Penny Jordan - Breaking Away

Its warmth and beauty, indefinable and yet so very much there, took her breath away for a moment, so that she forgot the discomfort of her damp clothes and even momentarily forgot the irritation of locking herself out of the cottage, and the embarrassment of announcing as much to the strangers who lived here.

As she stepped out of the car and walked towards the ancient oak door, she found herself envying whoever it was who lived here—not because of the house’s size and privacy, but for its marvellous and totally unexpected aura of peace and happiness.

Someone was opening the door as she approached it. Trixie’s familiar, smiling face greeted her, the younger girl apparently completely unsurprised to see her.

Ben, the Labrador, welcomed her boisterously as Trixie almost pulled her inside.

‘I’m so glad you’ve come round,’ Trixie told her. ‘I’ve been bored out of my mind.’ She rolled her eyes and giggled. ‘Rigg has virtually banned me from going out.’

They were standing in a lovely square panelled hallway, with an enormous stone fireplace that actually had a fire burning in its grate.

Ben, having welcomed her, went and lay down in front of it with a luxurious sigh of pleasure.

A worn oak staircase went up one wall to a galleried landing, the staircase wall lined with paintings which looked frighteningly as though they might be originals and priceless.

Heavy damask curtains hung at the windows, their rich fabric adding an extra glow of warmth to the room. She was standing, Harriet belatedly recognised, on an antique rug that was surely never intended to be the recipient of wet and probably still muddy shoes.

She started to apologise automatically, but Trixie just laughed.

‘Come on. I’m dying to introduce you to Rigg. He’s always complaining that I never make any respectable friends…’

Harriet froze as the potential embarrassment of the situation struck her. Somehow or other she had assumed that Trixie’s uncle would not be here, that he would be at work. If he was the same man she had had that difficult confrontation with the other evening, she had no wish at all to meet him again, especially not under these circumstances—not an invited and welcome guest to his home, but rather a petitioner.

‘Oh, no…please…there’s no need to disturb your uncle. I’m sure he must be very busy,’ she protested, catching hold of Trixie’s arm and adding uncomfortably, ‘Actually I didn’t come here to see you, Trixie. I didn’t even realise you lived here.’ Although she ought to have done, she recognised; it had been obvious from Trixie’s engaging and informative conversation that she came from a wealthy background, and from what the agent had told her about the owner of the Hall she ought perhaps to have had the sense to put two and two together and recognise that it must be Trixie’s home. No wonder her uncle hadn’t wanted Harriet reporting his plight to the police.

Trixie looked at her, her expression clouding a little.

‘You haven’t come to see me, then?’

Quickly Harriet explained about locking herself out of her cottage.

‘I rang the agent I bought the house from, and his secretary told me that you used to have a key here.’

Neither of them heard someone also enter the room, but as Trixie furrowed her forehead and then said doubtfully, ‘I don’t know anything about it. I’ll have to ask Rigg.’

Then an all-too-familiar male voice sent shivers of despair racing down Harriet’s spine as it enquired dulcetly, ‘You’ll have to ask me what, Trixie?’

Without intending to, Harriet swung round towards the door, and suffered a heart-shaking jolt of sensation as she stared at the man standing there. He seemed familiar and yet almost totally unfamiliar in his formal business suit and immaculate white shirt.

The dark hair, no longer damp and clinging to his scalp but well cut and brushed, seemed to accentuate the maleness of a face which in the daylight she could see appeared to be almost carved in deep lines of cynicism.

‘It’s Harriet,’ Trixie told him. ‘She’s locked herself out of the cottage and she thought we might have a spare key.’

For a moment, from the dismissive way his glance flicked over her and then returned with hard intent to his niece, Harriet thought that he had not after all recognised her.

She was surprised by the strength of her chagrin that he, who had made such a dangerously lasting impression on her, had apparently no remembrance of her whatsoever.

‘Try for a slightly more logical explanation, Trixie,’ he suggested calmly. Although Trixie grimaced a little, it was obvious to Harriet that she had a healthy respect for her uncle, because after gritting her teeth and casting Harriet an appealing glance, she said quickly, ‘This is Harriet, Rigg. I met her the other…yesterday. She lives in the old gamekeeper’s cottage. Harriet, this is my uncle.’

‘Thank you, Trixie, Miss Smith and I have already met.’

Harriet started a little. Then she had been wrong in that first assumption that he had not recognised her, but how had he discovered her surname?

‘Oh, have you?’ Trixie gave them both a puzzled look, and said to Harriet, ‘You never said anything yesterday about meeting Rigg.’

It was Rigg who answered for her, saying silkily, ‘Perhaps the incident is not one she cares to recall. Miss Smith was, I’m afraid, the unfortunate victim of your idiotic behaviour the other evening. She has the misfortune to drive a car of the same make and colour as yours. When I emerged from the river, to discover her driving towards me, I thought for a moment that you’d come to your senses.’

As she glanced at Trixie, Harriet saw that that unrepentant young lady was trying hard not to laugh. Her uncle obviously didn’t share her amusement, though. He was looking grimly at both of them.

‘Oh, Harriet, no! Was it you who refused to give Rigg a lift?’ Trixie gasped, before her mirth overcame her. ‘See, it worked after all, Rigg!’ she crowed to her uncle. ‘Circumstantial evidence…and I’ll bet that Harriet didn’t believe—’

‘What Miss Smith believed was that I was either a lunatic or a rapist, or possibly both,’ Rigg interrupted Trixie in a hard voice.

‘Oh, Harriet, how brave of you—refusing to give him a lift.’Trixie’s eyes danced with laughter.

But Harriet couldn’t share her innocent amusement. Then Rigg had been the one to ask a favour of her, and she had refused, had refused to help or assist him, and now their positions were reversed, and she was the one needing his help…She shuddered inwardly, and wished it had been anyone else in the world she was having to confront right now rather than this cold, stern man. And even more than that she wished that her hitherto easily controllable imagination would not choose now of all times to become both rebellious and dangerous, by insisting on substituting for his immaculate business suit and shirt the vivid memory of how she had seen him in the headlights of her car, wearing nothing but…

She swallowed hard, and said huskily, ‘I’m sorry to have disturbed you, but the agent did say that you might have a spare key for the cottage here at one time, and I was wondering if you still had it?’

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