Chapter 6 - Beyond Compare

‘I’ve brought your car back, miss. Everything’s fine now…’

‘Oh, thank you. I’m sorry you had to send for the spare. I suppose really I should have asked Drew to take it to a local dealer, but I just never gave it a thought.’

‘Send for a spare? But…’

‘Thanks, Jack. I take it everything’s in order?’

Holly hadn’t heard Drew arrive in the yard, and whatever the garage mechanic had been about to say was lost as he chatted to Drew and handed her car keys over to Holly.

After he had gone, Holly remarked, ‘That’s odd. He doesn’t seem to have left me a bill. Perhaps he’ll send it in the post.’

‘It’s all been taken care of,’ Drew told her briefly, and it took Holly several seconds to realise what he meant.

‘Drew, you haven’t paid it!’ she exclaimed in distress. ‘Oh, you mustn’t do that. Please give me the bill.’

‘If you insist,’ he said quietly, obviously a little taken aback by her insistence.

Holly followed him into his office, where he handed the bill over to her.

‘What’s the panic, Holly?’ he asked her, ‘Does it offend you that I paid it?’

‘No. No… nothing like that,’ Holly assured him. If she was honest with herself, she had rather liked the sensation of being cosseted and taken care of; indeed, she could very easily get all too used to it. Drew’s manners were of the old-fashioned variety, but he was no domineering chauvinist, and Holly could quite see that he would think it no more than his duty to pay for the repairs, simply because he had been responsible for taking the car to the garage.

‘You’ve already done so much for me, Drew. Carry on like this and you’ll be turning me into a helpless female parasite.’

‘Not you,’ he assured her, and his words warmed her heart.

She had half hoped he would insist on her waiting until Thursday to visit Knutsford so that he could go with her, but he had done no such thing, and so as soon as Drew had assured herself that her car had been properly repaired she set out for the pretty market town.

Parts of Knutsford owed a great deal to the Italian influence of a certain architect, and when Holly had parked her car and was wandering around the small town, familiarising herself with its layout, she smiled a little to see the Italianate buildings in their late autumnal Cheshire setting.

Of course, the town also had its traditional half-timbered coaching house, and the narrow thoroughfare that was the town’s main shopping street was lined with a jumble of Tudor and Georgian buildings, interspersed here and there with something more modern.

The estate agent she visited first was pleasant but dismissive: a man in his late fifties, who plainly was not prepared to take her seriously, and Holly longed to have Drew at her side. Drew was the kind of man who would instantly command respect and attention from other members of his sex, she recognised, and yet he treated everyone with courtesy, not like Howard, who sometimes made her cringe with his high-handed and sometimes unpleasant attitude towards others.

As though by some magical process, her thoughts conjured him up, for, as she turned a corner, Holly almost ran into Howard himself.

Rosamund wasn’t with him, and he frowned a little as he saw Holly.

She didn’t miss the way he stepped off the narrow pavement as though he was almost frightened of coming into contact with her. Instead of hurting her, the gesture made her angry and contemptuous.

‘What’s wrong, Howard?’ she demanded bitterly. ‘Frightened that someone might see us together and report you to Rosamund?’

His skin mottled unpleasantly. ‘Don’t be so ridiculous, Holly,’ he snapped at her, but Holly noticed that he was quick to edge them both completely round the corner into the quiet side street. ‘What are you doing here anyway?’ he demanded brusquely. ‘I thought you’d have gone back to London by now.’

What he meant was that he wanted her to go back to London.

It was like having blinkers ripped from her eyes, Holly acknowledged sadly, suddenly seeing him without the rosy warmth of her love. The Howard she had loved had just been an illusion, she recognised painfully, a creature of myth and fantasy, and not a real human being at all. The reality appalled her. The man standing in front of her now wasn’t even someone she could like, never mind love.

‘Drew asked me to stay,’ she told him absently, trying to come to terms with her own abrupt recognition of the truth.

