"Well, I"m not," Elspeth gritted, glowering at both man and bird.
Having found her suitcase in the hall, she took it upstairs, showered and dressed, trying to restore herself to her normal confident, businesslike self by putting on a crisp cream shirt and a formal navy pin-striped suit. The suit was new, and Peter, when she had shown it to him, had remarked cautiously that he felt the skirt was a little on the short side. He had warned her against wearing it when they had visited his parents. His mother apparently considered any woman who wore a skirt that ended anywhere less than a good two inches bslow the knee to be unladylike in the extreme.
Elspeth remembered that she had been very irritated by Peter"s comment, and had even been tempted to tell him that his mother"s views were not written in tablets of stone. In fact, she had received a surprising number of compliments from her male colleagues when she"d first worn the suit. Not that she was flattered by such things. She left that kind of weakness to the male s.e.x, who everyone knew were hopelessly vain. But even so, it would have been rather nice if Peter had remarked on how well the skirt suited her slim hips and legs, and even nicer if he had given those same legs the kind of long, lingering and very appreciative look she had inadvertently caught one of the young men at work giving her. Which was ridicilous, of course. She had long ago recognised that there was far more to a stable male-female relationship than mere physical admiration. She and Peter were two of a kind--everyone said so. So why did she suddenly find the thought of being two of a kind with Peter oddly depressing?
There was one thing for sure, and that was that Peter would not approve of her living under the same roof as Carter. Not that he would for one moment suspect her of doing anything wrong.
No--of course not. That would be unthinkable. But Peter"s mother certainly wouldn"t approve. Periodically she came up to London, "surprise visits" made so she said on the spur of the moment, but Elspeth had the distinct impression that they were more in the nature of a trap designed to ensure that she and Peter were still living separately.
Peter"s mother did not approve of couples living together before they were married. Men were weak in these matters, she had once told Elspeth. Invariably it was up to the woman to ensure that a man"s respect for her was such that he would not even dream of asking her to move into his home.
Elspeth approved of respect existing between the s.e.xes, but sometimes she reflected rebelliously that her idea of respect did not accord with Peter"s mother"s. Sometimes--dared she admit it--there were even moments when she actually wished that Peter would suggest that they spend the night together.
That these wild, rebellious thoughts always seemed to occur just after she had paid a visit to her parents and witnessed their still obvious happiness together often made her reflect that Peter was perhaps right when he claimed that her parents were a bad influence on her. She knew he strongly disapproved of their, to him, over-casual approach to life.
When she had suggested that it seemed to work for them as they were very happy together--one only had to listen to them, see them. to Elspeth it always seemed as though her parents" lives were full of warmth and laughter--Peter rarely laughed, and nor, she realised, did she--Peter had been so affronted that she should argue with him that she had dropped the subject.
Reminding herself that it was Carter about whom she should be thinking and not Peter, she blew her hair into its neat, stylish bob, applied her rsual discreet make-up and almost-no-colour lipstick and then headed for the kitchen.
Outside the door, she paused and took a deep breath. Armoured now in all trappings of her business self, she would surely be able to wrest command of the situation from Carter, and make it plain to him that she was not going to tolerate his presence in the house. She was sorely tempted to tell him that her parents had made a mistake and that she could manage the small holding without his help, but, almost scrupulously honest with herself, she was reluctant to do so. After all, what did she really know about running such a business? It was her parents" livelihood, and if anything should go wrong. Taking another deep breath, she opened the kitchen door.
Carter was just pouring coffee into two mugs. He looked up as she walked in and said casually, "Good, I was just going to come up and tell you that breakfast is ready." He checked and frowned.
"I hadn"t realised you were going out this morning."
"Going out?" Elspeth glowered at him.
"I"m not going anywhere," she told him aggressively, "but you are. "
He put down the coffee-jug, and ignoring the last provocative piece of speech said incredulously, "You aren"t planning to wear that outfit here, are you? I should have thought jeans--" " What I choose to wear has nothing whatsoever to do with you," she told him crisply.
