Swiftly Lucy dialled the number of her friend, Perdy Roche. Perdy threw exquisite pots in her tiny riverside studio on the outskirts of Abbotsbridge, but to Lucy's dismay her friend's dulcet tones on the answering machine were the only response, which meant Perdy's weekend with her new man was being extended to Monday. This narrowed the choices down to staying the night at home in the dark, which Lucy really didn't fancy at all, or a long, cold hike into town to camp out in the flat above the shop.
'This,' she said aloud, 'is quite definitely not my day.'
'No room at the inn?' asked Joss, frightening the life out of her as he reappeared through the gloom.
Lucy glared at him. 'Is eavesdropping a hobby of yours?'
'No.' He stood just inside the door, hands in pockets. 'But, purely for my own peace of mind, I'd prefer to know you're somewhere safe before I go home. My motives were pure, I promise. I thought I'd wait to give you a lift to wherever you want to go.'
Lucy was tempted to say she'd rather walk barefoot, but pocketed her pride. 'In that case, since Perdy Roche isn't at home, perhaps you wouldn't mind running me into town. I'll camp out at the shop tonight.'
'On a chaise-longue in the window?'
'No.' Lucy hung on to her temper with an effort. 'In the flat above.'
His eyebrows rose. 'Is it furnished, then?'
'Not much. But it has electricity, so it beats this place hands down for the moment.'
He gave a brief nod. 'Very well. I'll wait in the car while you collect your things.'
'Thank you.' Lucy flew upstairs, torch in hand, threw some clothes into an overnight bag, then as an afterthought collected a few basic foodstuffs from the kitchen and locked up the house. The familiar Abbot's Wood Land Rover was waiting at the gate, with Joss Woodbridge leaning against it, smoking. He threw the cigar away as Lucy appeared, and took her bag before installing her in the passenger seat with impersonal courtesy. As they drove away, Lucy frowned.
'By the way, how did you come to see my car, Joss? It was quite a way from your place.'
'I was on my way home from Ted Carter's when I saw the car in the ditch. Naturally I stopped to see if anyone was inside in need of help, saw the number plate and realised it was yours.'
'How did you know it was mine?' she asked curiously.
'I knew.' He glanced sideways at her. 'It's quite easy to keep track of you, Lucy.'
She stared stonily through the windscreen at the fog. 'Yes, of course. Lucy Drummond's a household name in Abbotsbridge.'
'In the kindest possible way, surely?'
'Oh, absolutely. Everyone's very kind to me. Always.' She sighed. 'Sometimes it's suffocating. I long for the anonymity of a big city—but it's out of the question. Tom loves it here, and it's where I make my living, so I stay put. Probably it'll be on my epitaph. "Lucy Drummond, born, bred and died in Abbotsbridge".'
The bitterness in her tone was by no means lost on her companion, Lucy knew, but he drove on in silence until she exclaimed and leaned forward to peer at the road. 'Joss—you've missed the turning.'
'So I have,' He sounded unsurprised. 'In that case, I might as well take you back to Abbot's Wood.'
'What?' Lucy twisted to look at him, appalled, but Joss drove on unmoved. 'Please, Joss. You must know how unsuitable this is.'
He shook his head. 'Why? To me, it seems the height of folly to lie on the floor over your shop when several empty bedrooms are going begging at my place. And if you're worried about the proprieties, the Bensons are still with me under my roof. Your reputation will be perfectly safe.'
Lucy's chin lifted. 'All very funny to you, no doubt, but it's a very important consideration to—to someone like me.'
'Yes, Lucy,' he agreed quietly. 'I'm sure it is. But just the same I insist you stay the night in comfort—and safety.'
Lucy subsided, aware that she ought to feel offended by his high-handedness, but suddenly too tired to put up any more opposition. She had no yen for a solitary night on a hard floor, if she were honest. If the offer of a bed had come from anyone but Jonas Woodbridge she'd have jumped at it, she knew. It was only common sense to take him up on it just for one night. There were so many unsolved problems in her life at the moment that it was good to have someone take over for her, if only for an hour or two, giving her breathing space from the worries that seemed to multiply by the day.
'Do I take your silence as consent?' Joss enquired.
'Yes. All right. Thank you.' Lucy rubbed at her eyes. 'I expect it's only because you've caught me at a bad time, but to be honest I don't seem to have enough energy to argue.'
