Valentine's Night

‘It just feels it because the house has been empty. Wait until we’ve got the range lit.’

‘I’ll do that,’ Sorrel told him, knowing he was anxious to start back. ‘You bring the rest of the stuff in.’

She filled a small kettle and had just set it to boil on the emergency gas ring she had brought with her when Simon came in with the last load. The range was now lit and the chill just beginning to ease off the kitchen.

‘I’ll fill the lamps with oil,’ Simon told her. ‘I checked upstairs when I came with Fiona. The bedroom isn’t damp, so you should be OK. Remember to keep the range in, though, otherwise you’ll have no hot water.’

‘Don’t even mention it,’ Sorrel groaned.

‘Why don’t you light a fire upstairs?’

Sorrel had forgotten that the main bedroom had a working fireplace. In view of the unexpected iciness of the wind and the frozen ground outside, it seemed a good idea.

She made Simon a cup of tea while he checked that there was nothing left in the Land Rover and that she would be comfortable and safe.

Once he had gone, Sorrel didn’t feel alone, as she had expected. Perhaps because there was so much still to do.

The bedroom, as he had said, was dry but very cold. She lit the fire, and once she had assured herself that it was going properly, mentally thanking heaven for the convenience of modern firelighters, she set about making up the old-fashioned double bed with its wooden footboard and headboard. It had to be polished first, and the faint smell of beeswax that hovered in the air after she had finished this task reminded her very much of her childhood visits to her grandparents.

Her mother had wisely sent up a very large duck-down duvet and, a little to Sorrel’s surprise, the patchwork cover which had originally covered the bed and which had been made by her grandmother as part of her trousseau.

Once that was on the bed, the fire casting dancing shadows on the plain white walls, the room suddenly took on a cosy, homely look. Unlike the old-fashioned bathroom, which felt as though it was refrigerated, Sorrel reflected, her teeth starting to chatter before she had been in it for more than five minutes.

It needed, as her mother had forecast, cleaning, and by the time she had performed this chore she was beginning to feel a bit warmer. Even so, she did not envy her grandparents having to leave the warmth of their bedroom on a cold winter morning to come in here.

Downstairs the range was now thoroughly warming the kitchen, and Sorrel polished the large oak dresser which was set into one wall, unpacking the crockery from home and putting it on the shelves. It looked rather lost on a dresser designed to show off an entire family dinner service.

At first she was so busy that the sudden change in the quality of the light from outside didn’t strike her, and then a certain betraying silence, a certain inborn instinct, made her lift her head and go to the window. Her heart sank as she saw the snow swirling down outside.

Uncle Giles had been right, after all. She only hoped that it wasn’t snowing in Ludlow. If it was, her mother would be having forty fits of anxiety.

What time was it? She looked at her watch. Just gone four. Too early yet for the appearance of Valerie, if indeed she could still appear. If the weather deteriorated as dramatically as it could do at this height, the hill pass would soon be blocked and the farm would be cut off. It happened almost every winter.

Everything was ready now and there was nothing she could do other than wait … and hope that Cousin Val did not get stuck somewhere in the snow.

She lived in Perth, the beautiful town on the Swan River where Sorrel, whose knowledge of Australia’s weather was only sketchy, suspected they did not have the winters suffered by the Welsh hills. She wondered how Val’s parents felt about their daughter going half-way across the world to visit unknown relatives. What would she be like?

Sorrel filled the kettle and placed it on the hob of the old-fashioned range and then went to the window.

Already the landscape had turned white, the low stone walls thickly covered in snow. The wind had increased, driving the flakes into a frenzy of blizzarding white violence that eddied and whirled in front of the farm, changing the landscape as she watched.

Sorrel shivered. She was safe enough here inside the old farmhouse, and Simon would be back in three days, but she would hate to be driving in this weather. How far had her cousin got? To Ludlow perhaps, with its historic castle, now merely a ruin, but even in its destruction impressive, giving to the imaginative a strong sense of what its power must once have been. The redstone fortress on the River Teme conjured up to Sorrel’s eyes vivid impressions of all that it had once been.

Or had Val already driven through Ludlow and into the Welsh hills?

