thought Laura, he wished he could!
He went on fiercely, ‘But I can refuse to let anyone who buys the place use my land as an access road, so be warned! If you do buy Fern Cottage you’ll be buying yourself a lot of trouble.’
‘Don’t you threaten me!’ Laura bit back at him, her head up and her green eyes very angry.
‘I’m not threatening, I’m warning,’ Josh Kern said very softly, and something in that dark face made her skin turn cold.
The other girls gazed, transfixed, their eyes wide and incredulous.
Laura knew how they felt; this man was not someone you could ignore or forget. He had such penetrating eyes; in his rage they turned silvery, as though white-hot.
Mr Dale cleared his throat and nervously suggested, ‘Shall we go and look round the cottage now, Miss Grainger?’
‘Yes,’ she murmured, her eyes still held by Josh Kern’s menacing stare.
‘I meant every word,’ he said in that soft, dangerous voice, and she believed him. He had the look of a man who always meant what he said.
Maybe she should forget any idea of buying Fern Cottage?
CHAPTER TWO
‘HE CAN’T do anything to stop us using his road! If someone lived in that cottage for years and used his road all that time then that makes it a legal right of way,’ Patrick said on the phone later that day when Laura rang him to report on the cottage.
‘That’s what Mr Dale said. He told me to ignore the threats; there was no way we could be denied access if we bought the cottage.’
‘Mind you,’ Patrick said thoughtfully, ‘this farmer chap...what did you say his name was?’
‘Josh Kern,’ said Laura, investing the name with scorn.
Patrick gave a hoarse crow of amusement. ‘Josh Kern! How could I forget that? But seriously, darling, he could make life rather awkward, couldn’t he? I wonder if it’s worth it to go ahead? Do we want to find ourselves in the middle of a war with our neighbours?’
‘I’m not being frightened off by some hulking great brute of a farmer huffing and puffing at me!’
‘I can’t imagine you being scared, even by a hulking great brute.’ Patrick laughed, then more seriously added, ‘I’m sorry I wasn’t there to take him on, darling. Damn this flu; why do illnesses always come at such inconvenient times? From what you say about the cottage it’s just what we were looking for, and the price is way below what we would have expected. We should have guessed there would be snags. What did you say to Dale?’
‘That you’d have to see the cottage before we could give him a decision, so we have time to think about it. I’m glad your headache’s better, even if your throat sounds worse. Shall I come round tomorrow morning and cook you some lunch?’
‘I don’t want you to catch this, Laura. Better not come over. I’m not hungry, anyway. I’m drinking lots of fruit juice and I ate an orange just now. I’ve got plenty of eggs and cheese; I can always whip up an omelette if I do get hungry.’
Wryly, she said, ‘And your omelettes are ten times better than mine! In fact, anything you cook is ten times better.’
He laughed, but didn’t deny it. Instead he yawned, then said, ‘Sorry, darling...I’ve been sleeping on and off all day, but I still seem very tired.’
‘Then I’ll let you get back to sleep,’ she said. ‘Get well soon; I miss you.’
She put the phone down and stared out of the window at the busy York street below. Yes, it was a pity Patrick hadn’t been with her. Maybe then that man wouldn’t have talked to her, looked at her, the way he had. Her face ran with scarlet, remembering Josh Kern’s contemptuous eyes as he’d looked her up and down. She could never remember meeting anyone she disliked more; it had been like running into a stone wall. Her whole body still ached with the shock of it.
‘Who does he think he is?’ she had demanded of Mr Dale after Josh Kern had climbed back on to his tractor and driven away.
‘He knows who he is! He’s Josh Kern of Kern House, and he owns all this,’ Mr Dale had said drily, waving an arm around in a circle. ‘Four hundred acres of good farm land, half arable; last year he had a fairish crop of barley, but he runs stock, too. A good dairy herd—Friesians. He’s starting to run sheep on the hill up there too now, I gather. That’s new. His father never had sheep, never did much with that land, except a bit of rough shooting. Plenty of rabbits and some game birds up there—I’ve shot with him in the past. Not much use for anything else, that land, old Jack Kern always said; not worth clearing the gorse and heather, but upland sheep can live on very little. Josh Kern’s a canny chap; he’s done some controlled burning up there, rid the land of most of the scrub, and ploughed it up.’
Mr Dale looked respectfully and wryly after the farmer, who was disappearing into another field. ‘Aye, Josh works like a demon himself, and he gets good work out of his men—he expects his land to work, too.’
‘If you ask me, he expects too much!’ Laura muttered, still angry after the encounter with Josh Kern. ‘And he isn’t threatening me and getting away with it!’
‘Good for you, then,’ said Mr Dale, looking rather relieved. ‘I was hoping you wouldn’t let Josh scare you away.’
Her eyes narrowed. ‘Has he scared many would-be buyers away?’
Mr Dale didn’t answer. He pretended not to hear her, watching the girls, who, now that all the excitement was over, had tripped, giggling and chattering, into the cottage garden.
‘Eeh...like a flock of starlings, aren’t they?’ Mr Dale said, beaming after them. ‘Well, now, Miss Grainger, shall we go inside and look round?’
Laura followed him, but she wasn’t going to let him drop the subject of Josh Kern.
‘Was it his father who sold this cottage to the present owner?’ she asked the estate agent, who looked reluctantly at her, as he unlocked the front door.
‘Jack Kern didn’t sell it to her, he gave it,’ he said at last, rolling an expressive eye, and Laura’s brows shot up.
‘Gave it?’
‘Oh, aye,’ he said, waving her past him into the cottage. The models surged in after her and spread out around the ground floor of the cottage like spilt marbles, running from room to room, shouting to each other.
Mr Dale gestured around them. ‘The current owner had this porch hallway built on to the front of the cottage. The front door used to open right on to the parlour—that was how they built them a couple of hundred years ago. Through here, miss. There were two little rooms downstairs which have been knocked into one big one.’
Laura walked into the sunlit room and looked with pleasure at the rough stone walls, the arched fireplace with a blue slate hearth, the polished floorboards on which lay a few scattered blue and white rugs. There was a minimum of furniture—dark blue velvet curtains, a couch upholstered in matching material,