'Which must be a one-off!' Joss laughed shortly, and swung the Land Rover up the long curve of the driveway leading to Abbot's Wood. Lucy slid down from the vehicle when it stopped, suddenly tense as she looked up at the
house she had once known so well. Joss took her by the arm and led her to the wide door. Soft yellow light shone from the graceful fanlight above it, and from the long windows either side, warm and welcoming through the swirling fog, but Lucy shivered.
'Cold?' Joss opened the door and ushered her into the hall.
Not cold, thought Lucy. Haunted. She stood just inside the door, looking across the shining expanse of polished wood floor, at the familiar Persian rugs, the staircase with the portraits on the panelled wall, and she swallowed hard on the lump in her throat. It all looked so much the same, it was hard to believe Simon wouldn't come running down the stairs at any minute, grinning all over his handsome face. Joss seemed to sense her reaction and moved towards her, hand outstretched, but she shrank away and the hand dropped.
'I'll get Mrs Benson,' he said quietly, and went through a door at the back of the hail.
Alone, Lucy looked down at herself disparagingly. Her sweater was newish, but her tweed skirt and fleece-lined suede boots had been in service for some time, and she had a fair idea her face and hair looked a mess. In all the panic in the damp and darkness at Holly Lodge, her appearance had been the last thing on her mind. But here, in this beautifully-proportioned hall, with its stone fireplace and Florentine mirrors, she felt bedraggled and depressed.
Joss's return, in company with Mrs Benson, brought her out of her preoccupation with a start.
The neat, grey-haired woman beamed in welcome. 'Lucy—how very nice to see you. Such a nasty night! Mr Jonas says you've had some bother at home, my dear.'
Lucy smiled in wry agreement, and furnished the depressing details as she was shepherded upstairs to a wonderfully warm guest-room. Mr Jonas would be waiting in the study, Mrs Benson told her, as she left Lucy to perform a few rapid repairs. After a vigorous wash in the pretty bathroom, followed by an energetic attack on her curly, dark hair with a brush, some instinct prompted Lucy to add a touch of colour to her eyes and cheeks. Armour? she asked her reflection, then went quietly downstairs to the study door and knocked.
Joss welcomed her into the room she'd never been inside before. Applewood logs from the orchard behind the house crackled in the big open fireplace,
and Lucy held out her hands to the blaze, looking with professional interest at the Georgian knee-hole desk, the plain, leather-topped table piled with papers and books, surprised to see a word-processor on a workmanlike pine desk beside it. The modern items looked alien in the book-lined room.
'So this is where you write,' she said, and turned to look at Joss Woodbridge full in the face for the first time in the light. He returned the look with interest, his eyes travelling over her impersonally from the rubbed toes of her boots up over the brown tweed skirt and pink sweater to her face. Joss's face was burnt dark by some fierce foreign sun, and Lucy felt an unexpected pang as she saw the lines fanning palely at the corners of his slate-blue eyes. He was so like Simon, she thought with pain; the same thick brown hair, but the gold glints she remembered so clearly were silver now, adding a final touch of maturity to a face that had aged almost overnight all those years before. Once upon a time Joss Woodbridge had been more beautiful than any man had a right to be. Now he was different. There was a world-weary look in those slanting blue eyes, and a hard set to the beautifully-cut mouth; not that either factor, she thought drily, was likely to detract one iota from the attraction Jonas Woodbridge possessed for the female of the species.
Lucy allowed Joss to settle her by the fire, near a small table set with a tea-tray and a silver platter of delicately cut sandwiches.
'I thought you might have missed dinner in all the excitement,' he said, then shrugged, grinning. 'Besides, Mrs Benson was convinced you'd be starving. She said you were always hungry in the old days.'
'And had the figure to prove it,' said Lucy wryly. 'But please thank Mrs Benson. It can't be much fun having unexpected guests arrive late at night.'
'It happens too rarely to present a problem.' He eyed her closely. 'Aren't you a bit on the thin side, Lucy? You were a lot rounder once.'
'I was a lot of things once that now I'm not. Who isn't?' Lucy poured herself some tea and changed the subject. 'Where have you been recently then, Joss? Somewhere hot, by the look of you.'
'Fiji.'
