Inherit the Skies (19 page)

‘Come on, lazybones, I thought we were going to explore!'

‘Not for a minute.'

‘Yes! Come on!' She grabbed his hand, tugging. For a moment he resisted thinking how easy it would be to pull her down beside him. Then before he could act on the idea she let go his hand, dancing away. ‘ Well I'm going to if you're not!' she called over her shoulder as she made for the river. He watched her flying hair and petticoats then got to his feet and ran after her, catching her easily with his long athletic strides.

By the river it was cool again. Sarah took off her boots and waded in, squealing as the pebbles tickled her toes and bunching up her skirts. A moorhen scuttled from the opposite bank; in the shallows minnows darted beneath her bare feet. He rolled up his trousers and followed suit, still wondering if the opportunity to touch those lovely rounded breasts would ever come. She kicked up a little water at him, laughing, teasing, but not in a flirting manner, and he began to despair. A whole afternoon alone with Sarah and still she was behaving like a child let out of school … though he laughed with her, frustration was beginning to smoulder within him.

‘You're making me wet,' he objected.

‘It'll soon dry in the sun,' she scoffed. ‘You sound more like old Sobersides. Don't say you're going to grow up like him – to be no fun at all!'

He made a grab for her then but she eluded him, wading back to the bank, standing there tantalisingly while he followed more slowly to avoid soaking his rolled-up trousers.

Surely she knew what she was doing to him! he thought with mounting irritation. Not even Sarah could be that naive.

She led the dash back up the field, reached the rug and threw herself down on it wringing the water out of the hem of her dress.

‘And you were worried about getting wet!' she teased. ‘ Just look at me!'

‘I am looking,' he said.

She jerked her head up, startled, and he saw the guarded look that was suddenly there in her eyes. She dropped the hem of her skirt abruptly.

‘We had better pack up the picnic things.'

Again he cursed. He knelt beside her, more aware than ever of her nearness, yet still apprehensive about her reaction if he should make a move. The easiness between them was momentarily lost. He banged the plates into a corner of the picnic basket and heard her squeal. Swivelling his head he saw that she had lifted the remains of the fruitcake and disturbed a wasp; it was now buzzing angrily around her. He grabbed a serviette and flapped at it.

‘Don't!' she ordered, her voice a little panicky. ‘You'll make it angry and it will sting!'

‘I'll kill it.'

‘No you won't – you'll just make it angry. Cook says …'

The wasp flew out of range of Hugh's flailing serviette and suddenly he knew what he was going to do.

They continued packing up the picnic basket, Sarah bending over it to arrange things neatly. Her hair was swinging over her shoulders; where it had parted he could see the nape of her neck, smooth, pale and enticing.

‘Don't move,' he said, his voice uneven.

She froze. ‘What …?'

‘That wasp. It's in your hair. No!' as she made a quick panicky movement, ‘ stay quite still or it will sting you. I'll get it.'

She froze again, shoulders tense, neck rigid. He reached out and touched her hair. It felt silky soft. His throat was so tight he could scarcely breathe. He spread his fingers and felt a tremor run through her.

‘Hugh …'

‘It's all right,' he said. ‘ It's gone.'

She began to turn her head but he left his hand where it was, feeling her hair slip through his fingers. She was trembling but in his excitement he scarcely noticed. He caught her shoulder, turning her into his arms and she buried her face in him, half-sobbing. Slowly he moved his hand around her neck, astonished at the softness of it beneath his fingers, stroking, gentling. For a moment they remained there, kneeling together and he let his other hand slip down a little from her shoulder towards her breast. The desire was pounding in him now. As his fingers touched her breast she stiffened, drawing back a little, as though startled yet unwilling to believe the contact was deliberate and he could restrain himself no longer. He grabbed her breast, cupping it and squeezing, and felt the shock wave reverberate through her body.

‘Hugh!'

He held her firm. ‘Don't move! Oh Sarah …'

‘No!' she breathed, wriggling away.