She didn’t love Howard any more. She looked at him, and marvelled to discover that she felt nothing… nothing at all.

As though something in her cool, straight glance discomposed him, Howard flushed uncomfortably. ‘Be careful, Holly,’ he jeered at her. ‘You know what they say about love on the rebound. What are you doing here in Knutsford, anyway?’

‘Nothing that’s any of your business, Howard, and now if you’ll excuse me…’

As she walked away without a backward glance, Holly felt the most glorious sense of relief and freedom. Her spirits soared. She wanted to burst out into song, to laugh and dance down the street. She looked up at the sky and realised it was the most marvellous shade of blue. The sun was warm and gentle, the trees beautiful in their autumn dress, in fact the whole world, and this corner of it in particular, was the most wonderful, marvellous place there was.

She was smiling when she walked into the second estate agent’s. He was a little more helpful than the first, and when she left the small market town a couple of hours later she felt a good deal more hopeful than she had done when she and Drew left Chester.

She drove home in high spirits, bursting to tell Drew about her day. Only, Drew wasn’t there.

Peter, the taciturn cowman, who was the oldest of Drew’s four employees and who lived in one of the pair of tied cottages owned by the farm, told her dourly that Drew had gone to a meeting.

‘Said to tell you not to wait dinner,’ he informed her. ‘Said he wouldn’t be back until late.’

Feeling deflated, Holly headed for the house. It was surprising how empty it felt without Drew. She wandered round the kitchen, trying to concentrate on the units. Her paintbrushes and other equipment had arrived that morning, and she ought by rights to use what was left of the day to start work on preparing a stencil. Something pretty, but not too pretty. Something appropriate for the room and the farm.

Out of the corner of her eye she saw the large chestnut tree beyond the window, its turning leaves ruffled by a gusting wind that seemed to have sprung up out of nowhere.

Some of the leaves whirled upwards in a scatter of golden brown. Chestnut leaves… chestnut candles in the spring, rich spears of pink and white flowers. Yes, that could be her theme, the white of the candle flowers, the green of the spring leaves and young boughs, the golden yellow of the searing autumn leaves.

Her fingers almost itched to start work, and she hurried upstairs to her room to collect her equipment. She had no easel, but the kitchen table would do for a drawing-board.

Within half an hour, Holly was totally absorbed in what she was doing, swiftly sketching outlines for the components which would eventually make up her stencil.

Not wholly satisfied with her drawings, she got up impatiently and walked to the kitchen window. What she needed was a handful of leaves; hers didn’t look right at all, she decided despondently.

It was still light outside, and the chestnut tree was only a matter of two or three fields away at most.

Deciding against wasting time by changing into jeans and Wellingtons, she went outside as she was. For her trip to Knutsford, she had worn her pleated skirt and toning sweater, and she was glad of their warmth when she realised how chilly the wind was. Luckily it was dry underfoot, and the gate to the first field yielded easily as she swung it open and then took care to close it behind her, even though she knew that Drew had no stock in it.

The small milk herd he kept had now been brought in for the winter, and she presumed that he had done likewise with the beef stock.

Beyond the immediate environs of the farmhouse and its well-established garden was a long line of modern cattle sheds which she knew Drew had had built in the last few years. There was a good deal more to farming, she was beginning to realise, than simply owning land and animals.

The chestnut tree was further away than she had thought, and her calves were aching a little by the time she had crossed the second field.

The wind, blowing unchecked from the Welsh hills, buffeted her, tangling her hair and blinding her with it, but at last she reached her destination and started to gather up some of the fallen leaves.

Engrossed in her task, it was several seconds before she realised that she and the tree weren’t the sole occupants of the field. Standing less than ten yards away, watching her, was Drew’s prize bull.

Scrambling unsteadily to her feet, she stared at it in horror. For a second neither of them moved, and then it made a brief charge toward her.

