Читать книгу Past All Forgetting - Сара Крейвен, Sara Craven - Страница 5

JANNA PRENTISS stole a swift glance at her watch, and stifled her amusement as she realised the gesture was being surreptitiously copied all around the classroom. Not that she could really blame the children, she thought tolerantly. The autumn term was the longest, and this half-term break was more than welcome—to the teachers as well as the pupils. When they came back after their week’s holiday, everything would slide with ever-increasing momentum towards the hectic excitement of Christmas, and its attendant Nativity plays, carol concerts and frantic present-making.

A lot of her fellow staff members groaned both inwardly and aloud at the prospect, but Janna always found herself rather looking forward to Christmas, in spite of all the extra work. She enjoyed the yards of paper chains and the parties, and helping to cut out robins and holly which actually bore some resemblance to the real thing for the home-made calendars and cards.

It was this part of the year that she found so disturbing. She glanced out through the big window to the tree which dominated the centre of the tarmac playground. The summer had been long and lingering, but now, in late October, a wind with all the chill of winter in its breath was shaking loose the last remaining leaves and sending them drifting in little eddies to the ground.

The lunch bell was due to go at any moment. Quietly, she told the child at the top of each table to collect up the books and hand them in. There wouldn’t be any work that afternoon. Mrs Parsons, the headmistress, had hired some films, and the children were seething with excitement, vehemently arguing the merits of Tom and Jerry over Bugs Bunny. She chivvied them into a certain amount of quiet and order, and along the corridor to the school hall for lunch. It was mince, she noted wryly, with the soya bean which seemed an inevitable addition these days, and it was a taste she hadn’t been able to acquire to far, although the children seemed to like it well enough. She wandered back towards the staffroom. She wasn’t particularly hungry. She had an apple in her briefcase, and she would make do with that.

As she walked past the school office, Vivien Lennard, the school secretary, peered round the door at her. ‘Oh, there you are, Janna. I was just going to send a kid with a note to find you. Colin rang to say he would pick you up in five minutes.’

‘Oh.’ Janna paused for a moment, taken aback. She did occasionally have lunch with Colin, but he usually gave her a fair amount of warning. She knew that if she’d spoken to Colin herself, she would have made an excuse. She didn’t feel like indulging in a large and probably stodgy meal at the White Hart, whose dining room was Carrisford’s only restaurant.

‘Cheer up!’ Vivien sounded amused. ‘Anyone would think you’d just had the death sentence pronounced! Well, that comes later, dear—at the wedding. For now, you’re just engaged to the lad, so why not enjoy it?’

Janna smiled in spite of herself, knowing quite well that Vivien herself was as happily married as it was almost possible to be.

‘Sorry if I’m ruining your image of love’s young dream,’ she returned. ‘I’m just feeling a little jaded, that’s all. It’s been damned hard work this term so far. This class hasn’t been as easy to get to know as some that I’ve had.’

‘Never mind.’ Vivien gave her a pat on the arm. ‘When you and Colin get married, all this will just seem like some horrible dream. He does still want you to give up work straight away, doesn’t he?’

‘Yes,’ Janna agreed with something of an effort, ‘he does.’

Vivien stared at her. ‘Don’t tell me you’re having second thoughts!’

Janna smiled faintly. ‘Oh, not about Colin. Just about giving up work. It seems so—so odd, somehow. I just can’t visualise myself as a lady of leisure.’

‘A lady of leisure—with Colin’s home to run, and all that entertaining you’ll be called on to do, not to mention having a family of your own some day? You’re kidding!’

‘I suppose it does sound ridiculous. But when I started my training I thought I’d be teaching for years to come.’

‘The dedicated spinster, I suppose, with Prime Ministers coming to wring your gnarled hand and swear they got their inspiration from you.’ Vivien’s laugh was infectious. She gave Janna a shrewd all-encompassing glance from the sleek cap of smooth dark hair which curved forward on to her cheeks, and the slightly tilting green eyes, down over her slender but rounded figure to her slim legs and small feet in fashionably high-heeled shoes. ‘I’m sorry, my dear, but you don’t fit the image at all.’

