Swallowing hard to ease the dryness in her throat, she watched him pour out a mug of tea and carry it across to the table. Removing a cricket bat from a chair, he sat down, stretching his long, lean legs out in front of him.
‘How long have you lived in the village, Mrs Adams?’ he enquired quietly.
Clemency hesitated. It was a perfectly innocuous question and yet there was something in the astute blue eyes that reflected more than just polite, idle curiosity.
‘I moved down here over four years ago.’
‘From London?’
Her spine stiffened. ‘Yes,’ she acknowledged.
‘An unusual career move,’ he observed slowly.
For a second Clemency wondered if he was baiting her, but there was no hint of mockery in the pensive eyes.
‘Relocation,’ she said shortly. Relocation of her life.
She focused her attention firmly on Mary Harrington as she rejoined them at the table but it was impossible to distance herself from the formidable male presence on her left. Contributing little to the casual conversation, he nevertheless seemed to dominate the room, emanated a masculine force that was almost tangible.
He wasn’t even in her direct line of vision, but she was alert to his slightest movement, her senses tuned into him as if she’d suddenly developed a set of ultra-sensitive antennae.
The kitchen which had seemed so warm and welcoming when she’d first entered seemed to have undergone some subtle change. There was an underlying tension which wasn’t solely contributable to her own growing unease. Unable to resist any longer, she flicked the silent man a sideways glance.
Dark eyebrows drawn together, he was frowning at the opposite wall. Unobserved, her eyes swept over the strong planes of his face, and dropped to the firm line of his chiselled mouth.
Unsteadily she picked up her cup and drained the contents, setting it down on the saucer with a clatter that seemed deafening in the otherwise silent kitchen.
‘Thanks for the tea.’ She forced herself to smile across the table.
‘You’re more than welcome.’ Mary Harrington smiled back.
‘I’ll see you out.’ Her son rose to his feet in a swift, controlled movement.
‘Thank you,’ she murmured evenly, overwhelmingly conscious of his height and breadth as he ushered her down the hall. Opening the front door, he stood back to enable her to step through, and for an imperceptible second her eyes locked with his, saw the hard certainty in their depths as they raked her oval face. The pretence was over for both of them.
‘It was you, wasn’t it?’ Joshua Harrington said quietly.
The colour drained from her cheeks. ‘Yes,’ she said simply, and saw a muscle clench along the hard line of his jaw.
‘I think I recognised you almost straight away,’ he conceded slowly.
‘But you hoped you’d made a mistake?’ she said levelly.
‘Yes,’ he admitted shortly.
That swift pinprick of hurt was completely irrational. Hadn’t she been equally reluctant to acknowledge his identity? Exhibited no more warmth or pleasure at seeing him again than he had her?
‘Your hair was longer then,’ he said abruptly.
Five years ago her waist-length red hair had been the most striking, most immediately noticeable thing about her.
‘I had it cut.’ She stated the obvious, wondering why it should matter that he made no immediate comment on the shorter gamine style. His own physical appearance had altered, too, but the change was more subtle. His dark hair was as thick and rich as she remembered. His eyes were the same intense blue—but the guarded detachment in their depths was as alien to her as the cynicism.
Clemency surveyed him with large, wary eyes, the constrained silence that had fallen between them unbearable. It seemed impossible that she had once, for a short time, felt closer to this man than any other living creature. But she was at a total loss how to even try to bridge the chasm that existed between them now. Wasn’t even sure that she wanted to.
‘I’d better be getting home.’ With amazement Clemency registered her calm, collected voice. But then over the past five years she’d become an expert at concealing her emotions. What happened to your wife? Knowing just how tenuous her composure was, terrified that the faade might crack at any minute and she would give utterance to the question pounding in her head, Clemency turned away quickly.
‘Mind the step.’
Instinctively he stretched out a hand to steady her as she missed her footing. His touch was brief and impersonal but her bare skin felt as if it had been scorched. That she could still react to his slightest touch like this was ultimately the biggest shock of all.
‘Goodbye, Clemency,’ he said quietly. It was the first time he had ever used her given name.
‘Goodbye.’ she returned, registering the finality in his voice that told her as clearly as words that he had neither the desire nor the intention of furthering their acquaintance.
But then, what had she expected? Clemency wondered, her legs swinging with uncharacteristic jerkiness down the drive. An invitation to come over for coffee that evening when the twins were in bed to have a cosy chat about old times?
To Joshua Harrington she would always be a reminder of a past that, like her, he wanted to forget. A reminder to that strong, proud, private man of a rare moment of weakness. Moving on autopilot, Clemency made her way around to the back of her cottage. Reaching the far end of her garden without any real recollection of how she’d arrived there, she sat down on the grass beneath the shade of an old gnarled apple tree.
Joshua Harrington. A man she had never expected to see again. The only person to whom she’d ever told the truth about Simon. Her anonymous confidant. The stranger on a train.
Except that she hadn’t met Joshua Harrington on a train but on a London bench by the Thames on a dark New Year’s Eve, five years ago.
CHAPTER TWO
DRAWING up her long legs to her chest, Clemency rested her chin on her knees and stared unseeingly at the daisy-strewn lawn. Married to Simon for eighteen months, she’d been so happy at the start of the evening, so totally unprepared for the bombshell that was to wreck her secure world. Her eyes closed. They had been celebrating the end of the year at a party in her eldest brother’s flat by the river in Chelsea.
Her hair swinging over her shoulders, cheeks flushed from the heat generating from the swirling, gyrating dancers packed into the small room, Clemency tried unsuccessfully to match the flamboyant steps of her extrovert partner.
As the music slowed, somewhat to her relief, the russet-headed young man took hold of her hand and swung her in front of him.
‘I think you’re the most beautiful woman here tonight, Clemency Adams,’ he proclaimed loudly.
Clemency laughed up into his open, good-natured face.
‘And I think you’re extremely drunk,’ she reproved him affectionately. Best man at their wedding and, like Simon, a school friend of her youngest brother, she’d known David Mason almost all her life.
‘Run away with me to my South Sea island home,’ he implored her theatrically.
‘To your bedsit in Clapham?’ she teased gently.
‘Oh, Clem, you’re a hard woman.’
‘I’m also a very married one.’ She grinned back, her eyes moving around the densely packed room, searching for one particular fair head. There he was. Standing over by the