her.  She was damn lucky that
she had believed he was involved with Katie.  The last thing, the very
last thing she needed in her life right now was a man who would use her
sexually and then leave her once he had grown bored with her--a man
who.  A man who what?  that treacherous inner voice whispered
provocatively.

A man who aroused and enticed her, a man whose touch, whose kiss
promised a type of pleasure, a type of fulfilment she could only dream
of knowing.  So what if it was only desire he felt for her, so what if
that desire could only be impermanent, so what if once his work, his
book was finished, he would walk away from her without a second glance?
At least she would have lived, really lived.  at least she would have
touched the stars and known what it truly meant to be a woman.

Dismayed by such treacherous, such wanton thoughts, she forced herself
to try and concentrate on what Katie was saying, reluctantly giving her
the promise she had demanded.

Silas had given her a promise this afternoon, a promise that he would
not attempt to touch her again.  Would he keep that promise or.

She could feel her body going hot, her stomach tensing.

Of course he would keep it.  And of course she wanted him to.  Didn't
she?

Despite the fact that Katie had insisted there was no need for her to
do so.  Hazel was up at six the following morning to drive her daughter
to the nearest station.

"Honestly, Ma, there was no need for you to do this," Katie
protested.

"I don't know if I'll be able to make it home again before
Christmas."

"That's OK," Hazel assured her, adding drily, "I'm a big girl now, you
know.  You don't need to come running home every other weekend to check
up on me."

That made Katie laugh at her and tease, "Oh, yeah?"

Before she drove off.  Hazel looked uncertainly towards the house.

There was no light on as yet in the room which Silas was occupying.

After she had kissed Katie goodbye and waved her off.  Hazel returned
to the house.

Today she would have to make some time to turn out her father's study
and bedroom, and to remove some of the junk which had accumulated
inside them since her father's death.

She would also have to do some shopping.  Since Katie's departure for
university she had grown used to buying much smaller amounts of food,
but now with Silas.  That's it, she told herself as she walked
reluctantly back into the house.  Keep your mind occupied with trivia,
with mundane household chores;

that way you won't have to think about other things.  About Silas
himself or what had happened between them.

She made herself a fresh jug of coffee and sat down on a stool, nursing
her mug.

It was just as well that she hadn't started her new commission yet.

That would give her time to turn out the study and do her shopping.

She also had some gardening to catch up on, and with Christmas not so
very far away perhaps it was time to start thinking about beginning her
Christmas shopping.

Anything.  anything at all which she could think of to do to keep her
mind and her hands busy.

Half an hour later, when she was standing in the middle of me study
carpet rubbing her back where it ached from pushing and tugging at the
heavy old desk, so that she could clear out its drawers, she heard the
sound of the shower running upstairs.

When they had first moved into the house, her father had had two new
bathrooms installed, one in what had originally been a small box-room
adjacent to his own bedroom and the other next to her own bedroom and
the room which had originally been Katie's nursery.

When Katie had been in her teens, a shower and basin had been installed
in her room, and partitioned off to provide her with a minute private
bathroom of her own.

Silas was still sleeping in the old nursery where she had originally
made up a bed for him, which meant that he was using her bathroom.

It gave her an odd sensation in the pit of her stomach to know that he
was there, standing under the shower, his body glistening with soap and
water, his dark hair plastered to his scalp.  She had never been
attracted by the thought of overly hirsute men, but suddenly she had a
very vivid and erotic mental image of Silas's body; of a narrow pathway
of dark hair arrowing down its centre, across the taut flatness of his
belly.

Stop it, she berated herself frantically, stop it at once.

The best way to chase away such dangerous and uncontrollable thoughts
was to work so hard that she couldn't indulge in them, and, clinging
determinedly to that belief, she started pushing at the heavy desk
again, trying to manoeuvre it into the.

centre of the room, so that Silas could sit behind i and get the
benefit of the light and the view from the window, and at the same time
enjoy the heal from the open fire.

After her father's death, she had gone throug' his papers, meticulously
keeping those whic needed to be kept and transferring them to her ow
desk, throwing away those that were unnecessary but keeping in
carefully marked files those persona things such as old photographs and
letters belonging to her father and which she thought in years to come
Katie's children might enjoy having.

The desk had then been pushed back against the wall, and the room
filled with an assortment of things, including her father's favourite
chair and footstool, and several other odd pieces of furniture The
chair and stool could stay, she decided, the bookcases lining the one
wall were already filled but the cupboards beneath them were empty and
could be used by Silas to store his own papers.

As she struggled with the heavy, old-fashionei partner's desk, she
wondered if he used a compute!  or word processor and, if so, whether
there woulc be room on the desk for it.

It was just as well she had taken down the curtains in the spring and
had them cleaned.  She would have to bring them down from upstairs and
rehang them, and.  She had almost got the desk where she wanted it; one
final push, that was all it needed, but the wretched thing refused to
move, and she ended up banging her hip bone quite painfully on it as
she leaned her full weight against it.

The pain made her cry out in irritation and frustration.  She had
realised that the shower had stopped running, but she hadn't realised
that Silas had come downstairs until he opened the door and demanded
tersely, "Hazel, what's wrong?  I heard you cry out.  Are you all
right?"

Hot and flushed, self-consciously aware of how dreadful she must look
with her curls all tangled, and her top clinging stickily to her skin,
her jeans dusty, and her face free of make-up.  Hazel swung round to
face him.

"I'm fine," she told him shortly.

"I didn't realise you were down.  I'll just get cleaned up and then
I'll come and make your breakfast."

"I'm not a child, you know," Silas returned coolly.

"There's no need for you to wait on me.  I'm perfectly capable of
making myself a cup of coffee and eating some cereal.  What exactly are
you doing in here?"

"Isn't it obvious?"  Hazel asked him tartly.  Her amis were beginning
to ache, warning her that she had probably overdone things in her
attempt to move the desk.

"I want to get this room straight so that you can work in here, but
this damned desk..."

Silas frowned as he came further into the room.

' You've been trying to move thisT he demanded shortly.

"My God, woman, are you crazy?  Don't you realise how easily you could
have injured yourself?"  he asked her grittily without waiting for a
response.

"Why on earth didn't you wait until I?"

Normally equable and even-tempered.  Hazel felt all the confusion, the
anguish, the pain of the last few days boil up inside her, until
ignited by irritation and misery it exploded.

"Until what?  Until you, Mr.  Macho Male, could move it for me?"  she
demanded aggressively.

"Well, let me tell you something, I don't need your help.  In fact, I
don't need anything from you at all.  I'm perfectly capable of managing
by myself."

Abruptly she realised what she was saying and stopped.  Her heart was
beating far too fast; she was over-reacting out of all proportion to
his comment.  She felt torn between bursting into tears and screaming.
She hardly recognised herself or her reactions and, although she was
unaware of it, some of her confusion and despair showed in her
shadowed, stormy eyes.

"Yes, very capable," Silas agreed drily, so drily in fact that her
temper subsided and she looked directly at him.

If she hadn't known better, she might almost have believed that was a
touch of wry self-mockery she could hear in his voice.

As though.  As though what?  As though he was actually acknowledging
that her independence, her desire to be self-reliant, rubbed against a
streak of male protectiveness within himself which he had not hitherto
recognised.

Ridiculous.  She must be imagining things, she told herself sternly.

"Actually what I was going to suggest was that the two of us might have
a better chance of shifting it without injury than one of us alone."

She had the grace to flush a little, but she couldn't bring herself to
offer any kind of verbal apology.  She still felt too raw, too
vulnerable, too aware of how close she had come yesterday to making an
utter fool of herself.  She couldn't bear to think what might have
happened if she had actually accused him of being unfaithful to Katie.
Would he have been amused, or annoyed?  She suspected that it would
have been the latter.  He was far too intelligent not to be aware of
the opinion of him she had drawn in believing he was romantically
involved with Katie, and she doubted that he would have been nattered
by it "I'm not sure if this room will be suitable--' she began to say
uncertainly, frowning as she mentally checked the number of power
points and the size of the desk, worrying about how he would fit in any
electronic equipment he might need to use.

The look he gave her was singulariy cynical.

'IN my time, I've worked quite successfully in a space less than a
quarter the size of this.  In fact this is sheer luxury.  One of the
reasons I've sold my London flat and decided to move out into the
country somewhere is the lack of space.  My rooms at the university are
adequate, but barely.

"Fortunately, I'm not a collector of material possessions, or at least
I haven't been up until now.  When I began my career, I worked, lived
and slept in a room in my sister's house which she and her husband
generously provided rent free.  When I first moved into my flat,
although I had thought that I'd enjoy its privacy and solitude, I found
that for months I was constantly listening for the sound of feet on the
stairs, for the kids' voices.  I missed their company more man I'd ever
realised I would."

Katie frowned at him.  Why was he confiding in her like this?  What was
he trying to tell her?  That he was a man who hadn't put down roots?

Well, she knew that already, but she had assumed that that was from
choice.  Now.  Pushing her hair back off her face, she asked him
curiously, "If you feel like that, then why?"

"Have I never married?"

Her eyes registered her shock.  What she had been going to ask him had
been why he had not moved closer to his family, but he had not allowed
her to complete her question and had obviously totally misunderstood
it.  She would never have dreamed of asking him something so
personal.

"Initially because I was simply too busy, and too poor, and then
latterly... Well, I suppose it's true that the older you get, the
fussier you become.  Sexual desire, sexual chemistry, call it what you
will, is no longer enough.  You want more... much more.  You want
someone who will be a true partner in all the meanings of the word.

Both my sisters are extremely happily married and very much in love
with their husbands.  I envy them those relationships, and I certainly
wouldn't settle for anything less.  They've been lucky, and they've
worked hard at their marriages.  But what about you?  A young woman on
your own with a small child to bring up--there must have been times
when you've been tempted to marry, if only to provide Katie with a
father.  "

He had been too open with her for her to be tempted to lie.

"Yes, there have," she agreed honestly.  "Although in my case... Well,
Katie had her grandfather.  He was a wonderful man, but very
old-fashioned.  After what happened with Katie's father..."  She bit
her lip, unable to go on, alarmed by how much she had already told
him.

"Yes?"  Silas prompted gently, watching her.

"Er well..."  She paused and thought frantically of something she could
offer him to silence his questions, and then abruptly changed her mind.
Why not simply tell him the truth?  Once he realised how very far
removed from his league she was in terms of experience, if he had been
tempted to break the promise he had given her yesterday then he would
surely change his mind.

"Although he never said so, I think my father was concerned that...
that history might repeat itself."

When he frowned, obviously not understanding, she gritted her teeth and
told him despairingly, "He accepted that what happened with Katie
was... was an accident, but you see he was very old-fashioned, very...
very shocked by what I had done, and I think he felt that... that it
might happen again.  That I might..."

"That you might what?"

"Have another child," Hazel told him huskily.

"That I might make the same mistake I had made with Jimmy, and become
pregnant without being married."

There was a long pause and then Silas said incredulously, "But as I
understand it you were barely sixteen when Katie was conceived, and her
father hardly a year older.  You were children, both of you, and it's a
credit to your maturity, to your spirit that you've coped so
successfully with a situation like that."