In all but one thing, it suddenly occurred to her after she had gone back into her office and resumed her task of filling in the endless forms that were part of her daily routine. Janna was a lovely thing and had never lacked for masculine admirers, long before Colin Travers had arrived on the scene. Yet there had always been something cool, even remote about her, although Vivien had always considered her husband Bill was exaggerating when he described Janna as ‘an icicle’. Nevertheless, there was a promise of generosity in the curves of Janna’s mouth that Vivien could swear had never been fulfilled, and allied to this was the constant suggestion that Janna was holding herself back in some way—constantly reserved.

‘One thing’s certain,’ Vivien told herself as she thrust an envelope into her typewriter and began to type the address. ‘If she ever does let herself go, someone will be counting his blessings for the rest of his life.’

Meanwhile, the unconscious object of all this speculation had retrieved her full-length suede coat from the cloakroom, and was standing near the main entrance watching out for Colin’s car.

A group of older children, who would be attending the second dinner sitting, came racing over to her. ‘Miss—Miss—have you seen that car?’

Alison Wade, who had been in her class the previous year, caught her hand. ‘Come and see it, Miss. It’s—it’s fantastic!’

‘It must be,’ Janna said amusedly, knowing that Alison was not easily impressed.

Half-resignedly, she allowed herself to be shepherded round to the side of the building where the staff and visitors parked their cars, and her jaw dropped a little. Alison had not been exaggerating. She knew very little about cars and she could place neither the model nor its country of origin. What she could recognise was the understated suggestion of power and performance in the streamlined, low-slung shape, and an unmistakable aura of luxury.

The children were staring at it and murmuring, resisting the temptation to touch it and leave fingermarks on the immaculate pale grey body.

Kevin Daniel nudged her. ‘Eh, Miss,’ he said in awe, ‘it’s like something out of a James Bond film.’ He pointed at the headlamps. ‘D’you think there’s concealed machine-guns there?’

‘I doubt it,’ Janna told him apologetically, but even she was taken aback by the instrument panel on the dashboard. Maybe there were no machine-guns, but she was sure every gadget in the history of the world was included somewhere in that terrifying array of dials and switches.

A car horn blared sharply, and involuntarily she stepped back, wondering just for a second if the car owner was somehow able to warn people away by some form of remote control … Then she saw Colin’s car parked outside the school gates, and chided herself for her own fancifulness. She paused long enough to shoo the children safely back to the playground and out of temptation’s way, then went out of the gates where Colin was waiting impatiently, holding the passenger door open for her.

‘We haven’t got much time,’ he remarked as he swung himself into the driving seat, leaning across and brushing his lips against her cheek.

Janna glanced at her watch. ‘We’ve over an hour. The service at the White Hart isn’t that slow and …’

He shook his head. ‘We aren’t going there. There’s something I want to show you first. We might manage a drink and a sandwich at the Crown afterwards.’

‘The Crown?’ Janna stared at him, puzzled. ‘But that’s out of town.’

He sent her a brief, triumphant smile. ‘I know. Sit back, my sweet, and prepare for a surprise.’

Janna complied, faintly bewildered by the air of barely suppressed excitement that hung about Colin. He was generally so imperturbable, so much in control of his emotions. It was one of the things that she admired about him, and certainly an aspect of his character which explained his success in business. It was an open secret locally that Colin was the driving force now at Travers Engineering, and that his father, who had founded the firm, was content to be a figurehead, and leave the running of the company in Colin’s hands.

