‘You really should make an attempt to get up earlier.’
She turned to look at him. ‘Excuse me?’
He was closer than she realised and his chin, rough with an overnight growth of beard, brushed against her cheek. It intensified the tingle, sent her temperature up a degree. Deadly dangerous. She should move.
Closer…
‘It’s gone nine,’ he pointed out. ‘I assumed you were late for work?’
His hair was dark and thick. He’d worn it longer as a youth, curling over his neck, falling sexily into his eyes. These days it was cut with precision. Even the tumble into the ditch had done no more than feather a cowlick across his forehead. And if possible, the effect was even more devastating.
‘I am,’ she admitted, ‘but not because I overslept.’
His breath was warm against her temple and her skin seemed to tingle, as if drawn by his closeness.
She really should move. Put some distance between them.
She’d never been close enough to see the colour of his eyes before. They were very dark and she’d always imagined, in her head, they were the blue-grey of wet slate, but in this light they seemed to be green. Or was it simply the spring bright tunnel of leaves that lent them a greenish glow?
He raised an eyebrow as he opened a clasp knife. ‘You had something more interesting to keep you in bed?’
‘You could say that.’ In her vegetable bed, anyway, but if he chose to think there was a man interested in undoing her buttons she could live with that. ‘I’m more concerned about my ten o’clock appointment at the Town Hall with the chairman of the Planning Committee.’
He glanced at his watch. ‘You’re not going to make it.’
‘No.’ There were worst things than crashing into a ditch and losing her job was one of them. ‘If you got a move on I could call him before I’m late and reschedule for later today.’
‘Have a care, Miss Thackeray,’ he warned, glancing up at her, ‘or I’ll leave you where you are.’
About to point out that all she had to do was undo her jacket and she could free herself, she thought better of it.
If Hal North was working for the estate he probably knew far more than the planning department about what was going on.
‘I was going to talk to him about the Cranbrook Park estate,’ she said, moving her hand away from her jacket button. ‘There’s a rumour going round that a property developer has bought it.’
The rumour of a sale was real enough. As for the rest, she was just fishing and most people couldn’t wait to tell you that you were wrong, tell you what they knew.
‘And why would that be of interest to you?’
Yes, well, Hal North hadn’t been like most boys and it seemed he wasn’t like most men, either.
‘The estate is my landlord,’ she said. ‘I have a vested interest in what happens to it.’
‘You have a lease.’
‘Well, yes…’ With barely three months left to run. ‘But I’ve known Sir Robert since I was four years old. I can’t expect a new owner to have the same concern for his tenants. He might not want to renew it and if he did, he’ll certainly raise the rent.’ Something else to worry about. It was vital she keep her job. ‘And then there are the rumours about a light industrial estate at my end of the village.’
‘Not in my backyard?’ he mocked.
‘Yours, too,’ she replied, going for broke. ‘I live in Primrose Cottage.’
‘What about the jobs that light industry would bring to the area?’ he replied, apparently unmoved by the threat to his childhood home. ‘Don’t you care about that angle? What about young Gary Harker?’
‘I’m a journalist.’ A rather grand title for someone working on the news desk of the local paper. ‘I’m interested in all the angles. Protecting the countryside has its place, too.’
‘For the privileged few.’
‘The estate has always been a local amenity.’
‘Not if you’re a fisherman,’ he reminded her. ‘I assume, since you’re covering local issues that you work for the local rag?’
‘The Observer, yes,’ she said, doing her best to ignore his sarcasm, keep a smile on her face. She wanted to know what he knew.
‘All that expensive education and that’s the best you could do?’
‘That’s an outrageous thing to say!’
Oops… There went her smile.
But it explained why, despite the fact that she’d been a skinny kid, totally beneath his notice, he had remembered her. Her pink and grey Dower House school uniform had stood out amongst the bright red Maybridge High sweatshirts like a lily on a dung heap. Or a sore thumb. Depending on your point of view.
The other children in the village had mocked her difference. She’d pretended not to care, but she’d envied them their sameness. Had wanted to be one of them, to belong to that close-knit group clustered around the bus stop every morning when she was driven past in the opposite direction.
‘You were headed for Oxbridge according to your mother. Some high-flying media job.’
‘Was I?’ she asked, as if she didn’t recall every moment of toe-curling embarrassment as her mother held forth in the village shop. She might have been oblivious, but Claire had known that they were both the object of derision. ‘Obviously I wasn’t as bright as she thought I was.’
‘And the real reason?’
She should be flattered that he didn’t believe her, but it only brought back the turmoil, the misery of a very bad time.
‘It must have been having a baby that did it.’ If he was back in the village he’d find out soon enough. ‘Miss Snooty Smartyhat brought down to size by her hormones. It was a big story at the time.’
‘I can imagine. Anyone I know? The father?’ he added, as if she didn’t know what he meant.
‘There aren’t many people left in the village who you’ll remember,’ she said, not wanting to go there. Even after all these years the crash of love’s young dream as it hurtled to earth still hurt… ‘As you pointed out, there aren’t any jobs on the estate for our generation.’ Few jobs for anyone. Sir Robert’s fortunes had been teetering on the brink for years. Cheap imports had ruined his business and with his factories closed, the estate—a money sink—had lost the income which kept it going.
The Hall was in desperate need of repair. Some of the outbuildings were on the point of falling down and many of the hedges and fences were no longer stock proof.
Cue Archie.
‘No one who’ll remember me is what I