"I had help.  My father was wonderful.  He supported us both
financially.  Gave us a home."

"And forced you to live like a nun?"  Silas asked her grimly.

Hazel chewed her lip defensively.

"He thought he was doing the best thing for all of us.  And I can see
his point of view..."

And you never, never once, wanted to break out of the strait-jacket he
locked you in?  You never once wanted to?

"To what?"  Hazel demanded harshly, her sensitivities bruised by the
anger she could hear in his voice.

"To have some sort of wild sexual fling?  No.  I never wanted to do
that.  I'd better go and get your breakfast," she added shortly,
changing the subject.

"I have to go shopping later this morning, once I've got this room
sorted out.  Will you be using a computer or a word processor?"

"Yes.  But you can leave me to sort all that out.  I do know how to use
a duster and a vacuum cleaner, you know."

As she made to walk past him, it seemed as though he was going to reach
out and stop her, but when she froze and stared at him he said simply,
"There's no need for you to put yourself out on my account, you
know."

"No need at all," she agreed curtly.

"Which is why I don't intend to do so."

She was angry with him and punishing him because of her own folly,
because somehow or other he had drawn her out to such an extent that
she had confided in him, telling him things she had never ever told
anyone else.

She ought to be punishing herself and not him, she recognised as she
headed for the kitchen.  It wasn't his fault that she seemed to find
him so.  so easy to talk to, so.  so easy to confide in.

And what on earth he must think of her idiotic admission that she had
lived a completely celibate life since Katie's conception she had no
idea.  He probably pitied her, thinking she was virtually devoid of any
kind of normal sex drive.  He was probably thanking his lucky stars
that he had found out the truth about her before it was too late.  She
had no doubt that he would most definitely keep his promise to her
now.

So why, as she prepared another fresh jug of coffee, did she feel more
like bursting into tears than being relieved?

CHAPTER SIX

'good heavens, you've been busy, haven't you?  "

Hazel gritted her teeth inwardly, and smiled mechanically as Sheila
Simpson stared curiously at her loaded shopping trolley.

Of all the people for her to bump into in the supermarket, Sheila was
the very last one she would have chosen.  Sheila was the local gossip
and busybody, an angular woman of forty-odd who ruled her own
apparently perfect family and husband with a rod of iron, and who
continually and loudly disparaged those who could not match her own
exacting standards.

Hazel had always been aware that Sheila was deeply suspicious of her,
both because of her single state and apparently because she considered
that Hazel looked far too young to have a daughter of Katie's age.

"Expecting visitors, are you?"  she questioned now with false
friendliness, her glance fixed on the contents of Hazel's well-filled
trolley.

"Not exactly," Hazel told her coolly.

"Oh, doing a bit of early shopping for Christmas, then, I expect,"
Sheila hazarded.

"Of course you'll have Katherine home, won't you?"

It was one of Sheila's many affectations that, as she piously informed
everyone, she refused to shorten people's names to some corrupt
derivative of the original, and Hazel had never bothered to inform her
that Katie had in fact been christened exactly that.  Her full name was
Katie Georgina, the Georgina being for Jimmy, whose second name had
been George.

Without vouchsafing her a yes or a no.  Hazel determinedly pushed her
trolley past her.  It was ridiculous that she should feel guilty for
withholding the truth from Sheila, and even more ridiculous that she
should feel uncomfortably aware of how avidly curious the other woman
would have been had she told her the truth.

She was thirty-six years old, for heaven's sake, and if she chose to
invite a member of the opposite sex to lodge with her for a short space
of time that was no one's business other than her own.

Besides she could just imagine how Sheila would embellish and extend
the truth, how she would serve it up to others, dressing it up with a
sauce of sexual innuendo while virulentiy protesting that of course she
knew there was nothing in it and that the relationship was totally
innocent.

Hazel had heard Sheila in action before.  She specialised in stirring
up trouble.

But what did it matter if people did gossip about her?  she asked
herself later as she drove home.  Her father was dead and could no
longer be hurt by that sort of thing.  Katie was far too modern and
youthful in her outlook to do anything more than laugh her head off at
the suggestion that her mother was involved in a sexual liaison with
someone, and, as for her own feelings, she was of course concerned what
her friends, her real friends, thought of her, but they knew her far
too well to judge her on Sheila's gossip, and besides she had been
urged more than once by all of them to stop hiding herself away, to go
out and enjoy herself, to, as one of them had very bluntly put it, "Go
out and find yourself a man, and use what nature has so generously
endowed you with before it's too late."

And after all, who knew?  Perhaps they were right and she was wrong.

Perhaps she had lived with her father for so long that she had
unconsciously adopted his views as her own.

Several of her unmarried and divorced friends cheerfully and frankly
admitted to brief affairs, and even in some cases to the odd one-night
stand, and evidently felt no shame or embarrassment in doing so, and
after all why should they?  They were, much as she was, accountable
only to themselves.  Her lifestyle was an unusual one for a healthy
woman of her age.  Perhaps if she'd been older when Katie was
conceived, perhaps if her experience of sex with Jimmy had been
different, she might not have found it quite so easy to fall in with
her father's wishes, to suppress her own desires almost before they
were born, to relentlessly control every impulse towards expressing her
sexuality which she had experienced, so much so that it was now almost
second nature, rather like being taught to sit up straight or hold your
tummy in--it had become something she did without even having to think
about doing it any longer.

Or at least she had.  Perhaps in the years since her father's death she
had not kept such a careful guard on herself, because she had foolishly
begun to believe that at her age she was past suffering the pangs of
need and loneliness which had beset her in her twenties, or perhaps she
had simply grown careless.  She had no idea which of these weaknesses
had been responsible for her reaction to Silas.

When she got home, the Jaguar was no longer parked outside.  She stared
at me space where it had been, her heart thumping.  Had Silas perhaps
changed his mind and left, without telling her?  What if he had gone?
Wouldn't that be for the best?

All the time she was walking up the path and unlocking the back door,
she was telling herself that it would be a relief if he had gone--that
it was the most sensible thing he could do, that she wouldn't be in the
least bit upset.  and yet when she opened the kitchen door and saw the
note he had left on the table, she reached for it with trembling hands,
scanning it quickly while her mouth went dry and her stomach heaved.

"Gone to Chester to see if I can borrow some research material from
their library," the note read.

She pulled out a chair and sat down in it.  She felt weak and oddly
light-headed, and she told herself that what she was experiencing could
not be relief.  Of course it couldn't be, and yet all the time she was
unpacking and putting away her shopping, she was listening for the
sound of his car, for his footsteps, for his voice.

When she had finished and he still hadn't returned, she paced
restlessly around the kitchen, unable to settle to anything.

"For heaven's sake," she muttered out loud to herself impatiently.

"You're a woman of thirty-six and you're behaving like a girl of
sixteen.  Anyone would think you'd fallen in love with the man."

She froze where she stood, suddenly shivering.

What a ridiculous notion.  Of course she hadn't fallen in love with
him.  She was far too old for that sort of thing.  Far, far too
sensible.  Women of her age did not fall in love.  After all, she
barely knew Silas.

And yet already she had told him far more about herself than she had
told some of her closest friends.

That knowledge was like touching the nerve in an aching tooth: highly
painful and highly addictive, something to which her thoughts kept
returning again and again no matter how much she tried to distract
him.

"You know what you're doing, don't you?"  she derided herself.

"You're virtually willing yourself to be in love with him.  Stupid
woman."

She went into the study determined to banish such thoughts with some
physical work, but when she had opened the door and walked inside the
room she stood and blinked in amazement.

Every surface was clean and polished, the window sparkled, and the
carpet was immaculate.  All those items she had put to one side to be
disposed of were neatly stacked in one corner of the room, a fire had
been laid in the grate and the old brass coal bucket had been polished
within an inch of its life.

All that the room now lacked was its curtains, and on the desk stood a
modern computer screen and keyboard, neither of them somehow or other
looking at all out of place with the heavy oldfashioned furniture.

Silas certainly hadn't exaggerated when he'd said he was perfectly
capable of wielding a vacuum cleaner and a duster, and yet for some
reason, instead of feeling relieved that she no longer had to face the
task of cleaning out the room, she felt faintly aggrieved.

Resentful almost, as though in cleaning the room himself he had somehow
in a subtle and non-verbal way been telling her that he had no need of
her help, that he was entirely self- reliant, that there was no place
for her in his life.

But she didn't want a place in his life.  She didn't want to become
involved in any way at all with a man who, while he might give her some
brief passing sexual pleasure, could never satisfy her deeper and more
important emotional needs, could never give her the companionship, the
emotional stability, the love she had always denied to herself that she
wanted, but which in actual fact.  Stop this right there, she warned
herself shakily.  Such thoughts could only lead in one direction.  Such
thoughts could only lead her into pain and the kind of heart-searching
which would achieve nothing.

She was content with her life as it was.  Well, she was reasonably
content.  as content as a woman of her age had any right to expect to
be.  When she looked around, how many of her friends, of the women she
knew, were truly and happily fulfilled by their marriages in the way
they had anticipated when they entered into them?  Not many of them,
and, while sometimes she envied them their husbands, more often than
not she found herself listening to their complaints, their
frustrations, and thinking that perhaps after all she was more
fortunate than they.

The kind of relationship she had once dreamed so yearningly of was pure
fiction, did not exist.  could not exist.  No single other human being
could ever match one's own emotional needs exactly and immediately, and
only a fool thought that it was possible for them to do so.

But she did have friends who were happy, who were content, who
cheerfully admitted that, while their marriages had matured into far
different relationships from those they had initially envisaged, these
relationships were good ones; their husbands were men whom they
actually liked as well as loved, despite their differences and their
disappointments.

She Aimed blindly towards the window.  Was she really content to spend
the rest of her life alone?  Katie had her own life to live and she had
no wish to chain her daughter to her even if that were possible.

So what alternatives were left to her?  A steady, secure relationship
with one of the men she already knew; there were two or three among her
acquaintances who had made it clear that they would like more from her
than mere friendship, and who were free and willing to commit
themselves to her.

She moved restlessly around the room.  The trouble was that, much as
she liked each of these men, she did not desire them.  did not want the
kind of intimacy with them that came with marriage.

So what else was there?  An affair.  A series of affairs.  No, that had
never appealed to her.  Although she listened with curiosity and
sometimes disbelief to her more sophisticated friends' descriptions of
their own relationships, the more she heard, the more she herself felt
repressed by her lack of knowledge, her own awareness that while she
might in terms of years be a woman of maturity, in terms of experience
she was as ignorant as the teenager she had been at sixteen.

No amount of listening to other people's experiences could make up for
the lack of one's own.  Any man who wanted to take her to bed would
quite naturally assume that she had the knowledge and the skill to take
full responsibility for her own pleasure and a good measure of his.
Men, especially older men, her friends told her, were often selfish
lovers, expecting, as one of her more frank friends had cheerfully told
her, "That you're going to do all the really hard work and they're
going to enjoy the results of it.  Give me a younger man every time!
They might not have the experience but they more than make up for that
with their enthusiasm."

Hazel did not know why but she did not feel inclined to become involved
with a younger man.  Perhaps she simply did not have the
selfconfidence.

No.  What she wanted.  What she wanted was Silas.