Travers was the only large works in the locality, and it had expanded dramatically in recent years in spite of the generally depressed economic climate. With the expansion had come a change of role for Carrisford, with a brand new housing estate springing up on its outskirts, and a hurried building programme to add to the capacity of its primary and comprehensive schools. Yet in many ways it still remained a rather sleepy little market town, Janna thought with affection as Colin’s car threaded its way through the crowded square bordered by tall grey stone buildings. The tradition was there in the market cross, and the square Georgian town hall set firmly at one end of the market place.

It had always looked the same for as long as she could remember. She had gone away to do her training, and in many ways had been glad to go, and she still wasn’t sure what had brought her back as a newly fledged teacher in her probationary year. Her parents were undemonstratively glad to see her. They regarded it as part of the scheme of things that the daughter of their marriage should live at home until she set out on a married life of her own. There was a reassuring sense of permanence, of stability about things, and Colin’s advent into her life seemed, as far as her mother was concerned certainly, merely an inevitable piece in the pattern.

Janna and Colin had met two years earlier, when Colin had first come to the Carrisford works. Up to that time, he had merely been a name to many of the local people, having followed school and university with a prolonged training period, both abroad and at the other works in the north-west of England.

They had met at the cricket club one warm Saturday afternoon when Janna was helping some of the players’ wives with the teas. When the match was ended prematurely by a drenching thunderstorm he had asked her to go out to dinner with him. Before many weeks had passed Janna knew she was being courted. At first, she could only feel dismay, but she soon discovered Colin had no intention of rushing her either physically or mentally into a relationship she was not prepared for. His pursuit of her, though determined, was leisurely. As she had come to know him better, she realised that this was not solely out of consideration for her, but because there was an instinctive element of caution in his nature. He too wanted to be absolutely sure before committing himself.

They had been officially engaged for just over three months now, and Janna had begun to sense a slight change in his attitude of late. They had not planned an exact date for their marriage, but she knew he was thinking in terms of the following spring. But though this had led to a new sense of urgency in their relationship, Janna had not discovered any determination in Colin to take it to a more intimate level which she might have expected. After all, he was going to be her husband. She wore his very expensive ring and was a frequent guest at his father’s rather ostentatious house in the neighbouring dale. In many ways, there was not the slightest reason why they should hold back any longer. And yet … Janna gripped her hands together in her lap until the brilliant solitaire she wore on her left hand bit into her flesh. At the back of her mind there was always that memory, no matter how deeply buried she thought it was. Savagely, she dammed it back into the recesses of her brain. It was over—had been over for years. Anyway, she’d been hardly more than a child. She couldn’t still go on blaming herself for that …

She dragged herself back into the present with a start, aware suddenly that the car had turned left at the last fork and was climbing steadily.

‘The Crown’s the other way.’ She twisted around in her seat and looked at the grey town lying in the sheltered valley behind them. ‘Darling, I know I said I had an hour, but it doesn’t last for ever.’

‘I know. But I do have a surprise for you, my love. Be patient.’

‘All right.’ She looked ahead of them uncertainly. ‘But there’s nothing up here, you know. Only Carrisbeck House.’

She was glad that Colin had no idea what an effort it cost her to say that.

‘Correct. Clever girl! Go to the top of the class.’

To her dismay, the car was slowing, and Colin was indicating his intention to turn left.

‘But we can’t go in there,’ she protested, fighting her panic. ‘It—it’s empty. It has been for years.’

‘I know,’ Colin said casually as they drove through the gates and up the long curve of the drive. ‘Tragedy, isn’t it?’

Towering rhododendrons crowded on each side of the gravel. The last time she had driven up this drive they had been covered in blossom, she thought confusedly, and she had sat in the back of a much less opulent car than Colin’s, almost sick with excitement because she was going to a party at Carrisbeck House and because he would be there. And because tonight—that night—she was going to make him notice her.

She shivered suddenly, closing her eyes.

