Shadow Of Desire

And Toby’s subsequent appreciative remarks had made the extra effort more than worthwhile, she decided smugly before she fell asleep that night. And perhaps it wasn’t altogether imagination that the warm gleam in his eyes when he looked at her hadn’t simply been prompted by gratitude for the food, delectable though it had been.

Since then he had been down to Monk’s Dower every weekend, and Ginny found she was looking forward to each visit with a strange intensity. She knew what was happening to her, of course. She had been vaguely attracted to men before, but it had never meant anything and such relationships as she had enjoyed had been casual in the extreme. But the feeling growing inside her was new to her, and she didn’t want to fight it, although common sense told her that she should. After all, she had not the slightest reason to think that Toby felt the same. He looked at her as if the sight of her pleased him, but reason told her that he might well look at any passably attractive girl that way. And he was practically a stranger to her. He worked in London, that much she knew, but she had no idea what he did for a living. She assumed his frequent absences were caused by his trips abroad, but he never mentioned them or any aspect of his life away from Monk’s Dower at all.

She sometimes wondered if he had a girl-friend. It was hardly possible that anyone as attractive and charming could still be unattached. She visualised the bleak prospect of his wanting to bring girl-friends down to Monk’s Dower with him, as he was perfectly entitled to do, she told herself. How would she feel about that?

There were all kinds of unanswered questions about Toby, she decided. One of the downstairs rooms had been fitted up as a study with a workmanlike desk and a large electric typewriter, but he made no attempt to use it, as far as she knew. Perhaps he went in there and worked during the night—but at what? she wondered.

Surely there was some easy way to find out, without sounding as if she was trying to pry, or get too close. Perhaps this very weekend—if he came down, because the expected message hadn’t arrived yet—she would get the opportunity to find out a little more about him, Ginny thought. Maybe he had telephoned while she was out shopping, and was on his way at that moment.

The weekends had begun to assume a kind of pattern. Toby would arrive some time during Friday evening and eat the food that she had left in the oven for him. Then he would come over to their part of the house and join them in their sitting room. Sometimes they would watch television, but at others they would play Scrabble, and Toby had taught Tim how to play gin rummy. He teased Aunt Mary outrageously, and scratched Muffin’s stomach with his foot, and behaved pretty much, Ginny thought, as if they were his family, and he had come home.

He was clearly a very social person, and enjoyed the company of others, and Ginny found it strange that he should choose to rent a house in a quiet remote corner like Monk’s Dower. She could only surmise that perhaps it presented the greatest possible contrast to his workday life.

On Saturdays he usually got up late and cooked himself an enormous breakfast combined with lunch. Then he went out during the afternoon. Once or twice he had taken Muffin with him for a walk. On another occasion, he had driven Tim into Market Harford and taken him to the cinema.

On the previous weekend, he had taken Ginny herself out for a drive. She’d enjoyed sitting beside him in the big, powerful car. He drove well, she thought judiciously, trying to be objective, but took too many unnecessary risks, relying on his extra speed to get him out of trouble. He hadn’t spoken much, and Ginny didn’t attempt to break the silence, quite satisfied that he had chosen her company. She hoped secretly that when the afternoon ended he would say, ‘Don’t let’s go home yet. I know a place where we can have dinner and dance afterwards.’

But he didn’t, of course. He just drove her home in the ordinary way. It was dusk as he turned the car through the gates into the courtyard, and the lights were on welcomingly in Ginny’s part of the house. She said, trying to sound casual, ‘Would you like to come in and have some supper with us?’

He turned and looked at her in the gathering darkness, and for a moment she had the oddest feeling that he hadn’t been with her at all. Then he smiled and said easily, ‘Not tonight, Ginny love. I have to get back to town. But I’ll be down again soon, so hold my invitation over, will you?’

He helped her out of the car, and she was absurdly conscious of his hand under her arm. She stood very still. Their bodies were almost touching, and if she lifted her face and he lowered his head, their mouths would touch, and she wanted it to happen more than she had ever wanted anything in the world. Something inside her was crying, ‘Toby, kiss me,’ so wildly that she was momentarily afraid she might have spoken aloud.

