The End of her Innocence

In less than two hours, she’d be with Ian, and the time between would be spent pampering herself as never before.

I want to be irresistible, she thought, smiling inwardly.

All the same, she wasn’t finding it as easy to slip back into the swim of things as she’d expected, although her uncle’s affectionate greeting the previous evening had been balm to the soul, and he and Aunt Libby had tranquilly accepted that Ian was needed elsewhere, so she’d be eating cottage pie with them.

‘That whippet’s a beauty but she could be tricky. Let’s hope this litter is the first and last,’ had been Mr Jackson’s only comment.

‘So what are you doing with yourself today?’ he’d asked that morning as he stood up from the breakfast table, stuffing his folded newspaper into his jacket pocket.

‘Just pottering, I suppose.’ Chloe had smiled at him.

‘Well you could always potter over to Lizbeth Crane’s, if you felt inclined,’ her uncle said briskly. ‘She’s damaged her wrist gardening and Jack’s in Brussels, so their retriever will need walking.’

‘Of course I’ll go.’ Chloe didn’t think twice. ‘A wander across the fields with a friendly dog like Flare is just what I need. I’ll call round as soon as I’ve been to the post office.’

Which in itself had been an experience, she thought.

‘So you’re back.’ Mrs Thursgood had greeted her with a faint sniff. ‘Thought you’d deserted us for good. Come back for that young vet, I dare say. We all thought round here that the banns would have been called a year back or more. You don’t want to leave it too long, missy,’ she added with a look of faint disparagement. ‘You’re not getting any younger, and men go off the boil as quick as they go on it.’

Chloe, acutely aware that every word was being savoured by the queue behind her, paid for her stamps with murder in her heart and escaped.

But there had been more to come. She had to run the gauntlet of the shoppers in the main street, and by the time she reached the Cranes’ house, she felt if one more person said, ‘Well, Chloe, you’re quite a stranger,’ she would howl at the sky.

But Mrs Crane’s delighted welcome, accompanied as it was by coffee and home-made biscuits, plus Flare’s grin and gently offered paw had compensated for a great deal.

Except …

It had been a marvellous walk, the sun warm on her back, and Flare, plumy tail waving, bounding along ahead of her. After a mild disagreement over the retriever’s wish to complete the pleasure of the morning by rolling joyously in a large cowpat, they turned for home. They’d just emerged from a field onto the lane leading back to the village and Chloe was fastening the gate behind her, when she heard the sound of a horse’s hooves.

She glanced round and saw a handsome bay gelding trotting towards them, and paused, her throat tightening when she saw who was riding him.

‘Good morning.’ Darius brought the horse to a stand, and bent forward to pat his glossy neck. ‘Enjoying a constitutional, Miss Benson? I thought you’d be getting your exercise elsewhere on this lovely day—in some convenient haystack with your intended, perhaps.’

Her skin warmed. ‘Do you have to make unpleasant remarks?’ she asked coldly.

‘On the contrary, the activity I’m referring to is entirely pleasurable.’ He grinned down at her. ‘Or perhaps you don’t find it so. What a terrible shame, not to mention waste,’ he added, his gaze sliding appreciatively over the thrust of her breasts under her white shirt, down to her slender waist and the curve of her hips.

Aware that her flush was deepening, Chloe bent hurriedly to clip on Flare’s leash.

‘Just as a matter of interest,’ he went on. ‘Why are you walking Lizbeth Crane’s dog?’

‘I’m being a good neighbour,’ she said shortly. ‘A concept you may find unfamiliar.’

‘Not at all, as I hope to demonstrate over the coming months.’ He paused. ‘However, if true love has worked some miracle and you’re really in Good Samaritan mode, you might consider extending your range as far as the Hall.’

As Chloe’s lips parted to deliver a stinging refusal, he held up a hand.

‘Hear me out, please. I don’t get the chance to take Orion here out as much as I should, largely because any spare time I have goes to my brother’s Samson, who’s eating his head off in between throwing serious moodies.

‘I seem to recall you were a damned good rider in the old days, so, if you’d consider exercising Orion for me sometimes, I’d be immensely grateful to you.’

She gave him a startled look. Gratitude wasn’t something she’d ever have attributed to him. Or the paying of compliments. Not that it made any real difference. I seem to recall …

‘I’m sorry,’ she said. ‘But it’s quite impossible.’

‘May I ask why?’

‘I have a wedding to organise,’ she said curtly. ‘In case you’ve forgotten. I shall be far too busy.’

He sat, one hand resting on his hip, his gaze meditative as he watched her. ‘I hadn’t forgotten. But is it really going to take all day of every day? How many hundreds of people are you planning to invite, for God’s sake?’

‘That’s none of your business,’ she returned. ‘Anyway, Arthur must still be at the Hall, so why can’t he ride Orion?’

‘Unfortunately, his arthritis won’t let him, but it would break his heart if I pensioned him off and got a younger groom.’

He added flatly, ‘And, for obvious reasons, my father finds even minor changes distressing.’

Chloe bit her lip. ‘Yes—yes, of course.’ She paused. ‘I was—very sorry to hear about Andrew. I hadn’t realised.’ She took a breath. ‘It was terribly sad.’

His face hardened. ‘Not just sad but bloody stupid and totally unnecessary.’

She gasped. ‘You don’t feel, perhaps, that’s too harsh a judgment? Whatever may have happened, he was still your brother.’

‘Harsh, perhaps,’ Darius returned coolly. ‘Yet entirely accurate. However, this is not the time to debate Andrew’s motives for risking his life by pushing himself to ridiculous and dangerous limits.

‘And my proposition over Orion still stands,’ he added. ‘I’d like you to think it over, instead of just dismissing it out of hand because I’m doing the asking. You don’t even have to give me a personal reply. Just ring the Hall at any time, and Arthur will have him tacked up and ready for you.’

He smiled faintly. ‘And Orion would be grateful too, don’t forget.’

He touched the horse with his heels, and they moved off.

Chloe stared after them, her mind a welter of mixed emotions. It was still impossible, of course—what he’d asked—but Orion was an absolute beauty, and the thought of cantering him along those flat stretches by the river in the Willow valley was a genuine temptation.

But one she had to resist.

She’d told herself the same thing at intervals during the day, and she was still saying it now as she stepped out of the bath and dried herself, and applied some of the body lotion from the satin-lined gift basket of Hermes’ Caleche that the Armstrongs had given her for Christmas.

She repeated it as she put on her prettiest lace briefs and sprayed her arms and breasts lightly with matching scent. As she applied her make-up and combed her hair into glossy waves around her face. And as she finally slipped on the knee-skimming cream georgette dress with the deep-V neckline, which discreetly signalled that she was wearing no bra.

Too obvious? she worried in front of the mirror. Or simply a means to an end? A message to Ian that at last she was his for the taking.

Absurd to feel even remotely jittery about something that was so natural and would be so right, she thought sliding her feet into low-heeled sandals that echoed the colour of the lapis lazuli drops in her ears. Yet for some reason, she did.

Ian was in the sitting room talking to her aunt and uncle when she arrived downstairs. When he turned in response to her quiet, ‘Good evening,’ and saw her standing in the doorway, his jaw dropped.

‘God, Clo, you look amazing—like someone from a magazine cover.’

‘You look pretty good yourself.’ And it wasn’t just his looks, she thought as she went to him smiling, appraising his black-and-white houndstooth tweed jacket, worn with dark trousers and the ruby silk tie which set off his crisp white shirt. He’d dressed to kill too, for this important night in their lives.