Penny Jordan (14 page)

'YOU'RE VERY RESTLESS
this evening,' Jenny commented to Jon as he paced the length of their sitting room. 'It's gone eleven. I'm ready for bed.

Are you?'

'You go ahead. I'll be up shortly,' Jon told her.

He grimaced, admitting. 'I do feel a bit on edge.

I don't know why.'

'It's probably because the boys aren't back yet,' Jenny said soothingly.

'It was good of Guy to get them both holiday jobs on Lord Astlegh's estate.'

'Yes, it was,' Jenny agreed, smiling lovingly at him as she opened the door and headed for the stairs.

After she had gone, Jon went to stand in front of the window. Perhaps it was the storm outside that was making him feel so tense and edgy, as though.. .he was waiting for something. For
some-

thing
? For
what?

He frowned as he remembered the conversation he had had with Olivia earlier in the day. They had been talking about Ben, and Jon had mentioned how concerned he was about his father's health.

'He misses your father very badly,' Jon had told her.

'He
may do, but I certainly don't,' Olivia had retorted immediately. 'I never want to see him again as long as I live and if I did...' She stopped and said harshly to Jon, 'But you must feel the same way—after what he did.'

'Yes...at first,' Jon had agreed slowly. 'And I certainly can't condone his wrongdoing, but time passes. Wounds heal.'

'Mine haven't,' Olivia had countered. 'There's no way I could ever forgive him for what he did.'

The vehemence in her voice had disturbed Jon, but he had felt unable to pursue the issue. Olivia wasn't a girl any more. She was a woman. An adult...a wife...a mother...and a daughter?

Outside, the thunder rolled nearer. It was going to be a wild and stormy night.

W H E N DAVID WENT UPSTAIRS, all the lights were on on the landing. Honor warding off the demons of the dark? As he opened his own bedroom door, he could hear the thunder rolling closer.

IN HER BEDROOM
, Honor heard the floorboards creak as David walked along the landing. Both her bedside lamps were on, their comforting glow dispelling the darkness of her bedroom. People found it difficult to understand her fear of the dark and even her grown daughters teased her a little for it, but she had never been able to shake it off.

Tonight, though, she had something much more pleasant to think about, to go to sleep on... David was such a gorgeously sexy man.

'Mmm...' Smiling to herself, she closed her eyes as she reviewed with sleepy female appreciation just
why
she considered David to be so sexy, ignoring the increasingly loud rumble of the thunder as it came closer. Unlike the dark, thunder had never bothered her, not even when, as it had done just now, it seemed to be right overhead, but as the sound died away, the lights flickered and Honor froze. She sat bolt upright in bed, her mouth dry with dread as they flickered again and then went out.

No, please not that, she prayed, but it was too late. Too afraid to move as the darkness closed over her, Honor made a small keening cry of terror.

David wasn't sure at first just why he had woken up, only that some sixth sense had alerted him to the fact that something wasn't as it should be.

Lying fully awake in his bed, he looked searchingly around the shadowy darkness of his room and then realised what was missing—the thin bar of light from the landing that he had been able to see beneath his closed bedroom door. Which meant... Swiftly, he reached for the switch on his bedside lamp. Nothing. No power, no electricity, no light.

Without stopping to analyse what he was doing, or why, he pushed back the bedclothes, reaching for the heavy towelling robe Honor had produced for him earlier in the day. She had informed him that it was a gift from one of her daughters 'just in case you should have any male visitors'. 'I rather fancied at the time the male visitor Abigail had in mind was her then current boyfriend,'

Honor had told him wryly. 'But they split up before the relationship got as far as bringing him home. I daren't tell either of them, but I must admit that I'm rather looking forward to the day they make me a grandmother—not that I'd want either of them to rush into motherhood without being very sure about what they were doing. Do you have any grandchildren?' she had asked him.

He hadn't been sure what to reply, but she had saved him from the necessity of saying anything by smiling and apologising.

'I'm sorry. I'm prying.' And then she had tactfully changed the subject.

