Second Best Husband Part 4

" I just remembered," he told her, that we didn't arrange a time to meetlast night. I have to go into the village, and I was going to suggestthat I picked you up on the way back if that's convenient."

About to protest that there was no reason for him to do that and thatshe could quite easily drive herself up to the manor, Sara recognisedthat it was silly to use two cars when he was pa.s.sing the house anyway,swallowed her instinctive desire to prove that she was independent andquite capable of looking after herself, and said instead," Well, ifyou're sure you don't mind..."

" If I did, I wouldn't have suggested it."

His response startled her a little. She still wasn't used to suchbluntness.

Ianwould never have been so forthright. Ian. Ian. She felt her throatstart to close up and swallowed hard, clinging to the deep, slightlyrough texture of Stuart Delaney's voice as he told her what time hewould be picking her up.

" I'm looking forward to it," she told him politely when he had finishedspeaking.

" So am I."

For some reason, the simple comment set off the most extraordinaryreaction inside her.

A fluttery, heady, expansive feeling of antic.i.p.ation and excitementimmediately followed by a sharper, warning sense of danger and fear.

What was she frightened of, for heaven's sake--what was there to fear?

Not Stuart Delaney, surely? She couldn't remember the last time she hadfelt so at ease with anyone. Perhaps that was it, she reflected a fewminutes later as she replaced the receiver; perhaps it was the very factthat she did feel so at ease with him that made her feel apprehensive.

In her present vulnerable state, the last thing she needed to do was tobecome emotionally involved with another man.

Emotionally involved With Stuart Delaney? A man who after all had been astranger to her until last night? Ridiculous. Impossible. After all, howcould she be in any danger of becoming emotionally involved, emotionallydependent on another man when she still loved Ian?

She was being silly, over-cautious, looking for problems that could notpossibly exist.

No, she had nothing to fear from Stuart Delaney. He, like her, hadsuffered the agony of loving the wrong person, and just like her hewould be anxious to avoid an emotional relationship. She wondered howlong it had been since his romance had broken up. He was a veryattractive man; not good-looking in the way that Ian was good-looking,of course, but very attractive none the less, if one liked the ruggedoutdoors type, and many women did.

Had he remained celibate since the end of his relationship? Such thingswere harder for men, so one wa sled to believe. Of course she and Ianhad never been lovers. No man had ever been her lover, she reflected alittle savagely.

She had not minded that, not while she was still forcing herself tobelieve her delusion that one day Ian was going to look at her and wanther. love her. But now that she had been forced to face up to the truth.

She was twenty-nine years old. a twenty-nine year-old virgin. She smiledwryly to herself. What was she saying? That she regretted the fact thatshe had not at some period of her life experienced the intimacy ofsharing her body with a lover? If so, was that so very wrong? She wasforced to accept that mentally and emotionally it would be harder for her now at twenty-nine, with the added maturity that a decade brought, toactively contemplate a purely physical affair; that her awareness, notjust of me changing social climate, which had led to a far lesspromiscuous and more cautious outlook on casual s.e.x, but also of herselfas a woman, of her inhibition and reserve, which told her that she couldnever be the kind of woman who would find it easy to share an intimaterelationship with a man to whom she was not deeply emotionally, andmentally committed would make it impossible.

Harder? She smiled grimly to herself. Why not face the truth? It wouldbe impossible. Which meant. which meant that unless she was prepared totake Margaret's advice and look for a pleasant, like-minded man, withwhom she could settle down, she was unlikely to have the opportunity tohave the family, the children she knew she wanted.

Not for her the brief casual affair, resulting in a pregnancy and a childthat would be hers and hers alone. And as for falling in love.

Well, that wasn't going to happen either, was it? She had fallen in lovewith Ian and look what that had led to.

Even if she could ever manage to stop loving him. She sighed faintly toherself. These were morbid, unwise thoughts. She would be betteremployed in turning her mind to other, less emotive topics.

She wondered if Stuart Delaney had found a way of coming to terms withhis emotional pain and, if so, if he perhaps had any tips he could pa.s.son to her.

Surprisingly, for someone who had always guarded her privacy sointensely, and who had never easily made friends with members of theopposite s.e.x, she found that she could contemplate the idea ofdiscussing her situation with Stuart Delaney with astonishing ease.

Perhaps because so many of her barriers had already been down at themoment of their initial meeting, she felt as though she had known himfar longer and far more intimately than a mere handful of hours.

She was, she discovered, as she glanced at her watch to check the time,actually looking forward to seeing him, actually aware of a quitedistinct tremor of excitement and antic.i.p.ation running through her bodyas she listened for the sound of his arrival.

When Stuart arrived a few minutes earlier than he had said she was taken a little by surprise. Ian was never early for anything, and was in factinvariably late, salving the offence with one of his charming,apologetic smiles, and yet somehow always leaving one with the feelingof being not quite important enough to have merited the compliment ofhis arriving ontime. As she picked up her jacket and bag, she wondered alittle bitterly if he ever kept Anna waiting.