The thought slid serpent-like into her mind, making her shiver and
cross her arms repressively around her body, as though somehow by doing
so she could subdue the ache inside her, the knowledge that she only
had to think of Silas, to close her eyes and remember what it had felt
like when he kissed her, and immediately she wanted him, ached for
him.

This was not love.  It was lust, she told herself defiantly, and
probably the very best thing for her to do would be for her to go to
bed with the man and get the whole thing out of her system.

Go to bed with him.  She started to shiver, trembling inside with the
force of what she was feeling, acknowledging the dangerous
insidiousness of her own thoughts, at the same time as she tried to re
5 assure herself that of course she would not want to do any such
thing.

Casual sex was not for her.  She was adamantly sure of that.  And
besides.  Silas probably didn't want her any more.  If her behaviour
yesterday had not put him off her completely, then surely her idiotic
confidences this morning, which had laid bare for him the paucity of
her sexual history, must have done so?

Yes, she was safe enough from any subtle sexual pressure from Silas.

But was she safe from herself, she wondered, or was her self-control
finally cracking up?

If so.  She took a deep breath; if so then she would just have to keep
as much distance between Silas and herself as possible, starting right
now.

She might not need to do any work on the study, but there was still her
father's bedroom to turn out;

the bed to be made up, the bathroom to be stocked with towels.

Silas could move in there tonight, where he would have the privacy of
being virtually at the opposite end of the house from her, where he
would have his own bathroom.  Where she need not go into the house's
main bathroom and discover that the scent of his cologne still hung
elusively on the air.  Where she need not be tormented by erotic images
of his body, nude and supple, and so very, very male.

Stop it, she urged herself as she headed for the stairs.  For goodness'
sake stop it.

At half-past six, just when she had decided that Silas had taken her
repudiation of him so much to heart that he was not going to return
until after supper, she heard the sound of his car coming down the
drive.

She hadn't changed from the jeans and top she had been wearing earlier,
and although she was wearing make-up it was no more than she would
normally have worn.  There was after all no reason why she should make
any special effort to make herself look attractive for Silas.  No
reason at all, and yet before going downstairs she stared at herself
critically in her bedroom mirror and decided depressingly that she was
perfectly safe from Silas because no man with any sense of taste could
possibly find anything remotely attractive in a five foot-two female
dressed in old jeans and a bulky sweatshirt, who wore her hair in a
cloud of untidy curls.  What she failed to see what was immediately
obvious to others, and that was the clear naturalness of her skin, the
youthful contours of her face and body, the soft silkiness of her
abhorred curls, and the sexual appeal of her slender body clad in its
oversized top and snug-fitting jeans.

No, there was most definitely nothing about her appearance which would
lead Silas to imagine that she had changed her mind, she decided firmly
before heading downstairs.

He was already in the kitchen when she walked in, looking across the
room towards her with an expression in his eyes she could not
decipher.

She decided that it was probably amusement and was therefore unable to
hide her astonishment when he remarked softly, "You know, I'd forgotten
how good it was to have someone to come home to.  You do, when you live
alone."  He paused and then before she could pull herself together and
say anything, he added thoughtfully, "You must miss your father, and
Katie."

Was he suggesting that he felt sorry for her?  A woman on her own?

She looked defensively at him and, seeing neither pity nor mockery in
his eyes, allowed herself to admit huskily, "Yes, as a matter of fact I
do."

"You're still young enough to marry.  To have more children..."

Hazel's jaw dropped.

"I'm thirty-six," she protested, unable to hide her surprise.

"So what?  There are women today of forty who are having their first
child; women who have spent their twenties and thirties concentrating
on their careers, and who have realised that those careers aren't
enough, that they want a family as well.  Or is it that you don't want
any more children?  I can understand why you might not feel you want to
take on a husband," he told her whimsically, 'but children.  "

Children.  She'd never even thought about it.  At least.  well, yes,
she had thought about it when Katie was younger, not wanting her to
grow up alone as she had done, but then once Katie had reached her
teens.  and now.  Well, she was thinking more in terms of the
grandchildren Katie would one day provide her with, not babies of her
own, and yet, as Silas had remarked, there were women older than her
who were giving birth and bringing up young families.

"I... I haven't really thought about it," she fibbed, turning her back
on him.

"I certainly don't feel any need to fulfill myself by conceiving a
second child to bring up without its father," she added quietly.

"With Katie I was lucky.  She's never reproached me because she's had
to grow up without knowing Jimmy.  Jimmy's family have always made her
welcome as a part of them."

"Did you love him very much?"

The question startled her.  It was one she wasn't used to hearing.

Jimmy was so very far away from her now in her past that she found it
hard sometimes to remember exactly what she had felt towards him, but
she knew it had not been the love of a woman for a man.  How could it
have been, when they had only been children?

"He was my friend," she answered honestly.

"I was a very intense teenager, perhaps because I was very lonely.
Jimmy.  Jimmy was very special to me as a person.  But no, I didn't
love him as... as a lover."

She had said far more than she had intended to say, revealed far more
than she should have done, and as she swung round and saw the
compassion darkening his eyes she bit her lip in vexation, saying
abruptly, "It was all a very long time ago, and hardly matters now.

I've cleared out Dad's room for you.  It has its own bathroom.  I
haven't made anything for supper.  I wasn't sure if you'd be coming
back.  "

All the time she spoke, gabbled almost, she was aware of Silas watching
her, studying her--as well he might, she reflected dismally.

No doubt, as far as he was concerned, she was an odd and rare species,
a woman whose one experience of sex had led to the conception of a
child, and who had never allowed herself to become a fully functioning
sexual woman.  Oh, yes, he might well regard her with that thoughtful
considering gaze that made her feel so uncomfortable and so.  so
vulnerable.

"I thought we might have supper out.  I'm having a small problem with
my work, in that my research has revealed such a wealth of information
and detail that I'm undecided as to whether I should only deal with a
shorter space of Hugo's life in this book, and then continue it in
another.  I need someone to listen while I talk myself through the
problem, and I wonder, rather selfishly I know, if in return for supper
you might be prepared to lend a sympathetic ear."

Then But I can't advise you.  I don't know the first thing about
writing a book.  Surely your publishers.  "

"A second opinion is always of value, even if it only helps to clarify
your own thoughts.  Besides, you said you'd like to read more about
Hugo.  You already know the character, so don't underestimate the value
of your opinion.  Don't put yourself down so much," he added coolly.

"If you aren't prepared to value yourself as you should, then at least
don't deny others the opportunity to do so."

Hazel was too stunned to speak.

"I haven't booked anywhere," Silas continued.

"I wasn't sure whether you'd be free, or if you'd be willing to help me
out."

When he put it like that, how could she refuse him, or pretend that she
was already engaged elsewhere?

"I'll have to change," she told him uncertainly.

"That's OK--so will I. Is there anywhere in particular where you'd like
to eat?"

"There's an Italian place in Knutsford," she told him.

"I don't know if you like Italian food."

"I do," he assured her.

"Do you know the name?  I could telephone and book a table."

Feeling rather as though her life had suddenly escaped from her own
control, she gave him the name, and then headed for the stairs.

Half an hour later, standing in front of the mirror and frowning at her
reflection in a red jersey wool dress which Katie had insisted on her
buying the previous winter, and which was one of the few really smart
things in her wardrobe, she wondered what on earth she was doing.

Silas had made it plain enough why he wanted her company, and she did
not for one moment doubt that he had spoken the truth, but what about
her--what about her motives?  Was she honestly and completely sure that
she had managed to root out of her system the perverse and extremely
disruptive thoughts which had been attacking her ever since she had set
eyes on him?

Yes, of course she had!  Of course she had.

The restaurant was a small comfortable place run by a large and
garrulous Italian family, who recognised Hazel the moment she and Silas
walked in through the door, despite the fact that she had only eaten
there on a handful of occasions.

The proprietor, genial, rotund, and very, very Italian, came forward to
greet them and then exclaimed lavishly, "Ah, at last we see the husband
of the so beautiful lady who dines here only with her friends.  I say
to my own wife then, that this lady, she is too beautiful to be on her
own.  All my male customers, they are distracted from their food by her
beauty."

Hazel could feel herself going scarlet, but as she opened her mouth to
correct his misapprehension Silas touched her lightly on her
shoulder.

When she turned round he shook his head and murmured so that only she
could hear, "I shouldn't bother if I were you, it will probably only
lead to further confusion.  Unless of course you wish to take issue
with him on the subject of his chauvinism and point out that no woman
these days needs a man to make her life complete."

, Hazel shook her head numbly, following the beaming Italian to a small
table set in an alcove, and romantically illuminated by the discreet
lighting and the candles on the table.

"I can't imagine why he thought we were married," she told Silas
uncomfortably when they had given their order.

"I'm not even wearing a wedding ring."

"I shouldn't let it worry you," Silas responded, frowning a little as
someone coming towards them caught his eye.

Hazel turned her head to see what had caused his frown.

A man in his mid-fifties, accompanied by a girl who could not have been
much older than Katie, were being shown to a table several feet away
from their own, and it was immediately obvious that their relationship
was not one of father and daughter.

"Now, that's something I always dislike to see," Silas commented
quietly to her.

"No doubt if questioned both of them would claim that the age gap
between them isn't important; that they love one another, but somehow
such arguments fail to be convincing, and one is always left with the
uncomfortable feeling that he has bought her youth to wear on his arm
like a trophy and that she has sold herself out to him because it is
easier to be the pampered pet of an indulgent older man than to work at
a relationship with someone younger and poorer."

The distaste in his voice echoed his words, causing Hazel to stare at
him in surprise.

"You don't agree?"  he questioned, watching her.

"Yes... yes, as a matter of fact I do," she told him vehemently when
she had got over her surprise.

"It's just that it's so unusual to hear a man voicing such views.  A
woman, yes, but men seem to have a complete blind spot where their own
vanity is concerned.  Ask any man of over forty if he genuinely and
honestly believes that a girl of eighteen or twenty can really love a
man in his fifties for himself and not his assets, and he will
immediately say yes, denying every argument you can give him to prove
otherwise."

There was a small pause while they were served with their first course,
and when the waiter had gone Silas leaned across the table and said
quietly to her, "You don't have a very high opinion of my sex, do you.
Hazel?  We aren't all blind to reality, you know.  Nor do all of us
have such fragile egos that we need to buy ourselves a pretty little
plaything to show off to our friends."

"No, I know," Hazel agreed.

"That was why I was so upset when I thought that you and Katie--' She
stopped abruptly.  Oh, God, what on earth was she saying?  But it was
too late--after a sharp look at her, Silas was already demanding
evenly, " That Katie and I what.  Hazel?  "

She cast around desperately in her mind for something innocuous to say,
but she could almost feel the seconds ticking by, and with them Silas's
patience.  She could almost feel the silent pressure of his demand that
she answer his question.  There was no escape.

Even if she could think of a suitable fib, she knew she just did not
have the self-confidence to utter it with any real conviction.

"I assumed... that is I thought... Well, Katie didn't..."

"You thought that Katie and I were lovers," Silas supplied for her,
cutting through her embarrassed attempts to admit how she had misjudged
him.