‘Grey goose flying over your grave?’ Colin’s voice was almost jocular. The car had stopped and when she opened her eyes, it wasn’t a nightmare. It was really happening. They were really parked in front of Carrisbeck House. It looked just the same, with the short flight of shallow steps leading up to the front door. The only difference was that the two great stone urns which flanked the steps looked empty and neglected. Mrs Tempest had always kept them filled with flowers, she thought. Summer or winter, it seemed there had always been something in bloom to welcome you at the door. Now there was nothing, and the curtainless windows seemed to stare down at her inimically as if they were remembering that other Janna Prentiss, not quite seventeen and much more sure of herself than she had ever been since.

‘We can’t go in.’ Her voice sounded strained and breathless even in her own ears. ‘I know it’s empty, but it still belongs to Colonel Tempest even so …’

Colin reached into his pocket and produced a bunch of keys tied to a label.

‘No longer, I’m afraid. I’m surprised you haven’t heard, but it will be in the Advertiser at the weekend. Colonel Tempest died last week, so the house is on the market. Barry Windrush’s father is handling the sale and Barry gave me a tip-off.’ He gave a swift, excited laugh and drew her unresponsive body against his. ‘Don’t you understand, darling? That’s going to be our house!’

The silence was endless and then she said stupidly, ‘But—we can’t buy that.’

‘What’s to prevent us? Don’t be an idiot, my sweet.’ The affection in his voice had an added note of exasperation. ‘I’ve spoken to Dad, and he’s given us the go-ahead. In fact, he’s all for it. It’s ideal—close to the works, big enough to do all the entertaining, but not so massive that you’d need an immense staff to help you run it. I believe the Tempests had a housekeeper. She’s been keeping an eye on the place, I understand, so its condition should be quite reasonable. And her husband has been keeping the garden in order. I know they’re neither of them young any more, but Barry reckons they might be quite willing to stay on, if they were asked, and that would solve all sorts of problems. Janna, what is it? Are you all right?’

‘Yes, I’m fine,’ she lied, trying desperately to catch at the rags of her self-control. She gave him a meaningless smile. ‘But you can’t be serious, Colin. How can we live here? It’s the old Tempest house. Everyone knows that.’

He shrugged irritably. ‘No doubt, but what happens now that there are no more “old Tempests” to occupy it? Do you really think a lovely place like this should be left to moulder away and fall down? Not if I know it. Come on, darling,’ he added with an impatient look at his watch. ‘It’s you that has to get back. Come and have a look round.’

She had no option but to obey. If she refused to go in at all, he would have every reason to accuse her of being illogical, and she couldn’t explain.

As they reached the top of the steps, she said carefully. ‘But there are more Tempests, aren’t there? What about the—the nephew?’

Colin shrugged, intent on fitting the key into the lock. ‘I wouldn’t know, darling. I didn’t even know there was a nephew. Whatever has happened to him, he hasn’t inherited the estate.’

The big panelled hall was just as she remembered it, with the sweep of the stairs leading up to the galleried landing above.

‘Barry says they used to hold dances in here.’ Colin looked around. ‘I must say there’s room enough. I’m quite sorry I never came to any of them. I suppose you never did, darling? You were probably too young.’

‘I came—once,’ she said, then walked over to the drawing room door and turned the handle. It was a beautiful room. She had always loved it with the great French windows looking out over the sloping gardens, and the gleam of the river in the distance. It looked forlorn without the deep sofas and chairs with their charming chintz covers. She could see the marks on the walls where pictures had once hung. The fire-irons still stood in the hearth to the left of the empty grate where sweet-smelling pine cones and logs had once burned. There had been a low-seated Victorian chair by that hearth once, she remembered, and Janna the schoolgirl had once sat nervously on its edge, clutching a bone china plate while Mrs Tempest poured tea and asked what she intended to do when she left school. And she had said quickly, ‘I’d like to travel,’ and tried to stop herself glancing too eagerly towards the door, waiting for the moment when it would open and he would come in. Rian. Rian Tempest, Colonel Tempest’s nephew and sole relative, who worked as a foreign correspondent on a newspaper and travelled all over the world.