Somehow she doubt edit. Anna had not struck her as the type of woman whowould wait for any man.

It was only as she was locking the door behind her that she realisedthat she was actually thinking how well suited the pair of them were intheir selfishness. The thought was enough to make her stand still whereshe was, her body frozen in shock as she contemplated the almostheretical nature of her own thoughts. Never in all the years she hadworked for him and loved him had she ever allowed herself to criticise Ian even in the deepest privacy of her own thoughts, her own often verysore heart, and yet now here she was doing so, and finding it shockingly easy.

Uneasily she realised that had she not loved Ian so deeply she mightalmost have disliked him. despised him. Take away the blinkering effectof his intense good looks, take away the charm--which she was beginningto realise was no more than surface deep--and what were you left with? Avery selfish self-absorbed man with a nature, a personality thatrepelled rather than attracted her.

It was an unpleasant discovery. She had never considered herself to besilly enough to place any undue importance on a person's looks. Theirpersonality, their warmth, their responsiveness to others--these werewhat mattered, and yet here she was admitting that had Ian not been sogood- looking. And it was no excuse reminding herself that she had onlybeen a very impressionable nineteen when she met him. She wasn'tnineteen any longer.

" Something wrong?"

The concern in Stuart's voice as he opened the gate and came up the pathmade her shake her head.

" Thank goodness. I thought for amoment there might have been bad news.

Bad news? From Ian, did he mean?

When she looked puzzled, he explained," From your mother... yoursister."

Instantly Sara's face flooded with guilty colour.

" Oh, no. Mother and baby--a little girl--are both doing fine, althoughMum and Dad will be staying on for alittle while. Actually I must driveinto Ludlow tomorrow and get a card, and something for the baby.

They're going to call her Jessica."

" Nice," Stuart approved.

" Is David pleased?"

" Over the moon. He's been longing for a daughter."

" Awise man. I must admit I've always had a yen for a couple of pigtailed serious-eyed daughters myself. Not that I've anything againstsons. In fact..." He gave her a wry glance.

" It doesn't just seem to be your s.e.x that suffer the urge to reproducethe species once they get to their thirties. Men suffer a similarsyndrome."

Sara looked at him in some surprise.

" You want children?"

Ian, who was in his early thirties, had been very voluble in his beliefthat children were a nuisance, a hindrance to the kind of life hepersonally wanted to lead and somehow or other she had supposed that the majority of unmarried men in their thirties must feel the same way.

" Very much; don't you?"

The directness of his answer and the question that followed it shook hera little bit. No matter how comfortable she felt with him, she was stillsurprised by his straightforwardness.

" Yes... yes, I do," she admitted a little hesitantly.

" In fact..." She paused, and then reminded herself that there was noneed for her to conceal her true thoughts from Stuart as there had beenfrom Ian.

" In fact, just before I left London, my next-door neighbour, a closefriend, was suggesting that I ought to consider finding someone to marrywho shared my love of children. She claims that that's what she did.

That she heard her biological clock ticking away extremely loudly andextremely fast, and that when she met Ben, and discovered they hadagreat deal in common, she married him, knowing he would be agood fatherfor their children, rather than because she was in love with him. hi hercase it all worked out very well, since she does now love him very much.

" Mnun. On the face of it, and using today's mores and standards, itdoes seem a cold-blooded arrangement, and yet it isn't really so verymany generation sago that marriages were arranged either by one'sparents, or other family relatives, for reasons that had very little todo with the emotional needs of the parties concerned, and on the face ofit those relationships worked."

" Probably because people's choices were so much more limited. Divorcewasn't possible and so they had to stay together, and, of course, thenin every stratum of society the time that husbands and wives actuallyspent together was far more limited than it is today. Families played amuch larger role in people's lives than they do now. Newly marriedcouples had the support and ad vice of not just parents and siblings tocall on, but a vast clan of aunts, uncles, cousins and more."

" Yes, that's true. I take it you don't consider your friend's adviceworth taking?"

Sara paused as she reached his Land Rover.

" In one sense, yes. In others..." She gave a tiny shrug.

" I do want children... very much, I always have done. But to marry aman I don't love..."

" There are many differing degrees of love," Stuart surprised her bysaying.

" Perhaps it sounds cynical, but I suspect that the securest and mostenduring foundation for a stable relationship between a man and a womanisn't necessarily based on the euphoric and very often totallyunrealistic state we describe as" being in love".

" Mutual understanding: mutual goals, respect, leavened by a sharedsense of humour, will in my estimation take arelationship a good dealfurther."

Sara was shocked enough to protest.

" But what about desire? Surely..."

He was standing close enough to her for her to see the way the tawnygold of his eyes suddenly became darkly brilliant. An unfamiliar frisson of sensation twisted through her and her skin suddenly burned withheated colour as she reacted to him with a mixture of embarra.s.sment and shock.