"All right, no need to lose your temper. Especially not before breakfast--it will ruin your digestion. Come and sit down.
Everything"s ready. Your mother told me how you like your porridge.
Porridge? Elspeth"s jaw dropped.
"I loathe porridge," she told him grittily, "and I never. ever eat breakfast. "
"Well, you should. Your mother"s right, you are too thin. At least, parts of you are," he added musingly, and humiliatingly, as she was tormented by a vivid and unwanted mental picture of just how much he must have seen of the voluptuous curves of her b.r.e.a.s.t.s out there in the yard, a hot wave of colour crawled betrayingly up over her body, spreading until even her face burned with the in tensity of it.
"I want to talk to you," she told him when she had recovered.
"Do you? Well, come and sit down, then. I want my breakfast, even if you don"t want yours."
He was holding out a chair for her, and rather than argue with him she sat down in it and watched in revulsion as he tucked into one of the two bowls of porridge on the table.
Why on earth had her mother told him she liked the stuff? She knew it revolted her. Why had her mother been discussing her at all?
"What was it you wanted to talk about?" he invited
Adopting her most brisk and businesslike air, she told him, "I want you to find somewhere else to live. At least while my parents are away.
You must see the sort of gossip and speculation it will give rise to if we both stay here. I suppose my parents left in such a rush that it never occurred to them how potentially embarra.s.sing your being here might be to me."
"Embarra.s.sing?" he checked her.
"How?"
Elspeth glared at him. Surely she didn"t have to spell it out for him?
" You are a single man. / am an a virtually engaged woman. "
"Oh, you mean your" --almost" fiance might object. Doesn"t he trust you, then?"
"Trust me? Of course he does," Elspeth retorted, incensed.
"Peter knows I would never..."
"Never what?" Carter asked her helpfully, suddenly abandoning his porridge to look directly at her, so directly, in fact, that the amber stare of his eyes seemed to have an almost hypnotic effect on her, making her forget every word she had been about to say. They were gold, she recognised in bemus.e.m.e.nt, a pure, clear gold. Instead she broke into a fl.u.s.tered and almost incoherent flurry of words, which seemed to plunge her deeper and deeper into a mora.s.s of confused admissions and accusations.
"I see," Carter said softly when she had finally stumbled into silence.
"It isn"t that this " almost" fiance of yours would imagine for one moment that living under the same roof as me might incline you into any kind of moral decline, but you are afraid that his parents wouldn"t feel the same way. What kind of man is he?" he asked her almost gently.
"Whose opinion of you matters the most to him-his own or his mother"s?
Come to think of it," he added, narrowing his eyes as he looked at her, "why on earth are the two of you not actually engaged, or better still married? Believe me, if I"d found the woman I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, I wouldn"t take the chance of her getting away from me by leaving her free to find someone else. In fact, I"d fill her life and her thoughts and her bed so completely that she wouldn"t want to find someone else. "
Elspeth gaped at him.
"If you"re suggesting that / want to find someone else," she accused recklessly "then let me tell you that you"re wrong. I"m perfectly content with Peter. "
"Content." The dark eyebrows climbed steeply.
"Contentment, my dear Elspeth, is for old age, not youth. No wonder this " almost" fiance of yours doesn"t mind your taking off and leaving him for weeks on end.
If contentment is the best way you can describe your relationship. "
"I suppose if you were almost engaged you wouldn"t even let the poor girl go away without you," Elspeth challenged back.
"If there"s one thing I cannot stand it"s possessive men."
"Oh, I"m not possessive. When you"re in a secure relationship founded on mutual love, you don"t need to be. I was merely pointing out that, to the outside observer, your relationship seems to lack a little pa.s.sion. Still, if you"re content " I am," Elspeth retorted, suddenly realising how far she had been side-tracked off the main issue.
"However, it isn"t my relationship with Peter I want to discuss. It"s the fact that it"s impossible for us both to live here under the same roof."
She waited, while he drank some coffee and chewed a piece of toast--maddening creature, he was deliberately trying to irritate her.