But he did not come, and Janna’s excuse for her visit—she had volunteered to deliver the parish magazine for Mrs Hardwick who had a sprained ankle—was a complete waste. And she still had dozens of the beastly things to hike around in the sun. It was less a sense of duty and more a fear of retribution, divine or all too human, which had stopped her giving them decent burial behind some convenient hedge. But perhaps, she’d thought, giving her imagination full rein, Mrs Tempest might mention that evening over dinner that she’d been there. ‘That lovely Prentiss child’—which wasn’t really conceit because she’d heard it said so many times, and Rian might take a new look at her and see that she wasn’t really a child any more but a woman—a woman …

As she stood in the middle of the empty drawing room, Janna’s cheeks burned at the memory of her own naïveté. It had all seemed so simple then. You stretched out your hand and said ‘Give me’ and a kindly Providence dispensed whatever was required, because you were lovely and so nearly seventeen and spoiled by everyone.

Someone had left a key on the inside of the french windows leading to the terrace. The key was stiff in the lock, but eventually it yielded and Janna walked outside into the fresh air. Somewhere at the back of her mind a warning voice was shouting at her, ‘Don’t look back.’ All these years it had worked so well. Glimpsing the house as she drove past on her way somewhere else, hearing the Tempests mentioned, she had managed to avert her gaze and closed her ears.

It had been difficult, though, when she had heard that Mrs Tempest had died. She had never been a robust woman, Janna thought, remembering the finely boned face under its coronet of silvering hair. Colonel Tempest had always been openly protective towards his wife, and Rian’s attitude to his aunt had echoed this.

But there had been no sign of weakness about Mrs Tempest that night. She had driven Janna home, her back straight as a ramrod, her gaze fixed unerringly on the road ahead. At her gate, she had said, ‘You are quite well, Janna? Then I will bid you goodnight.’ She had driven away and Janna had never seen or heard from her again. It had only been a few weeks later that the house had been shut up, and the Colonel and his wife had moved away. There was speculation, naturally, but it did not take the form that Janna had feared. It was taken for granted that Mrs Tempest’s health would not stand up to another northern winter. Someone in the post office had even remarked that she’d ‘been showing her age lately, poor lady’.

No one, luckily, had linked Rian’s abrupt departure several weeks before with the Colonel’s decision to close the house and move. Rian was a law unto himself. He came and went when and where his job took him. Everyone knew the Colonel had been disappointed because his nephew hadn’t followed him into the Army, but it was accepted that Rian had a mind of his own, and no one could say the Colonel wasn’t proud of the way the boy had turned out. More like a son than a nephew, people said, and that was the way it should be as Rian had no parents of his own any more.

A much younger Janna had always been among the crowd of worshippers when Rian, who played cricket for his university, turned out for the local club during the summer vacation. She had begged his autograph once on the corner of a score card and treasured it until it literally fell to pieces.

There had been a quality about him even then which had set him apart from the rest, although she had been too young to analyse it. His movements were unstudiedly elegant and economical, and although he certainly wasn’t good-looking in the film or television star mould, there was a latent attraction in his dark, saturnine features. When he smiled, his charm was magical, almost wicked. It hinted that its owner was not disposed to take anything really seriously, especially you, no matter how delightful he might find you, and it was irresistible. Or Janna had found it so.

She stepped forward to the edge of the terrace, wrapping her arms tightly across her body. The wind was blowing straight off the Pennines, and its force had an added bite.

‘Darling, what on earth are you doing out here? It’s freezing.’ Colin’s voice sounded rather plaintive as he made his way out through the french windows to join her.

‘Blowing the cobwebs away,’ she said, and heaven knew it was the truth. But would it work?

Colin, to her relief, took the remark at its face value.

‘The place could do with an airing,’ he remarked. ‘But I can’t smell any damp, can you? It all seems in pretty good nick. Shall we have a look upstairs?’