"Well, yes... yes I did, but only because... Well..."  She remembered
just in time that she was supposed to have extended an invitation to
him to stay with her while he was doing his research and realised that
she could hardly tell him that when Katie had described him to her in
such glowing terms she had quite naturally assumed that Katie was
romantically involved with him, not realising that her daughter had
simply been trying to prepare the way for her acceptance of him as a
potential lodger.

"Because what?"  Silas asked her evenly.

"Because I immediately struck you as the type of man who would become
involved with a girl as young as Katie?  A girl young enough to be my
daughter."

"I... Well..."

He was furious with her and no wonder, she acknowledged wretchedly.

"I can understand why you might think that I might be tempted by a girl
of Katie's prettiness and vitality.  Just... But what I can't
understand is how you could ever have imagined that Katie would be
interested in me."

"Well, I thought... I thought you'd be younger," she told him
defensively.

"Younger."  He was frowning at her.

"I realise the photographs on the back of my dust jackets are somewhat
out of date but--' " And although Katie is very sensible, I thought she
might.  Well, I worried.  Some girls of her age do seem to feel the
need for a father figure.  "

"Some do," Silas agreed.

"But not Katie."

"I'm sorry if I've offended you," Hazel apologised miserably.  Why on
earth had she been so stupid?  The trouble was that she had been so
bemused, so thrown off guard by his contempt for the other couple that
she had forgotten to guard her tongue, and had spoken impulsively and
from the heart.

"I'm sorry too," Silas told her, pushing away his food half-eaten.

Hazel discovered that she too had lost her appetite.  When the waiter
came to remove their plates and serve their main course, he frowned
unhappily at their far from empty plates, increasing Hazel's feelings
of guilt.

"It never occurred to me mat you'd imagine... Katie is a lovely girl,
young, pretty, lively and intelligent; the kind of girl it's always a
joy to behold from a purely aesthetic point of view, but sexually...
She is still a girl, but I am not a boy."

He paused while the waiter served their main course.

Every word he uttered was increasing Hazel's feelings of guilt and
shame.  If he had lost his temper with her, it would have been easier
to bear, but he hadn't done.  Instead she could almost feel the
distaste and disbelief radiating from him, making her feel guilty of
the most gross kind of misjudgement.

Once the waiter had gone, he continued curtly, "As I was saying,
sexually I don't have the remotest interest in Katie... In fact..."

Hazel couldn't look at him.  To her horror she could feel tears
gathering behind her eyes.  Keeping her head lowered towards her plate,
she tried frantically to blink them away.

The evening had been disastrous enough as it was, without her adding to
its horrors by bursting into tears.

But nothing she could do could stop the tears from welling and rolling
slowly down her face.  A face which had become so hot from
embarrassment and shame that she was only surprised her tears didn't
turn into steam from that heat.

She tried to dip her head even lower, but it was too late.

She heard Silas swear under his breath, and then the next thing she
knew he was standing up and saying urgently to her, "Come on, let's get
out of here.  This is something we need to discuss in private."

She tried to tell him that there wasn't anything to discuss, but
somehow or other she was on her feet, and his arm was round her,
guiding her, comforting her almost, certainly shielding her from the
potentially curious stares of the other diners.

She heard him saying something to the owner about his wife not feeling
well as he paid the bill.

All Hazel wanted was to get out of the restaurant as quickly as she
could, and not just out of the restaurant but out of Silas's company as
well.

She had embarrassed herself and she had no doubt embarrassed him just
as much.  What she had said had been bad enough, but to break down in
tears like that.  The cold night air hit her, making her shiver.
Immediately Silas put his arm around her, pulling her back into the
warmth of his body, his gesture almost an automatic one, as though they
were in actual fact a couple and he had held her like this many times
before.

"You're cold," he stated matter of factly.

"Let's get back to the car."

He had parked a few minutes' walk away, and although Hazel tried
discreetly to pull away from him he made no attempt to let her go.

"I'm sorry for behaving like such a fool," she apologised when they
reached the car and Silas opened the passenger door for her.

"Don't apologise," he told her.

"It was my fault.  I upset you."

"You had every right to be angry with me," Hazel told him as she closed
her door and he got into the car beside her.

"Angry!"  He turned to look at her as he fastened his seatbelt,
frowning a little.

"I wasn't angry.  Disappointed, hurt maybe, because I felt you'd
misjudged me, but I wasn't angry, Hazel."

"I shouldn't have said anything.  I--' " I'm glad you did.  In fact.  "
He paused and looked at her and then asked mildly, " Does Katie know
that you thought she and I were lovers?  "

"Yes," Hazel admitted.

"I couldn't understand why the two of you seemed to want to spend so
little time together.  She thought it was funny.  She wanted to tell
you there and then, but... well, I asked her not to."

She yawned suddenly, overtaken by a wave of emotional and physical
exhaustion.

"You're tired," Silas commented.

"And no wonder, heaving that damned desk around and then getting that
bedroom ready for me."

"I'm thirty-six, not seventy-six," Hazel retaliated drily.

Silas had been about to start the car's engine, but now he paused and
looked at her thoughtfully.

"Do you know, that's the first time I've heard you say something
positive about your age?  You look younger than many women of thirty,
and yet you try desperately hard to give people the impression that
you're at least twenty years older than you actually are.  All the time
in your response to people, you seem to be telling them not that you're
a highly desirable woman, but that you're a woman who has put the years
of her sexuality behind her.

Most women of your age these days would be most affronted if anyone
were to suggest that they were sexually past it, so to speak.  "

"I'm not most women," Hazel told him stiffly.

"My father--' " Your father locked you away in an emotional chastity
belt, yes, I know," Silas broke in grittily.

"You were barely sixteen when Katie was conceived.  Little more than a
baby yourself, and in all the years since her birth I suspect that
you've remained as unawakened sexually as you were when she was
conceived."

This wasn't the kind of conversation she ought to be having with him.

It was far too dangerous, far too laden with potential hazards.

"If you're going to ask me why I've never made any attempt to
experiment sexually, then me answer is that obviously I have a very
low, not to say virtually non-existent sex drive," she told him
fiercely, 'and now could we please change the subject?  You brought me
out to dinner so that we could discuss your book.  "

"A very low sex drive," he repeated musingly, ignoring the latter part
of her speech.

"Mm... or perhaps a father who made you feel so guilty and ashamed of
your sexuality that you were emotionally coerced into suppressing
it."

"Well it's hardly of world-shattering importance now either way, is
it?"  Hazel interrupted him.

"After all, at thirty-six I'm hardly likely to--' " There you go again,
Silas told her.

"At thirty-six you're hardly likely to what?  Fall in love?  Why on
earth not?  Thousands do... every day."

"Yes, teenagers.  People in their twenties--' " No," Silas contradicted
her ruthlessly.

"Not just people under thirty.  I have an uncle.  He never married,
never wanted to, and then when he was sixty-five he went on a cruise,
met someone, fell in love and married her.  They've just celebrated
their tenth wedding anniversary and they're as much in love now as they
were when they first met, and before you ask, no, she isn't some young
girl, in fact Louise is actually three years older than Frank.

Before they met she'd had a very hard life, a husband who treated her
badly, and then left her with five children to bring up.  Those
hardships are reflected in her face and it was those, her
vulnerabilities as much as her strengths, that drew my uncle to her.

"Love isn't restricted to the very young.  Hazel, and why should it be?
Isn't it true after all that all too often it's something they take for
granted and frequently abuse?  Older people can fall in love too, you
know."

"Even those as old as thirty-six," she said shakily.

"Even those as old as forty-one," he told her softly, startling her
into looking directly into his eyes.

It was a mistake.  Her heart missed a beat and then another.  She
suddenly discovered that it was hard to breathe.

Was Silas going to kiss her, and what if he did?  she wondered in
panic.  Would she be able to stop herself from responding to him?

Would she.  ?

As the frantic thoughts flooded through her head and she tensed her
body against them, Silas smiled at her, and then turned the key in the
ignition.

He wasn't going to kiss her after all she realised indignantly, trying
to tell herself that it wasn't disappointment that she was feeling at
all, and that she was glad.  yes, glad that he had finally started the
engine and put an end to the dangerous conversation they had been
having.

As Silas drove out of the town and into the darkness of the surrounding
countryside.  Hazel yawned again.  She felt desperately tired; a legacy
from her sleepless nights and emotional turmoil.  She leaned her head
back against the headrest and closed her eyes.  Just for a few minutes.
She wasn't going to go to sleep.  She was just going to relax, that was
all.

Silas glanced at the sleeping figure in the passenger seat, grimacing
wryly to himself as he noted the way she had turned her body away from
him.  Even in her sleep she withdrew from him.

It had stunned him tonight to discover that she had thought he was
sexually involved with Katie, but, unflattering though her assumptions
had been, they did explain a great deal.

Was he being a complete fool?  he wondered musingly, glancing back at
her.  She certainly wasn't willing to admit him into her life, but she
wasn't totally indifferent to him either.  Had her father repressed her
basic femininity so much that she would never be able to overcome that
repression?  She had described herself as having a low sex drive.

Her body had already given him a very, very different message.

But would she ever be able to accept that .  that what?  That he had
virtually fallen in love with her from Katie's description of her, and
that his first sight of her had only confirmed what he had already
felt?  And even if she accepted it, would she care?

She had responded to him when he kissed her, but sexual response was
not love.  He reflected that it was just as well her father was dead.

They could almost certainly never have been friends.  He had damaged
her too much, destroyed her self-esteem and hurt her, even if he had
not done that damage maliciously or knowingly.

When he stopped the car in the drive.  Hazel was still asleep.  Getting
out of the car, he found the set of keys she had given him and went to
open the back door.  Then, returning to the car, he opened the
passenger door and said her name quietly.

She moved in her sleep, frowning as though she had heard him, but
refusing to wake up.

Common sense told him that the sensible thing to do was to give her a
little shake and speak more loudly, but when had a man in love ever
behaved sensibly, even one of forty-one?  Especially one of forty-one,
he told himself with a wry smile, as he leaned into the car and
released her seatbelt, before gently easing her out of the seat and
into his arms.

She weighed less heavily than his teenage god daughter, but then she
was almost half a head shorter as well.  His sisters were going to love
her.  They were always on at him to get married, chivvying him for
being too fussy, telling him that he was in danger of turning into a
fussy old bachelor.

As he carried her towards the house, she seemed to nestle into his
arms, burrowing against his body, making a soft sound of pleasure as
she turned her face into his throat.

The sensation of her warm breath against his skin paralysed him where
he stood, a wave of intense longing and need sweeping over him, making
him wryly aware that falling in love wasn't the only thing that,
supposedly reserved for the youthful, could overtake a man of
forty-one--but the very worst thing he could do right now would be to
sweep her off to bed and make love to her the way his body was so
urgently demanding.

Before he even so much as kissed her again, he needed to build up her
trust, her selfconfidence.  he needed to establish a bridge between
them, a rapport; he needed to make her respond to him as a fellow human
being before he could show her how much he wanted to respond to her as
a woman.

Which was why the moment they were inside the kitchen he put her down
rather urgently, causing her to wake up abruptly and stare bemusedly
into his eyes.

