A Kind Of Madness Part 7

Her stomach suddenly rumbled, contradicting her statement that she wasn't hungry. Chagrined, she bit her lip. What was the matter with her anyway? She never normally ate breakfast. But then she never normally lost her temper, she never normally discussed her relations.h.i.+p with Peter with strangers, and she certainly never normally virtually exposed her completely nude body to unknown men.

When he had finished he studied her, and then said blandly, "So you'll be going back to London, then?"

Her breath hissed out in outraged fury.

"No, I shall not," she told him.

"You are the one who will be leaving. You must see the impossibility of your staying on here."

"No, quite frankly I don't," he told her almost sharply, suddenly dropping his casual, almost careless att.i.tude, and staring at her across the table in a way which was almost intimidating.

"And if you don't mind my saying so I think your objections are positively Victorian, not to say almost paranoid. You can hardly really suppose in this day and age, and given the fact that your parents know that the pair of us will be staying here, and that you're virtually engaged, that anyone, apart from dear Peter's mother, is going to give the fact that we're both staying here the slightest thought?"

"So you won't leave?" Elspeth asked him flatly.

"No. I promised your parents I'd keep an eye on things while they were away, and that's exactly what I intend to do. If you want to stay, then fine. If you don't..." As he shrugged powerful shoulders, it occurred to Elspeth that he might be deliberately trying to get her to leave, giving him a clear field to create whatever difficulties he wished for her parents' business.

"I'm not leaving," she told him, tilting her chin and glaring at him.

The look he gave her was decidedly odd--almost triumphant in some way, as though she had reacted exactly as he wanted her to, and yet that was impossible. He couldn't want her to stay any more than she wanted him to do so.

"Good, I've got a couple of auctions to attend in the next two weeks and, while I could have arranged cover for myself, it will be much better if you're here to take over just in case I don't make it back for any of the evening watering or deliveries."

His casual a.s.sumption that she would fall in with his plans and allow him to dictate what she did further inflamed her temper, but she decided that she wasn't going to allow him to provoke her. She was sure that he would enjoy doing so, no doubt hoping that she would take umbrage at his att.i.tude and leave.

Instead she asked as casually as she could, "These auctions--I take it they're for land and property locally? Mum said that you were hoping to set up a similar operation to theirs."

"Yes, that's right. There's more than enough business for both of us."

He seemed to be reading her mind, Elspeth reflected, but she suspected he was lying. There couldn't be that many local restaurants wanting organically grown produce.

"So it's agreed, then. We're both staying, and if you have any problems with Peter's mother you can always refer her to me. I promise I'll swear to her that you never so much as touched me, and that your behaviour was impeccable throughout your entire stay."

Speechless with rage, Elspeth contented he self with turning her back on him and pretending she hadn't heard. It might amuse him to make fun of her, and of course he would find her att.i.tude amusing. No doubt he thought nothing of going to bed with whatever woman took his fancy. He looked that type--the kind of man who could never understand the needs and motivations of her kind of woman. It was just as well she was immune to the attractions of the male physique and good looks. The fact that he was very virile and very handsome meant nothing to her; it was a person's nature that was important. Take Peter, for instance--he certainly wasn't handsome, nor as revoltingly male as Carter, but his personality, his nature, his love for her-She stopped suddenly, realising uncomfortably that Peter's personality was sometimes overshadowed by his mother's upbringing, that his nature could on occasions be a little sharp and unfeeling, and as for loving her.

Well, Peter believed that emotional and physical love between two people were treacherous foundations on which to build a stable marriage. Even so. Even so. what? she asked herself a little bleakly, unaware that Carter had got up until he announced, "John should have arrived by now. I promised I'd give him a hand breaking up the soil on the paddock. If you fancy a walk later on we'll be there until lunchtime."

With a casual nod, he walked over to the door and opened it, leaving her alone and feeling oddly forlorn.

CHAPTER FOUR.

of course, she wasn't going to go down to the paddock, Elspeth a.s.sured herself firmly, half an hour later, her things unpacked, the breakfast dishes washed, her body suddenly and inexplicably filled with a restless energy that took her across the kitchen to stand in front of the window and then back again to the door.

There were plenty of things she could do to keep herself occupied up here at the house.

Such as?

She valiantly tried to ignore the tempting inner voice that whispered that outside the sun was s.h.i.+ning and that it would do no harm to just quietly and quickly take a walk outside. After all, it made sense for her to discreetly check on what her parents' two part-time employees'

routine was. She had no need to go too close to the paddock. And wasn't it about this time in the morning that her mother normally went out to open up the greenhouses when it was warm?

It struck her, as she stood frowning by the door, that she really had very little idea of what actually was involved in the physical running of her parents'

small business. On her brief stays with them, she normally spent her time trying to help her father unravel the complications of their antiquated bookkeeping system, and in coaxing him to replace it with a modern computer.

