Reclaiming His Wife

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘A TOBOGGAN!’

Taylor stared disbelievingly at the sleek, well-made contraption Jared had dragged around to the front of the house and thought back to his disturbing words in the kitchen earlier about having fun. ‘You’re never going to get two of us on that thing!’ And when she could see that that was his intention, ‘You’re crazy!’ she laughed.

From the other side of the narrow slatted frame, Jared gave a casual shrug. ‘Possibly,’ he conceded with a wry compression of lips, but she sensed a hidden depth of meaning in the way he said it.

‘Where did you get it?’ It was obvious he had dug the sledge out of the old shed. But then something rang a bell with her, even as he started to remind her. Just large enough to take two adults, at a push, he had constructed it himself under the keen eye of his grandfather when he had been a mere youngster. Its cleverly constructed design, though, with the painstaking curvature at its front, showed how good he was with his hands and what a talented, caring craftsman he might have been if he hadn’t chosen to make his living with his brilliant intellect instead.

Like him she had already donned a thick anorak, woollen hat and gloves and scouted around for some wellingtons from a previous visit when he had suggested she get ready for a walk.

Now the green eyes she lifted to his were shining with anticipation and excitement. ‘Well? Are you going to take me for a ride?’

So he did, laughing at her eagerness as they came out of the lane and trudged, with the sledge trailing behind them, up the frozen, steeply rising ground.

From the top of a long sweep of snow-blanched terrain he stopped, and Taylor turned to look about her.

They had come a long way, much further than she had expected. She couldn’t see the house now, only the smoke drifting up from its chimney above a belt of trees. Now and again she caught the faintest traces of its sweet woody scent on the air. Below it, on the flat pastures of the valley, sheep huddled together, feeding on silage and hay, fat woollen bundles, heavily pregnant with lambs, or with their young already braving the unexpected freeze-up at their mothers’ sides. A tractor was moving away from them, out of range of her hearing, and yet if she listened she could almost imagine she could hear the throb of its engine on the absolute stillness of the air.

Perhaps that was why the travel brochures and magazines referred to this valley as the loveliest in England, Taylor appreciated, allowing her eyes the luxury of a full breathtaking survey.

Grey and white stone houses—clustered in hamlets— crouched beside open fields and seasonally stark woodands, a tranquil haven within the deep yawning mouth of the mountains. She could see the meandering river glinting in the sun, disappearing now beneath one of the many small stone bridges that were a feature of the area, appearing again between twisting, wooded banks, joining the dark oval of Derwent Water on its south side with Bassenthwaite Lake to the north. The low stone boundary walls of the outer fields, she noticed, stretched to the very foothills of the mountains, while beyond, at the head of the valley, the dramatic assembly of craggy peaks dominated the whole scene, austere, magnificent and awesome.

Like him, Taylor decided as her gaze came back to where Jared was stooping, doing something to the toboggan. Behind him their own mountainside glared down at them, its face cruel and inclement, giving no quarter to the unwary hiker.

He would know every curve and bend of these hillsides, she thought, with a marked degree of respect for him; know which ones to traverse and which to avoid. And it surprised her to realise that she didn’t doubt for one second that she would be safe with him. That in spite of all that had happened, between them, she would trust him with her very life if she had to.

A small frisson ran through her just from the sight of his bent head in the dark wool hat, from watching him securing the tow-ropes and thinking about what those capable gloved hands could do to her.

Suddenly then he stood up, caught her looking at him through the dark glasses he had recommended they both should wear and colour stained her cheeks, already pink with the cold.

‘OK.’ With sighed resignation she dropped a swift glance to the sledge, before meeting those shielded dark eyes again. ‘Thrill me,’ she purred huskily, slipping her hands into her pockets.

It was the worst thing she could have said, of course. Or the best, she thought, depending on which way she wanted to look at it, because if he had been intending to break her in gently to the experience of tobogganing then, after that rather foolhardy challenge, all his reservations went by the wayside.

‘I’ll make you scream,’ he promised excitingly, as she clambered onto the wooden slats in front of him, and he proceeded to do just that, laughing at her shrieks as he nudged them off the top of the slope to bring them flying down the hillside at a startling pace.

Faster and faster they seemed to go, gathering momentum as they descended so that she wondered if they would ever be able to stop.

