Stolen Summer. Anne Mather
a brush to her hair, and she grimaced at her reflection as the thick coarse strands resisted her efforts. She had often been tempted to have her hair cut, but although she had it trimmed from time to time, it still hung well below her shoulders. Usually, she wore it in a loose coil at the nape of her neck or occasionally, as the day before, she wound it into a knot on top of her head, which made her look even taller.
Abandoning the task, she pushed heelless mules on to her feet, and opened her door. Marsha had briefly explained the lay-out of the house to her the night before, and Shelley easily made her way to the head of the stairs, and descended slowly. The balustrade was smooth, after years of use and Mrs Carr’s polishing, and a warm red carpet underfoot gave colour to the panelled wall that mounted beside her. Some of Marsha’s paintings had been hung to provide their own illumination, and someone had filled a copper urn with armfuls of white and purple lilac, that scented the air with its perfume.
Downstairs, she found the morning room easily. The door was standing ajar, and she could see a round table spread with a white tablecloth and smell the delicious aroma of coffee. Marsha had evidently gone to tell Mrs Carr that her guest would not be requiring breakfast in bed, and Shelley entered the room without hesitation, halting abruptly at the sight of a man, lounging at the side of the table which had been hidden from the door. He had a newspaper propped in front of him, and all Shelley could initially see was one leg, encased in cream denim, the foot resting carelessly on the leg of the chair beside him, and one arm, which revealed he was wearing a matching denim shirt. The sleeve of his shirt was rolled back almost to his elbow, exposing a lean brown arm, and his wrist was encircled by a slim gold watch which, in spite of its leather strap, looked rather exclusive. It was the sort of present Marsha would buy, Shelley suspected, guessing who it must be. But she was unwilling to face anyone else in her present state of undress, and she would have withdrawn unseen had he not chosen that moment to lower the newspaper.
‘You!’
Shelley’s instinctive embarrassment at being caught out gave way to blank astonishment at the sight of the man, who was now withdrawing his foot from its resting place and getting to his feet. It was the man from the Land-Rover—Ben Seton—and for several seconds she forgot her appearance in the numbness of disbelief.
‘Good morning, Miss Hoyt—or can I call you Shelley?’ he enquired, evidently deriving as much amusement from her reaction today as he had from her frustration the day before, and Shelley fought to regain her sense of balance. What was he doing here? she asked herself abstractedly. How had he found her? And how did he know her name, when she herself hadn’t told him. Marsha! she thought intuitively. Marsha must know he was here. And with that awareness, came another sickening realisation …
As if her sudden, dawning knowledge was written in her eyes for him to read, he put the newspaper aside, and came easily across the room to stand in front of her. Without her heels, he seemed much taller than he had done the day before, and she knew an ominous feeling of presentiment when he put his hands upon her shoulders.
‘I’m sorry,’ he said, and she knew now why his eyes had briefly seemed so familiar. ‘I know I should have told you yesterday, but when you didn’t recognise me, I decided you deserved all you got.’ His lips tilted, and his teeth were very white against his dark skin. ‘I was going to come over last evening for dinner, but I took pity on you, after all. I guessed—after the day you had had—you might not be able to stand any more shocks.’
Shelley didn’t know which emotion she felt strongest—anger, at his deliberate deception; resentment, that he should still be treating her with the same mixture of good humour and tolerance he had displayed the day before; or panic, at the fact he had come back into her life and overthrown her resolution not to think of him again.
‘Are you angry with me?’ he asked softly, and aware that Marsha could come upon them at any time, and she was in no state to deal with that, Shelley gave a helpless shake of her head.
‘I—why—you were only about seventeen, when I saw you last,’ she stammered, looking up at him and then wishing she hadn’t. He really had the most fantastic eyes, dark grey at the moment, and fringed with thick silvery lashes, that accentuated their beauty. A person could drown in those eyes, she thought unwillingly, unable to drag her gaze away, until his tightening fingers on her shoulders brought her quickly to her senses. ‘W-where is your mother?’
‘In the kitchen,’ said Marsha’s son flatly, allowing her to step back from his hands, and Shelley, reminded of her unwelcome state of undress, wrapped the folds of her kimono closer about her. Even so, she was intensely conscious of the revealing thinness of her garments, and of the fact that her nipples were standing taut against the material.
‘I should get dressed,’ she said distractedly, half turning towards the door, but his hand about her wrist prevented her from leaving.
‘Don’t,’ he said, his thumb moving insistently over the vulnerable inner veins, and although she knew he was probably unaware of what he was doing, her breath caught painfully in her throat.
The sound of footsteps crossing the hall outside made Shelley put some distance between them. By the time Marsha appeared in the doorway, she had taken a seat at the table, and the older woman looked at them delightedly, evidently sensing nothing amiss.
‘Isn’t this a surprise, Shelley?’ she exclaimed, bustling into the room to set a third place at the table. ‘I see you two have renewed your acquaintance. I’m surprised you recognised Dickon. It must be eight or nine years since you last met.’
‘Eight,’ said her son drily, returning to the chair he had occupied before Shelley’s intervention. ‘But Shelley hasn’t changed. I’d have recognised her anywhere.’
Shelley managed a tight smile, but the look she cast in his direction was apprehensive. ‘How gallant!’ she said, her elbows on the table protecting her body from his gaze. ‘Your son has inherited your flare for understatement, Marsha. It’s very kind, but it’s not the truth.’
Marsha laughed. ‘Oh, Dickon has always been able to charm his way out of any situation,’ she declared, not without a certain amount of motherly pride, and her son expelled an exasperated breath.
‘My name’s Benedict, Mother, not Dickon.’ His eyes moved briefly to Shelley’s averted head and then back again. ‘I doubt if your guest even knows my proper surname.’
‘Does it matter?’ Marsha pulled a face at him. ‘Shelley doesn’t care if you call yourself Benedict Manning or Benedict Seton, and I, for one, prefer the name Dickon to Ben.’ She shrugged. ‘Benedict was your father’s choice. I wanted to call you Richard.’
‘Well, I prefer Ben,’ he retorted, as the maid came into the room carrying a fresh pot of coffee and a rack of toast. ‘What do you think, Sarah? Do I look more like a Ben than a Dickon?’
‘Oh, Mr Benedict, I don’t know,’ the girl simpered girlishly, her eyes darting triumphantly in Shelley’s direction, almost as if she might be envying her his attention. ‘But Mrs Carr did say to ask you if you wanted sausages as well as bacon for breakfast. ‘Cos if you do, I’ve got to run down to the village and see if Mrs Peart’s is open.’
‘Bacon is fine,’ Ben assured her firmly, and his mother pursed her lips.
‘Honestly, that girl is impossible sometimes,’ she exclaimed, after Sarah had left the room. ‘And you encourage her, Dickon. You know perfectly well she was not supposed to add that rider about having to run down to the village! If you wanted sausages, you should have asked for them. It wouldn’t have taken her more than five minutes to ride down to the stores on her bicycle!’
‘But I didn’t want sausages, Mother,’ Ben responded patiently. ‘I’m only having bacon because you insisted. Where is it, by the way? I don’t have all day.’
‘Oh—I’d better go and speak to Mrs Carr,’ declared Marsha, pushing back her chair, and before Shelley could prevent her, she had left the room once again.
‘You didn’t tell my mother