The kettle sang and Sorrel shivered. She felt restless and ill at ease in a way that was unfamiliar to her, alien to her normal placidity and calmness. Her placid nature was one of the things Andrew admired most about her. For some reason or other, that seemed to amuse her family. It was true that as a child she had often been driven to quick-tempered outbursts against her brothers, but she had outgrown such childishness long ago. She sat down in front of her tapestry, trying to concentrate on the stitches. It was an ambitious project, unlike any of her previous work—something she was doing purely for the creative pleasure it gave her; something along the lines of a medieval wall-covering, depicting the four seasons in relation to the traditional work of the farmer’s wife. She was doing it as a special gift for her mother, who had often remarked that the bare galleried landing of the old farmhouse cried out for some kind of tapestry.

The Shropshire farmhouse was even older than the Welsh one, but its Tudor-style beams and wattle and daub walls gave it a soft prettiness that the more sturdy stone Welsh building lacked.

The light was fading rapidly, and Sorrel had to get up to light the lamps and to go upstairs and check on the fire. The bedroom felt deliciously warm now, although the bathroom was still icy cold. She hadn’t investigated the other bedrooms, which she knew would be bare of their furniture and very cold.

Simon had brought down a box from the attic which contained the old diaries, and on impulse Sorrel kneeled down on the floor beside it and lifted one out.

It had been a tradition that the women of the Llewellyn family kept diaries, originally merely to record the events of their working year: to record details of their produce from the kitchen gardens, to list the ingredients of herbal remedies and the money paid out for those household necessities which could not be made at home.

Their farm had been a productive one compared with many, but even so it made Sorrel wince to realise how hard their lives must have been.

She was so deeply engrossed that it was gone six o’clock before she lifted her head from the book. She went to the window and could see nothing in the dark, so, picking up one of the lanterns, she opened the door.

The moment she opened the outer porch door, the wind blew in fierce eddies of snow, the lamp flickering wildly as she held it up.

Beyond the farmyard lay a sea of white. Deep drifts blocked the drive. No car could possibly get through them, and even a Land Rover would have had problems. There was no way Cousin Val was going to be able to make it to the farmhouse now and, mingled with Sorrel’s feeling of relief that she had been spared the three days’ intimate company of a woman she had no idea how she was going to get on with, she had a prickling sensation of apprehension as she wondered where on earth her cousin was.

And it wasn’t even as though the farm had a telephone and she could alert her family to the situation.

If anything, the temperature had dropped even lower, and just those few minutes’ exposure to the cold had turned her fingers numb and was making her shiver. Sorrel was glad to get back inside.

The remoteness of the farm caused her no fear, and neither did she find the thought of her own company disturbing. It struck her that by rights she ought to be yearning for Andrew to be with her, but when she thought of her fiancé it was in the knowledge that, if he were here, he would be alternately complaining and worrying.

Andrew was devoted to his business, fussy to the point of irritation about his appearance and that of the small flat above the bookshop. He would hate the farmhouse with its lack of amenities.

When they got married they planned to find a house in Ludlow, and she would then use Andrew’s present flat as her workshop; at least, that was what she had suggested, and Andrew had seemed to go along with her idea. It was odd, when she thought about it, how they had got engaged. They had been dating casually for a few months, and then Andrew had taken her to see his great-aunt, and it had been while they were there that the subject of an engagement had first come up.

The old lady had been extremely forthright in her views and speech, and she had commented that it was high time Andrew settled down and produced his family; he was too old to remain single any longer without becoming eccentric.

And then it had been on the way home that he had proposed to her … stumbling over the words a little, making her aware of both how much she liked him and how vulnerable he was. He had wanted to buy her a ring, but in the end they had decided to save the money instead. At twenty-four, she felt she was too mature to need the visible trappings of their commitment to one another. Only, recently that commitment hadn’t seemed quite so strong, on either of their parts.

The sudden sound of someone banging on the outer door made her jump. She got up uncertainly and hurried towards the kitchen door, opening it and stepping into the porch.

As she reached for the outer door, the knock sounded again, demanding impatiently that she hurry.

