A Kind Of Madness Part 16

it was the warning burr of her parents' radio alarm that woke Elspeth from her confused and painful dreams to lie disorientated and unrefreshsd while she tried to grapple with why on earth she had ever set the alarm for four-thirty. Reluctantly she had to admit that, if she had to wake up at such an unholy hour, she couldn't have chosen a better morning on which to do so.

The rising sun shone in through the window from a clear pale blue sky, as she discovered ance she had forced herself out of bed. It was, she recognised sleepily, going to be a perfect summer's clay.

Long ago memories of distant summers of waking early so that she could help with some of the farm ch.o.r.es before setting out for schoal, came back to her so sharply and nostalgically that for a moment, standing in front of the window, breathing in the country-scented air, she forgot how early it was, and remembered only that she had willingly swapped all this to live in a city.

For years she had told herself stoically that she didn't miss the country, that she preferred the hectic pace of city life, that those who talked nostalgically and enviously of living in the country were thinking only of a picture-postcard countryside which bore no resemblance whatsoever to reality. In winter, country lanes were ankle-deep in mud, country gardens bleak, dank, empty s.p.a.ces, country houses damp and cold; and yet there were other mornings, crisp with frost when the air was sharply scented with the promise of snow, autumn days when the gales buffeted the trees and dared human beings to challenge their strength, and days like these when a heat haze already misted the distant hills and the air was already warm and scented.

She wasn't here to daydream about the weather, though--she was here to work. Last night she had told herself it would be the easiest thing in the world to simply stay in bed this morning and so avoid having to face Carter, but she had resolutely denied herself that escape route.

She was going to show him that no matter how bitterly she might regret what had happened, no matter how self-contemptuous she might feel, she was not afraid to face him. Like a dose of nasty medicine, the sooner it was over with the better, and hopefully they would be so busy working that she wouldn't have to do anything more than distantly acknowledge his presence.

She showered and then dressed quickly in a pair of ancient denim shorts and a comfortable, loose

T-shirt--clothes which she would never have dreamed of wearing in London, nor in the immaculate suburban garden that belonged t3 Peter's parents. In fact these clothes belonged to be years before she had left home for London.

Quickly brushing her hair, and applying some protective moisturiser to her face, she pulled on a pair of shabby trainers and opened her bedroom door.

Was Carter still in bed? Resolutely she walked past the closed bedroom door and went downstairs. As she opened the kitchen door she smiilled the freshly made coffee and hesitated in the open doorway, but Carter had already heard her. He turned round, not quite masking his surprise, and then frowning as he looked rather piercingly a) her.

She withstood his look as steadily as she could, but her voice wasn't quite as easy to control as she said shakily, "You did say you wanted an early start this morning!"

"Yes, but I didn't mean that you had to join us."

"That's what I'm here for," she told him grimly. If privately she was beginning to realise that three days would never have been sufficient for her parents to educate her in all that needed doing just to keep the business ticking over, she was rot going to admit as much to anyone else. And especially not to him.

The parrot, for some obscure reason, was whistling the "Ma.r.s.eillaise', but as she approached the table he stopped to comment admiringly, "

Nice legs. "

When Elspeth glowered at him. Carter told her smoothly, "He's had a rather cheque red career. I believe he was about to become the victim of a broken home when your mother rescued him."

"I'm not surprised," Elspeth retorted scathingly, still glowering at the bird, who was now preening himself.

"I wouldn't even be surprised if he was the cause of the broken home."

"Coffee?" Carter invited, indicating the filter jug.

"I've had my breakfast, but if you'd like some toast--' " If I want toast I'm perfectly capable of making my own," Elspeth told him acidly.

Why didn't he just go away and leave her alone? He must realise how uncomfortable she felt with him now, how--how mortified and embarra.s.sed. Just because he was behaving as though nothing out of the ordinary had happened it didn't mean that she found it as easy to put last night out of her mind. She looked at him suspiciously, wondering if he was deliberately baiting her by behaving so perfectly normally, or was there a more sinister reason behind his apparent pleasantness?

Was he concerned that because of last night she might insist on his leaving the house, and in doing so make it more difficult for him to sabotage her parents' work? She had every right to ask him to go, she reflected bitterly, as she poured herself sorr e coffee, taking care to give him as wide a berth as possible as she walked past him.