Holly screamed and dropped the leaves, running as fast as she could for the gate and safety, acting on instinct alone and nothing else. Why, oh, why hadn’t she checked the field before she opened the gate? Behind her she could hear the thunder of the bull’s hoofs as it pursued her:

Panic made her heart pound, adrenalin pumping frantically through her veins, so that she forgot everything other than her need to escape.

The gate was ahead of her. Open. Open?

‘Holly!’

She heard Drew call her name and she screamed out thankfully to him through her tortured lungs. Her scream took her last reserve of energy, and as he came running toward her she flung herself thankfully into his arms, only somehow her foot slipped and she felt herself falling, her unprotected body hitting the hard earth with a blow that drove every bit of oxygen from her lungs.

The bull’s hoofbeats shook the earth. Frantically she tried to get up, dimly aware of Drew’s soothing voice and helping hands, and then mercifully everything blacked out.

When she came round she was lying safely on the other side of the gate, on Drew’s Barbour. As she looked anxiously at the gate, Drew squatted down beside her.

‘Holly, does anything hurt?’

‘No,’ she told him quaveringly, testing her limbs uncertainly, but when she struggled to sit up he pressed her back gently.

‘You took quite a tumble,’ he told her quietly. ‘Just lie there for a minute until you come round properly. What happened?’

‘I wanted some leaves… I was doing my stencil. I thought the field was empty.’ Her bottom lip trembled and her eyes filled with tears of shock and relief. ‘I thought the bull was locked up.’

‘The bull?’ Drew turned his head, and Holly shuddered as she saw the animal on the other side of the gate, pawing at the ground and watching her balefully.

‘Oh, Septimus. Yes… Yes, I see.’

Had she not been feeling quite so dreadful, she would have seen the distinct twinkle in Drew’s eye, but she had closed her eyes to ward off the peculiar feeling of light-headedness engulfing her.

Beyond the gate, the bullock, that Drew’s cowman’s wife had raised by hand after he’d lost his mother, bellowed mournfully, feeling unfairly deprived of his human companion and potential playmate, and Drew turned his attention back to the woebegone figure at his feet.

‘Don’t get up,’ he told Holly comfortingly. ‘I’ll carry you back to the house. You’ve had a nasty shock. Oh, and don’t worry about your skirt, it should clean up all right.’

‘My skirt? Oh, yes, the mud when I fell.’

‘Not mud, exactly,’ Drew announced carefully.

Holly’s eyes flew open. She touched the sticky mess adhering to the skirt tentatively, and winced as the smell told its own story.

‘Oh, Drew! And I’m lying on your jacket!’

‘Not to worry. Besides,’ he added, ‘it’s only the front of you that—er—took the brunt of things.’

Ignoring Holly’s despairing wails, he picked her up and carried her back to the house. No one else seemed to have witnessed what had happened, and Holly shuddered to think what the outcome would have been if Drew had not appeared.

She said as much, and, when he remained silent, added curiously, ‘But what are you doing back? Peter said you wouldn’t be until later.’

‘The meeting of the church council I was due to attend has been cancelled. The vicar’s been called to see the bishop on some urgent matter, and couldn’t get a message through to us in time to stop us from turning up.’

‘How long have you been on the council?’ Holly asked him.

‘Just over a year. The popular consensus of opinion was that it needed an infusion of young… well, relatively young blood. I was asked if I’d like to take on the job. We don’t have any world-shaking decisions to make, but I find it very interesting.

‘I think we’d better strip off your skirt and sweater in the kitchen, and then upstairs for a warm, reviving bath. Are you sure you don’t want me to call out the doctor to check you over? That was quite a nasty tumble you took.’

‘No, nothing’s damaged. Bruised, maybe,’ Holly admitted ruefully, ‘but not damaged.’

To prove it, she tested her reflexes gingerly as he put her down, and then protested as he kneeled to unfasten the waistband of her skirt. ‘Drew, I can do that.’

‘I know, but it will be much quicker if I do it. You’re still in shock, Holly,’ he told her gently, ‘and I think getting you out of these things is rather more important than maidenly modesty, don’t you?’