She fumbled with the lock and then turned the handle. The wind caught the door, pushing it back so hard it almost knocked her over, and a very Australian and irritable male voice proclaimed ‘At last! Thank heaven for that.’

Cousin Val … it had to be. But by no strength of the imagination was Cousin Val what she had expected … what any of them had expected.

‘This is the Llewellyn farm, isn’t it?’ the Australian voice demanded, and Sorrel nodded. Her own voice seemed to have deserted her for some reason. Temporary paralysis caused by shock, she told herself, as she stepped back into the kitchen. The shock of discovering that Cousin Val was not, as they had all supposed, a woman, but a man … Very much a man, Sorrel acknowledged as he followed her inside the kitchen, shrugging off a snow-covered sheepskin jacket as he did so, and then bending to tug off his wellingtons.

‘I thought I wasn’t going to make it,’ he told her calmly. ‘I had to abandon my car way down the bottom of the lane. Fact is, I had no idea there was going to be this kind of weather.’ He looked round the kitchen and frowned, picking up her tension.

‘Is something wrong? You did get my letter?’

‘Oh, yes, we got your letter,’ Sorrel told him bitterly. ‘But we assumed, because you signed it Val, that the Val was short for Valerie.’

‘Valerie?’ He stared at her. The snow had melted on his head, revealing thick black hair, well-cut and clinging damply now to his skull.

As he stood up, she realised how tall he was, how very broad-shouldered, even without the enveloping sheepskin.

‘We thought you were a girl,’ Sorrel told him tensely.

He gave her a slow look. His eyes, she realised, were grey—cool and hard as granite.

‘Did you, now?’ He seemed faintly amused. ‘I suppose I should have thought of that. The Val is short for Valentine … a family name on my mother’s side. She was part Russian. So you thought I was a girl. Well, as you can see, I’m not. It doesn’t matter, does it?’

Doesn’t matter? she thought! Just wait until he knew!

‘As a matter of fact, it does,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘You see, this farmhouse is no longer occupied and we didn’t realise you were planning to visit us until it was too late to let you know what a bad time you’d picked—’

‘What do you mean, it isn’t occupied? You’re living here, aren’t you?’

He seemed more annoyed than concerned, and for some reason that annoyed her.

He had walked past her without so much as a ‘by your leave’, and was standing in front of the range. The small canvas bag he had brought in with him was still on the floor, snow melting on it.

‘I left the rest of my stuff in the car. How long is this snow likely to last?’

‘I don’t know!’ Sorrel told him grittily. She had seldom experienced the antagonism towards anyone that she was experiencing now, and never without undue provocation. So what was it about this man, with his air of easy self-assurance, that so rubbed her up the wrong way? She could feel herself bristling like a defensive cat confronted by a large dog. She didn’t want him invading her space. She didn’t want him anywhere near her, she realised.

‘Mm … Well, someone must know. Where’s the rest of the family?’

‘Not here,’ Sorrel told him succinctly, and had the pleasure of seeing him momentarily disconcerted.

CHAPTER TWO

APART from the hissing of the kettle which Sorrel had filled automatically and set on the hob, the kitchen was silent with tension. Then Val broke the tension, saying curtly, ‘Let me get this straight. Your parents don’t have the room to put me up right now, so, thinking that I was a young woman, they press-ganged you into coming up here to welcome me and stay with me until such time as your twin brothers go back to university.’

‘I didn’t say I was press-ganged,’ Sorrel said stiffly.

‘You didn’t have to,’ came the dry response. ‘It was written all over you.’

‘Oh, I see. You only need to take one look at a person and you know immediately what they’re thinking, is that it?’ she snapped at him, and then was appalled with herself. How on earth had she allowed him to get so dangerously under her skin that he could provoke her this easily?

Dangerously under her skin? A tingle of apprehension shivered over her body.

‘It seemed the most sensible solution. If we’d had the slightest idea that you—’

‘Yeah, I know. Nothing would have persuaded you to come up here if you’d known you were going to have to spend three days alone with a man. Hell, I thought modern women were supposed to be fully emancipated. Let me tell you, lady, in Australia it’s the male of the species who needs to protect himself from the female, not the other way around, especially if he’s made himself a bit of money.’

