So Close And No Closer

Tragically, her mother had died within hours of her own birth, and because of that, she and her father had shared a closeness which even now, six years after his death, she still missed.

‘Rue.’ Her solicitor’s face creased in a delighted smile as he swept some papers off the chair and dusted it down apologetically before offering it to her. ‘My dear, how lovely it is to see you.’

Rue hid a tiny smile as she accepted the chair. How on earth he managed to make a living out of his practice she had no idea. Every surface in the small room was piled high with pink-tied bundles of legal papers, files gaped open in half-open drawers, and a tortoiseshell cat drowsed in the sun coming through the small window.

‘Neil Saxton came here to see me first thing this morning,’ he told her rather breathlessly as Rue sat down. ‘In fact, he was here waiting for me at half-past eight when I arrived.’

Immediately he mentioned Neil Saxton’s name, Rue’s face hardened. ‘It’s no good,’ she told him firmly. ‘Nothing you can say to me will make me change my mind. I’m not going to sell Vine Cottage or the land.’

‘My dear child, think,’ her solicitor pleaded with her. ‘I assure you he’s prepared to be very generous—very generous indeed. With that money…’

‘I have more than enough money for my needs,’ Rue cut in ruthlessly. ‘I own the cottage and the land and its freehold. I have no debts.’

‘And no assets, either,’ her solicitor pointed out firmly, surprising her a little. ‘Rue, think: at the moment your business is doing very well, but you have precious little behind you. A bad season, any other kind of accident…’

‘You don’t need to tell me that,’ Rue interrupted him. ‘But it isn’t going to happen.’

‘My dear, I can understand your attachment to the cottage and to the village, but surely there must be other properties.’

‘I’m sure there are,’ Rue agreed obediently, ‘but I suggest you try telling that to Neil Saxton, and not to me.’

‘But you must realise why he wants your property.’

‘Of course,’ Rue agreed.

‘It was, after all, originally part of the estate,’ her solicitor pointed out. ‘He has told me that he is concerned that, if for any reason anything were to happen to you, the land could be sold away completely, and that is the reason he is prepared to make such a very generous offer.’

Rue’s eyebrows climbed a little as she listened to this rather hesitant statement, hardly surprising, she reflected inwardly, in view of her comparative youth.

‘You may reassure Mr Saxton that I have no intentions of selling the land either to him or to anyone else,’ she said firmly, standing up. ‘I’m sorry. I know you’re only thinking of my future and my security, but Vine Cottage is my future and my security. I refused to sell it to that builder last year and now I’m refusing to sell it to Neil Saxton. I’m sorry if he finds that knowledge unpalatable, but he’ll just have to accept it.’

She saw that her solicitor was looking very unhappy, and hesitated, frowning a little.

‘He’s a very determined man,’ her solicitor offered nervously. ‘He asked me a lot of questions about you…about the land…’

Rue’s frown deepened. ‘What did you tell him?’ she questioned sharply.

Her solicitor looked even more unhappy, and a tiny sigh of irritation escaped Rue’s soft mouth. She should have known that a man like her solicitor would be no match for the Neil Saxtons of this world. By now, no doubt, he knew the whole sordid story of her past and the folly she had committed. She shrugged inwardly. What did it matter? He would think her a fool, of course, but what did his opinion matter to her?

‘Well, if he gets in touch with you again, please tell him that there is absolutely no question of any selling the land either to him or to anyone else,’ Rue said firmly.

‘I don’t think he’s going to give up easily,’ her solicitor told her warningly, ‘not a man like that, who’s built up a multi-million international company almost out of nothing.’

Rue hesitated, her interest caught in spite of herself. ‘What exactly does he do?’ she questioned her solicitor thoughtfully.

‘His company deals in computer software of a highly specialised sort.’ Her solicitor made a vague movement with his hands. ‘I believe it’s very highpowered, and that he himself has made a personal fortune from his own innovative ideas.’

‘A self-made millionaire,’ Rue mocked a little bitterly, ‘and now that he’s made it he’s decided to buy himself a part of England’s heritage in the shape of Parnham Court.’

As though he knew the pain that underlay her cynical words, her solicitor looked sympathetically at her.

‘I’m sorry, my dear,’ he said softly. ‘I know how it must hurt you.’

Rue brushed aside his words impatiently.

‘No, no, it doesn’t at all,’ she told him fiercely. ‘I’m not so much of a dog in the manger.’