True, she did sometimes stroll through one of the greenhouses with her parents, and she certainly enjoyed the fruits of their labours when she sat down to a meal. She knew that her parents had recently invested in a series of polythene tunnels which would enable them to grow over a longer period, and that they were hoping that this year their profit would be large enough to warrant their taking out a bank loan for a new greenhouse, but of the actual day-to-day physical work of sowing, planting out and growing, she had very little knowledge at all.

Angrily she chewed hard on her bottom lip and then stopped, disgusted with herself for this reversion to such an infantile habit.

It was almost eleven o'clock. She couldn't spend the rest of the day virtually a prisoner inside, and all because she didn't want Carter to think that he had won and that he was in charge in her parents'

absence.

Come to think of it, perhaps he was a good deal more clever than she had thought; perhaps he had deliberately suggested she go down to the paddock, knowing that to do so was to be sure that she're S

mained well away from it. And she had fallen for it. Why, for all she knew, he could right at this very minute be poisoning her parents'

land, be destroying it, or contaminating it with the very chemicals from which it was supposed to be free.

Suddenly impelled by new urgency, she hurried across to the back door and then hesitated. She had no wish to arouse Carter's suspicions, to make him aware that she and Peter realised that his motives in becoming so friendly with her parents might not be entirely altruistic.

Her glance fell on the kettle and she smiled.

Of course. If she were to take the two men a drink, under the guise of proffering an olive branch. She would have a much better chance of discovering just what Carter was up to if he no longer thought that she was hostile to him.

Berating herself for not having thought of this before, for perhaps having aroused his sense of selfpreservation and caution, she started to make some fresh coffee.

Much as it went against the grain to allow any man, but especially one like Carter, to think that he had won and that she was prepared to be subservient and obedient to him, sometimes one had to use a little caution and diplomacy. After all, this wasn't something she was doing for her own sake, but for her parents. They had worked so hard to establish this small and potentially profitable business and they were so proud of their joint achievement They would be desolated if they were to lose what they had built up. It was up to her as their daughter to make sure that that did not happen.

Peter had been quite right to alert her to the danger posed by Carter, and she quickly squashed the small and rather uncomfortably disconcerting feeling that, in pretending she was now prepared to be friendly to Carter, her behaviour was rather underhand. Elspeth had always prided herself on her honesty, and it rather irked her that she should now have to adopt a less than truthful manner.

Frowning over things, she found a large flask and filled it with coffee, and then, as though to compensate for that small fris son of guilt, she found the tin containing her mother's home-made scones and cut and b.u.t.tered some.

Putting everything in one of her mother's baskets she opened the back door, momentarily starting as the parrot shrieked unexpectedly, "Mind how you go! Mind how you go!"

He had been so quiet since Carter had gone out that she had virtually forgotten his presence.

The age of her parents' house, its thick walls and small windows, ensured that its interior was kept dark and cool even on the hottest of sunny days,

and Elspeth blinked as she walked out into the yard and the brilliant suns.h.i.+ne.

Only one of her father's dogs seemed to have accompanied Carter, the other as though by some mutual canine agreement apparently having decided to stay on guard, just inside the gate. With the habits and instincts of her breed, she was lying in the shade, just out of sight of anyone approaching the house. She turned and grinned at Elspeth, thumping her tail on the dusty ground as Elspeth spoke to her, reminding her endearingly of one of the wicked collies portrayed so cleverly in a Giles cartoon.

She was less than halfway across the yard when she realised she ought to have changed her clothes. Her suit skirt was far too tight for her to lengthen her stride to one comfortable for crossing even relatively flat open land. The heat of the sun made the jacket uncomfortably warm, and her smart, low- heeled shoes were certainly nowhere near as comfortable on a b.u.mpy gra.s.s path as they were for city streets.

It was less than half a mile to the paddock; she had grown up on a farm and virtually as soon as she could stagger had been familiar with the countryside. Whenever she came home, she always packed her sensible walking shoes and a couple of pairs of well-worn jeans.

Her Wellington boots were still in the rack beside the back door along with those of her parents--so why on earth was she behaving like an idiot and trying to gingerly pick her way along a narrow, overgrown path, in clothes that any fool would have known were completely unsuitable for such an occupation? Any fool--even one whose only acquaintances.h.i.+p with the countryside came from looking at the ads in glossy magazines.

From here she could see the paddock, and the two men working in it could see her, which meant that she could not go back and get changed.

The trouble was that she had been so determined to check up on Carter that she had forgotten that mad impulse when she'd got up this morning to dress in something that would make it clear to him the type of woman she was. And, much as she longed to go back to the house and get changed, or even to remove the uncomfortable weight of her jacket, she stoically refused to give in to that need, firmly continuing on her set course, and trying to pretend that she felt completely at ease in her ridiculous and unsuitable clothes.