‘Umm… They do smell rather strong, don’t they?’ Holly agreed, hastily stepping out of her skirt as it dropped to the floor, and adding banteringly to cover her sudden self-consciousness, ‘I’m surprised you haven’t put me under the sluice in the yard as you do the dogs.’

Drew laughed. ‘Ah, but they do it deliberately, your mishap was an accident. At least…’

He paused in his deft removal of her sweater to laugh down at her, and as she smiled back into his eyes Holly had the oddest sensation—just as though her heart had physically turned over in her chest and stopped beating.

In fact, so sure was she that it had stopped beating that she almost stopped breathing, only realising what she was doing from the sudden tightness of her chest.

‘Holly, are you sure you’re all right?’ His smile changed to a frown.

‘I’m fine,’ she assured him huskily, summoning a smile as she added, ‘At least, I will be once I’ve had that bath.’

‘Mmm. I think I’d better carry you upstairs. We don’t want to take any risk of your fainting again.’

‘Drew, no! I can manage,’ she protested, but he was deaf to her objections, picking her up easily, and holding her in his arms as though he were completely oblivious to the slim length of her bare legs and the soft roundness of her body clothed only in the demureness of her white lace bra and matching briefs.

‘How did you get on in Knutsford?’ Drew asked her conversationally as they reached the top of the stairs. For all the world as though they were sitting having dinner, Holly thought crossly.

‘Fine,’ she told him curtly.

‘Mmm. I believe Howard was there this afternoon. You didn’t happen to run into him, did you?’

Holly tensed in his arms. ‘Yes, as a matter of fact I did. How did you know he was there?’

‘Oh, Rosamund told me,’ he informed her carelessly, using his shoulder to push open the door not to the bathroom she used but to the one adjacent to his own room.

‘Rosamund?’

‘Yes. I saw her this afternoon when she dropped her father off. He’s on the council, too.’

‘You saw her, and talked to her?’

The most appalling jealousy burned through her like bush fire through overdry undergrowth. She had never experienced anything like it in her life. It seared and crackled, destroyed and wounded, and she shuddered under its bitter impact. She was jealous of Rosamund, but not because of Howard. Oh, no…not because of Howard. She was jealous of Rosamund because…

‘Hey… are you all right?’

The concerned question roused her from the turmoil of her thoughts.

‘Yes. Rosamund and Howard…’

‘Oh, they’re still engaged.’

She couldn’t halt the fierce leap of relief inside her, and remorsefully she stretched out and curled her fingers round Drew’s arm. For all that he strove to hide it behind his smile and careless words, he must be feeling dreadful. As dreadful as she was feeling herself, she acknowledged painfully.

And then she knew that she owed it to him to tell him the truth, and what was more to tell him what she was becoming more and more convinced was an impossible task. She herself no longer loved Howard, but she doubted that anything would make him give up Rosamund, nor her him. She owed it to Drew to tell him the truth.

‘Drew,’ she said hesitantly, ‘I don’t think our plan is going to work. I think we should accept that Howard and Rosamund are engaged and that they will get married. Anyway, I know now that I don’t…’

‘Give up?’ Drew interrupted her. ‘No way! No, we’ve got to keep on trying. You’re just feeling down at the moment, Holly. You’ll see things differently tomorrow,’ he promised her. ‘In fact, I’m sure you’ll see things differently once you’ve had a bath and a hot meal. I’ll run the water for you, and I’ll give you half an hour to soak in it, then I’ll come back for you. Scrambled eggs OK for supper?’

‘Drew…’

‘It will be all right, Holly. I promise you. Just have faith…’

And with that he put her down on a chair and dropped a light kiss on her hair as he released her and turned his attention to filling the old-fashioned bath with piping hot water.

‘Half an hour, remember,’ he warned her once he had assured himself that she could come to no harm getting in and out of the bath. ‘And, Holly—’ he paused at the door ‘—any problems… any feeling of faintness or anything…no false modesty, please. Just call out. I’ll leave the door open.’

