quietly hived off towards the expertly landscaped wooded area, moving steadily away from the noise of the party.
It was late but not particularly cool and the fresh air was doing wonders for her fuzzy head. Indeed, her spirits were on the up when she was aware of movement in a little clearing in the trees. Goodness only knew how they had managed to do it, but the copse was cleverly interspersed with small benches that had been fashioned roughly out of gnarled tree trunks, so that at first glance they looked like part of the natural scenery. Amy went into immediate stealthy mode and didn’t even bother to try and fight her curiosity.
She peered, eventually making out who the two people on the bench were. It was dark, but not completely. Moonlight cast a dull, ephemeral light and as the couple moved apart for a few seconds she saw them clearly. The woman she didn’t recognise. Long, poker-straight hair, very fair skin and a body that was in a state of semi undress.
The man…well, the man…
She felt a tide of nausea rise up her throat and she took a couple of steps backwards, standing perfectly still when a twig snapped under her foot, but the couple were too engrossed in one another to hear the snapping of any twig. In fact, they would probably have been deaf to an approaching intercity train. When he pulled the woman so that she could straddle him, Amy fled.
Her heart was pounding. She tried hard to be quiet, but after five minutes the need to get as far away from the sight of James wrapped around a woman was so great that she stopped giving a damn how much noise she made.
She hit some part of the gardens but she wasn’t sure which part because she could no longer see the house, nor could she hear the strains of the music.
She was sharing a bedroom with Claire, who had turned in a while before. Who was going to miss her?
Amy willed herself to stop running and to get her breathing under control. Okay, here were the facts. The man she was mad about was involved with someone else. She was also lost. The first she would have to put on hold until she could cry about it later. The second she would have to sort out right away or else risk spending the night somewhere in the acres of estate with only her thoughts for company.
With typical pluckiness, Amy drew in a deep breath and did what every good Girl Guide book would suggest at a time like this. She looked for a tall tree. Not too hard. Actually, they all looked pretty tall. Enormous, in fact, to someone pretty short, but, drawing in a deep breath, she kicked off her useless strappy sandals, and yet again wished she were decked out in something more suitable—talk about getting her dress code all wrong—and began to climb.
She got high enough to panic but not nearly high enough to see where the house was, at which point she threw caution to the winds and began yelling her head off.
When she next got up the courage to look down, it was to see the unmistakable shape of the gardener staring up at her. Of course, it would be the gardener.
‘I’m stuck!’
‘Why are you up a tree?’ Rafael felt his lips twitch. That blonde tangle of hair announced its owner with a glaring lack of subtlety.
‘Never mind that! You need to get me down!’
‘Sorry, but I don’t hear you using that special little word.’
‘Now’s not the time for games!’
‘Always time to be polite.’
‘You’re a fine one to talk,’ Amy yelled down, ‘considering your rudeness the last time we met!’ She felt her grip on the tree branch get precariously unsteady and ordered him to go and fetch a ladder instantly! Please!
‘There’s no ladder at the cottage. Hang on and I’ll get you down!’
Amy closed her eyes. She was aware of him climbing up the tree, skilfully manoeuvring the trunk and the branches. She had never felt more of an idiot in her life. Her skirt was everywhere. Floaty was fine at a party but not so fine when it came to shinning up a tree and having to be ignominiously fetched down like a stray cat.
And Lord only knew what it was doing as he coaxed and aided her down, holding onto her when necessary until he could lever her gently to the ground, then he jumped down and landed softly next to her.
‘Thank you.’ Amy dusted down her skirt and avoided looking at him.
‘So. Care to tell me what you were doing up a tree at…’ he looked at his watch ‘…twelve thirty in the morning?’
‘What were you doing awake?’
‘I was up plotting my next attack on the bugs destroying the rose bushes. What do you think? I heard someone screaming like a banshee and thought that I’d better investigate.’
Rafael glanced sideways at the dishevelled figure next to him. He felt utterly bemused by her random behaviour. Like most men, he had certain preferences when it came to women, and was accustomed to certain codes of behaviour. Not even by the wildest stretch of imagination did climbing trees at midnight fit the bill. He tried to picture any one of his erudite, contained and eminently respectable girlfriends up a tree and failed.
‘You haven’t answered my question and, considering you’ve put me through a lot of unnecessary hassle, I think I’m owed an explanation. What the hell did you think you were doing?’
Amy gave him her best look of defiance and folded her arms, but he wasn’t buying it and eventually she shrugged and looked away. ‘Oh, the usual.’
‘Which would be…?’
‘Girl meets boy, girl likes boy, girl…’ she glanced down at her now dirty, creased skirt ‘…dons new outfit to impress boy only to find that boy has scuttled off to the woods so that he can be with another girl.’
‘And in frustration you decided to climb a tree…’
Amy remembered just how obnoxious the man was. She glared at him and told him, sounding to even her own ears like a broken record, to point her in the right direction. At this rate, the infernal man would start thinking that she was stalking him.
‘The house is a stiff walk away, at least if you take the direct route, and I certainly won’t be sending you back through the deep, dark woods. God knows where you might end up.’
He turned on his heel and started walking away and, with a mixture of frustration and resentment, Amy half ran behind him, struggling to keep up with his long strides.
‘I think I can manage!’
Was it possible to read someone’s expression from the inclination of their fast-disappearing back? She thought so!
‘Please wait!’ she yelled. ‘These sandals weren’t designed for sprinting!’
Rafael stopped and turned around, waiting for her to catch up with him. The woman was truly off her rocker. How many sane human beings climbed trees at midnight in an attempt to deal with a broken heart? In fact, how many sane adults climbed trees? He hadn’t climbed a tree since he was a kid!
‘You should have thought of that before you decided to hike your way across the estate,’ Rafael pointed out in the sort of calm voice that someone might use when dealing with the village idiot.
