The direction of her thoughts brought her to an abrupt and shocked halt. A physical relationship with a man who wasn’t Ian? A man she did not love? Was she out of her mind? Had the shock of recent events virtually unbalanced her mentally as well as emotionally?
Stop it, she warned herself angrily. You’ve got enough problems to deal with without looking for more.
It had been several years since Sara had last visited the manor house—a duty visit with her mother one Christmas to the old man who used to live there—but as a child she had always found the place fascinating, and now, as Stuart brought the Land Rover to a halt at the rear of the building in what had originally been the stable yard, she turned to him and asked him impulsively, ‘What made you decide to buy this place?’
He gave her a brief smile. He had a nice smile, she noticed, and an unexpected dimple on the left-hand side of his mouth. She had to subdue an odd urge to reach out and touch it. It gave him a vulnerability totally opposed to her initial impression of him as a man as tough as granite.
He might not have Ian’s golden good looks, but he was a very attractive man none the less, she recognised, on a small spurt of surprise, a man a woman would feel she could depend on, trust…a man who would make a good father.
She was startled by the waywardness of her own thoughts. Where on earth were they coming from? A good father… What a ridiculous thought to have about a man she barely knew.
‘It was the woodland,’ she heard him saying to her, and frowned until she realised he was answering her own question. ‘Not because of the quality of the trees in it. In all honesty they’re pretty poor. Most of the oaks have had to come down, although I’ve been hoping to be able to use the wood once it’s matured. No, it was because the soil here…the land, is perfect, or as near perfect as I’m likely to get for my purposes. The acreage that goes with the house is sufficient for my needs, and the land is sheltered by the Welsh hills. It’s well watered but not marshy. I must admit I was worried at first about the risk of transplanting our stock up here, but so far our losses have been minimal and the new trees we’ve planted are doing very well. It’s always risky transplanting mature trees; that’s why, before we sell one, I like to check on where it’s going and to make sure the buyer is aware of the maintenance programme that’s necessary until it’s securely rooted. Of course, with all the recent storm damage, we’ve done very well on the sales side, but that also puts pressure on us to produce more stock, which takes time.’
Sara was both fascinated and confused.
‘I didn’t think it was possible to transplant mature trees.’
‘It isn’t unless they’ve been specially grown for that purpose. My uncle started the business, seeing a gap in the market, and in the main supplying councils. When he died I inherited it from him. I was already working for the Forestry Commission. In fact I was on secondment in Canada at the time. At first I intended to sell the business, but then we had the storms of ‘87 which put pressure on all suppliers of mature trees—and there aren’t many of us—and somehow or other I found I was hooked and that the business had grown on me, so to speak, but we needed to expand, and so I started looking for somewhere to relocate.’
‘It sounds fascinating,’ Sara commented, and genuinely meant it, but she could see from the sudden tightening of his mouth that he thought she was being sarcastic.
Impulsively she touched him, and said quickly, ‘No, I meant it. It does sound fascinating. I had no idea that it was possible to transplant large trees.’
There was a small pause and then he replied, ‘If you really are interested, while you’re up here, I could show you round…show you what we’re doing.’
‘I’d like that.’
She was surprised to discover that she genuinely meant it, and not just because it would be a means of keeping Ian out of her thoughts if only for a short space of time.
‘Are you feeling OK now?’ he was asking her. ‘Or—’
‘No. No, I’m fine,’ she assured him quickly. It was one thing to tell herself that that momentary and discomfiting sexual response to him meant nothing and was hardly likely to happen again. It was quite another to put that belief to the test, especially so soon after that first uncomfortably enlightening occurrence.
‘So far I haven’t been able to do much to the house,’ he warned her as they crossed the yard, and security lights came on, illuminating the cobbles and the empty stables as well as the jumble of windows and doors that studded the weathered stone of the building.
‘As I said, Mrs Gibbons comes up from the village a couple of times a week. I’ve managed to make the kitchen habitable, plus one of the bedrooms, but as for the rest…’
‘It’s a very large house for one man,’ Sara ventured.
They had almost reached the back door and he paused now, turning to look at her.
‘Yes,’ he agreed bleakly. ‘When I bought it, I hadn’t actually visualised living here alone.’
Immediately Sara guessed what must have happened. Like her, he had obviously been rejected by the person he loved. Perhaps she had not wanted to live in such an isolated spot. Perhaps she had been someone he had met in Canada who had not wanted to come and live in England, who had not loved him enough. No one knew better than she how much that kind of rejection hurt…how it scarred and wounded. She wanted to reach out to him, to touch him, to offer him her sympathy, her understanding, but he was already turning away from her, extracting some keys from his pocket and unlocking the kitchen door.
As he held it open for her, he reached inside and flicked on the lights.
Sara stepped past him and into the generous-sized room, catching her breath in admiration as she saw how it had been transformed from the dreary place she remembered.
Walls had been moved to make the room larger; the kitchen range, which she vaguely remembered as a crouching evil monster that belched smoke and was covered in rust, had been transformed somehow or other into a model of polished perfection, whose presence warmed the entire room, offering the two cats curled up on top of it a comfortable place to sleep.
Where she remembered a haphazard collection of tatty utilitarian cupboards, and a chipped stone sink, there were now beautifully made units in what she suspected was reclaimed oak, from the quality and sheen of their finish. The original stone floor had been cleaned and polished and was now partially covered with earth-toned Indian rugs; the walls had been painted a soft, warm, peachy terracotta colour; on the dresser, which like the units was oak and softly polished, stood a collection of pewter jugs and a service of traditional willow-pattern china.
A deep, comfortably solid-looking settee was pulled up close to the range, and the table in the centre of the room looked large enough and solid enough to accommodate a good-sized family.
In fact all that the room lacked to make it perfect was perhaps some flowers in the heavy pewter jugs, and of course the delicious warm smell of food cooking which she always associated with her mother’s kitchen and her mother’s love.
‘This is wonderful,’ she commented admiringly, swinging round to face Stuart and to say wryly, ‘I don’t know who installed these units for you, but I do know that they must have cost the earth—the quality of the wood alone…’
‘Reclaimed oak,’ he told her offhandedly. ‘I picked it up quite cheaply, and as for the units…’ He shrugged, and turned away from her.
‘I made them myself. Not a particularly difficult task.’
He sounded so offhand that for a moment Sara felt embarrassed that she had enthused about them so much, and then she recognised that her praise had probably