‘I can’t believe this! How can you do this to me?’ she screamed above the rush of steel over the ice, shrieking even more loudly as the toboggan hit a bump, then another, so that she bounced back against him, laughing hysterically.

It was a tight squeeze sitting there between his legs with her own legs drawn up in front of her, and with her hands gripping the sides of the sledge as if her life depended on it, although she had no worries on that score.

Caught between Jared’s hard thighs and those powerful arms clutching the ropes, she was vibrantly aware of his strength and the solid padding of his body both ready to protect her if she did take a tumble.

All around them free-roaming sheep with brightly painted rumps stared after them as they sailed past, and Taylor laughed at their bemused faces, catching their tremulous chorus of bleats through the rush of the cold clean air.

‘You rotten…!’ Swearing amicably, she was still laughing as they ploughed into a deep drift and came to a sudden halt, sending white flakes flying everywhere. ‘You made it bump deliberately!’

‘No, I didn’t.’

‘Yes, you did,’ she argued. ‘You singled them out just to pay me back.’

‘So what if I did? You asked for it,’ he reminded her wickedly, arguing back. Like children, she thought. Without a care in the world.

‘I could have come off.’

‘No you couldn’t.’ His thighs tightened on either side of her, emphasising his point. ‘Only if I did,’ he murmured silkily, ‘and the worst you could have experienced would have been a roll in the snow.’

His murmured approval of the idea suddenly made Taylor disturbingly conscious of the powerful legs entrapping her, of the strong arm around her middle and the warmth of his breath fanning her cold cheek when she sent him a challenging glance over her shoulder.

‘OK.’ He lifted his hands, palms outwards in acceptance. ‘So you don’t share the same view.’

He was laughing down at her, the glare of the sun, with the brilliance of the snow bouncing off his dark glasses, accentuating every line and curve of his magnificent bone structure, the hard-etched jaw and forehead, that proud straight nose, the gleaming whiteness of his teeth.

He was different here, she thought. Different from the hard-headed, hard-working and often disdainful entrepreneur who had had far too little time for her back in London and who, when he had found time to be with her, had scared her witless with his brilliance and his power over her mind and body. But here she hadn’t even seen him using his mobile phone.

Here he was fun to be with—was taking time to relax— and for the first time she was seeing a new and exciting playfulness in him that unsettled as much as it pleased her. She wasn’t ready just to shelve all her fears and her anxieties and go back to him, and she was worried that this sudden absolute interest in her—his decision to give her all his undivided attention—was just a ploy to get her back; that, once there, their marriage would revert to being the same insecure and tumultuous farce that it had been before.

‘No,’ she assured him firmly, negating his suggestion— however flippant—of any further intimacy between them, even though her body throbbed and her breath came quickly through her lungs just from thinking about it. ‘It just complicates things,’ she said.

For a moment those hard thighs gripping hers tightened inexorably. Another glance over her shoulder revealed how the bright sun made a hard, cruel feature of his mouth.

What was he thinking? she wondered hectically, scanning the sudden, stark rigidity of his face. But then almost at once his features relaxed, as did his hold on her.

‘Come on,’ he rasped, springing to his feet a second after she did. ‘Let’s get this thing back up the hill.’

After that the morning resumed most of its earlier conviviality for which Taylor was relieved. She didn’t want to be forced to look too closely at her feelings for him. She wanted to enjoy these moments together without any pressure from him.

There was tension in her laughter now though as she travelled, clinging to his long legs, down the crisp cold hill, even when she fell off in an unharmed, shrieking heap with him, and emerged from her fall, pelting him with snow. There was also circumspection in the way he touched her, as though he were avoiding any reoccurrence of what had transpired between them the previous night.

They were lovers who had just crossed a threshold and become what they knew they should be. What they really were. Estranged partners, she thought painfully, dusting snow off her anorak and track suit bottoms. Strangers, shackled together merely by bad weather and by that keen astuteness of Jared’s in knowing that she would come.

She straightened suddenly, a hand shielding her eyes— in spite of her sunglasses—as her ears registered the continuously mournful bleating some distance away.

‘What is it?’ Jared was beside her, brushing snow from his shoulder. His shielded gaze followed hers to the stream winding down towards the valley, its swollen silver waters tumbling between craggy banks.

‘I don’t know. A lamb in distress. It keeps calling but there’s nothing answering,’ Taylor said, concerned.