Then the door opened and the light streamed into the courtyard, and the magic moment had gone, and Aunt Mary was calling, ‘Ginevra, are you there, child?’

She thought she heard Toby mutter something under his breath and hoped very much that it might be a curse of frustration.

He said lightly, ‘In with you, love. I’ll see you.’

During the past week, she’d lived on that—the unspoken promise behind, ‘I’ll see you.’ And the fact that he had called her ‘love’ twice. Surely that must mean something, she thought.

All week she’d hoped that Toby might phone her—not just to say that he was coming for the weekend, and would she have the house ready—but simply to speak to her privately, even if it was just to ask how she was. But the phone had remained inimically silent.

Ginny pressed down on the accelerator, anxious to get home in case there was a message now. As she turned into the lane which led to Monk’s Dower, and then on to the Manor, she saw Vivien Lanyon coming towards her on the back of a tall mare. Ginny slowed at once, and pulled in well to her own side of the road. To her surprise, Mrs Lanyon reined in her horse and dismounted, looping the reins over her arm. Ginny felt a quick flutter of alarm. Over the past weeks she had seen very little of her employer, and she had been quite content for it to be so. She leaned over to the passenger side and wound down her window with some reluctance. Perhaps Vivien Lanyon had decided that Toby was to be her exclusive property after all, and had heard about last weekend’s outing. But her employer’s expression, though cool, was not particularly unfriendly.

She said, ‘So there you are. I’ve been trying to ring you at the house.’

‘I’ve been shopping for the weekend’s food in Market Harford,’ Ginny felt obliged to explain. ‘Tim’s at school and Aunt Mary usually has a rest in the afternoons. She doesn’t hear the phone from her room when the door’s shut.’

Vivien Lanyon’s brows rose. She said languidly, ‘Spare me the domestic details. I just wanted to tell you that I’ve heard from Mr Hendrick, and he’ll be down this weekend. Make sure everything is ready, will you.’

She gave Ginny a slight nod, then moved away from the car before re-mounting.

Ginny sat and watched her departure in the rearview mirror. She felt as if she had been abruptly showered with very cold water. So Toby was in contact with Vivien Lanyon after all. Perhaps he liked sophisticated older women. Whatever his tastes, she thought, re-starting the engine with a hand that shook slightly, country mice would come a very poor second each time.

On the other hand, she reasoned as she drove, perhaps he too had been telephoning Monk’s Dower and been unable to make Aunt Mary hear, and had phoned Mrs Lanyon as a last resort. Her spirits rose perceptibly at the thought. And all that really mattered anyway was that he was coming down for the weekend and perhaps this time they would really be alone and no one would interrupt or switch on a light or call out, and he would really kiss her.

Her cheeks were pink and her eyes were bright as she hurriedly unloaded her groceries. The kitchen was full of a savoury smell. Aunt Mary had been busy making one of her special chicken casseroles. Ginny decided that she would wait until Toby arrived and take his helping across to him in a covered dish. Then the choice was his. He could either dine in solitary splendour, or come across to their side of the house and join them for the meal.

She would be very lighthearted and casual about it, she told herself. She would say laughingly, ‘I’ve brought your supper, but that invitation still stands,’ and see how he reacted.

There was a mirror beside the kitchen dresser and she caught a sudden glimpse of herself, and paused, dissatisfied. Why did she have to look so—so damned ordinary? she asked herself despairingly.

Basically, she could change very little in the time available, but she could at least have a bath and wash her hair. She had some special cologne she had been saving. She would use that too.

‘He won’t know what’s hit him,’ she told the mirrored reflection defiantly.

Her plans were delayed by the discovery that Muffin had been sick in the sitting room. She had just finished with the cloth and disinfectant when Tim arrived in from school, complaining of imminent starvation, and she sat him down at the kitchen table with a thick crust cut from the end of a new loaf indecently loaded with butter, and a glass of milk.

