And gentle teasing be damned, she thought, pulling on her T-shirt and sliding her damp feet into their shabby canvas shoes. Remembering the wide shoulders and the muscularity of his arms and chest, she knew she could have been in real danger. Because if he’d made a move on her, there was no guarantee she’d have been strong enough to fight him off.
Trying to make her wet hair less noticeable, she dragged it back from her face and plaited it into a thick braid, fingers all thumbs, securing it with one of the elastic bands that had been round the newsletters.
Now she felt more or less ready to face the outside world again. And some, but not all, of the people in it.
When she got back to the gate, she was almost surprised to find her bicycle where she’d left it. Dad had always dismissed the old saying about bad things happening in threes as a silly superstition, but it occurred often enough to make her wonder. Only not this time, it seemed, she thought with a sigh of relief, as she cycled off, determined to put as much distance as she could between herself and Ladysmere Manor with as much speed as possible.
When she got back to the Vicarage, she found her father in the kitchen, sitting at the table with a pot of tea and the crossword, plus the substantial remains of a rich golden-brown cake.
She said lightly, ‘Hi, darling. That looks good.’
‘Ginger cake,’ said Mr Denison cheerfully. ‘I had some at the WI anniversary tea the other week and said how delicious it was, so the President, Mrs Harris baked another and brought it round.’
‘You,’ Tavy said severely, ‘are spoiled rotten. I suppose they’ve guessed that my baking sets like concrete in the bottom of the tin?’
His smile was teasing. ‘One Victoria sponge that had to be prised loose. Since then—straight As.’
‘Flatterer,’ said Tavy. She paused. ‘Dad, have you heard if the travellers have come back?’
‘It’s not been mentioned,’ he said with faint surprise. ‘I confess I’d hoped they were safely settled on that site at Lower Kynton.’
You can say that again, thought Tavy, her mind invaded by an unwanted image of a dark face and tawny eyes beneath straight black brows gleaming with amusement and something infinitely more disturbing.
She banished it. Drew a steadying breath. ‘How’s the sermon going?’
‘All done. But if the caravans have returned, perhaps I should write an alternative on brotherly love, just to be on the safe side.’
He turned to look at her, frowning slightly. ‘You look a little pale.’
But at least he didn’t mention her wet hair...
She shrugged. ‘Too much sun, maybe. I must start wearing a hat.’
‘Go and sit down,’ he directed. ‘And I’ll make fresh tea.’
‘That would be lovely.’ She added demurely, ‘And a slice of ginger cake, if you can possibly spare it.’
* * *
She arrived at work early the following morning, aware that she hadn’t slept too well, for which she blamed the heat.
But she’d awoken feeling rather more relaxed about the incidents of the previous day, apart, of course, from the encounter at the lake. Nothing could reconcile her to that.
She’d even found she was glancing at herself in the mirror as she prepared for bed, imagining that she’d somehow had the chutzpah to walk naked out of the water and reclaim her clothes, treating him contemptuously as if he’d ceased to exist.
After all, she had nothing to be ashamed of. She was probably on the thin side of slender, and her breasts might be on the small side, but they were firm and round, her stomach was flat and her hips nicely curved.
At the same time, she was glad she’d stayed in the lake. Because the first man to see her nude was going to be Patrick, she thought firmly, and not some insolent, low-life peeping Tom.
As she let herself in through the school’s rear entrance, she heard Mrs Wilding’s voice raised and emotional, mingling with Patrick’s quieter more placatory tones.
He must have told her about us, was her first thought, the second being a cowardly desire to leave before anyone knew she was there. To jump before she was pushed.
‘Oh, don’t be such a fool,’ Mrs Wilding was raging. ‘Don’t you understand this could finish us? Once word gets out, the parents will be up in arms, and who can blame them?’
A reaction that could hardly be triggered by her relationship with Patrick, Tavy decided.
As she appeared hesitantly in the sitting room doorway, Patrick swung round looking relieved. ‘Tavy, make my mother some tea, will you? She’s—rather upset.’
‘Upset?’ Mrs Wilding repeated. ‘What else do you expect? Who in their right mind would want their innocent, impressionable child to be exposed to the influence of a drug-addled degenerate?’
Tavy, head reeling, escaped to the kitchen to boil the kettle, and measure Earl Grey into Mrs Wilding’s favourite teapot with the bamboo handle. This was clearly an emergency and the everyday builder’s blend would not do.
‘What’s happened?’ she whispered when Patrick arrived for the tray.
‘I ran into Chris Abbot last night, and we went for a drink. He was celebrating big time.’ Patrick drew a deep breath. ‘Believe it or not, he’s actually sold the Manor at last.’
‘But that’s good, surely.’ Tavy filled the teapot. She found one of her employer’s special porcelain cups and saucers, and the silver strainer. ‘It needs to be occupied before thieves start stripping it.’
Patrick shook his head. ‘Not when the buyer is Jago Marsh.’
He saw her look of bewilderment and sighed. ‘God, Tavy, even you must have heard of him. Multimillionaire rock star. Lead guitarist with Descent until they split up after some monumental row.’
Something stirred in her memory, left over from her brief time at university. A group of girls on her landing talking about a gig they’d been to, discussing with explicit detail the sexual attraction of the various band members.
One of them saying, ‘Jago Marsh—I have an orgasm just thinking about him.’
Suppressing an instinctive quiver of distaste, she said slowly, ‘Why on earth would someone like that want to live in a backwater like this?’
He shrugged, then picked up the tray. ‘Maybe backwaters are the new big thing, and everyone wants some.
‘According to Chris, he was at a party in Spain and met Sir George’s cousin moaning he had a country pile he couldn’t sell, no reasonable offer refused.’
‘He’s changed his tune.’ Tavy followed him down the passage to the sitting room.
‘Seriously strapped for cash, according to Chris. So Jago Marsh came down a while back, liked what he saw, and did the deal.’ He sighed. ‘And we have to live with it.’
Mrs Wilding was sitting in a corner of the sofa, tearing a tissue to shreds between her fingers. She said, ‘I would have bought the place myself when it first came on the market. After all, I’ve been looking to expand for some time, but my offer was turned down flat. And now it’s gone for a song.’
‘But still more than you could afford,’ Patrick pointed out.
‘There were other offers,’ his mother said. ‘Why doesn’t Christopher Abbot check to see if any of them are still interested? That way the Manor could be sold for some decent purpose. Something that might bring credit to the area.’
‘I think contracts have already been exchanged.’
‘Oh, I can’t