‘Probably been a bit too adventurous and like most kids preferred to ignore sound parental advice,’ Jared murmured dryly, but Taylor was only half listening.

She could see it now, down by the beck, its small cloven feet slipping over icy stones, its black-hooded face lifting with each cry that came piercingly on the air.

‘There it is!’ she said, pointing to the spot between two overhanging trees where the river-bank curved steeply.

‘It’s been born too early for all this savage weather,’ Jared commented sympathetically.

‘It’s all alone.’ Taylor’s face was puckered with worry. ‘We should rescue it.’

‘No, we shouldn’t,’ he contradicted her, and as she made to move past him, ‘Leave it,’ he advised with a restraining hand on her arm. ‘They have voice-boxes like radar,’ he assured her. ‘Its mother will find it. Every ewe is instinctively tuned to the call of its young.’

From behind their dark lenses, wounded and sceptical eyes flew accusingly to his.

‘She’ll come back for him,’ he promised.

‘But supposing she doesn’t?’ With all her strength she was pushing him aside, leaving him staggering backwards.

‘Taylor! Taylor, don’t be stupid! For pity’s sake! It’s treacherous down there!’

Drawn by the animal’s cries, she took no heed of Jared’s angry warning, stumbling over steep and slippery ground, her only thought, somehow to help the distressed creature.

Teetering down the bank towards the beck, she managed to stop herself by grasping frantically at the overhanging branch of a tree just before her sliding feet almost plunged her into the water.

‘Heck.’ It was a small gasp of relief at having saved herself from Jared’s scorn rather than an icy soaking. She wasn’t sure which would have stung most, but she could guess.

Taking a dim view of her sudden crashing into its sphere, the lamb, however, had leaped further up the bank, bleating now with fear and indignation.

From a few metres away, it stood shaking on its spindly legs, little face turned towards her, bleating pitifully.

‘Come on. I won’t hurt you.’ Finding a safe footing at last, stooping to make herself appear less threatening, Taylor murmured soft little coaxing phrases above the tumbling of the stream. ‘Come on, little sheep. Don’t be afraid.’

It looked frightened and cold—and was probably very hungry too, she thought, her heart going out to it standing there, lost and defenceless, with its little legs half buried in a drift of snow.

And suddenly she could feel its fear; feel the cold that numbed her own feet and the cruel wind penetrating her bones as though she weren’t protected by her gloves, thick socks and anorak because memory was stripping her of those defences, stripping back the years so that she was five years old again, shivering, vulnerable and afraid.

She didn’t hear Jared shout, catching only the stronger-voiced vibrato of the ewe that was standing, viewing Taylor suspiciously from above the river-bank, bleating her impatience with her errant offspring.

Recognising its mother, the lamb leaped into the air as if on wires, making short work now of the slippery slope. There was a joyous cacophony of bleats before the small hooded face nudged under it mother’s thick coat, tail wagging from the warm comfort of her milk.

In only a few seconds, though, the ewe was pulling away from the small questing mouth, urging her lamb to safety and more familiar ground.

Jared was right, Taylor thought with a cold emotion shuddering through her, staring after the bright disappearing rump of the ewe with her skittish, reunited lamb. Even an animal came back for its young.

‘What the hell did you think you were doing dashing—’ Strong arms were turning her roughly, the deep male voice breaking off as those shaded eyes tugged questioningly over her finely drawn features.

‘What is it?’ he asked urgently. ‘What’s wrong, Taylor?’ He was reaching up to remove her glasses, using his other hand to make her look at him when she tried to turn away. With infinite tenderness his thumb moved across the pale, drawn lines of her face, over the sadness of her downturned mouth. ‘What is it?’ he whispered, concerned.

His touch and the tone of his voice were so gentle and so moving after his anger of a few moments ago that she pressed her eyelids closed against the sensations that were running riot in her, struggling to bring her emotions under control.

‘Just me getting too sentimental over an animal,’ she exhaled heavily, opening her eyes.

Above the dark glasses, she saw the black brows come together, noticed his interest shift to the retreating ewe and her lamb before returning to Taylor again, and now the furrow deepened between his eyes.

‘Tell me,’ he commanded quietly, unconvinced, drawing a soft leather finger down the curve of her cheek.

