Chapter 9 - Beyond Compare

Drew was right about the snow. The first few flakes fell three days later, just after his mother’s visit to the farm.

Holly was well advanced with her work on the kitchen units now. She had dragged the outer panels in a soft shade of yellow over cream, wiping off the beading to make it stand out. Now she was painstakingly feathering faux marbre centre panels to each cupboard door. Later, if she felt so inclined, she would add her stencil.

Drew’s mother had been flatteringly impressed, marvelling at the detailing and care she had taken, and announcing quite firmly that she was definitely going to commission Holly to work on her guest suite.

‘The bedroom has fitted units and perhaps you could link them to the bathroom in some way, Holly. I’d rather like a blue and yellow colour scheme, I think. I’ve already got a fabric in mind.’

She had described it, and Holly, who’d recognised it as coming from a very popular traditional range, had known that she wouldn’t have much problem in coming up with a couple of suitable colour schemes.

However, it had been as she was leaving that she had dropped her bombshell, announcing almost casually, ‘I’m so pleased about you and Drew, my dear. I always have a large family gathering at Christmas; normally Drew allows me to have it here because our small drawing-room simply isn’t large enough. I want to make sure everyone comes this year so that they can meet you. I expect Drew will be giving you an engagement ring soon, and I want to plan something very special.’

What she was saying was virtually that she intended to hold an engagement party for them, Holly had recognised, and now she was sitting in the kitchen, wondering how on earth she was going to tell Drew, and watching the ever-increasing flakes of snow tumble down from the grey sky.

A commotion by the door disturbed her and she went to open it to let in the large tabby cat who was supposed to make her home in the stable, but who had attached herself to Holly. She had come to recognise the tabby’s chirruping meouw.

The cat came in proudly and deposited a large fat mouse at her feet. Holly repressed the urge to scream, thankful to see that the poor thing was dead. The cat, plainly unaware of her feelings, wove its way round her legs, purring loudly, demanding praise for its cleverness. Holly petted it gingerly, wondering if she could persuade it to take its prey back outside.

Drew came in while she was standing there, his eyebrows lifting as he saw the mouse.

‘You’re honoured,’ he told her wryly.

‘Really?’ Holly responded weakly, and then added in a voice that shook a little, ‘Drew, how can I make her take it back outside?’

‘You can’t. Not without offending her. Tell her she’s a wonderfully clever girl and pour her some milk. With a bit of luck, while you’re distracting her, I’ll be able to dispose of it.’

It worked; while the cat drank her milk, Drew removed the small, furry corpse. He came back into the kitchen and washed his hands, eyeing her with concern as he saw her pale face.

‘You’re not frightened of mice, are you?’ he asked her abruptly.

She shook her head. ‘No, I know it’s silly, but it just upset me… seeing the poor little thing.’

‘Poor tender-hearted Holly,’ he said drily, ‘trying so desperately not to allow the giver to see how unwelcome the gift of love is.’

For some reason Holly felt as though the words held a meaning that eluded her. Perhaps it was because of the faint edge of bitterness that hardened his voice.

‘Is it still snowing?’ she asked him, changing the subject.

‘Yes, and likely to continue to do so. I take it Mother came as planned?’

‘Yes. Oh, Drew… the most dreadful thing… She intimated that she intends to give a Christmas party for us. She even hinted that she expects us to get engaged.’

He had been looking at her, watching the vivid play of emotions across her face, but now he turned away slightly, his voice muffled as he asked, ‘What did you say to her?’

‘Nothing. What could I say? I felt so awful for deceiving her.’

‘Umm… It might not be such a bad idea, you know. Getting engaged,’ he said thoughtfully, as though he hadn’t heard her last words. ‘It might just be the incentive our laggard ex-partners need.’

‘Oh, Drew, no!’ Holly protested, her skin losing all its colour. How could she tell him that she couldn’t bear the thought of pretending to be engaged to him? That she couldn’t trust herself not to become so caught up in their self-created world of make-believe that she would never be able to leave it? ‘No.’

For some reason he suddenly looked tired, and Holly realised guiltily that he must be feeling exactly the same way as she was herself.

‘How could we?’ she said huskily. ‘I mean, when we both know that it wouldn’t be real. I’d feel so guilty.’

‘Would you? I thought any means was justified when love was at stake,’ he said casually.

She had thought the same thing, too, once. But then she had been a heedless, naive girl, with no awareness of what love was really all about.

‘My family will be shocked,’ he told her. ‘After all, they’re not sophisticated city folk, and you are living here with me. They’ll expect you to make an honest man of me. I shall have to tell them that you’re reverting to ancient custom and that you won’t marry me until I’ve proved that I can give you a child.’

Holly’s face flamed at his careless reference to an ancient custom among country folk that a couple did not marry until the bride had proved she could provide her groom with a son.