‘You go ahead,’ she said. ‘I’ll join you in a minute. I want to enjoy this view for a while. It’s a long time since I’ve seen it.’

A long time—seven years, to be exact. Seven years since she had come out of that antique auction further up the dale with her father and found herself face to face with Rian, come to collect his aunt who had been bidding for some china figures. For a moment she had barely recognised him. He had always been thin, but now his face was harder and older, the dark eyes under their lazily drooping lids suddenly wary. He had answered her father’s jovial greeting with a smile and a handshake, and then had turned to her, his smile widening.

‘Of course I remember Janna,’ he responded to her father’s query. ‘I’m waiting impatiently for her to grow up.’

It was the teasing, slightly flirtatious remark that he might have made to the schoolgirl daughter of any old acquaintance. She could see it now. Why couldn’t she have seen it then?

Because I didn’t want to, she thought, gripping the terrace balustrade with suddenly shaking hands. Because in that brief instant, on the heels of his joking remark, she had found a focus for all those barely understood adolescent yearnings. Still half a child, every demand of her awakening womanhood had become crystallised in Rian. And her egotism, burnished by the knowledge of her legion of admirers in the local Sixth Form and the Young Farmers’ club, had done the rest.

She wanted Rian, so it must follow as the night did the day that he wanted her.

Janna winced, recalling how simple it had all seemed then. It had not taken her long to find out why Rian was in Carrisford. He was on an extended sick leave recovering after a fever contracted in a jungle war, but the fact that he was officially convalescent did not prevent him throwing himself into the social life of the district.

Just how fully Janna only realised at breakfast one morning, when her father casually remarked to her mother, ‘I see young Tempest has taken up with Barbara Kenton. Bit of a lass, isn’t she?’

‘You could say that,’ her mother had replied with a repressive glance in Janna’s direction.

Janna had pushed away her cereal bowl with a sudden sick feeling. She knew all about Barbara Kenton. Within the limitations of the area, Barbara was fairly notorious. In her last years at school, there had always been jokes about her, and comments scribbled on walls. Then, she had been a tall, sleepy-eyed blonde whose clothes always seemed just too skimpy for her voluptuous body. Now she was working as a receptionist in the White Hart, and making little attempt to conceal her overt sexuality.

Her father was speaking again. ‘Well, you can’t blame the lad. Plenty of time before he needs to think of settling down. But I bet he hasn’t told his uncle. Bit of a Puritan, the old Colonel, if you ask me.’

Janna got up from the table, feeling her cheeks beginning to burn angrily. Collecting her school bag from the hall, she told herself vehemently that Rian couldn’t like Barbara Kenton. He just couldn’t! She was so vile and obvious. But that evening at the Midsummer barbecue she was given plenty of evidence to the contrary. Rian was there, and Barbara was with him, clinging to his arm at every opportunity. They left the barbecue early, and Janna overheard a few of the ribald remarks when their departure was observed. It was her first real experience of jealousy, and it was cruel and hurtful. The evening was ruined for her, and as she lay in bed that night, tossing restlessly in a vain attempt to capture some sleep, images of Rian with Barbara kept superimposing themselves on her mind.

It wasn’t a great consolation to find that Barbara could not consider him her exclusive property either. She was just one of a long list of girls that Rian escorted to dances and parties, and drove to dinner in his sports car as June lengthened into July. But Janna, to her chagrin, was not.

They met everywhere, of course, and he always spoke pleasantly to her, but at the same time he made no attempt to further their acquaintance. To her dismay, she realised that he was treating her as he would any other of the youngsters. She did everything she could to get him to notice her, abandoning her own crowd of friends and hanging about on the fringes of his, flirting outrageously with anyone who gave her any encouragement, and dancing without a trace of inhibition with any partners who offered themselves. Rian did not offer. Occasionally she caught him watching her, an expression of faint amusement in his dark eyes, but he always held maddeningly aloof.

