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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 red-blooded 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 th
e 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, 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.