His behaviour towards her had been atrocious. There was nothing she would like more than for him to leave, but she dared not confront him;

she was too frightened that he might retaliate by claiming that she wanted him to go not because he had kissed her against her will, but because she had wanted him to kiss her.

She knew if he made that accusation flat there was no way she could deny it. If he had been a gentleman he would have left without her having to say anything, she thought, tight-lipped, but then if he'd been a gentleman he would never have done it in the first place.

Peter would never in a thousand years have behaved in such a way.

She sipped her coffee and then tensed, as she realised in outrage that it was not grat tude for Peter's reserve that was colouring her thoughts, but a certain rebellious wistfulness that made her frown angrily and curse her own stupidity.

She was just finishing her coffee when battered van pulled into the yard, sending the dos into a frenzy of barking and scattering the scratching hens.

"That will be John and Simon," Carter announced.

"I'll leave you to finish your breakfast in peace. No need to hurry."

No need to hurry because he didn't want her to see what he might be doing, Elspeth reflected darkly as he opened the back door. She was suddenly discovering that she had an unexpectedly vivid imagination, which relayed to her pictures of her mother's tender baby carrots and peas, with all their careful organic nurturing, suddenly being sprinkled with some hideous compound of chemical fertilisers designed to ruin her parents' reputation and their business. And it wouldn't be that difficult--Carter had said something about watering the crops before they picked them.

Ignoring the faint growling noises from her stomach telling her that a piece of toast would be more than welcome, she finished her coffee, grabbed a pair of her mother's gardening gloves from the basket beside the door and hurried after Carter.

The yard was empty of dogs and men and, having automatically thrown out a couple of handfuls of grain for the hens as she walked past, Elspeth followed them.

As she approached the greenhouses and the long rows of vegetables and salads growing out in the open, she saw that the sprinklers were already at work watering the crops. While Carter orened the greenhouse windows, the other two men were steadily removing the tunnels of protect he plastic from younger rows of crops.

Carter saw her arrive, and came out of the greenhouse towards her, standing so close to be' that she was immediately aware of the warm male scent of him. His skin also carried the rich smell of the greenhouse tomatoes, and she had a dizzying thought that if she were to touch his skin now with her mouth it might taste of the warm, ripf;

fruit.

Love-apples, wasn't that what the Elizabethans had called tomatoes?

She felt her skin suddenly flushing hotly at the direction of her thoughts, unaware of the quick, frowning look Carter gave her as she suddenly stepped hurriedly back from him.

His urgent warning made her freeze, bu: she had already stepped back on to the rake lying behind her and had started to overbalance.

It was only natural that he should reach out and grab hold of her to steady her, an instinctive and automatically protective gesture that anyone might have made, but the minute his fingers closed round the smooth flesh of her arms she was aware of him so intensely and intimately that she could hardly breathe for the choking ache of need that flared through her whole body.

Her violent, "Don't touch me," was borne out of her own shocked fear that he would see just how much she ached for exactly the opposite, but he reacted to it immediately, letting go of her arm as though her flesh burned him--or disgusted him, she thought tormentedly.

She felt sick and dizzy, oddly light-headed as though she had been standing out in the sun for too long, filled with unwanted yearnings and needs.

"Where do you want us to start. Carter?"

Neither of them had heard John approaching, and Elspeth turned away instinctively as Carter looked away from her; she hid her face in the shadows, terrified of what anyone might read in it.

"Er--I think we'd better start with the carrots, and then there's the peas."

"I'll do those," Elspeth offered quickly. Anything, anything to get away from Carter, to be somewhere where she didn't have to look at him.

He gave her a brief nod in acceptance of her offer, apparently as reluctant to look at her as she was to look at him.

As she walked away from him, she was conscious of a certain stiffness in her movements, a deep and desperate tension within her body.

Picking peas might not be the most mentally challenging task in the world, but it was certainly therapeutic, she acknowledged ten minutes later, surprised and pleased by how quickly she had discovered the forgotten rhythms of her childhood, the forgotten instructions of her mother, so that; she was automatically discarding those pods that were as yet too small, swiftly developing a skill which had her basket soon filled and another started.

As she worked doggedly among the 3eas, refusing to turn round and look for Carter, she tried to tell herself that what she was experiencing was just some kind of aberration--a form of prs-marital nerves.