Her parents had never understood her decision to come and live and work in Avon. They had pleaded with her to change her mind, but she had remained steadfast, and she had had the report of her doctor to back her up. Peace and tranquillity, relief from pressure, a need to recuperate and gather up her mental strength—that was what he had advised.
That had been five years ago. Now her parents accepted, albeit reluctantly, that she lived a different life from theirs.
Her mother had never given up trying to coax her back to London. Every few months she had a fresh attempt—still hoping, perhaps, for that all-important grandson—but Jessica shied away from the commitment that marriage involved. She was free for the first time in her life, and that was the way she intended to stay. Marriage meant responsibilities, duties, putting others’ feelings first…She didn’t want that.
In her hall she picked up her parcel and let herself out into the small front garden. The sun was warm, but the air cool once she stepped into the shadows. She paused to admire the dwarf Michaelmas daisies she had planted much earlier in the year. Their rich massing of purple, mauve and lilac pleased her and she bent to touch their petals gently. Gardening was her second love, and she planted her garden in much the same way as she worked on her tapestries, but with the artist’s fine eye for colour and form.
The post office was the only shop in the village; the nearest garage was ten miles away in the small market town, and the post office was very much the focus of village life. Mrs Gillingham, who ran it, knew all the local gossip and passed it on to her customers with genial impartiality. Jessica interested her. It was unusual for so young and pretty a woman to live so very much alone. Martha Gillingham put her single state down to a broken romance in her past, romantically assuming that it was this relationship which had led to her arrival in the village and to her single state.
She was quite wrong.
Jessica had never been in love. Initially because there had never been time. At university she had worked desperately hard for her degree, terrified of disappointing her parents’ hopes for her, and then when she joined the bank everyone had known exactly who she was—the daughter of the bank’s chairman—and that knowledge had isolated her from the other young people working there.
And then, after what had happened, the last thing on her mind had been falling in love. She liked her single state and was content with it, but something in the speculative way Mrs Gillingham always questioned her about her private life made her feel raw and hurt inside, as though the postmistress had uncovered a wound she hadn’t known was there.
Not that there was anything malicious in her questions. She was just inquisitive, and over the years Jessica had learned to parry them with tact and diplomacy.
Today she had the attention of the postmistress to herself. She was just waiting for her parcel to be weighed when she felt the cold rush of air behind her as the door opened.
The postmistress stopped what she was doing to smile warmly at the newcomer, exclaiming, ‘Good morning, Mr Hayward! Are you all settled in yet?’
‘Not yet, I’m afraid.’
The man had a deep, pleasant voice, and even without looking at him Jessica knew that he was smiling. She had heard from the milkman about this newcomer who had moved into the once lovely, but now derelict Carolean house on the outskirts of the village, but so far she hadn’t actually met him.
‘In fact, I was wondering if you could help me,’ he was saying, and then added, ‘but please finish serving this young lady first.’
The faint touch of reproof in his voice startled Jessica, giving the words far more than the form of mere good manners.
She turned round instinctively and was confronted by a tall, almost overpoweringly male man, dressed in jeans similar to her own and a thick sweater over a woollen shirt, his dark hair flecked with what looked like spots of white paint, and a rather grim expression in his eyes.
There was something about him that suggested that he wasn’t the kind to suffer fools gladly. All Jessica knew about him was that he had bought the house at auction, and that he was planning to virtually camp out in it while the builders worked to make it habitable.
He had arrived in the village only that weekend, and had apparently been having most of his meals at the Bell, the local pub, because the kitchen up at the house was unusable.
She had heard that he worked in London, and that being the case Jessica would have thought it would be more sensible of him to stay there at least until such time as his house was habitable.
Mrs Gillingham had finished weighing the parcel, and, summing up the situation with a skilled and speedy eye, quickly performed introductions, giving Jessica no option but to take the hard brown hand extended to her and to respond to his quick ‘Please call me Daniel,’ with a similarly friendly gesture.
‘Jessica Collingwood…’ His eyebrows drew together briefly, as though somehow he was disconcerted, the pressure of his grip hardening slightly, and then he was relaxing, releasing her and saying evenly, ‘Jessica—it suits you.’
And yet Jessica had the impression that the flattery was an absent-minded means of deflecting her attention away from that momentary tense surprise that had leapt to his eyes as he’d repeated her name.
Mrs Gillingham, eyeing them with satisfaction, went on enlighteningly. ‘Jessica makes tapestries, Mr Hayward. You’ll have to go and look at her work,’she added archly. ‘It’s just the sort of thing you’re going to need for that house of yours.’
Jessica gritted her teeth at this piece of arch manipulation and hoped that Daniel Hayward would realise that this arrant piece of salesmanship was not at her instigation.
It seemed he did, because he gave her a warm, reassuring smile and then said ruefully, ‘Unfortunately, before I can hang any tapestries on them I’m going to have to have some walls. This…’ he touched his hair gingerly ‘…is the result of an unsafe ceiling collapsing on me this morning.’ His face suddenly went grim and Jessica shivered, recognising that here was the real man, the pure male essence of him in the hard, flat determination she could read in his eyes.
‘I’ve sacked the builder I was using for negligence, and I was hoping you might be able to give me the names of some others from whom I might get estimates…’
Mrs Gillingham pursed her mouth, trying not to look flattered by this appeal. ‘Well, there’s Ron Todd. He does a lot of work hereabouts…and then there’s that man you had to do your kitchen, Jessica. What’s his name?’
‘Alan Pierce,’ Jessica informed her, helplessly being drawn into the conversation, wanting to stay and bask in the warm admiration she could read so clearly in Daniel Hayward’s lion-gold eyes, and at the same time wanting desperately to escape before she became helplessly involved in something she sensed instinctively was dangerous.
‘Oh, yes, that’s it…Well, he’s very good. Made a fine job of Jessica’s kitchen. You ought to see it…’
Numbly Jessica recognised that she was being given a very firm push in the direction Mrs Gillingham had decided she was going to take.
No need to enquire if Daniel Hayward was married or otherwise attached. Mrs Gillingham was a strict moralist, and if she was playing matchmaker then it could only be in the knowledge that he was single.
Helplessly,