But at last her chance came. There was a Young Farmers’ buffet dance, and Janna managed to wangle herself an invitation from Philip Avery, who was only a couple of years Rian’s junior. Her parents did not approve, she knew, but they could not forbid her to go without offending the Averys. Besides, Philip was eminently respectable, and his eight years’ seniority to Janna was the only real complaint they could make against him.

Extreme behaviour had got her nowhere, she decided, so she would see what the utmost circumspection would achieve. At first it did not seem to be achieving very much at all. Rian’s eyebrows had risen when Philip had arrived at his table with his partner, and his greeting to Janna was cool. Everyone else in the party was at least five years older than she was, and Janna soon began to feel very out of things. Much of the general conversation was lost on her as she did not know the people or the incidents being referred to. Philip was good-natured enough, but it was obvious from his attitude that he now rather regretted bringing her, and Janna guessed that he had been teased by some of his contemporaries for cradle-snatching. Suppressed tears of mortification made her eyes sparkle even more brilliantly than usual, and she held her head high as she sipped her fruit juice, and tried to pretend that it didn’t matter that she was the only person at the table not old enough to order something alcoholic.

It was just after the interval that the miracle happened. She came back from the cloakroom to find everyone else dancing and Rian sitting alone at the table. He rose courteously as she approached and held the chair as she sat down, but she knew that he was hiding his annoyance at the situation. Inwardly she was jubilant.

She smiled at him, using her lowered eyelashes quite shamelessly.

‘Aren’t you going to ask me to dance?’

‘I wasn’t,’ he said dampeningly. ‘However, if you insist.’ He rose and held out his hand.

She swallowed down a swift feeling of humiliation, and accompanied him on to the dance floor. It was a fast-moving beat number, and there was no opportunity for conversation. She could have cried with disappointment. She knew she could make him interested in her, if only—only she was given the chance. Like an answer to her prayer, the lights dimmed and the band’s tempo changed to a slow smoochy number. Amid wolf whistles and catcalls, couples went willingly into each other’s arms. Janna glanced shyly at Rian and saw that amusement was battling with exasperation on his face. For one appalled moment, she thought he was going to take her back to the table in front of everyone. Then, with a slight shrug, he held out his arms.

For a few seconds she was too unnerved with happiness to be aware of anything other than she was at last in his arms where she had wanted to be. Then her senses began to report other messages, the sheer hard muscularity of his body against hers, the sharp, expensive smell of the cologne he used, and almost involuntarily she moved closer to him, pressing herself invitingly against him and sliding her arms round his waist under his jacket.

For a moment he tensed, and she heard him give a soft, unamused laugh.

‘You, my sweet Janna, have all the makings of a first-class witch—but of course you know that,’ he murmured.

‘I don’t know anything except that this is the first time I’ve ever danced with you.’ She tipped her head back and looked up at him, deliberately provocative.

He tapped the end of her nose with a careless finger. ‘Don’t try your tricks on me, little one. I’ve seen them all before and performed by experts. Go and cut your milk teeth on someone your own age, and I don’t mean Philip Avery.’

When she spoke, her voice shook with anger. ‘Don’t be so—so bloody patronising! You’re only ten years older than me, Rian Tempest, so what gives you the right to criticise my conduct?’

He grinned down into her furious face. ‘That’s more like it, Janna. The sophisticated siren bit doesn’t suit you, you know. You’ve got years ahead of you for that. I preferred the kid with ice-cream round her mouth who used to tail after me at cricket matches.’

‘How very sad,’ she said, struggling to regain her poise. ‘I’m afraid I buried her some time ago, along with my ankle socks and the braces on my teeth.’

‘It’s sadder than you know,’ he answered briefly. There was a long pause, then he said quite gently, ‘Look, Janna, I know—or rather I suspect—what you’re up to. I won’t pretend I’m not flattered. I wouldn’t be human if I wasn’t. You’re young, very lovely, and very desirable. It’s a combination that adds up to dynamite and I—I don’t want to be around when the explosion happens. I have enough excitement in my work. When I’m on leave, I’m looking for some rest and relaxation.’