‘Really?’ Sorrel looked down her nose at him. ‘Am I to presume that you’re speaking from personal experience or merely hearsay?’

There was a moment’s silence, during which he gave her a lightning look of such chilling intensity that she almost shivered. She had struck a nerve there, no doubt about it, and privately she was astounded by her own recklessness. It was completely out of character for her to behave like this.

‘Well, now,’ he told her in a calm drawl, ‘to use an American phrase, that’s for me to know and you—’

‘And you can keep the knowledge to yourself,’ Sorrel interrupted him, hot flags of temper burning in her cheeks. She wasn’t used to men who treated her like this: men who dominated their surroundings by their height and breadth, men who practically oozed sexuality in a way that was positively unnerving.

The kettle reached the boil and started to sing. Sorrel reached for it automatically, and then cried out as she forgot about the metal handle and scorched her skin.

Instantly Valentine was at her side, moving with surprising speed for such a large man, whipping up a cloth and removing the kettle from her burned hand, rushing her over to the sink to swish icy-cold water over her hot, blistered skin.

She tried to pull away, to regain control of the situation, but his body trapped her against the sink. She was a tall girl—taller, in fact, than Andrew and her father, but Valentine was at least a head taller. He made her feel fragile and vulnerable in a way that made her heart thump—or was that just the effect of the adrenalin released by her pain?

‘Have you anything to put on this?’ he asked her tersely.

Sorrel nodded. ‘There’s a medicine chest upstairs in the bathroom. I’ll get it. It will be quicker,’ she added, when she saw he was going to object. ‘It’s only a small burn.’

Once upstairs, she refrained from giving in to the cowardly impulse to shut herself in the bedroom and stay there. Her mother had never dreamed of this outcome when she had cosily announced that Sorrel and her cousin could share the large double bed.

Valentine would simply have to sleep downstairs. But on what? There were only a couple of easy chairs in the kitchen, and no spare bedding at all.

When she got back downstairs, she found him pouring out two mugs of tea. He handed her one of the mugs, and although the tea was rather stronger than she liked she took it gratefully.

‘So, how long are we likely to be cooped up here together?’ he asked her once she had assured him that her hand, although painful, was not badly burned.

‘Well, the twins go back to university at the end of the week, but I don’t know how long the snow will last. Simon should be able to get through with the Land Rover.’

‘But he won’t arrive for another three days?’

Sorrel shook her head.

‘Well, I guess unless the snow clears, we’re stuck with one another.’ He saw her face pale and raised his eyebrows.

‘Burn bothering you?’

‘No,’ Sorrel told him shortly, in a voice that announced that she didn’t like his questions.

‘Well, something is,’ he persisted, ignoring her coldness. ‘Look, it’s a long time since I last drove through snow, and since you’ve made it plain just how you feel about my company, if you could just show me where I’m supposed to sleep …’ He saw her face and frowned.

‘Now what’s wrong?’

There was no way she could avoid it. She looked at him and said hollowly, ‘There’s only one bedroom—furnished, I mean. You see, when Uncle Giles left, Mum and Dad moved the furniture out, just leaving the one bed for Simon when he comes here during the summer.’

His eyes narrowed disconcertingly, suddenly boring into her with an intentness nothing in his previous demeanour had led her to expect. She had the odd notion that she was suddenly seeing the real man, and that the cloak of bonhomie and laid-back insouciance he had shown her before was just exactly that. It gave her an uncomfortable jolt to be subjected to that hard grey stare.

‘What do you mean, one bed?’

‘Exactly what I said,’ Sorrel mumbled uncomfortably. ‘The old bed that belonged to Gran and Gramps was so heavy that Mum and Dad left it. I brought clean bedding with me, of course, but only enough for that bed.’

There was a long pause, and then he said softly, ‘I see … You mean that because your mother assumed that Val was short for Valerie and that I was therefore female, she saw no harm in the two of us sharing a bed.’

‘She was panic-stricken,’ Sorrel told him. ‘She had no idea what to do. It was too late to get in touch with you to let you know the situation.’