Then Aunt Mary appeared, complaining that she had lost her reading glasses, and insisting that everyone stop what they were doing immediately and help her search. The glasses, safe in their case, eventually came to light down the side of Aunt Mary’s favourite chair in the sitting room, where she swore she had looked already, and Ginny gave an unobtrusive look at her watch and smothered a faint groan. Toby could be arriving at any moment. Her bath would have to be the quickest dip on record if she was to complete her chores before his arrival.

Not that it really mattered, she reassured herself as she ran the water into the bath and tossed in a handful of the bath salts Tim had given her for Christmas. He would be sharing their supper, so it wouldn’t matter if the range wasn’t lit. And she would have plenty of time to make up his bed while he was playing cards with Tim.

She towelled her hair briskly, then stroked it dry, using a brush and a hand-dryer. It was still slightly damp as she stood looking through her meagre wardrobe for something to wear. Not a dress, she decided with regret. That would be too obvious altogether, but her best jeans and the white ribbed sweater which made the most of her slender curves. She shook her head and watched her hair swing silkily around her face and was satisfied.

All the time she had been listening for the sound of the engine of his car, but not closely enough, it seemed, for when she went downstairs into the kitchen she saw the car drawn up outside the main door.

She bit her lip vexedly, snatching a handful of cutlery from the drawer and strewing table mats on to the kitchen table at random. She fetched a dish and spooned a helping of the chicken, vegetables and gravy into it, adding potatoes from the pan on top of the stove. It smelled wonderful.

‘Almost as good as I do,’ Ginny said half-aloud, and laughed. She took a last look at herself in the mirror—eyes wide and bright with expectancy, the lines of her mouth softened and vulnerable. She looked more like the child she had been than the woman she wanted to become, but there was nothing she could do about that, and she let herself out of the kitchen door and walked across the courtyard carrying her casserole dish.

It was a cool evening for spring, and the breeze made her shiver a little—or was that only excitement?

She didn’t call out as she usually did when she entered the hall at Monk’s Dower, but stood listening for a moment. From the kitchen she could hear an exasperated rattling sound, and guessed he was trying to light the range. It was quite simple really—a question of knack, but Toby hadn’t mastered it. And he’d be wondering why there was no supper either.

She walked quickly and quietly to the kitchen door, and flung it open, She said gaily, ‘Surprise—did you …’ and stopped, her jaw dropping with shock and fright.

Because the man kneeling in front of the range—the man rising to face her—wasn’t Toby at all. He was taller and very dark—dark as a gipsy with a thin arrogant face. He needed a shave and a haircut, and he was wearing faded denims and a dark roll-collared sweater which had seen better days, and she registered all these things as if she was seeing them in slow motion, and it was vital that she master every detail.

Ginny was shaking suddenly. The car was here. Toby should be here. Then who was this disreputable-looking stranger?

She said on a high breathless note, ‘Who are you? And what have you done with Toby?’

She saw him react to that, dark brows drawing together above the thin high-bridged nose, then he moved towards her—one step, that was all—and she was terrified, seeing Toby lying somewhere covered in blood while this man robbed the house.

She heard herself scream something, then she threw the casserole dish straight at his head across the kitchen.

CHAPTER TWO (#ub40424f1-a99e-56d2-b4ce-09e05b5fb8ca)

SHE missed him completely, of course. The casserole whizzed harmlessly past him and shattered on the wall behind him, dropping a nauseous trail of meat and vegetables down the painted plaster. It had been a wasted gesture because it left her without a weapon, and he was still advancing on her. Ginny could almost feel the blaze of anger coming from him, and she looked round instinctively, her eyes falling on the rack of kitchen knives near the sink, every bright blade honed to razor sharpness.

He must have guessed what she was thinking because he said, ‘Oh, no, you don’t, you violent, destructive little bitch!’ Before she could move to defend herself, he had vaulted lightly across the pine kitchen table and seized her by the shoulders in a grip which hurt.

‘Now then,’ he said grimly, ‘who the hell are you, and what are you doing here?’

Dazedly it occurred to her that he didn’t sound like a criminal bent on housebreaking—always supposing she had the slightest idea what such a person would sound like. His voice was educated, low and resonant, and if there was menace in it, it was probably sparked off by the fact that he was good and mad.

She said on a sob, ‘What have you done with Toby?’