That had been important in the days when inheritance was a vital issue, but it wasn’t embarrassment that was making her body tingle and her insides ache.

Holly had a bad dream that night. She dreamed that she was standing talking to Drew and suddenly a huge crowd of people swelled between them, parting them, and no matter how hard she struggled she couldn’t get through the seething press of bodies to find him.

She called his name repeatedly, each call sharper and more frantic than the last, sobs tearing her chest and hurting her throat.

She came awake abruptly, shivering under the bedclothes, a tight, raw feeling in her throat that presaged tears. She wondered if she had actually cried or if it had only been part of her dream. What was real, though, was the aching feeling of despair that possessed her, the realisation that Drew was lost to her for ever.

Drew. She had known him for more than half her lifetime. Known him, liked him, and dismissed him as bucolic and unexciting, with a child’s lack of depth of perception and wisdom, with a child’s vain grasping for the ephemeral glitter of life. She had even, in her folly, scorned him a little and not found it strange that Rosamund should prefer Howard.

Now Howard was as a pale shadow, a flimsy, weak character whose very lack of any real substance when compared to Drew made her marvel that she had ever believed herself in love with him.

She was still shivering, her feet frozen beneath the duvet, and she knew it would be impossible for her to get back to sleep. She reached for her dressing-gown. She would go downstairs and sit in front of the Aga for a while, perhaps make herself a hot drink. She shivered again just thinking about it. Living in the city for so long, her body had lost its ability to adapt itself to changing temperatures, or perhaps the fault was hers for not armouring herself against them. In the same way she had neglected to armour herself against loving Drew.

The landing and the stairs creaked underfoot-comforting, solid sounds, the sounds of an old house that had known many lifetimes of joys and tears.

The cat was sitting by the range; she stretched and yawned, greeting Holly’s entrance with soft, chirruping sounds of welcome as Holly switched on the lights.

Outside, the sky had cleared. The moon was sharp and bright, casting a coldly brilliant light. It danced off the rooftops of the cow sheds and barns with their frosting of snow. Holly went to the window to look outside. The yard was pristine white except for where the cat had walked.

How quickly and devastatingly winter could come to the land. Drew had planned to plough the last of the fields this week. Now that would have to wait until the ground thawed. He had explained to her how he was carefully channelling his resources into breeding and small high-profit crops, rather than the old-fashioned traditional mixed farming of his father’s day: a dairy herd and grain crops.

She filled the kettle and switched it on. As she waited for it to boil she thought about Christmas and the party Drew’s mother was planning. She thought about the kitchen and the woman who would eventually use it. Not her… Rosamund? If Drew had his way…

The kettle boiled. She reached for it through a haze of tears, sending the teapot crashing to the floor. The sound of it breaking seemed preternaturally loud. One sharp piece pierced her finger, making it bleed. She gave a low cry, and sucked it clean.

‘Holly. What’s wrong?’

She stared at Drew, his hair tousled, his chest bare as he tugged on his robe, his expression that of a man roused unexpectedly from a deep sleep.

The sight of him standing there made her react like a frightened child.

‘I’m sorry, I’ve broken the teapot,’ she said huskily, and then to her horror she started to cry.

Suddenly she was in Drew’s arms, her head pressed into the warm curve of his shoulder, her sobs muffled by his robe. He was picking her up despite her muddled complaint about the mess on the floor and the danger to the cat. He paused to switch off the light and close the door, soothing her with soft words of comfort. Upstairs, he carried her to her room, frowning over its icy atmosphere.

‘I opened the window,’ Holly told him, ‘and then I couldn’t close it.’

‘It’s too cold for you to sleep in here. The temperature’s dropped damn near ten degrees today. You can sleep in my room, and I’ll use this one.’

‘Drew, no.’ But it was pointless to protest. He was already half-way there, shouldering open his door, and depositing her in a bed that was huge and blissfully warm.

‘That better?’ he asked her in an oddly husky voice as he released her, sitting on the side of the bed, and reaching out to brush a silky tangle of hair off her damp face.

She looked up at him, and her whole world seemed to turn over as she saw the look on his face.

Need…desire…urgency… All of them were there, darkening his skin with a hectic flush and drawing it tight against his cheekbones, dilating his eyes and turning them molten gold. In the space of a heartbeat he had turned from comforter to lover.

A startled protest rose to her lips and was checked as she trembled between the realistic, sensible cautioning of her head, and the heedless, helpless yearning of her heart.

‘Drew, no,’ she protested huskily. ‘We can’t just let our… our feelings for Howard and Rosamund trap us into a sort of sympathetic intimacy.’

She couldn’t pretend that she didn’t know what was in his mind… that she hadn’t recognised, bone-deep and instinctively, despite her lack of experience, his sudden savage determination to make love to her.