‘And that’s why you’ve been behaving like a cat walking on hot desert sand, is it? The thought of having to sleep with me …’

‘I am not going to sleep with you,’ Sorrel told him indignantly, her face flaming. ‘And yes, of course I was a little … embarrassed.’

‘No need to be on my behalf,’ he told her drily. ‘You won’t be the first woman I’ve shared a bed with.’

Sorrel stared at him, almost struck dumb with anger at his casual mockery of her. When she got her voice back, she said tightly, ‘No, I’m sure I’m not. But unlike you, I haven’t—’ She broke off abruptly, but it was too late.

‘You wouldn’t by any chance be trying to tell me that you’re still a virgin, would you?’

The way he said it made it sound as though she was some kind of freak, Sorrel thought wretchedly. Oh, what on earth had possessed her to be so stupid? Why hadn’t she just kept quiet? She ached to be able to make some light-hearted comment that would cover her mistake and deceive him, but one look into those steel-grey eyes warned her that it was impossible. It was like looking into the heart of a steel trap.

‘A virgin,’ he mused, watching her. ‘And you must be what … twenty-five—twenty-six?’

‘Twenty-four, actually,’ Sorrel snapped at him.

‘You’re not bad looking. Nice body … good legs,’ he added appreciatively, skimming her body with thoughtful scrutiny. It’s hard to guess what your breasts are like under that sweater, but my guess—’

He broke off as Sorrel gasped in indignation.

‘Something wrong,’ he asked her, lifting dark eyebrows.

‘When I want your opinion on my body, I’ll ask for it,’ Sorrel told him grimly.

‘No need to get so uptight. I was just curious to know why a woman like you hasn’t had a lover. When I was your age …’

He was somewhere in his mid-thirties, Sorrel guessed, although, with the deep tanning of his skin and the tiny lines that fanned out from his eyes, it was hard to be accurate. There was certainly no grey in his hair. No discernible excess of flesh on his hard-muscled frame.

‘I have no wish to know about your sexual experiences,’ Sorrel told him frigidly.

‘No man in your life, eh? Now …’

Sorrel had had enough. ‘As a matter of fact, there is a man in my life. I’m engaged to be married, and if Andrew has too much respect for me to … to rush me into bed, then …’

She broke off as she heard his laughter. Hot spots of colour burned in her face as she glared at him.

‘Too much respect? More like not enough guts,’ Val told her forthrightly. ‘What kind of man is he?’

‘A decent, respectable, hardworking kind,’ Sorrel told him grittily. ‘Not that it’s any business of yours.’

He was looking at her rather oddly, an almost devilish glint of amusement in his eyes.

‘I see. And I suppose the sober, respectable … worthy fiancé would not approve of you spending the next three days and nights alone here with me?’

Sorrel opened her mouth to protest that Andrew would understand, and then she remembered how very narrow-minded he could be on occasions, how much importance he placed on respectability, and she swallowed back the words. He would understand, of course he would. And no one outside the family need know. The kind of speculation and gossip that Andrew would abhor wasn’t going to arise because no one outside the family would ever know, would they?

She looked up and found that Val was watching her with cool amusement.

‘Of course Andrew would understand,’ she lied, tilting her chin and staring him down. ‘He trusts me implicitly, and besides, there’s no question of anything … well, illicit. It’s just that there’s been a mistake.’

‘He trusts you, but he doesn’t desire you. Sounds an odd basis for a lifetime commitment to me.’

‘Just because sex isn’t the most important part of our relationship, that’s no reason to sneer at it,’ Sorrel told him angrily.

‘As far as I understand it, sex doesn’t form any part of your relationship,’ Val threw back at her. ‘Lord, I thought your kind had gone out with the Victorians. What do the rest of the family think about this engagement?’

‘They … they like Andrew,’ Sorrel fibbed valiantly.

‘You don’t sound so certain. It seems to me that this engagement of yours has been a bad mistake.’

Sorrel couldn’t believe her ears. She knew that Australians believed in frank speaking, but this was sheer rudeness. Thoroughly affronted, she opened her mouth to tell him that her private life was no concern of his when he forestalled her by changing the subject and saying, ‘Any chance of anything to eat? We were late landing at Heathrow, and I never eat plane food.’