'And now you're home to write a book about it?'
'Yes. For a few months or so. Then I've been commissioned to do a book on Brazil. The effect of the erosion of their rain-forest on an Indian tribe in the Amazon basin.' Joss lounged in a chair opposite, staring absently into the fire.
'I saw a programme you did on television. Mauritius, was it?'
'Did you enjoy it?'
'Very much.' Lucy sighed. 'But programmes like that depress me sometimes. Faraway places with strange-sounding names tend to make me restless.'
Joss turned to look at her. 'Don't you ever go on holiday, Lucy?'
'When I can manage it. But only in this country. Nowhere exotic.'
There was a pause, then Joss said quietly, 'I was sorry to hear about your father, Lucy. I liked him enormously. You must miss him very much.'
Lucy's dark eyes shadowed. 'He went in the way he'd have chosen, you know, after a reunion dinner with old RAF cronies, reliving the past. He came home, went to bed—and never woke up. Tom and I were flattened. It was so unexpected. I mean—Dad wasn't that old. Only sixty-eight. And always such a live wire.'
'Is that why you've put the lodge up for sale?
'Partly. There are other reasons, too.' Lucy changed the subject firmly, casting about her for inspiration. 'I'm surprised to see a word-processor,' she said brightly. 'Somehow I'd always pictured you with a gold pen, writing at a desk something like the Georgian one over there. Not that I'd ever seen this room, of course. You wouldn't let Simon and me near it. You kept it locked.'
'Which means I was wise about one thing, at least. The rest of the time I didn't do very well at all with Simon, did I? Nor with you, Lucy.' The long blue eyes met hers with unmistakable meaning, and between one instant and the next the atmosphere changed, electric with things unsaid, and Lucy stared back, mesmerised, unable to look away. Colour washed her face, then receded, leaving her deathly pale as memories flooded back. From the look on his face it was all too evident that Joss was remembering the same thing; that day in another time, another life, when they had found themselves so unexpectedly alone together in this very house. But then it had been hot, humid summertime, and she had been young and helplessly, hopelessly in love . . . Lucy drew in a long, shaking breath and Joss sprang out of his chair to kneel before her, with the quick grace that was so much a part of his attraction. He took her hands in his, and leaned towards her, his face darkly urgent.
'Lucy—' he said huskily, but at the sound of his voice the spell was broken. Lucy tore her hands from his and shrank back, turning her head away, and with a muttered oath Joss shot to his feet and returned to his chair. Lucy clasped her hands together to stop them shaking, cursing herself for being so foolhardy as to come back here, when the place had been the scene of so much pain in the past. Happiness too, she reminded herself, trying to be fair. The silence in the room lengthened, but it was different from before, no longer charged with sexual tension, and at last Lucy ventured a glance as Joss. He was staring into the fire with hooded eyes. The handsome face was set in bitter lines, and to her surprise Lucy felt an unexpected rush of sympathy. Casting about wildly for some neutral topic of conversation, she said the first thing that came to her head.
'I don't suppose you enjoy winter much in Abbotsbridge these days, Joss.' Even to her own ears this sounded inane in the extreme, and she flushed as
Joss turned sardonic eyes in her direction.
'No, Lucy. And the weather is particularly bad for the time of the year, don't you agree? Quite the worst March night I remember.' His mouth twisted in a humourless smile. 'What would we British do without the weather to fall back on at awkward moments?'
'Perhaps that's why people in warmer, reliable climates have more volatile temperaments,' Lucy offered. 'No vagaries of weather to discuss as a safety valve.' To her relief, Joss's face relaxed a little, but he continued to look at her thoughtfully.
'What is it?' she asked. 'Have I changed so much?'
'Yes, you have.' His eyes took on a wary look. 'But that isn't what's on my mind.' He hesitated. 'I've no wish to intrude on your private affairs, Lucy, but has your father's death left you strapped for cash?'
'Since cash has never figured largely in my life anyway, it doesn't make much difference.'
'Isn't your shop doing well?' he asked quickly.
'Not badly at all, but ' Lucy stopped, colouring. 'I really mustn't bore you with my problems, Joss. When did you get back?'
'Yesterday. I had rather hoped to see Tom before he went.'
'You can see him when he's home next, if you're planning to be around for a while.' Lucy shifted uncomfortably in her chair.