What was happening?  Hazel wondered sleepily.  What was she doing in
the kitchen, standing so close to Silas that she could actually feel
his heartbeat, when the last thing she could remember was being in the
passenger seat of his car?

She looked away from him to the still open kitchen door.  Had she
really walked through it without realising what she was doing?

"I carried you in," Silas told her, answering her unspoken question.

"I tried to wake you, but you were too deeply asleep."

He had carried her in!  She looked up at him, her eyes still dazed with
sleep, as her body continued to absorb the warmth of his.  She didn't
want to move away from him.  She wanted to stay right where she was.
She wanted.  She looked at his mouth, her own lips parting,
unconsciously seeking his kiss.  Silas looked back at her, knowing that
if he touched her now.  Immediately he stepped back from her and just
as immediately Hazel realised what she was doing, what she.  was
inviting. She was practically begging him to kiss her.  No wonder he
was looking at her so grimly.  What on earth must he think of her?

She stepped back from him instinctively, not trusting herself to be
able to look at him.

"I'm rather tired," she told him quickly.

"If you don't mind, I think I'll have an early night."

It was only later, when she was just on the verge of sleep, that she
realised that neither of them had really eaten.  For herself the last
thing she wanted was food, but Silas.  He was an intelligent adult, she
reminded herself.  If he wanted something to eat, presumably he would
make himself a meal.  As she fell asleep, she was smiling a little
sadly to herself, remembering her father, who would have been shocked
and confused by any suggestion that he might prepare his own meals, but
then her father and Silas were two very, very different members of the
male sex.

CHAPTER SEVEN

A week passed and then another.  Silas was so absorbed in the research
on his book that Hazel only saw him in the evening when he joined her
for a meal.

She had come to look forward to these shared meals, sometimes prepared
by her, sometimes prepared by Silas and sometimes, now that she too was
working on a new commission, by them both together.  It had amazed her
at first that a man could be so masculine and yet at the same time be
so at home and at ease domestically.  One cold evening when she had
made a casserole which was one of Katie's favourites, Silas had
enthused over it and asked her for the recipe.

Sometimes he discussed his book with her, outlining to her what he was
doing, giving her a fascinating glimpse into the construction based on
hard facts that supported the fictional fabric of his work, and then
there were other evenings when they barely spoke at all, but when their
silences were comfortable and shared.

She had grown too used to having him around in far too short a space of
time, she acknowledged one evening when he had telephoned her from
Chester to say that he would be staying late at the library, checking
up on some reference books he was unable to bring home.

That evening she ate alone and found that she had no appetite for the
meal she had prepared; that she was too restless and lonely to settle.
that the house felt empty without him in it and that she missed him in
a way that she had not even missed Katie when she left for
university.

He was becoming too important to her, she acknowledged, shivering a
little in the chill of that knowledge.

After several days of blustering winds and rain she woke up one morning
to discover that the rain had stopped and that the sun was shining,
revealing the untidiness of the garden, and pricking her conscience to
do something about it.

Silas announced over breakfast that he intended to spend the day
visiting several of the area's older houses, in order to do some more
research.

"How is your work going?"  he asked her, reaching behind him for the
coffee jug and filling both their mugs.

"Quite well.  I've finished the preliminary sketches.  I sent them off
yesterday and now I have to wait for the author's reaction."

"Mm... Well, why don't you have a day off and come out with me?  I
could do with a good navigator."

She ached to be able to say yes.  There was nothing she would enjoy
more than spending the day in Silas's company.  Unless of course it was
spending the night with him.  She swallowed tensely.  She was
constantly having to battle against such wayward thoughts, against her
growing desire to extend the intimacy of friendship which was growing
between them to that of lovers, but since that one time when he had
kissed her Silas had been scrupulous about maintaining a physical
distance between them.  There was nothing now in his manner towards her
that suggested he found her remotely desirable as a woman.  And that of
course was what she wanted.  Or at least it was what she had told
herself she wanted.

She was not sure she could cope with several hours alone with him in
the intimacy of his car.  Her sleep last night had been disturbed by a
particularly erotic and vivid dream in which he.  She swallowed hard.

"I'd love to," she told him honestly.

"But I've promised myself that I'll do some work in the garden while
it's dry."

Silas looked towards the window.

"The forecast is quite good for the next few days.

Why not put it off until the weekend?  I should be able to take a break
then and we can do the gardening together.  "

Together.  What a wonderful word that was.  She was desperately tempted
to give in, to say yes, to ignore all those small warning voices
clamouring so urgently inside her.  What, after all, did it matter if
Silas realised she wanted him?

It mattered a great deal, she told herself severely.  He would find her
desire for him embarrassing; it would spoil the friendship which was
growing between them.

Regretfully she shook her head.

"No.  I really ought to make a start today."

She waited, telling herself that if he pressed her.  already half
regretting having refused him, but he simply drank his coffee and said
easily, "Well, if I can't persuade you to join me I suppose I'd still
better make a move."

Half an hour later, as he left, he gave her another cheerful smile,
leaving her with no idea that his whole purpose in asking her to join
him had not been because of any research he wanted to do, but because
he had hoped that the intimacy of being completely alone with her might
allow him to take their relationship a step further.

Outside, away from the domestic setting of the house, there would have
been far more opportunities to begin a subtle physical bonding with
her. After all he could hardly put his arm around her to help her walk
across the kitchen.  at least not at this stage of their
relationship.

And now he had condemned himself to spending a whole day away from her,
supposedly doing some quite unnecessary research.  So much for the
table he had surreptitiously booked for lunch.  So much for all the
plans he had so carefully been laying.  Wouldn't it, he wondered wryly,
be far easier and more adult to simply tell her how he felt and to
invite her to either accept or reject him?

Easier perhaps, but he was not sure that she would take him seriously.
It was true that she had ceased mentioning her age, as though it were
some kind of barrier to her either feeling or engendering in someone
else sexual desire, but he was still not sure if she would want to
accept that he found her physically desirable to such an extent that
there were times when it took every ounce of willpower he possessed to
stop himself from reaching out and taking hold of her.

Unenthusiastically, Hazel went upstairs and changed into an old pair of
jeans and a thick sweater.

m the kitchen she pulled on her Wellingtons and a sleeveless jacket
and, picking up her gardening gloves, opened the back door.  The sun
might be shining but the wind was cold, though digging over the
vegetable patch ought to warm her up a bit.

Three hours later, her back aching and her energy flagging, she
acknowledged that she had had enough.  But it was still only lunchtime
and Silas would be gone all day.  She felt reluctant to go back into
the empty house, but she was certainly not in the mood for any more
gardening.  Her muscles ached for the comfort of a hot bath, and then
perhaps afterwards she could light the sitting-room fire and curl up in
a chair there with a book.

Telling herself that what she was contemplating was the grossest
self-indulgence, she cleared the clogging mud off her tools and
returned them to the shed before walking tiredly towards the house.

Outside she removed her Wellingtons and padded across the kitchen
floor, stripping off her jeans and top where she stood, to stuff them
into the washing machine with a grimace of distaste.

Upstairs in the bathroom, she ran a deep, hot bath, and added a liberal
amount of the bath oil Katie had given her for her birthday, breathing
in its heady fragrance with enjoyment.

Securing her curls on top of her head with an elasticated silky band
which had originally belonged to Katie, she sank blissfully into the
water.

Less than five miles away, Silas stared moodily into his driving
mirror.  What the hell was he doing driving around aimlessly like this
when the only place he really wanted to be was at home with Hazel?

Stopping abruptly, and checking the empty road, he swung the car round.
Hazel might not want to be with him, but he certainly wanted to be with
her.  needed to be with her.

Downstairs the phone rang.  Hazel heard it but ignored it, but when it
continued to ring all her maternal instincts were activated and she
clambered out of the bath, telling herself that it probably wasn't
Katie telephoning her at all, and that even if she was it didn't
necessarily mean that there was something wrong.

Nevertheless she reached for a towel, and then cursed mildly under her
breath, remembering that she had left the clean towels neatly folded in
the kitchen.

In her father's day the very last thing she would have been able to do
was what she was doing now, which was hurrying downstairs, naked and
damp, grateful for the warmth of the house's central heating and
reflecting that there were after all some advantages to living on one's
own.

As she picked up the receiver in the hallway, she told herself that one
day soon she really must buy herself a modern remote control phone
which she could take into the bathroom with her.

"Ma."

"Katie, it is you.  What's wrong?  Is?"

"Nothing's wrong.  Heavens, you do panic.  I've got a free period and I
thought I'd give you a ring.  I haven't disturbed anything important,
have I?"

"I was in the bath," Hazel told her, 'and right now I'm standing in the
hall, dripping water all over the place.  "

"Mm... I take it that you're all alone then, and that there's no Silas
there to appreciate the view," Katie teased her.

"Silas has gone out for the day," Hazel told her repressively.

"Is everything all right, Katie?"

"Everything's fine.  As a matter of fact, I rang because / was worried
about you.  Is everything OK with you and Silas?  I mean, are the two
of you getting on all right?"

"Yes, yes we're getting on fine," Hazel told her, frowning as she
thought she heard the sound of a car drawing up outside.

"Katie, I'm going to have to go.  I think someone's outside--' she
began.  Before she could replace the receiver, Katie called out
urgently, " Hang on a sec, Ma.  I think I'll be coming home for
Christmas on about the twentieth.  "

Hazel froze as she heard the kitchen door open.

She had locked it when she came in, she knew she had, and besides she
didn't know anyone who would just walk in without knocking, apart from
Silas, and he and he.  Her jaw dropped as the hall door opened and
Silas walked through it.

For the space of a heartbeat, they both stood looking at one another,
and Hazel had never felt more vulnerable, nor more of a fool in her
entire life.  Humiliatingly, Silas seemed to be deliberately avoiding
looking directly at her, and no wonder, she thought wretchedly, as she
said jerkily to Katie, "Yes, yes, that's fine, Katie.  I must go.

I. "

Silas mercifully had gone back into the kitchen.  Why on earth hadn't
she gone and got a towel instead of coming downstairs like that?  Why
hadn't she.  what?  Guessed that he would come back?

She had just replaced the receiver and was about to go upstairs when
the kitchen door opened again.  She froze where she stood.  "Here, I've
brought you this," Silas told her quietly.

He was holding out a clean towel to her, one of the ones she had
earlier removed from the dryer and folded prior to taking them
upstairs.

"Thanks," she responded tightly, reaching for it, without daring to
look at him, but somehow it slipped from her fingers and as both of
them moved forward together to pick it up.  Hazel felt herself start to
tremble when Silas's fingers brushed against hers.  She straightened up
abruptly, and then winced as something tugged sharply at her hair.

"Hang on," she heard Silas saying above her in a muffled voice.

"You seem to have got caught.  You'll have to move a little closer to
me," he told her as she tried to move and realised that her hair had
managed to entwine itself around one of his shirt buttons as they had
both reached down for the towel.

There was nothing she could do other than stand there, every inch of
her bare skin burning with mortification and embarrassment, as Silas
painstakingly unravelled the snarled-up curl from around his button.

It seemed to take forever, and, even though she knew that his gaze was
fixed on his task, Hazel was agonisingly conscious of her nudity.

