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Her bathroom was a couple of doors down the corridor; knowing she had the house to herself, she didn’t hesitate to open her bedroom door and walk on to the landing wearing the faded soft cotton pyjama jacket which was her preferred nightwear. She had several of them, all of them washed to a similar state of faded softness. Frilly nightdresses were not for her, and when she had returned from London she had eschewed the chain-store-bought nightshirts she had worn then in favour of the discarded top halves of pyjamas she suspected had originally belonged to her father, and which she had found abandoned in one of the house’s many chests of drawers.
Now, absently noticing how thin the cotton was wearing, she acknowledged ruefully that she would soon have to replace them, but with what? She had grown accustomed to the softness of a quality of cotton no longer cheaply available.
Automatically, having walked out on to the landing, she followed her normal routine of making her way downstairs to make some coffee. This was her morning ritual, to make the freshly brewed coffee she enjoyed so much, despite its heavy caffeine content, and then go upstairs to shower and dress so that the fragrant brew was waiting for her when she came back down.
The kitchen floor felt cold beneath her bare feet, her toes curling instinctively at the chilly contact. Beyond the kitchen window, she could see the dew-dampened outline of the lawns and flowerbeds, softened into mystical beauty by their covering of moisture. She paused for a moment to admire the miracle of nature, admitting how much she would miss these simple pleasures of living in the countryside if she were ever forced to return to city living.
Grimacing a little at the state of the kitchen, she hurried into the pantry, and started to fill the filter machine’s jug with cold water. It was while she was doing so, her back to the door, that she felt the unmistakable chilliness of cold fresh air, as though a door had been opened.
Immediately she tensed, swinging round, her eyes rounding in dismayed shock as she saw Oliver standing in the open doorway. Unlike her, he was fully dressed in an immaculate business suit and a crisp white shirt.
‘I thought you’d gone.’
The words left her throat in a husky whisper that sounded more like an apology than the accusation she had intended it to be.
‘I’m just on my way. Unfortunately I couldn’t resist walking
round the garden before I left.’ He grimaced as he looked down at his very wet shoes. ‘I’d forgotten how wet dew can be. I was just on my way upstairs to change my shoes when I heard you in here.’
‘I came down to put the coffee on,’ Charlotte told him awkwardly, suddenly conscious of how she must look, her hair uncombed, her face unwashed, dressed in an oversized and worn pyjama jacket that was surely the opposite kind of nightwear someone like Vanessa would choose to sleep in.
She stepped forward awkwardly and stopped, blinking in the full beam of the sunlight shining in through the window to momentarily blind her. She heard Oliver catch his breath, almost as though in shock, and her own nerve-endings responded automatically to the sound so that she froze where she was.
‘I’d better go and change these shoes,’ she heard him saying in a harsh, rasping voice that for some reason made her throat ache.
She wanted him to take her in his arms, to hold her, to kiss her. Angry with herself, she blinked in the strong light, and watched the movements of his tall, lithe body, wondering bleakly at the unfairness of nature. Why couldn’t it have been content with simply giving him his overpowering physical maleness? Why had it had to add the kind of personality she felt so in tune with that she was helpless to defend herself against the impact of his emotional and physical effect on her.
She heard him go upstairs, and stayed where she was until she heard him come down again to leave via the front door, bleakly wondering why it hurt so much that he hadn’t come back into the pantry to say goodbye to her.
Ten minutes later, when she walked into her bathroom, she thought she knew the answer, or at least part of it, and her face turned deep pink with embarrassment. Sunshine flooded her bathroom as it had done in the pantry, but here in the bathroom she had the advantage of seeing in the mirrors that lined its walls the effect that sunlight had.
The soft cotton of her pyjama jacket, so warm and bulky to her touch, had turned virtually transparent in the strong sunshine, so that when she stood bathed in its light the entire shape of her body, every one of its contours and curves, could be seen quite clearly delineated beneath the jacket, right down to the soft shadowing between her thighs and the deep rose areola of her breasts.
From being flushed her skin drained of colour as she stared in mortification at her own reflection. This was what Oliver had seen when he’d walked into the pantry. No wonder he had left so quickly.
He must have thought…what? That she had come downstairs deliberately knowing that he was there, wanting him to see her like that. Had that been what he’d thought? Did he think she had actually…?
Her heart was beating far too fast, a nauseous churning feeling burning her empty stomach. She started to tremble. Why on earth hadn’t she checked before going downstairs? Why hadn’t she realised he was still there? But it was too late now for such recriminations. The damage was done.
* * *
All day long it was on her mind, a poison eating into her, so that several times Sheila watched her worriedly, wondering what was wrong.
‘Aren’t you feeling very well?’ she asked at one point, causing Charlotte to lift her head from her paperwork.
‘I’m fine. Why?’ she asked defensively.
Sheila shrugged. ‘Well, it’s just that it’s such a beautiful day, and you’re all wrapped up in that thick woollen sweater.’
Sheila herself was wearing a very pretty short-sleeved blouse which showed off her feminine figure, and Charlotte, who with that incident in the pantry very much to the forefront of her mind had deliberately dressed in the most body-muffling clothes she could find, felt her face burn with guilt and humiliation.
In actual fact she felt almost stifled in the sweater, which was more appropriate for cold mid-winter wear than a soft late spring day, but, with her mind still full of mental visions of how she had looked this morning, she had writhed in mental torment and deliberately wrapped herself in as many muffling layers of clothing as she could endure.
‘I…I didn’t realise how warm it was going to be,’ she mumbled, knowing that she was flushing and hoping that Sheila would put her high colour down to the warmth of her unseasonal clothes.
During the afternoon, Charlotte took Sophy with her when she drove out to Hadley Court to measure up the house and to start taking details of those items of furniture which were going to be auctioned.
Sophy proved very quick to follow her directions, and by the end of the afternoon Charlotte was ready to acknowledge that, in doing the younger girl a favour by giving her a job, she had probably done herself one as well, providing always that Oliver left her with enough business to merit employing both Sheila and Sophy.