David opened his bedroom door and stepped out onto the dark landing. The house held that night silence that to some people was comforting and to others eerie. After living the way he had done virtually out in the open with none of the refinements of civilisation, any building with four stout walls and a roof to keep out the elements would have been welcoming. Still, David acknowledged that he actually liked Foxdean. Going round it with Honor, he had found himself sympathising with the house's plight and its surely undeserved reputation.

Halfway down the landing, he paused, listening as he caught a sound that had nothing to do with creaking floorboards or ill-fitting windows. There it was again, a muffled indrawn sound of terror.

Honor!

Quickly, David hurried to her bedroom door and turned the handle.

The room, of course, was in darkness, but despite the storm clouds in the night sky, there was enough light from the sickle moon for a man used to the darkness of velvet tropical skies to make out the shape of the room's furniture and the hud-dled form curled up in a tight ball on the bed.

'Honor. It's all right. It's me,' he reassured her in a soft voice as he approached the bed.

She had turned her head towards him, but David wasn't sure if she had actually registered either his presence or his words.

'Honor.' As he reached the bed, he sat down on it beside her. 'It's all right. There's been a power cut.'

'David?' He could hear the relief in her shaky voice.

'Yes, it's me,' he told her comfortingly.

She looked directly at him and he glimpsed the shadows of her fear in her eyes.

'Thank you for coming. I was too terrified to move. Silly, I know—'

'It's not silly at all,' David hastened to correct her. 'If we're honest, most of us have to admit to a fear of one thing or another.'

Honor gave him a wan smile and asked, 'So what are you afraid of, then?'

She was recovering now. David saw it in her eyes, but he could see more than that. Much more...

He could see, for instance, the way the moon-light shadowed her skin, highlighting the tempting curve of her mouth and the way her hair lay against her throat. He could see, too, the smooth warmth of her bare shoulder and guessed that beneath the bedclothes she was totally naked.

His body stirred in reaction to his thoughts.

'What I'm more afraid of than anything else at the moment is being here with you,' he answered honestly. Just for a second he thought that her silence meant that he had offended her and that she was rejecting him.

Then he saw the glimmer of tears shining in her eyes. When he reached out protectively to cover her hand as it lay on top of the bed with both of his own, she told him quietly, 'Every year, we—my parents and my brothers—used to go up to Scotland to visit my grandparents. They had this huge old barracks of a house. Upstairs, there was a long gallery.' She made a small face. 'You know the sort of thing, all heavy family portraits hanging on the walls alongside a hideous collection of hunting trophies. We used to play there when it rained. At one end there was a large oak chest. My brothers used to tease me that it was really a coffin.' She smiled again. 'Of course it wasn't, but for some reason I actually believed them.

'They were both older than me and I suppose, too, they resented having to play with a girl—they were at boarding school and so we didn't really have much contact with one another apart from the holidays. It sounds terribly archaic now, but then... Well, this particular holiday—I was quite young, only just eight and a very young eight at that. We were playing pirates. I was "captured"

and they bundled me up in an old sheet...

threatened to make me walk the plank, but instead, for some reason, I don't remember why, they decided to imprison me in the chest...'

As she talked, her speech had speeded up and he could hear the dry anxiety in her throat, but now it slowed right down as though she was finding it hard to speak at all. Her voice had dropped and become so low that David automatically moved closer so that he could hear what she was saying.

'It was just a boyish prank...they didn't mean... But something must have happened. Either they were called away or they just simply forgot about me.'

She had begun to shiver and her face was nearly the same colour as the pale white sheets on the bed. But despite her shudders, David could see the perspiration dewing her skin as she relived the terror of her imprisonment. David could fully understand why.

Just listening to her and imagining how she must have felt was making his own heart beat heavily and fast. If he had those two little wretches—her brothers—here right now...

Anxiety, anger and an aching need to take hold of her and tell her that she was safe, that there was nothing for her to fear, that he, David Crighton, would guard and protect her for the rest of his life, thundered down over him in an avalanche of feeling.

'What is it?' Honor asked a little bit breathlessly as his grip on her hand tightened.

