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Smiling, he handed her a key. It was the first real smile she'd had from him since he'd walked in and found her with Fenton. It was a smile she could have lost herself in and her heart picked up speed, pattering rapidly, making her feel like a love-sick fool.
'Let yourself in,' he said. 'Look around while I pull the car up into the orchard. It's the only gateway wide enough.'
She walked slowly along the path, enjoying the warmth of the late afternoon sun, the fresh country smells. Life was beginning to wear a happier face.
And as for their marriage, well, maybe the symptoms were grim, but the prognosis was good. It would have to be. She would make it so!
The key turned easily in the lock and Cleo stepped straight into a parlour that might have been modelled on an illustration in a Beatrix Potter book. Red and white checked curtains decked the tiny windows, rag rugs were scattered about the floor and squashy, slightly shabby flower-patterned armchairs surrounded an open fireplace, while four ladder-backed chairs were placed around a pine table which sported a vase of dried teasles.A dresser and a rocking chair completed the decor, and Cleo gave Fiona full marks for not turning the interior of her country cottage into something artfully twee.
The whole cottage, she discovered, was basic, functional, and just right.
True, there was only one bedroom, the second having been converted to a bathroom at some time. But if everything went as she prayed it would, she need have no reservations about sharing that big brass bed with Jude.
Going swiftly back down the twisting stairs, she told herself to take it easy.
Pointless to hope for too much. Every time she'd tried to talk to him in the past, to put her point of view, they'd ended up further apart than before. But despite her warnings to herself she couldn't help hoping...
She found him in the kitchen; her suitcase was on the floor with a battered canvas tote bag beside it, and there was a carton of groceries on the table.
'I'll get out of this stifling gear.' He indicated his formal grey business suit and picked up her suitcase, the tote bag which must contain his things. 'Like the place?' he asked, turning in the low doorway, and there was a softness in his eyes that warmed her heart. She couldn't help smiling, her pleasure showing through the cool facade.
'I love it!' She would have said the same if he had brought, her to stay in a hen house, because she just knew everything was going to be fine.
'Good.' He made a movement as if to go on his way, but something seemed to hold him and she saw, just for a second, a look of puzzlement deep in his eyes. And then it was gone, and it might never have been because the azure depths were as they so often were—slightly on the cold side of bland—before he finally turned away.
As she heard his feet on the stairs she turned to the box he'd left on the table.
Unpacking it would give her something to do, calm her. She felt slightly sick, every sense highly tuned because, one way or another, the next day or so would set the pattern for the rest of her life.
The box was crammed with enough food to last them for days and she moved about the kitchen quickly, stowing a fresh chicken, butter and bacon in the fridge, leaving the steak out because they could have that tonight. She was crouching, pushing the cartons of milk into the already full fridge, when he said, from behind her, 'I'm going to split logs. I'll light a fire, the evenings get
chilly.'
She turned, looking up at him over her shoulder, and her heart flopped over.
He had changed and he looked, as ever, superb. Faded denim jeans clipped long legs and lean hips, and his dark checked shirt had long sleeves, pulled up to the elbows, revealing hard, sinewy forearms liberally sprinkled with dark hair. And she only had to look at him to know she would always love him, no matter what happened.
'Perhaps you could make a start on a meal,' he suggested. 'We both missed lunch.' He was leaning against the table, half sitting, seemingly relaxed, and she was about to tell him, fine, she'd do just that because suddenly she was hungry, too, when the words died in her throat as he said softly, 'You look washed out, despite the sleep you had coming down here. Been pining over the news?'
'What news?' She was reluctant to tell him that her sleepless nights had been caused by her misery over him, and she stood up slowly, closing the fridge door with a nudge of her knee, repeating, 'What news? What are you talking about?'
'Fenton's engagement to Livia Haine, the millionaire brewer's daughter.' His mouth dented derisively. 'You can take it from me, they deserve each other.
She's a first-class bitch.'
'I didn't know.' Her heart began to thump, sounding thunderous in her own ears. Fenton engaged? It was the best news she'd heard in years! If he was set to marry money, which had always been his ambition, then he would keep his act clean until he'd secured the lady with a plain gold ring. He must have been working on it, and that would be why she'd heard no more from him.
Unsavoury details, involving his debts, wouldn't be what he'd want to see splashed around in some sordid gossip column. She was safe from Robert Fenton at last!
Carefully keeping her face straight, she pushed a strand of silvery hair back from her face with the back of her hand. 'I hadn't heard.'
'No?' Jude said. 'Didn't he at least warn you to expect that sickening photograph in the papers yesterday, alongside the announcement of their engagement? Apparently,' he added drily, 'it was a whirlwind romance.'
She didn't care what kind of romance it had been, and if Jude was right and the lady in question was a bitch then she wasn't about to waste her sympathy on her behalf. And she was about to say just that when he forestalled her again, levering himself away from the table, his face expressionless.
'I thought, with Fenton out of your reach, we could talk things through, lay out the guidelines for our future, our marriage. Because, believe me, he won't want to continue with your relationship if he's got his hooks into another heiress—one who's free to marry him.'
And with that he strode from the room, leaving her gaping. He must have decided to borrow the cottage, to fetch her away from Slade House, when he'd learned of Fenton's engagement. What he'd said hadn't been flattering, but at least he was willing to talk things through, try to make their marriage work. And he would listen to what she had to tell him, and they could begin again.