What on earth had made her come downstairs like that in the first
place?  It wasn't something she would normally have done.  In fact
there were often occasions when Katie had teased her about being over
modest, informing her vehemently, "Honestly, Ma, you ought to be proud
of your body, not always trying to hide it away.  You've got a terrific
figure.  And you know what they say, don't you?  If you've got it,
flaunt it."

Well, she had certainly taken her daughter's advice to heart today, she
reflected shakily.  What on earth must Silas think of her?  Did he
imagine that she was trying to be deliberately provocative, that she
was.

She gave a tiny shiver of distress, and immediately Silas said huskily,
"I'm sorry.  You're cold.  You're nearly free."

He was sorryI It was her fault she was in this situation, not his.

She wondered what he would say if she told him that she hadn't been
shivering because she was cold, but because she was realising that no
matter how much she might protest it with her conscious mind,
subconsciously it had been that wanton, dangerous streak within her
which was responsible for her present plight.

She shivered again, her embarrassment giving way to the beginnings of a
definite erotic tension;

an awareness that, despite the fact that he was fully clothed, Silas's
body was the male counterpart to her own femininity.  She could feel
the heat his flesh was generating and trembled violently in response to
it.  She heard Silas curse, and then suddenly she was free 'and able to
step back from him.

As he bent to retrieve her towel, she saw that his hand was trembling
slightly.

"I'm sorry," she apologised huskily.

He paused in the act of handing her the towel, his gaze locking with
hers.  His eyes burned with an unfamiliar heat that made her own pulses
race.

"What for?"  he demanded rawly.

"For letting me see you like this?"

The way he looked at her then made her feel more conscious of herself
as a woman than she had ever felt in her whole life; not self-conscious
and uncomfortable with her sexuality, not ashamed and guilty about her
body, but somehow proud of her femininity, aware of its power and
strength, aware of herself as the focus of male desire.

In that second an avalanche of sensations and emotions came crashing
down over her, the burden of years of self-repression falling away from
her so that she was conscious of herself and her needs so sharply that
that awareness was almost a physical pain.

She took a step towards him, ignoring the towel, impulsively wanting to
share with him the wonder of what she was feeling, and then abruptly he
killed that impulse by adding violently, "Yes, Hazel, so am I."

She froze where she stood, all her self-doubts and fears coming
crowding back, and added to them was an extra burden of humiliation and
shame.  Of course he didn't want her.  Of course he hadn't been
implying.  She started to shake violently, tears burning the back of
her throat.

"Hazel, what is it?  What's wrong?"

Her emotions were too strong to allow her to speak.  He was still
holding the towel and suddenly to her surprise he held it open and said
softly, "Come here--let's get you wrapped up in this before my
self-control deserts me completely.  Have you any idea what you're
doing to me?"  he demanded huskily, as he enveloped her in the towel,
somehow or other drawing her closer to him as he did so, so that when
he picked her up, lifting her completely off her feet and cradling her
in his arms, she had no option but to let him do so, wrapping her arms
instinctively around his neck for additional security as he headed for
the stairs.

"You and I need to talk," he told her quietly as he climbed the
stairs.

"I'm sorry if I gave you a shock coming back so unexpectedly like that,
but I didn't..."

Hazel wriggled uncomfortably in his arms, guessing what he had been
about to say, but unable to put it into words.  Of course he hadn't
expected to walk in and find her standing in the hall without a stitch
on.

They were at the top of the stairs now and he was heading in the
direction of her bedroom.

"I want to talk to you, but not while you're like this."

Of course not.  Her face burned.  Did he suspect that she had done it
deliberately?  But how could he?  She hadn't known he would come
back.

He was just about to put her down on the bed when she felt the tension
in his arms.  Her own muscles locked in mute response as she looked
towards his down bent head.

"Hazel."

He said her name on a rough, long drawn out breath that brushed her
skin with warmth and turned her body liquid.

As he gently unfastened the towel and kissed the hollow between her
breasts, she shivered with shocked delight, the hands which she had
locked behind his neck for support developing a will and an instinct of
their own so that they spread across his shoulders, stroking the hard
muscles, her soft murmur of pleasure breaking the thick silence of the
room.

As though that sound held some special plea, some secret message, Silas
sat down on the bed, still cradling her to him, his lips exploring the
soft swell of one breast, while his hands gently cupped and held their
roundness.

Now the silence of the room was splintered not just by the accelerated
sound of her own breathing but by Silas's as well.  With hearing that
was suddenly pretematurally sharp she could hear the soft sound of his
mouth moving against her skin, could feel its sensual vibration deep
within her body, could feel a growing urgent desire to hold him close
to her, to arch her back, and wantonly invite him to stroke every inch
of her exposed skin with the same wonderful sensuality with which he
was caressing her breasts.

It was the most erotic sensation she had experienced in her life, and
the most dangerous, but she ignored the danger, letting herself be
swept away on the turbulent mill-race of sensations flooding through
her.

And when Silas did slide the towel from her body, lingering, caressing
her skin with the silken warmth of his mouth, it was like a dream come
true, like a private secret fantasy, too magical surely to be actually
happening.

The soft sounds of her wonderment and pleasure seemed to be all the
encouragement he needed, and when his lips finally, tenderly possessed
the eager excitement of her tautly erect nipple, the little whimpers of
shocked delight she tried to strangle in her throat caused him to draw
the hot, aching nub of flesh fully into his mouth and to draw on it so
erotically that the sensation made her cry out loud in shocked
recognition of her own need.

Immediately she made that high keening sound, Silas's hands--which had
been caressing the slender roundness of her hips, stimulating her
sensitive flesh so that her whole body quivered with responsiveness to
him--stilled, just as his mouth ceased caressing her breast.

Bewilderment, anger, disbelief, but most of all anguished humiliation
swept through her as he slowly withdrew from her, silently re-covering
her with her towel, his glance fixed on a point somewhere beyond her
shoulder as he said roughly, "I'm sorry.  I should never..."  He got
up, moving away from her, while she lay on her bed, frozen with misery
and rejection, not knowing what she had said or done to provoke his
withdrawal from her.

"I ... I have to go out," he told her quietly.

"I'm not sure when I'll be back."

Unable to move, to speak, to do anything other than simply close her
eyes on the anguish she was feeling.  Hazel heard him go.

Even when she had heard the sound of his car engine fading away, she
still dared not allow herself to breathe properly, still dared not
allow herself to move.

Inside her body ached tormentingly, adding to the burdens of
self-contempt and shock she was already carrying.

Dear God, how could she have behaved like that?

How could she have been so.  so wanton?  And when she had already told
him that she didn't want him.

Well, he knew the troth now.  Knew that she had lied.  No wonder he had
withdrawn from her in such disgust.

Shakily she got off the bed, her body weak and drained, her hands
trembling as she dressed herself.

What would have happened if he hadn't stopped when he had?  If he, like
her, had been so overwhelmed by need, by desire.  By love!

She sat down on her bed, covering her face with her hands, her body
shaking with silent sobs of despair as she acknowledged the truth.

She had fallen in love with Silas.  It wasn't simply desire that
motivated her.  It wasn't simply some belated awakening of her senses,
of her desires, responding to the proximity of a very attractive
male.

She had fallen in love.  Vividly she recalled the first moment she had
seen him, the emotions she had felt then--had felt and had tried to
suppress, believing that he and Katie were lovers.  It was too late now
to wish she had never met him; to wish that what she was feeling now
had remained something she had never experienced.

Her burgeoning emotions were a thousand times more painful than the
most acute attack of pins and needles, tormenting her into an agony of
misery and depression.

It was a long time before she felt able to go downstairs.  Her body
felt oddly weak, and yet at the same time she was acutely conscious of
how it still ached, still yearned.

When Silas did not return for supper, she realised that he was trying
to keep as much distance between them as he could.  She went to bed
early, determined to do the same, but she couldn't sleep.  She heard
him come in when the hands of her alarm clock showed the time at just
gone midnight.  Where had he been?  Had he been alone?

Jealousy ate into her like acid fire, showing her yet another hitherto
unknown side of her nature.  It was a long, long time before she
managed to get to sleep.

For three days they continued to avoid one another, meeting briefly in
the kitchen in the morning over breakfast, when she was meticulous
about responding to whatever conversational comments Silas made to her
with monosyllabic answers and an averted profile.  It was far too late
for her to do anything about the fact that he must be aware of her
desire for him, but at least she could salvage something of her pride
by ensuring that that was all he knew.  by keeping herself aloof, and
showing him that no matter what her weaknesses might be she was adult
enough to control and withstand them.  And yet just to see him, just to
hear his voice, just to know he was in the house with her, caused the
most idiotic and useless weakening within her, the most appalling,
yearning desire.

If this was love, she had been better off when she had had no knowledge
of it, she decided bitterly one morning as she parked her car and
headed for the supermarket entrance, her heart sinking as she was
immediately hailed by Sheila Simpson.

Sheila Simpson was the very last person she felt like speaking to
today.  All she really wanted was to be left alone.  To wallow in her
misery and self-pity?  She smiled bitterly to herself.

"My goodness, you are a dark horse, aren't you?"  Sheila exclaimed
archly as she caught up with her.

"When I asked if you were expecting guests, I had no idea ... I mean I
assumed..."

Hazel focused on her, her eyes blank with dismissal.

"What exactly is it you're trying to imply, Sheila?"  she asked almost
sharply.  Where once she would have been upset and embarrassed to
confront Sheila and demand an explanation of what she was attempting to
say, suddenly she felt no such restrictions.  She was, after all, an
adult woman, not a child.  She was responsible to no one other than
herself.  Her father was no longer alive to be upset by any kind of
reference to her sexuality.

"Well, nothing," Sheila backtracked, looking slightly ruffled.

"But if you will have a man living with you, you have to expect that
people will assume--' " Will assume what?  " she demanded coolly.

"That we're lovers?"

Sheila flushed un flatteringly

"Well, yes," she agreed, looking uncomfortable.

"Of course I've said that there's no truth in that kind of gossip.  But
you know what people are..."

"I know what some people are," Hazel agreed pointedly, sweeping past
her, as she added acidly, "And now, if you'll excuse me, Sheila, I
really must get on with my shopping."

It was only when she was halfway down the aisle with her shopping
trolley that she realised that she was still trembling.  You're
over-reacting, she warned herself, but that warning did no good.  She
wasn't used to being the object of people's prurient speculation and
curiosity and she discovered that she did not care for me idea that she
might be.

She loathed the thought of people talking about her and
Silas--discussing them with the same kind of cynical destructive
cruelty with which she had heard them discussing others.  It made her
feel besmirched, dirty--it made her feel.  She shook her head, telling
herself she was behaving like a fool, but the feelings of anger and
misery Sheila's comments had caused refused to go away.

They were still with her several hours later, when Silas walked into
the kitchen just when she was in the middle of preparing supper.

The unexpectedness of seeing him, when she had grown accustomed to his
spending most of the day away from the house, made her freeze.

"Is something wrong?"  he queried frowningly, looking at her.

"I just wasn't expecting to see you."

"No, I can see that," he agreed, and there was a note in his voice that
made her tense even more, a bitter, almost derisory note that was so
unlike his normal manner that it was as abrasive, as harsh as sandpaper
against her sensitive nerves.

"I came back because there's something I want to tell you."