‘Does that mean that you don’t want me?’ he asked her huskily.

Not want him? The truth was there in her eyes for him to read. She heard him give a harsh groan of satisfaction, her eyes closing on a dizzying wave of response to him.

‘No,’ she heard herself saying shockingly. ‘I want you very much. Oh, Drew, why do you make me say these things?’

‘Perhaps because I’m very vulnerable. When a man is rejected sexually—and emotionally, when he’s been aching for as long as I’ve been aching, Holly, it’s a kind of sweet drug to him to know that he is, after all, desired. It makes him forget all kinds of things he should remember. It makes him… Oh, God, Holly, you feel so good in my arms. You know I want to make love to you, don’t you?’

Of course she did. She had known it from the moment he looked at her, and wantonly her heart had leapt in joyous response to it.

‘Drew, I’m not Rosamund,’ she reminded him, forced by her conscience to do so. ‘You know I’m not experienced, or…’ She flushed wildly and admitted honestly, ‘This will be the first time I’ve made love. Howard—’

‘Forget Howard,’ he told her curtly. ‘I promise I’ll make it good for you, Holly.’

‘Just like in the books?’ she said lightly, trying to hold on to reality.

‘Better,’ Drew promised her. ‘Much, much better. Let me show you…’

It was all wrong. He didn’t love her, she knew that, but she loved him and her body ached for him, and there was a certain odd inevitability to what was happening between them, almost as though it was in some way pre-ordained; almost as though she had been slowly moving toward this moment all of her life.

Now that she had reached it there were no doubts, no fears, no second thoughts, only a pure, clear joy that there should be this time, this togetherness, this man. Because, even without love, Drew would give her pleasure, consideration, compassion and respect, and she would give him…

What would she give him? she wondered hazily as he touched her. The full outpouring of her love, some small surcease, some small touch of balm against his hurts? And perhaps a memory that he would cherish in a tiny corner of his heart.

‘If I do anything that hurts or offends you, Holly, please tell me,’ he whispered against her mouth, adding huskily, ‘And you will have to tell me because I ache so damn much inside I can’t be sure I’m capable of recognising anything else.’ He saw her eyes widen and smiled mirthlessly. ‘Have I frightened you? Join the club. I’m beginning to frighten myself.’ He took her hand and placed it against his heart. It slammed against her palm heavily and far too fast. His skin felt moist and hot, and the delicate abrasion of his body hair against her fingertips made her tremble painfully. And yet she couldn’t stop herself from caressing him tentatively, from stroking his hot flesh and feeling her own heartbeat pick up the shallow, frantic rhythm of his as his muscles tensed. His hand cupped her jaw, holding her mouth under his own while he tasted it, tormented it, and finally opened it with a muted violence that sent a wild thrill of dazed pleasure through her body and made her breasts peak and harden and her stomach melt.

She reached up and clasped her hands behind Drew’s neck, her fingertips lost in the thick silkiness of his hair. The pressure of his mouth altered, softening, coaxing, suborning her will-power to the strong tide of his desire.

Instincts she had not known she possessed guided her, her body pliant, fluid, conspiring with his to ensure that she couldn’t resist the slow, drugging force of her own need. Her nails dug tenderly into Drew’s flesh and he made a sound of pleasure deep in his throat, lifting his mouth from hers to stare at her with desire-drugged, brilliant eyes. Dark colour burned his cheekbones, and she touched him tentatively, delicately absorbing the heat into her fingertips.

His heart slammed against his ribs and her eyes widened in shocked recognition of her own effect on him. She saw his mouth curl in brief acknowledgement of his own weakness, and in her veins the heady drug of sexual power sang its siren song.

She cupped his face, as he had done hers, letting her flesh absorb the hard imprint of his, feeling the sharp stubble of his beard against her palm, sliding her hand downwards until it rested against his throat. She felt the muscles there convulse, and the knowledge that he wanted her fed her own desire.

Drew caught hold of her hand, lifting it to his mouth, licking the soft pads at the base of her fingers, nibbling her sensitised flesh, making her heart turn over inside her body and her muscles go weak as he punished her for tormenting him.

He moved, his weight pressing her body deeper into the bed, and even through the thickness of her night-shirt and robe her breasts responded to the heat and proximity of him.

This was still new to her, this aching tenderness that fed her imagination with wanton desires, that made her long to feel the intimate touch of his flesh against her own.

‘Let me see you, Holly. Let me touch you,’ Drew begged against her lips, his voice low and slurred like that of a man hopelessly caught up in something beyond his control. It pleased her that she could make him feel like this, react like this, and her spine arched with delicate pride as he removed her clothes, her senses glorying in the wonder and raw desire she saw in his face as he gazed down at her.