The movement of her breast beneath his hand only increased his fever. It felt even better than he had anticipated in his wildest dreams, firm yet soft, like a ripe peach, filling the palm of his hand.

‘Stay still!' he ordered. ‘I won't hurt you.'

She continued to wriggle.

‘Hugh, don't, please! Stop it!'

He ignored her. Her face was close to his; suddenly feeling her breasts was not enough. He wanted to kiss her. His fingers tightened on the nape of her neck, spreading out to immobilise her twisting head and his lips found hers. They were sweet, tasting faintly of the dandelion wine. He kissed her hard and felt them move, unwillingly returning the pressure. For a moment he drank her in then he could no longer endure the throbbing demands of his body. He pushed her back so that she was lying half on the rug and half on the grass, kneeling astride her and fumbling at her skirts.

She began to flail then, half sobbing. ‘Hugh stop it! Hugh please stop it!'

He ignored her pleas. The firm flesh of her long legs felt too good. His seeking hand found the vee between her thighs, the warmth emanating through the thin cotton drawers inflamed him still further.

‘Lie still!' he ordered her, covering her mouth with his again. This time there was no answering response from her lips, her head twisted and her body writhed as she tried to escape. Keeping her shoulders pinned to the ground he fumbled with his clothing and tore at her drawers. A madness seemed to have taken control of him now; he had never intended that the encounter should go this far but now her very resistance was driving him on. With his knee he wedged her legs apart and began to thrust and plunge between them. He heard her sob and scream softly then her back arched towards him and the madness was all-consuming so that his body seemed almost not to belong to him and hers was no longer that of little Sarah but simply an object of his crazed delight. At the end it was all he could do to keep from crying out as she had done for the shock waves seemed to reverberate to the very core of him and he covered her face with kisses. She lay beneath him like a trapped butterfly and it was only when he tasted the salt of her tears that he realised she was crying.

He felt a moment's horror at what he had done but the exhilaration and the feeling of power and ascendancy was too great for it to last.

‘Sarah?' he said raggedly.

She did not move, lying there with the sun on her face and her hair tumbled in the grass. He sat up, looking down at her, and felt the strength regenerating in him.

‘Why are you crying?'

She opened her eyes and looked up at him. She did not speak. He reached out and pulled her blood-flecked skirt down over her splayed legs.

‘You're mine now, Sarah,' he said and there was a note of triumph in his voice. ‘You're mine and don't you forget it.'

Her eyes held his. He could not read the expression in them. After a few moments she sat up. He half-expected her to run but she did not. Instead without a word she resumed packing the remains of the picnic basket.

Puzzled he watched her. She stood up, tidying her hair with her fingers and smoothing her crumpled skirt.

‘It's time we were getting back,' she said.

Her calm almost unnerved him and as an unwelcome new thought struck him he turned cold.

‘You won't tell my father?'

An expression close to scorn twisted her features.

‘Of course not!' she said. ‘But don't try anything like that again, Hugh. Not ever again.'

A slow smile crossed his face. The sight of her was stirring him again, his body was remembering the delights of a few moments ago. He felt young and strong and invincible. She was better than Alicia. Much better.

They carried the picnic things back to the motor without speaking. The brightness was dying out of the day now, the sun sinking towards the horizon in a ball of deep orange fire.

It was only as they were driving home that he remembered he had still not seen Sarah's breasts though he had had more, much more, than he had expected. But he would. Oh yes, he would. The whole summer stretched invitingly before them and in spite of Sarah's warnings he knew there would be other times. As he had said, she was his now. And he had not the slightest intention of letting her go.

Sarah walked across the yard at Chewton Leigh House towards the stables. In her hand she carried a paper bag filled with sugar lumps. Sweet Lass, the mare Gilbert had bought for her when she had learned to ride, was in foal and her time was near. Sarah visited her whenever she could, bringing her little treats such as the sugar lumps which she bought from the village shop since Bertha had complained about her helping herself to the ones she kept in the kitchen.