It was comforting to be so cosseted; comforting and… And yet the sensations inside her when Drew held her had nothing to do with comfort. Excitement, apprehension, awareness, aching physical desire. She had experienced all those things, and a multitude more.

She loved Drew. She sat in the bath, staring into space while her mind and heart absorbed the truth of the words.

But only a short time ago she had been equally sure that she loved Howard.

Ah, but then she had had no idea what love really was. What she had mistaken for love had been nothing more than a despairing clinging to an old habit. A need to have someone in her life she could care for.

With Drew, it was different. With Drew, she felt… she felt all woman, she acknowledged tremulously. With Drew, she just had to look at his mouth and her body trembled. He just had to touch her and…

‘Holly, time’s almost up!’

Frantically she scrambled out of the bath, drying herself hurriedly on a thick, fleecy towel.

Drew hadn’t brought her any fresh clothes, and so, securing the towel around her body like a sarong, she padded to the top of the stairs just as Drew himself reached them.

‘You didn’t bring me any clothes,’ she told him huskily, blushing a little beneath the open inspection he gave her pink shoulders and arms.

‘No, I didn’t, did I?’ he agreed.

She had pinned her hair up on top of her head, and he touched an escaping wisp of black silk thoughtfully.

‘You look like a deliciously wanton cherub, all innocent eyes and flushed skin,’ he told her softly.

‘Drew,’ she protested breathlessly.

He looked at her and then said huskily, ‘What is it you’re asking me for, Holly? This?’

She murmured a denial, but it was too late, his arms were already around her, his mouth caressing the soft contours of hers.

How could she have ever thought she wasn’t capable of feeling intense desire? she wondered hazily, as Drew bit gently at her mouth and then less gently as he felt her body’s instinctive arch against his own.

His hands dug painfully into the soft, warm flesh of her upper arms but Holly barely noticed it. The aches and pains of her fall were forgotten, replaced by a deeper, more urgent ache.

She felt the hot coil of anxious pleasure begin to possess her body, and she moved instinctively against Drew. His hands moved to her shoulders and shaped her body, and she burned to feel their touch against her skin instead of merely through the blunting texture of the towel.

What had happened to her hesitancy, her reticence, her belief that physical pleasure was a kind of fulfilment that just wasn’t for her?

A reckless, frantic urgency took hold of her, and as though he sensed and shared it Drew dragged her against his body, holding her there while his tongue circled the moist softness of her lips, tormenting her, and then eased between them, softly at first and then far more erotically as he recognised her responsiveness.

‘Holly, I can’t make love to you here on the stairs. Let me take you to my room.’

Make love to her… Her whole body shuddered with insane delight at the thought. She actually started to melt compliantly against him, and then abruptly reality intruded. Drew didn’t want her; she was just a substitute for Rosamund, and she, fool that she was, had been idiotic to fall in love with him… That was the last complication either of them needed.

To her own consternation as much as Drew’s, she burst into inexplicable tears, causing him to release her gently.

‘I’m sorry,’ she gulped. ‘I think it’s just the shock.’

‘Of me having the temerity to want to make love to you?’ Drew asked her drily.

Not daring to look up at him, and so missing the pain his light words concealed, Holly shook her head. ‘No. Not that. It’s the after-effect of being chased by your bull.’

And in fact she did feel decidedly shaky, her legs suddenly boneless and weak, and she would have subsided on to the floor where they stood, if Drew hadn’t taken her in a steadying hold.

‘Oh, Drew, I was so frightened,’ she told him truthfully, not enlightening him that her fear sprang more from her discovery that she loved him than from her flight from the field. Now that she was once more in possession of her senses, she was desperately anxious to distract him from questioning her intensely passionate response to his kiss.

Everyone knew that men, those weak creatures, could be physically aroused by women they did not love, but women… well, they were different; and if she didn’t occupy his thoughts with something else, Drew might well wonder why on earth she had responded to him so wantonly when she was supposed to be in love with Howard.