His hand trembled as he traced the delicate line of her collarbone and then slid along the outer curve of her breast, his thumb almost brushing the dark aureole of flesh that crowned it, before his hand tightened over the narrow span of her ribcage, his fingers biting almost painfully into her flesh.

Eyes the colour of dark fire locked on her own, the message she read there making her stomach kick in wild excitement. His hand tensed beneath the soft swell of her breast, and, as though he had asked her, she said, ‘Yes. Yes, Drew,’ and to her own amazement took his hand and placed it against her breast, breathing in sharply as she saw the fierce desire flood his face and felt his fingers tighten around her. And then he was caressing her, touching, stroking, teaching her things about her own body she had never dreamed existed. The world spun dizzily around her and she closed her eyes, opened them abruptly seconds later as she felt the heat of Drew’s mouth against her flesh.

She drew in ragged breaths of delirious pleasure. How had he known of her need to have him caress her just like that, to feel the heat of his mouth drag against the swollen peaks of her breast in exactly that way, to…? She cried out incoherently as he drew fiercely on her nipple, and her womb convulsed in tiny, shimmering waves of pleasure.

‘Holly. Holly…’

When had he removed his own clothes? she wondered confusedly as he pressed hot, fierce kisses on her throat and face, and she felt the hard arousal of him against her.

It felt so right, this heat and weight, her body adapting itself to it instinctively, so instinctively, in fact, that Drew tensed momentarily as her thighs parted to accommodate him, her body in its innocence eagerly responding to the arousal of his.

He had wanted this for so long… ached for it, yearned for it, and yet now… Now he knew that he couldn’t take her without telling her.

Holly felt his tension and opened her eyes, every instinct she possessed screaming against the impossible. Drew had changed his mind. He didn’t want her. She could feel it in the sudden coolness of his skin, that tension in his muscles.

‘Holly,’ he began unsteadily, and she knew that he was going to tell her that they must stop, that…

She wouldn’t let it happen. She wouldn’t let him reject her. She would show him that she could give him just as much satisfaction as Rosamund, and far, far more love. Reaching up, she sealed his mouth with her fingertips, her eyes glowing brilliantly in her small face.

‘Please don’t stop, Drew,’ she whispered huskily. ‘Not now… Not now…’ And then she covered his throat and chest with pleading, open-mouthed kisses that made him groan out loud and which brought the hectic flush of heat to his skin, his body making its own unmistakable response to her plea.

She had won. He wouldn’t reject her now. He couldn’t, and her body rejoiced in its female power as she gladly let him take control of her shuddering flesh and make it his own.

There was pain briefly, and it made them both tense, and then as it faded Holly moved. As though the enticement of her was more than he could resist, Drew gave in to the urgings of his own need.

As his mouth silenced her soft little cries of pleasure, the words of love he knew he could not utter filled his soul. She was his… if only briefly, and he would show her how much he cherished the gift she was giving him.

Later…looking back with the sophistication of experience, Holly recognised how difficult it must have been for Drew to control his desire to match the pace of her own inexperience. The sensation of him moving within her delighted her emergent senses, making her respond frantically to each powerful thrust until he held her and showed her how to match his pulsing rhythm so that their bodies moved in fierce accord.

She felt the striving, the aching need to reach some totally necessary goal without knowing what it was, only that the driving force of Drew’s body was a piper’s call to which her own must respond, and the first quivers of climactic pleasure caught her by surprise, tensing her body, so that at first Drew thought he had hurt her. But when she opened her eyes and he saw the dawning of what was happening to her mirrored there, he whispered urgently, ‘Relax, Holly. Let it happen. Don’t fight it.’

And, as her muscles relaxed in obedience, he felt for himself the delicious, frantic little convulsions, and coaxed them and nurtured them until the soft body beneath his writhed and twisted in elemental pleasure and Holly cried out to him, begging him for release.

Her nails scored his back, her mouth pressing hot, urgent kisses against his skin, and, as the surges of pleasure grew quickly more and more urgent, Holly felt his own control snap, and knew that he had joined her in that magical place where nothing existed save for the sweet culmination they both sought.

They found it together: the ripples of pleasure exploding inside her so that she cried out and clung to Drew, feeling the shudders that racked him, the fierce tension that held him, and then the hot release of his flesh deep within her own. A rare, precious moment of communion that she knew she would treasure for the rest of her life.

Later, when he had eased himself from her body and tucked them both beneath the comfort of the duvet, she slept curled against him, replete with physical and emotional satisfaction, warmed by the hard bulk of his body, protected by the arm he curled round her, imprisoned by the firm weight of his leg across her thighs.

As she drifted deep into sleep, she thought she felt his soft breath stir her hair as he whispered in her ear, ‘I love you, Holly. I love you.’

But she knew it was only wishful thinking, because locked away deep in her heart was the knowledge that he loved Rosamund.