What on earth was she doing raising such a topic with a man she barelyknew?

It wasn't, after all, a subject she would even have raised with Ian. Infact, it was a subject it would have been impossible to raise with Ian.

" It is possible to experience desire without love, of course, but usingthat kind of physical need as something on which to base a permanentrelationship isn't something I personally would ever contemplate.

Nevertheless, there has, I agree, to be desire, but desire like loveitself takes many shapes and forms. And what is desire? A couple forwhom s.e.x is the most important part of their relationship would say thats.e.x is desire, but there are other couples who, although they might notadmit it, are more strongly motivated by a desire for money, a desirefor social position, even a desire for children, and these desires arethe most important focus of their relationships.

" For mea marriage founded on mutual goals, mutual trust and respect, amutual willingness to make the relationship work, plus a mutual desireto have children, are more important than intensely powerful s.e.x, nomatter how alluring that particular desire might sometimes seem."

" If you want children so much, why...?"

Sara stopped. How on earth could she have forgotten so quickly thatStuart, like her, had lost the person he loved?

" Why haven't I married?" he finished for her, tactfully easing herembarra.s.sment.

" Probably be cause I haven't found the right woman. It isn't easy beingmarried to a man with a job like mine. It's demanding work, involvinglong hours, and limited financial reward. The trees need constantattention even when one has an experienced and well-trained staff.

Holidays, that sort of thing, are a luxury I simply can't afford, and ittakes a very special kind of woman to accept the limitations my workwould place on our ability for personal freedom.

" One of the reasons I relocated out here was because, apart fromanything else, the old site was in an area which had slowly become moreand moreurbanised, and finding staff was growing increasingly difficult.

" Boys who were quite willing to work outdoors in the summer when theweather was good were not quite so happy about outdoor work in thewinter Moving to a farming community where it would be easier to findpeople prepared to take on outdoor work seemed a sensible idea."

He smiled at her as he handed her up into the Land Rover and then closedthe door. When he had walked round to the driver's door, climbed in andset the vehicle in motion, he continued," It isn't just the care andmaintenance of the trees while we're growing them, which is difficultenough. They have to be grown in such a way that, when necessary, we canlift them with a good solid root-ball. Not easy when you're talkingabout a half-grown tree which might in maturity reach eighty feet andweigh a couple of tons. There's also the problem of supplying adequateafter-sales care, to ensure that the newly trans planted tree doesn'tdie. I've lost a couple through poor care on the part of the new owners,and I can tell you there's nothing more soul-destroying. I hate to see ahealthy tree die out of sheer ignorance and neglect, especially when Iknow it's a tree that ought to have survived and flourished."

The emotion he was feeling was deepening his voice, making it slightlyharsh and abrasive. He really loved his trees, Sara recognised, and ifhe felt like that about them then she couldn't help reflecting what awonderfully caring father he would be.

It was amazingly easy to picture him mentally with his two little girlsand his sons as well, a happy smiling woman by his side, sheacknowledged wistfully. Why on earth had she rejected him, the woman hehad loved? If she were loved by a man like Stuart. A man like Stuart?

But she loved fan, who was as different as it was possible to be fromStuart.

This was ridiculous, she chided herself, as Stuart changed gear andturned into the manor's drive. She was obviously suffering from somekind of reaction to the trauma of the last few days, seeing in Stuartall the virtues she now realised that Ian did not possess.

Seeing his virtues was one thing, she derided herself, but picturing himas the father of four children was quite another.

" I haven't got round to using the main entrance to the house as yet,"Stuart told her apologetically as he brought the Land Rover toa halt inthe cobbled yard.

'm fact, as far as the house is concerned, I'm afraid I just haven't hadthe time to do a great deal with it. I bought the place because of theland--the house was an ancillary feature, and I have to admit I didn'teven look round it properly. I didn't realise until I moved in how largeit is."

" Well, it certainly has the potential to hold alarge family," Saramurmured, adding mischievously," A very large family."

He turned in his seat and looked at her.

" Indeed it does," he agreed wryly.

" It's large enough for a veritable tribe of offspring."

They both laughed, and as they did Sara realised how impossible it wouldhave been for her to have shared this moment with Ian. His sense of humour was sharp and cutting, malicious sometimes, and confined to thefoibles and vulnerabilities of people he knew combined with how theymeasured up to his own very individualistic table of good and badpoints, a table which seemed to be largely comprised of media and social in' jokes and rules.

" By the way," Stuart asked her," I was wondering Would you still be

willing to cast your expert eye over the havoc I've created with my paper work? You did say..."

" No problem. I'd be only too glad to," Sara a.s.sured him.

" It will give me something to keep me occupied while Iwait for Mum and

Dad to come home."

" Well, it will take quite a while to show you over what we're doing here. I was hoping I might be able to persuade you to stay for lunch.

Not one of Mrs. G. "s offerings this time. I bought some stuff while I