‘I didn’t realise your bull was in that field.’

‘I’ve got a confession to make,’ Drew told her. ‘He wasn’t.’

‘He wasn’t? But he chased me.’

Drew shook his head. ‘No. Septimus chased you,’ he corrected her. ‘Come on, let’s go downstairs and have our supper, and I’ll explain.’

Bewilderedly, Holly let him guide her downstairs.

‘I thought we’d eat cosily in the sitting-room tonight,’ Drew announced. ‘You go through—I’ll bring it in. It’s all ready.’

He had lit the fire in the small sitting-room off the kitchen, and the flames glowed warmly in the grate. Outside, the wind howled eerily, making the bare branches of the climbing roses tap and scratch at the windows.

Drew’s scrambled eggs were delicious, but Holly had scant appetite for them. The day had brought too many shocks, and now she felt drained and tired.

‘Tell me about Septimus,’ she demanded, when she had eaten as much as she could.

Drew put down his knife and fork and gave her a wry look.

‘Septimus is a bullock, not a bull…’

‘Not a bull? But he must be! He had…’ She broke off and flushed vividly, much to Drew’s obvious amusement.

‘Maybe, but he’s still a bullock. He was hand-reared by Peter’s wife after he lost his mother. The kids made quite a pet of him and he used to follow them around. He should have been sent off to market months ago, but somehow or other I hadn’t the heart. He wasn’t chasing you, Holly. He just thought you were a new playmate. He’s lonely.’

‘Oh!’ Crimson with mortification, Holly stared miserably at him. ‘You must think me an absolute fool,’ she said quietly at last.

Instantly Drew reassured her, taking one of her hands in his and curling his fingers round her wrist. The sensation of his thumb against her pulse, absently stroking that vulnerable area, made it pound erratically.

‘Not at all. I promise you I should have been equally terrified faced with crossing one of London’s main roads without the benefit of traffic lights. There’s nothing to be embarrassed about. I’m only sorry that you had such a bad fright. I should have warned you about Septimus’s predilection for human companionship.’

‘Oh, Drew, thank goodness no one else saw me! Your men…’

‘They’d all gone…but they aren’t insensitive, Holly. They would have understood.’

‘Poor Septimus,’ Holly said shakily with a light laugh. ‘I suppose I gave him quite a shock, running away from him screeching like that.’

‘Well, you can make amends some time if you feel up to it. I’ll make a formal introduction.’

‘Oh, Drew,’ she said impulsively, reaching out with her free arm to touch his hand. ‘You’re so nice. Rosamund must be a complete fool.’

‘For loving Howard?’ Drew asked her, looking intently at her.

Immediately she crimsoned again, realising how idiotic her comment had been.

‘Howard is Howard,’ she said bravely. ‘And you are you. You’re two very different men. I—I… I might love Howard, but that doesn’t mean that I can’t see how…how…’

‘How perfect I’d be for Rosamund,’ Drew supplemented for her, his voice unusually harsh and bitter.

‘I’m sorry,’ she apologised. ‘I shouldn’t have said anything.’

‘Why not? It’s good to know the truth. Tell me something, Holly,’ he said with sudden violence. ‘If there was no Howard, then do you think I might be considered the perfect man instead of only second best?’

‘Oh, Drew… you’re not second best,’ Holly protested, hating seeing him in such pain.

He gave her a long, brooding look, and then said harshly, ‘I think I’d better go out and check on the stock… before I do something we’ll both regret.’

Something like making love to her out of the frustration of his desire for Rosamund? Holly wondered hectically when he had gone.

Only she knew how shamingly tempted she had been to throw caution to the winds and offer herself to him, even knowing that the solace she could offer was purely temporary.

To have known his lovemaking only once…to have been close to him, part of him… But why torment herself? Wasn’t it far wiser to keep Drew’s friendship and her own self-respect, and to keep her love for him her own secret?