Her solicitor looked at her and waited, and Rue knew he was waiting for her to explain her antipathy towards Neil Saxton. Unfortunately, it was something she just couldn’t do. She couldn’t analyse even to herself the true reasons underlying her instinctive dislike of the man. One thing she did know, though, was that, no matter what her financial circumstances might be, she would never sell Vine Cottage or its land to him.

And yet, when she stepped outside into the shadowed coolness of the narrowed street, it wasn’t with a feeling of confident assertiveness because she had made it plain to her solicitor that she had no wish to enter any kind of negotiation for the sale of her property, but rather with a feeling of deep and unwanted unease. The kind of unease that prickled under her skin and made her muscles tense, almost as though she half expected Neil Saxton to appear out of nowhere and demand that she sell her land to him.

Horatio was waiting patiently in the car for her when she got back with her shopping. She stowed it away economically and then got into the driver’s seat. She had wasted far too much time over Neil Saxton already, she told herself grimly as she drove towards home.

Once there, she removed her shopping from the car and packed it away, and then went upstairs to change into her working uniform of cotton T-shirt and jeans. The neat skirt and top she had donned for her visit to her solicitor were clothes that belonged more properly to the period before her father’s death. She rarely wore such formal things these days, and indeed, had only put them on in the first place because she knew that her solicitor, old-fashioned perhaps about such things, would not have felt comfortable at the sight of one of his female clients clad in a pair of disreputable old jeans and a shabby T-shirt. Nevertheless, these were the clothes she now felt most at home in, she told herself, pulling the T-shirt on over her head and disturbing the smooth sleekness of her blonde hair as she did so.

She just had time to snatch a quick salad lunch before going outside into the field with her secateurs and her trug, ready to start harvesting those flowers that were at their peak. It was hard, backbreaking work, especially with the heat of the sun beating down on the back of her neck and her upper arms.

At three o’clock in the afternoon, as she straightened up tiredly, she acknowledged that she ought to have worn a hat. Her head was already beginning to ache, the pain pounding in her temples as she raised a grubby hand to massage the too-tight skin. Horatio had long ago deserted her to go and lie down in the shelter of the hedge. She thought longingly of her cool kitchen and the lemonade in the fridge there.

She was just on the point of giving in and going back to the house to get some when an all too familiar male voice hailed her. Furiously she watched as Neil Saxton climbed over the stile that separated his land from hers and came towards her, carefully weaving his way among the tall spires of her flowers.

Unlike her, he looked immaculate and cool. He was wearing a pair of white cotton trousers and a thin white cotton shirt open at the throat. His skin, like hers, was tanned, but his tan was much darker, richer. As he came towards her she felt a tiny pulse of fear beat frantically deep inside her body, and she had a compulsive urge to throw down her trug and take to her heels.

Telling herself that she was being idiotic, she remained where she was, unaware of how revealing the tight, defensive look on her face was to the man approaching her. He had learned a good deal from her solicitor this morning, and as he drew level with her Rue saw that knowledge in his eyes.

Mentally cursing her solicitor for his naı¨vete´, she said coldly, ‘If you’ve come to try to persuade me to sell my land, you’re wasting my time.’

Instead of responding to her challenge, he turned away from her and gestured over to where the neat beds of herbs nestled in the shelter of her walled garden.

‘Who buys those from you?’ he asked her thoughtfully.

Surprised into giving him a response, Rue told him, ‘Restaurants, sometimes gardeners wanting plants of their own, health food shops, and even people wanting to buy them for medicinal purposes.’

‘You’re joking.’ His amused cynicism irritated her.

‘No, I’m not joking at all,’ she told him sharply. ‘After all, herbal medicine existed long before our so-called modern drugs.’

‘Well, yes, but they were hardly as powerful.’

His self-assurance annoyed her, and she had a sudden longing to destroy it.

‘Some of them are,’ she argued firmly. ‘Take ergot, for instance…’

‘Ergot…What’s that?’ She had his attention now, he was looking at her in a direct, uncompromising way that she knew that she ought to find intimidating, but which instead for some odd reason she found challenging.

‘Ergot is the fungus on the rye,’ she told him knowledgeably. ‘It used to be used, among other things, for aborting unwanted foetuses. Unfortunately, its side-effects can be devastating. Used unwisely, it can give rise to a whole range of things from gangrene to madness.’ She saw the look on his face and laughed harshly. ‘It’s still used today as a base for migraine drugs. Doctors prefer only to prescribe it for men,’ she added drily.

‘You obviously know a lot about it.’