She stopped what she was doing and watched him.  Her heart was already
beating far too fast.  She was aware of a sensation of doom, of misery
hanging over her.  She wanted to stop him from speaking, from telling
her whatever it was he wanted to say, because she knew already that it
was something She did not want to hear.

"I've found somewhere else to stay."

He said it abruptly, challengingly almost, so that the shock of it was
increased.

She couldn't speak, couldn't react at all, other than to stare at him
in stunned silence.

"It seemed to be the best thing to do in the circumstances," he added
roughly when she didn't respond.

"I'll move my stuff out this evening."

Hazel knew she ought to say; something, make some response, but she
simply could not trust herself to speak.  If she did she was terrified
that she would simply go to pieces and break down completely," but she
had to say something, had to pretend that she didn care, that she
didn't mind--that he wasn't tearing her heart apart.  The habits of a
lifetime, ingrained so deeply by her father, flooded through her now,
and she heard herself saying in an unfamiliar, metallic-clad voice, " I
won't make you any supper, then.  "

The banality of what she was saying made her want to scream out loud
with hysteria, but somehow she just managed to restrain herself, to
stop herself from doing so.

Silas was going, leaving.  And it was all her fault.  All her fault. If
she hadn't reacted like a fool--if she hadn't shown him so plainly how
totally besotted she was with him.  But what was the point of berating
herself now?  What was the point of trying to cling on?  Where was her
pride, her self sufficiency  Where was her backbone?

CHAPTER EIGHT

it was a question she was forced to ask herself over and over again in
the twenty-four hours that followed, and she was forced to watch in
silence while Silas loaded his things into his car, and then gravely
sought her out to thank her for everything she had done for him.

Just before he left, he moved towards her, almost as though he was
going to take her in his arms, but immediately he checked the gesture,
turning on his heel and leaving without even saying a formal goodbye.

She waited until she was sure he had gone before giving way to her
grief.  Not in floods of tears, but in a silent anguished agony, which
had her curling her body into a tightly withdrawn ball and rocking it
silently back and forth as she tried to find some means of easing the
agony she was suffering.

Just before he had left, Silas had given her his address just in case,
he had told her, she needed to get in touch with him for anything.

He was apparently renting an empty cottage several miles away in a
small village.

He had paused just before he left, as though there was something he
wanted to say to her, but she had turned her back on him, and so he had
gone.

What after all could he have to offer her apart from his pity, which
was the last thing she wanted?

It took her three days to pull herself together sufficiently to return
to her work, albeit in a lacklustre, unenthusiastic manner, but it was
marginally better than lying in bed for half the day, unwilling to open
her eyes and face up to life, and then staying up until well into the
early hours because she was too emotionally wrought up to sleep.

What she needed, she told herself, was a simple but strict routine,
rather like someone recovering from an extremely debilitating illness,
which was after all what she was doing, wasn't it?  Only as far as she
could see recovery was still merely an impossible chimera--the best she
could hope for was simply to exist.

She was glad that Katie hadn't telephoned.  She didn't think she would
be able to conceal her emotional condition from her daughter, and the
last thing she wanted was to upset or worry her, and then, three days
after Silas had left, and just as she was promising herself that this
evening she would have her supper, do some work on her latest
commission and then go to bed at a reasonable time, she heard a car
pulling up outside.

Her senses were so acutely attuned that they recognised the sound of
Silas's car engine immediately.

Telling herself that it was impossible, that he couldn't have come
back, she tensed, staring avidly at the back door.

When she saw his familiar shape passing the kitchen window, she
panicked and would have turned and fled if he hadn't already seen
her.

When he knocked on the door she went slowly to open it, and then stood
there speechless with anguish, with the pain of loving him, with all
the things she was experiencing at far too late a stage in her life for
her ever to be able to recover from the anguish of the experience.

Her first thought that he must have forgotten something made her stand
to one side to let him in.

It must be the quality of the late autumn dusk that made his skin look
so pale and his face so drawn, she told herself as he came into the
kitchen.

"I was hoping I'd catch you in," was his initial comment.  He wasn't
looking directly at her, and in another man she would have put his
hesitation, his tension down to nervousness, but Silas had never
betrayed such an emotion to her before, and she could only think that
this visit was a reluctant one, paid out of necessity; a chore he
wished to get over as quickly as possible.  What did he fear--that she
would lose control completely and fling herself at him, begging him to
want her, to love her?

Her self-disgust, never far from the surface these days, welled up
sickeningly inside her.

How well now she understood the description 'lovesick'.

She had thought it was an affliction reserved for teenagers, but she
was discovering just how wrong she had been.

"Are you doing anything this evening?"

Silas's question, raw, jerky, and delivered in a manner so abruptly
different from his normal easy, pleasant style, made her raise
surprised eyes to his face, and reply without thinking.

"No, not really.  I had intended to do some work but--' " Good, then
you'll be free to have dinner with me.  "

Again the way he cut through her hesitant sentence was out of
character, just like the tension she could almost feel emanating from
him.

"There's something I need to discuss with you," he added curtly.

Her heart pounded frantically.  What did he need to discuss with her?

Did he feel that it wasn't enough to have moved out of her house;

that he had to explain verbally as well that he didn't want her?  Did
he think she was a complete fool?

"I don't think--' I don't think that's necessary, she had been about to
say, but once again he didn't let her finish, saying almost pleadingly,
" Hazel, please.  I wouldn't normally pressure you like this, but it is
important.  "

What could she say?

"Well... well, if you insist," she responded doubtfully.

"Good.  I'll wait here, shall I, while you get ready?"

He'd waifl She stared at him.  It was barely six o'clock.  It wouldn't
take her much more than half an hour to get washed and changed.  She
had no idea where he intended to take her, but surely it was still a
little early to be thinking of going out for dinner?  Unless of course
it was more that he wished to get the whole thing over and done with as
quickly as possible.

"Well, if that's what you want."

She gave him a questioning, uncertain look to which he responded with a
smile so warm, so tender almost, that it rocked her whole nervous
system.

Like someone under a powerful spell, she walked blindly towards the
door and had opened it and was halfway up the stairs before she
realised that she hadn't even asked him where he was taking her.

She told herself recklessly that if she was going to have to sit
opposite him and listen to him while he told her that he had guessed
her secret and that for both their sakes he felt he must tell her that
there was no possibility of his ever returning her love, she might as
well do so looking her best, looking like a woman who might potentially
excite a man's desire rather that one who already knew deep within
herself that she had been rejected, emotionally, sexually, every way by
the only man she had ever loved.

To this end, she showered quickly and then dressed determinedly in the
satin teddy which Katie had bought her the previous Christmas, claiming
that it was the sort of thing that every woman ought to have in her
wardrobe.

"But it's wasted on me," Hazel had protested, and as she had said the
words an expression of such anger and compassion had crossed her
daughter's face that she had immediately felt seared by the pain of her
own lack of sexuality.

"When you do wear it--and you will," Katie had threatened her, 'make
sure you wear it next to your skin with nothing on underneath it.  "

Then she had been shocked, repudiating such a suggestion with all the
prissiness her father would have approved, but now recklessly she
rejected the idea of re donning her bra, and instead slid the cool,
silky fabric on to her body, shivering a little as its sensual glide
reminded her of Silas's touch.

Stop that, she warned herself, pulling on the silk stockings that went
with it, and then wondering with wry self-mockery why she was going to
so much trouble for a man who was going to tell her that he was
rejecting the sexuality she was finding within herself so late in her
life that it was almost as though its discovery was fate's cruel way of
deliberately mocking her.

Unsure of exactly where it was Silas intended to take her, and aware
that he was downstairs waiting for her, she couldn't dawdle over what
to wear, and selected a bright red sweater dress that she had bought
several winters previously and then discarded as being too eye-catching
for her to wear successfully.

It had a neat round neckline, long sleeves, and a hemline which came
sensibly down to mid-knee, and yet despite all these features it still
somehow or other contrived to have what Katie referred to as 'oomph'.

The oomph in this case was probably supplied by the row of tiny buttons
that went from the throat all the way down past her waist and which
were secured with small scarlet loops.

When she had complained, honestly bewildered by her daughter's comment,
to Katie that she could not see why her daughter considered the dress
so sexy, all Katie had been able to say was "It's the buttons there's
something about them that no redblooded male will be able to resist."

As she remembered this comment, when she was halfway through fastening
them, she hesitated, her skin flushing uncomfortably.  Was she being
totally honest with herself?  Had she really accepted that Silas didn't
want her?

This dress, her underwear, wasn't some kind of foolish last-ditch
attempt to make him aware of her, to make him want her.  was it?

As'she hesitated, torn between tearing off what she was wearing and
reverting to her normal far more sensible attire, she heard Silas
moving about downstairs, and the decision was made for her.  She didn't
have time to undress, find fresh clothes and redress.  Silas was
obviously impatient to get the whole thing over and done with, and who
could blame him?

Before going downstairs, she reached into her wardrobe and withdrew a
long black woollen jacket, which she pulled on over the dress, taking
refuge in its anonymity and dullness.

Silas glanced up at her when she walked into the kitchen, but there was
nothing in his expression to suggest that he Was the slightest bit
interested in whatever she chose to wear.  He looked more like a man
carrying a very, very heavy burden, a burden which was occupying his
thoughts and emotions to the exclusion of everything else.

When they left the house, he was as meticulously polite as always,
opening the car door for her, and settling her inside, but sensitively
Hazel noticed that it was as though he could barely bring himself to
touch her--as though almost he was actually frightened of doing so.

And no wonder, she derided herself bitterly, her face growing hot with
embarrassment and guilt when she remembered the abandoned way she had
responded to him, the wanton way she had actually not just encouraged
but mutely pleaded with him for him to continue caressing her, to touch
her more and more intimately.

Lost in these uncomfortable reminiscences, she wriggled
self-consciously in her seat, keeping her gaze fixed firmly on the
darkness outside the passenger window.

She felt Silas getting into the car beside her.  The door slammed and
he started the engine, but resolutely she refused to give in to the
temptation to turn her head and avidly study him, storing up additional
memories of him to savour and cherish for the times when she would be
alone.  What was the point anyway in such reckless self-punishment?

As she sat motionless in the car beside him, staring out into the
darkness, she had no awareness of where they were going, only of the
miles slipping past, so that it came as a shock when he drove into a
small village and started to slow down, stopping the car outside one of
a small row of cottages.

When she turned her head to look at him, he read the question in her
eyes and said simply, "What I want to say to you isn't going to be
easy.  Selfishly I felt it might be best said in privacy."

Her stomach muscles clenched, her emotions plummeting downwards in
chagrin and misery.  What did he think she was likely to do?  Create a
scene, demand that he return her love?  She suppressed a desire to
burst into anguished laughter, to tell him that there was no need to
prolong their mutual discomfort; that she already knew exactly what it
was he wanted to say and that he need have no fears.  She might not be
able to control what she felt; she might not be able to root out and
destroy the unwanted and stubbornly resistant love for him growing
inside her, but she could and would ensure that he wasn't embarrassed
by it.  But Silas was already climbing out of the car and coming round
to open the door for her and she had no option but to walk in silence
through the small gate and down the narrow path that led to the
cottage's front door.