‘Is that what you get from Barbara Kenton?’ some inner demon made her ask.

His eyes narrowed dangerously. ‘I hardly think that’s any of your business,’ he drawled. ‘But let me advise you against trying to emulate her example. You—er—lack the basic equipment at the moment.’ He let his eyes rest insolently on the modest cleavage revealed by the dipping neckline of her pale yellow dress.

Her cheeks were flaming. ‘You—you swine!’ she breathed.

He bowed his head in ironic acknowledgment. ‘That’s a safer thing to be in your eyes than the answer to the maiden’s prayer, Janna,’ he said drily. ‘Now shall we sit the rest of this out?’

She had wept bitterly that night, but had risen the following morning with all the mercurial optimism of youth. He had said she was lovely and desirable, as well as being young. She would build on that.

She came back to the present with a start as Colin said irritably, ‘Are you going to spend all day gazing at this damned view?’

She turned. He was standing in the open french windows, staring at her reproachfully. ‘It’s nearly time for you to get back, and you haven’t even looked at the bedrooms or the kitchens.’

She looked down at the stone flags. ‘I don’t think I can live here, Colin,’ she said at last.

‘What?’ His voice rose incredulously.

‘We—we don’t have to buy this house, do we?’ She moistened her lips and stared desperately around her. ‘It’s too big, for one thing. There must be seven or eight bedrooms at least. You said yourself that we’d need staff. I’d rather looked forward to coping by myself—when we were first married, at least.’

Colin’s frown deepened. ‘I don’t know what’s got into you, Janna. I thought you knew that you weren’t going to be Little Mrs Average in her three-bedroomed semi. That isn’t our sort of life, darling. You must be realistic about it.’

She bit her lip. ‘I’m sorry, Colin. I—I just don’t care for this house. I can’t visualise myself ever living here.’

His expression became slightly more indulgent. ‘I’ve rushed you a bit, haven’t I, darling? I’m sorry, it was stupid of me. I just thought you’d be as thrilled as I am about it all.’ He walked over to her and slid his arms round her waist, pressing his lips to the side of her neck. ‘Forgive me?’ he whispered.

‘Of course.’ The smile was difficult, but she made the effort.

He was silent for a minute or two. Then, ‘It is a glorious view,’ he beguiled her. ‘Are you quite sure you want to let it go?’ He waited, but she made no reply. ‘Think about it, Janna,’ he said persuasively. ‘Properties like this don’t come on the market any old day, you know.’ He kissed her again. ‘And you’re so lovely,’ he muttered thickly. ‘It’s just the setting you need. You were born to be the mistress of this house, darling.’

Suddenly she wanted to be free of his seeking hands. Nervously, she pulled away, trying to laugh. ‘Colin, I’ve got to get back to school. I’m sorry I’ve disappointed you, and I will think it over, I promise.’

‘I can’t ask more than that.’ He linked his fingers companionably through hers and led her back into the drawing room, locking the french windows behind them. ‘I know you’ll change your mind, my sweet. I’ll arrange for a survey to be done, and we’ll come again next week when we have more time and go all over the place.’

‘Yes,’ she said quietly, ‘we’ll do that, if you wish.’

Conversation was desultory as they drove back through Carrisford, and parked outside the school gates. Colin took her hand. ‘Dinner tonight?’

She hesitated. ‘I don’t think so. I ought to wash my hair.’

‘It looks fine to me,’ he said. ‘But you know best. I’ll ring you tomorrow.’ He lifted her hand to his lips.

She stood on the pavement and watched the car drive away, feeling as if her entire world had been turned upside down. The safe walls of security and convention that she had built so painstakingly up around herself over the past few years showed every sign of tumbling around her, and it was an uncomfortable feeling at the least.

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

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

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

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

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

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

‘Hello, Janna,’ said Rian Tempest.

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