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They weren’t the only people taking advantage of the fine weather. The village was a popular beauty spot and a good centre for several excellent local walks.
Debra smiled as she heard a small child exclaiming in awe at the date above one of the shops.
‘1590. That was hundreds and hundreds of years ago.’
‘Thousands probably,’ another child chipped in, while a patient parent started to correct his error.
Leigh’s two daughters, familiar with this summer inrush of visitors, were displaying the superiority they felt as local inhabitants, and Debra watched the by-play with tender amusement, unaware that she herself was the object of someone else’s observation until she heard a male voice speak her name.
‘Marsh!’
Her recognition of his voice was immediate, shock overwhelming caution as she turned round and saw him standing a couple of feet away.
Numbly she took in the casual shirt and jeans, the workmanlike walking shoes and the local map he must have been studying when he’d seen her, and her agitation subsided a little.
How silly of her to assume that he had come here to seek o
ut her, when he was obviously here to walk and explore a little of his new habitat.
‘Marsh?’ she heard Leigh querying interestedly at her side before smiling at Marsh and extending her hand, saying wryly, ‘I believe I owe you an apology. A case of mistaken identity.’
‘Ah, the lady detective,’ Marsh responded.
‘I am truly sorry about what happened,’ Leigh told him. ‘No wonder you were so angry.’
Debra saw Marsh’s head turn in her direction. ‘A little,’ he agreed, ‘but it did have its... compensations.’
Debra swallowed. Her mouth had suddenly gone very dry. She had an insane compulsion to wet her lips with her tongue-tip; to relieve the dryness which seemed to be making them swell and throb a little.
Marsh was still looking at her. She wanted desperately to look away, but for some reason she couldn’t.
She could hear Leigh calling to their parents, ‘Come and meet Debra’s new boss,’ and felt a panicky urge to turn and run before it was too late, but too late for what?
Her mother was smiling at Marsh while Leigh introduced them. She heard Marsh making a reference to her stepfather’s birthday. Both men laughed; the sound was mellow, harmonious somehow, as though they had immediately reached out to one another on some special male level which for a brief spell excluded the watching women.
‘Have you just finished your walk, or were you just about to begin it?’ Debra heard her mother asking.
‘I was just about to begin it,’ Marsh told her. ‘But there are so many walks to choose from that I wasn’t sure...’
‘Why not come with us?’ Leigh suggested immediately. ‘We’re only walking as far as the river. A pre-washing-up attempt to offset the effect of Mum’s Sunday lunch.’.
They all laughed... except Debra. She was too bemused, too confused... too filled with a sudden sharp sense of events slipping away from her in some way to do anything other than glance anxiously from Leigh’s face to Marsh’s.
Surely he couldn’t possibly want to come with them? He was dressed for walking; they were only going for a short stroll, but he was already falling into step with them, and somehow Debra discovered that she was walking next to him as they separated into smaller groups to navigate the busy narrow street.
She tensed as he took hold of her arm, steadying her as someone jostled past her. She fought the fierce surge of pleasure that dizzied her, trying to breathe deeply and calmly, looking straight ahead as she thanked him and quickly stepped away from him.
‘Do you have any family?’ Leigh asked him, unashamedly curious, as they all reached the stile into the field.
‘Some. But unfortunately I don’t get to see much of them these days.
‘My sister is married to an Australian. They have three children. My parents retired out there several years ago. I think my mother had given up on me as a provider of grandchildren.’
‘You don’t want children?’ Leigh asked him.
Debra smothered her instinctive protest. Leigh was like that, inclined to ask the most personal of questions of relative strangers. It meant nothing. It was just a part of her personality.
She held her breath, hoping that Marsh wouldn’t snub her, even though she knew that she could never have asked him anything so personal.
