made of her business life, she still felt this emptiness, this yearning, this need to be fulfilled as a woman.
She shivered a little, all too well able to imagine how the man downstairs would laugh at that kind of vulnerability. Even Tom, great friend though he was, had not really understood this deep-rooted need she had to love and be loved in return. At times she didn’t even understand it herself, resenting its hold on her, wishing there was some way she could destroy it so that it never made her vulnerable again.
If she couldn’t destroy her own inner need, then at least she could ensure that no man ever got close enough to use it against her, manipulating her, deceiving her.
She moved restlessly, conscious of a sharp, biting anger that fate had decreed that she should be rendered so helpless and vulnerable that she had had no option but to accept Daniel’s help.
Why couldn’t it have been another woman who had found her there on the doorstep? Why did it have to be an unknown man—a man, moreover, who, despite his shabby clothes and generally down-at-heel appearance, seemed to exude power and strength in a way that only seemed to reinforce her own appalling weakness?
Despite what the doctor had said, despite his warnings, the sooner she moved into Tom’s cottage and away from Daniel, the better.
She said as much to Daniel himself half an hour later when he came upstairs, glibly omitting to tell him that while the doctor had said she might get up he had also warned her against overdoing things.
‘I really do feel I’ve trespassed on your time and hospitality far too long,’ she told him coolly, adopting her most businesslike manner and trying not to feel acutely conscious of the fact that all she was wearing was one of his shirts. ‘And the doctor agrees with me that I am now well enough to manage on my own.’
Was there just a suspicion of a betraying tremor in her voice as she spoke this small fib? Was she tilting her chin just a little too much as though defying him to argue with her, and, when he didn’t, when he simply continued to regard her thoughtfully, was that really a tiny thread of disappointment that tangled with her relief, increasing her anxiety to escape to the security and privacy of Tom’s cottage?
‘If you’re sure you can manage,’he said at last.
‘Yes. Yes, I am,’ and then, aware that it might seem as though she was not aware of all that he had done for her, she added quickly, ‘I’m very grateful to you of course, and if there’s anything I can do to repay you…’
The smile he gave her almost seemed to mock her as though he knew exactly how desperate she was to escape from him.
‘I still don’t even know your name,’ she told him fretfully, hating the way she felt at such a disadvantage. Now that she was fully conscious again, she was acutely aware of her unmade-up face and tousled hair, her borrowed and unconventional nightshirt, while he stood watching her armoured in the secure protection of his jeans and shirt. Now when it was the last thing she wanted to do, she had a series of illuminating and embarrassing mental memories of hazy moments of consciousness when she had called out for help, and he had been there, his hands holding her, soothing her, his movements calm and sure as though he had known instinctively what to do.
No nurse however professional could have cared for her so conscientiously. She was overwhelmingly grateful to him, and at the same time she was intensely self-conscious and embarrassed about the intimacies which had passed between them; intimacies which, even if she had been only half conscious at the time and in no fit state to do anything other than submit thankfully to his care, had remained uncomfortably sharply etched in her memory.
She remembered after one particularly gruelling bout of sickness how he had stripped off her clothes, and gently sponged her skin, almost seeming to know how intensely she longed to feel the clean coolness of fresh water on her body washing away the smell and heat of her nausea.
Looking at him now, it seemed impossible that he had shown such care, such…such tenderness. She felt her face grow hot with guilt and anger. What was the matter with her? He had simply done what he had felt necessary. In this part of the world neighbours helped one another, the doctor had told her that. There was no reason for her to feel so intensely aware of him—so intensely aware of him in fact that it was as though her flesh had somehow memorised the touch of his hands to such an extent that it now—
She swallowed hard, reining in her runaway thoughts, and almost blurted out, ‘I can’t stay here any longer.’
She saw the way his eyebrows drew together, and bit her lip. What on earth was the matter with her? She was behaving like a fool. Like a woman suddenly terrified of intimacy with a man for whom she felt a dangerous sexual awareness, and there was nothing like that about this situation.
There had been nothing remotely sexual in the way he had helped her. There was nothing in his manner now to indicate any degree of sexual awareness of her as a woman. No, the awareness was all on her side, she acknowledged bitterly. And yet why should she be aware of him? He wasn’t good-looking in the fairhaired, smooth way which Giles had been. He was too rugged, too roughly hewn, too powerfully male to have that kind of appeal. And even if there was nothing outwardly aggressively sexual about him, she had an instinctive knowledge that he was the kind of man that women would find strongly sexual. Not the kind of man who appealed to her at all. She had always avoided that particular type, finding them slightly intimidating, and they had normally avoided her, obviously realising that she was not the intensely sexually responsive type.
It was her relationship with Giles that had left her so vulnerable, so bruised and so lacking in self-worth that she had become acutely conscious of this man as a man. When he took a step towards her she found she was actually trembling. He saw it and frowned.
‘You’re still too weak to get up yet,’ he told her curtly. ‘You’ll stay here tonight and then in the morning, if you’re feeling up to it, we’ll see about getting you moved into the other cottage.’
She ought to have objected, to have told him that she was the one making the decisions, that it was her right to make them, that she was an adult woman and had no intentions of allowing him to dictate to her in any way, but she was still trembling inside, still desperately conscious of the fact that she wished he would move away from her.
‘I came up to see if you could manage some home-made broth,’ he told her, changing the subject.
Home-made broth. She stared at him as though he read her mind; he gave her a brief smile and told her, ‘No, I haven’t made it myself. The farmer’s wife gave it to me when I went to get the milk and eggs. She’d heard that you weren’t well.’
‘The farm—is it far?’ Angelica asked him.
‘Not really; a couple of miles, that’s all. I walk over every other day or so.’
A couple of miles. She swallowed hard. In London the furthest she ever walked was a hundred yards or so. The thought of walking a couple of miles in her present condition made her all too glad that she had her car. And then, without meaning to do so, she glanced automatically at Daniel’s lame leg.
‘The exercise is good for it,’ he told her curtly, so obviously following her train of thought that she flushed with guilt and embarrassment.
‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I was just—’
‘You were wondering how I managed to walk that far,’ Daniel supplied carelessly for her. ‘It wasn’t easy at first,