'Nothing,' David denied, and then, shaking his head, admitted, 'Your brothers, I'd like to have skinned the pair of them.'

To his relief, Honor laughed, a deep rich chuckle that arched her throat and made him long to press his lips to her skin.

'Although as a mother I'm totally against any kind of violence towards children, you don't know how good it makes me feel to hear you say that,' she acknowledged frankly.

'When my grandparents' housekeeper eventually found me, everyone was so fed up all I got was a thorough telling-off for playing silly games and getting my clothes dirty. My brothers had gone out to have tea with a friend and had forgotten where they'd left me. They'd neglected to tell anyone of the fact that they'd locked me in the chest. Fortunately, the housekeeper who was looking for me to give me my supper heard the noise I was making and had a spare key.'

'Your brothers must have been mortified to think of what they'd done to you,' David said.

'Not really,' Honor told him, adding simply,

'We weren't that kind of family. You've got to remember,' she counselled him gently when she saw the expression in his eyes, 'that my brothers were both at boarding school. In those days, boarding schools, whilst not in the Tom Brown's school-days mode, were nevertheless quite tough forcing houses for what were perceived to be prized male qualities. I think my family was quite out of patience with me when I developed this ridiculous fear of the dark. Such experiences are supposed to make one stronger, not weaker.'

She sighed gently. 'I wasn't allowed to have a night-light in my bedroom and my father was almost obsessive about insisting that all the lights be turned off at night. I smuggled a candle and some matches into my bedroom and I can only think that I must have had a very kind guardian angel watching over me to keep me from accidentally setting the whole house on fire.'

'A candle...' Thoughtfully, David looked round the room, suddenly understanding the real purpose of the many decorative candlesticks he had seen dotting the house.

'Mmm...stupidly I took the one I normally keep up here downstairs with me the last time I had a power cut and forgot to replace it, so it's my own fault that I got in such a state tonight.

I'm sorry that I woke you. It really is most un-dignified in a grown woman to make such a noise that she wakes up her house guest. You must think I'm an idiot'

David paused and looked at her, savouring the luminous darkness of her eyes and the soft sheen of her skin, the tempting fullness of her mouth, the sleep-scented warmth she exuded, before telling her gruffly, 'What I think is...is immaterial...'

He intended to say, since / am in no position to pass judgement on anyone, but instead, to his own bemusement, he heard himself admitting thickly instead, 'What I think is that
I'm
the one who's an idiot for coming in here when I already know how dangerously vulnerable I am to you and how very, very much I want to make love with you.'

'You do?' Honor responded almost whimsically, but there was nothing whimsical about the way she was looking at him.

'Yes, I do,' David agreed, and as she lifted the hand he was still clasping towards her throat, he leaned over and kissed her.

Honor made a soft sound of appreciation as David's mouth covered hers. The fear that had ter-rorised her had gone, but in its place was an equally dangerous emotion.

How long had it been since a man had made her feel like this...made her
want
like this?

Too long, her hungry body protested impatiently, but she wasn't an impetuous girl any more, Honor cautioned herself. She was a mature woman. Yes, she was, and as such, surely she was allowed to know what she wanted, to indulge herself a little, to be open and honest about her sensuality. After all, whatever she chose to do or not to do with this man was her business and hers alone. She wasn't accountable to anyone now.

Her daughters, the primary reason why as they were growing up she had been so determined not to allow a man into her life, were now adults themselves. To them she no doubt seemed too ancient to suffer the aching heat of sensual desire, but the reality was...

The reality was that she wanted David with an intensity that made it devastatingly easy to simply lie here and permit herself to be lapped by the voluptuous waves of their mutual need.

She knew already that he would be a caring, tender lover, that his touch—his
possession—

wouldn't be greedy or selfish.

Because of Rourke, she had witnessed, if not personally experienced, most of the harsh realities of what sex for sex's sake could be. It had perhaps given her a jaundiced view of men, as had the numerous attempts by her male acquaintances to convince her that what she needed was to have sex with them.