For One Night. PENNY JORDAN
covered her again, and then swung himself out of the bed. He never wore pyjamas, but there was a spare robe in the bathroom. He put it on, and then eyed the bedroom’s one easy chair in grim determination.
He had behaved foolishly enough for one night—he would spend the rest of it alone in that chair, otherwise God alone knew what might happen. He had been stupid enough as it was—insanely so. He ought to have thrown her out when he had had the opportunity. Against his will he remembered the look of aching desolation he had glimpsed in her eyes earlier. It must be hell to lose someone you loved to death. Who could blame her for wanting to hang on to life in the most basic way possible?
Neither of them were to blame for what had happened; another time, and things would have been different. They had come together as strangers, he thought broodingly, and that was the way they must part—for both their sakes. He had enough problems on his plate with the farm, without involving himself with a woman who was grieving for another man.
He would be gone before she woke up. They would never meet again. He knew his decision was the right one, but some part of him was reluctant to let her go. Some part of him wanted to hold on to her and …
And what?
And nothing, he told himself firmly.
CHAPTER TWO
“WELL, DIANA, you know your own mind best, but I must admit that I’m surprised. You’ve always fitted in well here at Southern Television, and somehow I can’t see you living in a small country village, running a bookshop.”
“I trained as a librarian before I came here, Don,” Diana reminded her boss, “and my parents lived in the country.”
“Oh, I see.”
She was surprised to see that he looked a little nonplussed. “You want to be closer to them, is that it?”
Diana shook her head. Her parents had emigrated to Australia six months ago to be close to her elder brother and his children, and her decision to sell the London flat and start a new life for herself in a small and fairly remote Herefordshire town had nothing to do with them.
“No, not really, I just thought it was time I had a change.” As she spoke, she glanced instinctively into the mirror on the opposite wall. Her stomach was still quite flat, her body as reed-slim as ever; no one looking at her could possibly guess that she was three months pregnant.
A guilty twinge flared through her, and she bit nervously at her bottom lip. By rights she ought to feel horrified at the thought of her impending motherhood, but she didn’t—she couldn’t. Ridiculously, she felt as though she had been given a most precious and wonderful gift.
To go to bed with a stranger, and then to conceive his child, was so removed from the way she lived her life that even now she could hardly believe it had actually happened.
Indeed, when she had woken up that morning in her hotel room and found all trace of the man and his possessions gone, her first thought was that it had been a dream; only there had been that tiny betraying stain on the sheet, and the invisible, but unmistakable knowledge that her body had changed; that she had changed.
It had never occurred to her that she might have conceived, and for a while she had put her nausea and tiredness down to the after-effects of Leslie’s death. It had been Dr. Copeland who had somewhat diffidently suggested there might be another cause.
Diana knew that the doctor had expected her to be disturbed and displeased by her pregnancy; after all, she was a single woman, a career woman living alone; but what she had felt had been a thrill of pleasure so great that nothing else had seemed important.
Oddly, until now she had never even contemplated the possibility of having children, had never considered what role, if any, they might play in her life; but now she was as fiercely protective of this new emergent life within her as though she had lived her life with no further end in view than this act of procreation.
Her decision to give up her job and start life completely afresh had been an easy one to reach. She could not bring up her child the way she would wish in London. Leslie’s legacy made her independent; wealthy enough, in fact, not to need to work.
However, it was one thing to decide to have a completely fresh start, it was another to achieve it. On impulse she went to see Mr. Soames to ask for his advice.
He listened to her whilst she explained what she wanted to do.
“Hmm. I would not advocate complete seclusion from the rest of the world,” he commented when she had finished. “Perhaps a small business that you could run by yourself ….”
“I’m an archivist,” Diana interrupted him. “I have no training for running a business.” But Mr. Soames wasn’t listening, he was looking at her with a thoughtful expression on his face.
“My dear Miss Johnson,” he exclaimed with a beam. “I think I may have the ideal solution. Only very recently, a cotrustee came to see me on behalf of a mutual friend—now deceased, alas. I was brought up near Hereford, and have retained some ties there. My client owned a small bookshop in a Herefordshire market town.
“She died several months ago—both the property and the business are extremely run down—I am an executor of her estate, as indeed is the gentleman who came to see me.
“Since there is no one to inherit, it has been decided that the property will be put on the market. I must warn you, though, that since both the living and shop premises constitute a listed building, certain restrictions are imposed on their alterations and development.”
Diana listened to him in silence. A bookshop. It was something she had never thought of doing … But she had the contacts … and the knowledge … and her years with the television company had given her a keen insight into marketing and selling techniques.
A tiny glimmer of excitement flickered to life inside her.
“Are you suggesting that I might buy the business and the building?” she asked Mr. Soames.
“Heppleton Magna is an extremely pretty market town, on the River Wye. None of my family live there now, but I have fond memories of the place, and I still have several clients there. If you are interested I could arrange for you to see the premises.”
Diana thought quickly and made up her mind before her courage could desert her.
“I’d love to see it, Mr. Soames.”
Before she left his office, she had arranged to visit the shop with him later in the week.
“I shall telephone you with the exact details. My coexecutor is out of the country at the moment—on business, buying bulls I believe. He is a farmer, so I shall have to accompany you myself, if that’s agreeable.”
THREE DAYS LATER they went, and Diana fell in love almost immediately with Heppleton Magna and its surrounds.
The town was more of a large village, with red brick Queen Anne buildings surrounding the town square, and narrow wobbly lanes leading off it, where Tudor houses with overhanging upper casements pressed closely together. The shop was down at the bottom of one of these lanes.
Inside, the rooms showed the signs of neglect that came from having an elderly, proud owner who, according to Mr. Soames, had refused to allow her friends to help her.
“She was in hospital for the last few months of her life, but she still refused to hand over the keys to anyone. You can see the results,” he added with a faint sigh, pointing out damp patches where water had seeped through the leaking roof.
The kitchen and bathroom in the living quarters were apallingly basic, and the bookshop itself, so dark and dim that Diana was not surprised to see from the accounts that over the last few years its takings had dropped drastically.
Even so she had fallen in love with the place; in a strange way it seemed to reach out to embrace and welcome her.
They would be happy here, she and her child.