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.’
