bit. It gave her the chance to look at him, and he was, without exception, the most delectable man she had ever set eyes on. ‘Hello,’ she answered. ‘Who are you?’
He grinned. ‘Well, actually I’m wearing two hats this week.’
Kelly blinked. ‘Excuse me? Your head is bare.’
His eyes narrowed, and he laughed—the richest, deepest, most mesmerising sound she could imagine. ‘Sorry. What I mean is that I’m one of the medical students running the course, and I ...’ And then his gaze fell to the cheap and battered old suitcase she was clutching, and his eyes softened. ‘Come inside. You must be tired after your journey. Here, let me carry your bags for you,’ and he took them from her without waiting for her assent. ‘Come with me. I’ll show you to your room. You’re the first to arrive. We weren’t expecting anyone until this evening.’
‘I—caught the early train,’ faltered Kelly, as she followed him up the steps leading to the house. The cheaper train, the bargain ticket, planning to kill time looking around the village of Little Merton. Except that when she had arrived in Little Merton there had been absolutely nothing to see, so she had come straight on up to the house. ‘I can always go away and come back later,’ she ventured.
‘What to do? There’s not a lot to see in Little Merton!’
‘So I noticed,’ remarked Kelly drily, and he turned his head to stare down at her again, giving her another of those slow smiles. She wondered if he knew just how attractive those smiles were—he must do!
Kelly followed him into the vast entrance hall, with him still holding her bags. No one had ever carried her bags for her before; in her world, women struggled with the heavy items, like pack-horses for the most part. She rather liked this show of masculine strength, and of courtesy. It made her feel fragile and protected, and rather cherished.
She stared around the hall. She had never imagined that a place could be so large and so beautiful, without being in the least bit ostentatious. There was none of the over-the-top gold scrolling which had abounded in Hampton Court. Instead, just an air of quiet loveliness, and the sensation of continuity down through the ages, of treasures being treasured and passed on for the next generation to enjoy.
‘It’s quite perfect,’ said Kelly simply.
He looked down at her. ‘Isn’t it?’ he said quietly. ‘I’m glad you like it.’
It didn’t occur to her to ask why. She just assumed that, like her, he had an eye for beautiful things.
He showed her upstairs to her room, decorated in a striking shade of yellow with soft sage-green fittings. It was just like being at the centre of a daffodil, thought Kelly fancifully.
‘It’s rather small, I’m afraid,’ he apologised. ‘But we’ve put some of the boys in the larger rooms, sharing.’
Small? Kelly gulped. It was palatial! She had spent the last fifteen years sharing a shoe-box of a room with a sister whose idea of tidying up was to chuck all the mess into an already overflowing cupboard! ‘It’s lovely,’ she told him, wandering over to the window. ‘And oh—’ her gaze was suddenly arrested by the tantalising glitter of sunlight on water in the distance ‘—is that a lake I can see?’
‘Mmm.’ He came to stand beside her. ‘We have black swans nesting there. Very rare and very beautiful. I’ll show you later if you like.’
‘I’d like that very much.’
He smiled.
She was suddenly very conscious of just how tall he was, how broad his shoulders; aware too of the powerful thrust of his thighs, similarly clad in denim more faded than her own jeans. She wasn’t used to being alone in bedrooms with strange men, she thought, her heart beating hard, but he seemed unconcerned by his surroundings. But then, why should he not be? He was a medical student, and about twenty-four, she guessed. He would not look twice at a seventeen-year-old schoolgirl.
All the same, she felt that it was probably wise to establish a more formal footing.
‘Which medical school are you at?’ she enquired politely.
‘St Jude’s. I’m in my final year. How about you?’
‘Another year of A-levels, then I’m hoping to get a place at St Christopher’s.’
He frowned. ‘So you’re—how old?’
‘Seventeen— just!’ she smiled, disconcerted to see an expression of disquiet pass over his features. ‘There’s nothing wrong, is there?’
He shook his head. ‘I somehow thought that you were older than that. Most of the students here are just about to go up to medical school. Some are even in their first year. You must be very good to be here.’ The grey eyes were questioning.
Kelly smiled, not falling into the trap of false modesty, knowing her own worth and ability as a student. ‘You’ll have to be the judge of that,’ she answered coolly.
Their eyes met, his giving a brief but unmistakably appreciative flash, and she found that she could not look away, that his face seemed to be at the centre of her whole universe right at that moment. She became aware of other things too, things that up until now she had only read about in biology textbooks: the sudden drying of her mouth and the hammering of her heart. The tightening of her breasts, as though they had become heavy and engorged with blood. And the sudden rucking of her nipples—exquisite and painful and highly disturbing.
Kelly wasn’t stupid. She had grown up in a neighbourhood where girls experimented sexually with boys from as early an age as fourteen, and up until now she had always been disapproving and highly critical of such behaviour. Now, for the first time in her life, she acknowledged the dangerous and potent power of sexual attraction.
She turned away, wondering if he had seen the betraying signs of that attraction in her body. ‘I’d better unpack,’ she said awkwardly. ‘Thanks for showing me to my room ...’ She hesitated. ‘I don’t even know your name.’
He paused for a moment before answering. ‘It’s Randall,’ he told her. ‘And yours?’
‘Kelly. Kelly Hartley.’
‘Because your eyes are Kelly-green?’ he hazarded.
She shook her head and laughed. ‘My mother says I was named after Grace Kelly, but my father disagrees. He says it was Ned Kelly—the bandit!’
He laughed too, then stayed her with a light touch of his hand on her forearm as she moved towards the tatty suitcase which looked ridiculously out of place amidst the restrained elegance of the room. ‘Don’t unpack now—there’ll be plenty of time for that later. It’s such a glorious day. Why don’t you let me show you something of the countryside? We could have lunch somewhere. That’s if you’d like to?’
She would like to very much, although the sensible, studious Kelly could think of all kinds of reasons why she shouldn’t go gallivanting off to lunch with someone she had barely met. But something in the soft silver-grey of his eyes was proving to be impossibly enticing. He was not the first man to have asked her out, but he was the first one she had ever said yes to.
She grinned. ‘I’d love to. Do I need to change?’
He