For a moment, recognising the depth of understanding— of tenderness—in him, she wanted to open up, share her innermost fears, feeling them being drawn from her by those shielded, searching eyes. But instead came the shocking recognition of just how much she still loved him—that she had never stopped loving him! That she could so easily believe him when he said his affair with Alicia was over with, before they were married, because she wanted to— so much! Which would mean, if that were the case, that it had all been her fault that her marriage had failed, wouldn’t it? she thought suddenly, because she hadn’t trusted him enough. Because she couldn’t hold on to anything…

You’ll always run away.

‘Take me home,’ she uttered quickly on a series of violent shivers. ‘For heaven’s sake, let’s go back. I’m freezing.’

They had potatoes on the fire again for lunch with ham and pickles, and a huge helping of fresh fruit to follow.

Now, having fallen asleep on the settee, relaxed by the fire and the unaccustomed amount of exercise she had taken that morning, Taylor woke to the jangle of brass rings and realised that Jared was closing the heavy curtains. On the mantelpiece, she noted, he had already lit the candles. She could smell the wax, and noticed that one was burning rather erratically where there wasn’t much of it left.

‘Awake at last.’ His voice was warm, indulgent.

Taylor sat up, putting her feet on the floor.

‘What time is it?’ she wanted to know, her hand stifling a yawn.

‘What does it matter?’ Jared came around the settee, looking down at her from his advantageous position. ‘We aren’t going anywhere.’

A small thread of excitement needled its way rapidly through her, jabbing alive feelings that were hot and sensual, piercing others with poignant regret.

No, she was snowbound here in a private world with this man who could make her blood sing with the potency of his sexuality; who could make her respond to his will because she was so crazy about him, and who had asked her to give them a chance. But if she did and they started afresh, together, then the pressures would be on her again…

‘I must have fallen asleep,’ she said, stating the obvious.

‘That comes from taking too much exercise you’re not used to. Both this morning—’ He broke off, that sensual compression of his lips finishing the sentence. And last night.

She turned away from those penetrating eyes and was glad when he went over and started stoking up the fire.

Surreptitiously, she watched the play of muscle beneath the thick check shirt he was wearing as he stooped to toss the last of the logs from the wicker basket into the flames. There was a book lying open, face down, on the easy chair opposite her. A book about the English Civil War, she noted, remembering his penchant for English history. So he had been reading while she slept, she realised, the thought of the rather homely scene giving a sudden violent tug on her heartstrings.

‘I wish the power would come back on.’ Distractedly she ran a hand through her dishevelled hair. He had made her run for a large part of the way home, forcing her blood to pump through her after he had seen her shivering down by the beck and now she felt decidedly grubby. ‘I’d give anything for a bath.’ Even if she could have managed to heat sufficient water on the fire to give her a bare amount to bathe in, there was no way, she decided, that she could face the temperature of the cold, unheated bathroom. Not while there were still subzero temperatures outside!

His countenance was grim as he picked up the log basket to refill it and went out, saying nothing. He probably felt the same way, unless he was taking cold showers—which she wouldn’t have put past him, Taylor decided with a grimace, until she remembered that even that was an impossibility without any electricity. Nevertheless, she wished she had kept her mouth shut, hoping she hadn’t sounded as though she had been complaining unnecessarily when he was doing his best to make them both comfortable.

Resigned to her discomfort, she got up and started clearing the dishes left over from lunchtime, filled the kettle for more water to wash them and with a small shudder went back to the warm sitting room where the logs Jared had heaped on the fire were already glowing red, giving off extra heat.

Roll on the thaw, Taylor thought wryly, placing the kettle across the two little walls of bricks that Jared had found in the shed and ingeniously erected in the grate for that very purpose before lighting the fire that morning. He had made the whole experience of being snowed in easier than it would have been had she simply been here on her own, she reflected with reluctant honesty. OK, she would probably have coped, though a little less efficiently since she lacked his degree of physical strength for chopping logs and suchlike, but she had to admit that Jared had somehow managed to make it fun. Even so, it was still harder work than she was used to, and it certainly made her appreciate how difficult life must have been for the ordinary people a century or so earlier, but that didn’t stop her longing to get back to normality. Just to be able to feel clean again, she thought, if for no other reason, because a thaw would mean going home—returning to her safe, self-sufficient existence, and as much as she knew that the sooner that happened and she could get away from Jared, the better it would be for her, some crazy, aching part of her—the part that loved him—didn’t want this time with him ever to end.