Inside, Silas had to duck his head to avoid colliding with the low
threshold to the sitting-room.

The room was shabbily and anonymously furnished, but at least there
was a warm fire burning in the grate, softening the austerity of its
unadorned walls.

"I haven't had much time to do anything with it as yet," Silas was
telling her, as though sensing her unspoken criticisms.

"As it was I was lucky to be able to find somewhere like this to rent.
Apparently its owner died last year and the son who inherited it hasn't
been able to decide whether to sell or to keep it, and let it out to
provide income.

"We'll have to eat in the kitchen, and I'm afraid it in no way compares
with your kitchen.  It's very basic and bare.  I miss coming downstairs
to the warmth of your Aga in the morning and I suspect I'm going to
miss it even more as winter rolls on."

It was on the tip of her tongue to say that if he missed the Aga that
much he could always come back, but her pride stopped her.  It would be
a stupid thing to say, and pointless as well.

Instead, she told him abruptly and honestly, "I'm sorry, but I don't
think I want anything to eat.  You said you needed to talk to me.

Couldn't we just.  "

She stopped, and looked away from him, unable to continue.

"If that's what you'd prefer," he agreed gravely.

"Come and sit down."

Assuming that he would opt to sit in the larger of the two fireside
chairs, she headed for the other, fl and promptly walked full tilt
into him, so that of course his arms came out automatically, to fend
her off, or so she thought, until they suddenly closed around her with
such force, such violence almost that she breathed out far more sharply
than normal and looked up at him.

"I'm sorry.  I'm sorry," he told her rawly, 'but this is killing me.

Hazel.  Wanting you, needing you, aching for you so much that I'm damn
nearly going out of my mind with thinking about you, and all the time
tied by that damned promise I gave you that I wouldn't touch you while
I was living under your roof--but I'm not living there any longer, and
you can tell me to stop if you want to.  You can tell me that you don't
want this, that you don't want me.  "

His body was shaking with emotion and intensity, sending violent
answering tremors zigzagging through her own.  She was, she discovered,
holding on to him as tightly as he was holding her, raising her mouth
for the kiss she knew he was going to give her, and, when it came,
opening herself to its passion, its need so completely that she felt
Silas groaning his pleasure into her mouth as he kissed her and kissed
her over and over again as though he simply could not get enough of
her.

Dimly she was conscious of him sliding her jacket off her shoulders,
and then moulding her against his body, a body which she could tell now
was openly aroused, pulsing hard and male, when he slid impatient hands
down over her back until he was cupping her bottom and urging her so
intimately against him, moving so erotically against her, that it was
her turn to gasp and shudder, to cling helplessly to him, letting him
mould her to him as though she was as pliant as silk.

"I love you, you know that, don't you?"  he was muttering against her
throat.

"I think I fell in love with you the very first time Katie started
telling me about you.

"Come home with me and meet her in person, if you're so fascinated by
my mother," she teased me.

"She's one of your greatest fans and I know she'd love to meet you."  I
persuaded myself that it was just because I needed somewhere to stay
while I did my research, I told myself that the woman who sounded so
entrancing, so.  so different when described by her daughter, could
hardly turn out to be the same in the flesh, and then I saw you and I
realised that nothing Katie had said about you had been an
exaggeration.  You were.  you are perfection.  "

He felt- her shake, and cupped her face, so that he could look into her
eyes.

"Don't you dare laugh at me," he told her fiercely.

"All right, so I know I'm making a fool of myself;

that men of my age simply do not fall so deeply in love that they're
incapable of doing anything other than fulfilling that love, but that
doesn't mean that what I'm feeling is any the less painful.  Just
because it's ridiculous.  "

Hazel stopped him, putting her fingers against his lips.

"I wasn't laughing," she told him huskily.

"Silas, you don't understand..."

She stopped, still too shy, too insecure, too uncertain to go on,
looking at him instead with all that she was feeling revealed in her
eyes.

He looked back at her.  She heard him catch his breath and then
suddenly he was kissing her again.  Not this time with intensity, with
ferocity, but with slow, gentle tenderness, with adoration as well as
need, with.  with love, she recognised dreamily as she responded to
what he was showing her, letting him see in turn how much he meant to
her.

"Is this real?"  he demanded huskily, reluctantly releasing her mouth
and cradling her against him.

"I feel as if I've stepped into an impossible dream.  I brought you
here tonight to try to talk to you, to begin to woo you, if you like.
To show you that there could be something between us, that I was
capable of behaving with restraint, of curbing my passion, my need, my
love, to allow you time to get to know me, and hopefully to come to
love me.  I thought I'd ruined my chances for ever the other day, but
the sight of your naked body, the feel of you in my arms, the sound of
your response to me..."

He gave a violent shudder, his eyes suddenly turning dark.

"Have you any idea what you do to me?"  he whispered against her ear.

"I think so," Hazel told him shyly, 'and if it's anything like what you
do to me--' He let her go so abruptly that she almost fell.

"You want me?"  he demanded roughly.

"Isn't it obvious that I do?"  Hazel retorted.

The smile he gave her made her flush a little.  It was full of
tenderness and love.

"No," he told her wryly.

"Oh, yes, I knew that you were responding to me, but I also knew that
you were a woman who had never been allowed to develop her sexuality,
to appreciate her sensuality..."

"You mean you thought I'd probably have reacted like that to any man
who happened to touch me?"  Hazel responded, aggrieved.

He laughed a little.

"Not exactly.  But you'd already made it obvious that you didn't
welcome any physical intimacy between us, and then I'd gone and given
you that idiotic promise that I wouldn't touch you while I was living
with you... " Getting this place became essential after the other day.
I knew then there was no way I could stay with you and keep that
promise, and I was terrified that if I broke it it would mean the end
of whatever slender chance I might have of getting you to see me as a
human being who had fallen desperately in love with you, rather than
simply some man who wanted sex from you.  "

"I'm sorry," Hazel apologised, sensing the pain in his voice.

"But you see I just don't have the experience to tell the
difference."

"I know that, my love."

He drew her to him again, holding her tenderly.  She was so bemused
that she could hardly think.  Silas loved her.  Silas loved her.  It
seemed impossible but it wasn't.

She was still unsure of herself, though, still painfully aware of her
shortcomings.

"You don't mind, then?  That I'm not ... that I haven't ... that I
don't have the kind of sexual skill and knowledge that a woman of my
age should have?"  she managed to finish jerkily.

There was a long silence and then Silas cupped her face, turning her to
look directly at him.

"I love you," he told her firmly.

"And that means I love each and every single minute component that goes
up to making you the person you are.  While I might and do deplore the
way your father prevented you from exploring your own sexuality, and
the burden of guilt he made you carry, it's you, the person you are,
whom I love, and that has nothing to do with any spurious sexual skill,
or lack of it.  You can turn me on more intensely, simply by being in
the same room with me, than could the skills of the world's most
experienced courtesan.  Come here and let me show you what I mean."

She was trembling as he drew her even closer to his body, but not with
fear.  not even with apprehension.

While he kissed her, and she clung eagerly to the sweet magic of his
kisses woven on her senses, she could feel his hands trembling over the
tiny buttons that closed her dress.  When he had opened them as far as
her breasts, he groaned and buried his mouth in the soft warm hollow
between them, telling her hoarsely, "You can't know how much I wanted
to do this again."

She was trembling uncontrollably now, hardly able to speak as she told
him, "I know how much I've wanted you to do it, though."

It was as though she had turned a key in a secret lock, as though her
words had unleashed a powerful magical force within both of them, so
that her inexperience, the long years of celibacy, might never have
been, and immediately her body, her senses, her emotions were so
responsive to his that each touch, each kiss, each murmured word of
praise and longing increased her awareness of her own sensuality, of
her body's female strength, of her age old ability to please this man
whom she loved so deeply, to pleasure him, just as he was pleasuring
her, with her hands, with her mouth, with her voice as she whispered to
him her delight, her need, her love, her pleasure in his body and her
own, and finally with the whole of her body, as he drew her down on the
floor beside the fire, studying her in silence, before his hands
drifted over her naked fire- gilded body, stroking it into liquid
silken eager responsiveness so that when he finally entered her her
response to him was so immediate, so powerful that, even as she wrapped
her legs around him, even as she arched and told him beseechingly how
much she wanted him, how much she loved him, how much she needed the
sensation of his flesh moving so powerfully, so deeply within her own,
pleasure coalesced and built up into such a fiery core that its
implosion within her made her tense and cry out in shocked awe, her
senses totally unprepared for the awesomeness of so much pleasure.

While her body shook with the shock of so intense an emotional and
physical completion, Silas held her tenderly, whispering reassuringly
to her that there would be time enough later for him to achieve the
same ecstatic state, that there would be all the time in the world for
them to share and explore their physical desire for one another, just
as they would share and explore their love.

He wanted her for ever, he told her, not just for today, for tonight,
but for ever, and he hoped that she wanted him in the same way.  She
did.  Hazel assured him shakily.

"Enough to many me?"  he asked her gravely.  And it was only then, when
she looked at him and saw the uncertainty, the need in his eyes, that
she actually did realise that in his love for her he was just as
vulnerable as she was herself.

"Yes," she told him equally gravely.

"Enough for that, and to spare."

They were married just before Christmas, the quiet church ceremony they
had planned somehow becoming a large joint family celebration.

All Silas's family were there, and on an impulse she couldn't really
name Hazel had invited Jimmy's mother, all his brothers and sisters,
and their children as well.

As Katie happily told anyone who would listen to her, she was the one
who was responsible for this marriage.  She had known from me moment
she set eyes on Silas that he was exactly right for her mother, and as
she had already fondly told Hazel, when Hazel had broken the news of
their marriage to her, "Only the best is good enough for you, Ma, and
Silas is the best."

Hazel hadn't been able to disagree with that.  Even now she could
hardly believe she had found such happiness, been blessed with such
love.

As she glanced at her new husband now and he looked back at her, she
blushed at the promise she could read so clearly in his eyes, hoping
that no one else could read it equally clearly.

There had been such a rush to arrange things, to put the house on the
market and look for somewhere they could start their lives together,
and to make all the other arrangements, that they had barely had any
time at all together, alone.  They had been lovers on less than a dozen
occasions and each time Silas made love to her it increased her
physical desire for him to such a pitch that now merely to look at him
was enough to make her body positively hum with anticipatory delight.

She told herself sternly that it was a ridiculous way to feel at her
age, but then Silas smiled at her, and she forgot all about her age,
and remembered only that she was a woman and very much in love.  very,
very much in love.

Time for us to leave, I think," Silas whispered to her, adding, under
his breath, " Have I told you recently how much I'm aching to be alone
with you?  "

"Not for the last hour," Hazel responded mischievously.

"You just wait," he threatened her.

"You just wait until tonight..."

They were standing together, so wrapped up in one another that Hazel
didn't even hear Katie approach until her daughter whispered in her
ear, "The way you two are looking at one another is almost making me
blush."

"We're just leaving," Silas grinned at her, and then, looking tenderly
at Hazel, added, "That's if you're ready to leave, my love."

"I'm ready," Hazel told him huskily, while Katie laughed again and then
hustled them both towards the door, claiming that now they really were
embarrassing her.