As she passed the windows of the house she looked in nervously but saw no-one and the quick beat of her heart steadied a little. No sign of Alicia or Leo, and more importantly no sign of Hugh. Since that afternoon, three weeks ago now, when she and Hugh had taken the Rolls to Bury Woods she had avoided him whenever she could but still he sought her out and the confusion in her emotions was such that she both dreaded the encounters and yet was strangely disappointed when they did not occur.

Why she should feel this disappointment Sarah could not imagine. After what had happened she had thought she would never want to see him again and the prospect of facing him, particularly in the presence of other members of the family, had made her feel physically sick. But after a few days when she had hidden herself away at Home Farm, her attitude towards the events of that afternoon had begun to undergo a strange metamorphosis. She recalled them now not so much with horror as with a creeping fascination, pondering on the way that Hugh had changed from the merry boy who had brightened her days at Chewton Leigh House and whom she had sometimes thought of as her only friend to something approaching a wild beast and marvelled that in some way it had been her body which had caused that change.

The knowledge was frightening and yet at the same time oddly exciting. She had taken off all her clothes and looked at herself in the slightly mottled mirror on her dressing table, noting with a critical eye the swell of her young breasts and the trimness of her waist, and remembering how she had once heard one of the ‘big girls' at school complaining in the seclusion of the privy block that her chest was sprouting and she did not want it to. ‘I don't want those ugly things' the big girl had said, almost weeping, but Sarah had been unable to understand her attitude then and she could not understand it now. For as long as she could remember she had admired her mother's breasts and hoped that when she grew up she would look just like Rachel; now, examining her reflection in the mirror, she knew her ambition had been realised. She ran her hands over them and felt prickling sensations trickle like silken cords from them to the very core of her being, the same sensation she encountered whenever she remembered Hugh and what he had done to her. She let her hands run on, across the flatness of her stomach to the firm columns of her thighs, then to the soft insides and up to the tuft of baby fine hair which grew there, and was aware of a strange feeling of power, unidentifiable yet very real.

This feeling puzzled her; Hugh had been the aggressor, she had been quite unable to prevent him from doing as he willed. So why should she now feel, even for a moment, that it was
she
who was the powerful one?

These secret thoughts did nothing to lessen the mortifying embarrassment she had felt on seeing him again, however. Her whole body had seemed to blush, her heart had pounded painfully against her ribs and she wished she could die. Alicia and James had also been in the room and with a tremendous effort she had behaved normally, desperate not to let them gain any inkling that things between her and Hugh were any different than they had ever been. Then Hugh had looked at her and she was sure the game was up. It was all there in his knowing narrowed eyes and the slight triumphant curve of his mouth, a look which made her blush all over again and started her heart beating so fast she could scarcely breathe, a look which sent the tiny shivers flickering through the deepest parts of her body and made her want to run and hide, and also to feel his hands on her again, both at the same time. So obvious was the look to her that she could not believe the alert Alicia had not noticed it. But it seemed she did not. When she left Hugh had come with Sarah to the door and his hand had rested for a moment on her back before slipping around and giving her breast a quick squeeze. Again her heart had lurched and he whispered, his breath hot on her ear: ‘Tomorrow in the copse by the lake. Ten o'clock.'

Of course she had not kept the appointment though at ten o'clock she was looking out of her bedroom window, her emotions swinging between the wistful and the tumultuous as she imagined him by the lake waiting for her.

The following afternoon he had come to the farm. She had seen him coming and run up to her room but Bertha had called her down.

‘Here's Master Hugh come to see you.'

‘I don't want to see him. I've got a headache.'

‘Don't be so rude, my girl. Come down this minute!'

She had come down, meeting his eyes defiantly, and again been aware of the sensation of power when she realised he was slightly non-plussed.

‘I came to see if you'd like to go for a walk, Sarah,' he said.

‘No thank you. I don't feel very well.'

‘It's this heat, I expect,' Bertha said, making excuses for her, and Sarah was for once grateful for the older woman's presence.