Susan Fox - Reclaiming His Wife

You’ll always run away .

‘Take me home,’ she uttered quickly on a series of violent shivers. ‘For heaven’s sake, let’s go back. I’m freezing.’

They had potatoes on the fire again for lunch with ham and pickles, and a huge helping of fresh fruit to follow.

Now, having fallen asleep on the settee, relaxed by the fire and the unaccustomed amount of exercise she had taken that morning, Taylor woke to the jangle of brass rings and realised that Jared was closing the heavy curtains. On the mantelpiece, she noted, he had already lit the candles. She could smell the wax, and noticed that one was burning rather erratically where there wasn’t much of it left.

‘Awake at last.’ His voice was warm, indulgent.

Taylor sat up, putting her feet on the floor.

‘What time is it?’ she wanted to know, her hand stifling a yawn.

‘What does it matter?’ Jared came around the settee, looking down at her from his advantageous position. ‘We aren’t going anywhere.’

A small thread of excitement needled its way rapidly through her, jabbing alive feelings that were hot and sensual, piercing others with poignant regret.

No, she was snowbound here in a private world with this man who could make her blood sing with the potency of his sexuality; who could make her respond to his will because she was so crazy about him, and who had asked her to give them a chance. But if she did and they started afresh, together, then the pressures would be on her again…

‘I must have fallen asleep,’ she said, stating the obvious.

‘That comes from taking too much exercise you’re not used to. Both this morning—’ He broke off, that sensual compression of his lips finishing the sentence. And last night .

She turned away from those penetrating eyes and was glad when he went over and started stoking up the fire.

Surreptitiously, she watched the play of muscle beneath the thick check shirt he was wearing as he stooped to toss the last of the logs from the wicker basket into the flames. There was a book lying open, face down, on the easy chair opposite her. A book about the English Civil War, she noted, remembering his penchant for English history. So he had been reading while she slept, she realised, the thought of the rather homely scene giving a sudden violent tug on her heartstrings.

‘I wish the power would come back on.’ Distractedly she ran a hand through her dishevelled hair. He had made her run for a large part of the way home, forcing her blood to pump through her after he had seen her shivering down by the beck and now she felt decidedly grubby. ‘I’d give anything for a bath.’ Even if she could have managed to heat sufficient water on the fire to give her a bare amount to bathe in, there was no way, she decided, that she could face the temperature of the cold, unheated bathroom. Not while there were still subzero temperatures outside!

His countenance was grim as he picked up the log basket to refill it and went out, saying nothing. He probably felt the same way, unless he was taking cold showers—which she wouldn’t have put past him, Taylor decided with a grimace, until she remembered that even that was an impossibility without any electricity. Nevertheless, she wished she had kept her mouth shut, hoping she hadn’t sounded as though she had been complaining unnecessarily when he was doing his best to make them both comfortable.

Resigned to her discomfort, she got up and started clearing the dishes left over from lunchtime, filled the kettle for more water to wash them and with a small shudder went back to the warm sitting room where the logs Jared had heaped on the fire were already glowing red, giving off extra heat.

Roll on the thaw, Taylor thought wryly, placing the kettle across the two little walls of bricks that Jared had found in the shed and ingeniously erected in the grate for that very purpose before lighting the fire that morning. He had made the whole experience of being snowed in easier than it would have been had she simply been here on her own, she reflected with reluctant honesty. OK, she would probably have coped, though a little less efficiently since she lacked his degree of physical strength for chopping logs and suchlike, but she had to admit that Jared had somehow managed to make it fun. Even so, it was still harder work than she was used to, and it certainly made her appreciate how difficult life must have been for the ordinary people a century or so earlier, but that didn’t stop her longing to get back to normality. Just to be able to feel clean again, she thought, if for no other reason, because a thaw would mean going home—returning to her safe, self-sufficient existence, and as much as she knew that the sooner that happened and she could get away from Jared, the better it would be for her, some crazy, aching part of her—the part that loved him—didn’t want this time with him ever to end.

She had just finished lighting a candle on the mantelpiece, replacing the one that had finally burned itself out, when a thud against the door jamb had her turning quickly.

Wearing the anorak he had casually thrown on to go outside, Jared was manoeuvring a large oval tin bath through the doorway.

‘I don’t believe this!’ Taylor laughed incredulously.

Seeing him trying to kick the rug aside with his booted foot, Taylor rushed to help him, dragging the table to one side and folding the rug clear of the space between the chair and the sofa so that he could set the hollow oval tub down in front of the fire.

‘There you are.’ He ran his hand around the tub’s interior, brushing out some foreign objects. ‘Every modern convenience.’

Still amazed, Taylor stared down at it. ‘How are we going to heat enough water to fill that?’

‘As your forebears did, darling. With one kettleful after another. Bath night, I believe, was every Friday or Saturday night.’

‘In front of the fire.’ Right now it sounded like pure luxury. In front of him .

Disconcerted, she uttered, ‘Did your grandparents use this? Did you?’ Try though she did, she couldn’t imagine him living quite so rustically.

He laughed, and said, confirming it, ‘Good heavens no! I didn’t. There was always the bathroom—certainly in my time. I’m not sure this was ever used. It did, however, come in useful for mixing potting compost and keeping goldfish outside in during the summer months.’

‘You’re joking!’ Horrified green eyes lifted from the ancient metal to meet those that were deep-set, dark and definitely laughing at her. ‘Thanks,’ she chided dryly, secretly amused.

Having to wait for each kettleful of water, it took some time to fill the bath to a practical level—until Jared found a large cauldron in the old pantry and started heating the water in that instead.

With the bath almost ready and steaming invitingly, Taylor went to fetch some of the toiletries she had brought with her; soap from the bathroom and, still in its paper bag, the bottle of fragrant bath foam she had purchased when she and Craig and another member of the crew had gone on a shopping expedition in Edinburgh a few days before.

She was glad Jared was upstairs, moving around in the master bedroom when she came back down because, intimate though they had been during their marriage and then shockingly—her cheeks burned as she thought about it— the previous night, she felt absurdly self-conscious in the present circumstances about undressing in front of him.

She quickly discarded her clothes and, sweeping her hair up and securing it with a large clasp she had brought down with her, she stepped nimbly into the water.

With her shoulders supported by one end of the bath and her long legs draped over the other, she was luxuriating with her eyes closed—breasts barely covered—in the scented bubbles when he strode back in.