‘Not exactly.’ He stiffened fractionally. This was where the caring, sharing had to stop.
‘In the country, then? Don’t tell me your parents used to drag you out for Sunday walks? My mum always made sure we went out on a Sunday afternoon for a really long walk, whatever the weather. She liked being out of the house, away from Dad. Although she always had to make sure to get back in time to prepare his tea if he happened to be at home. The closer we got back home, the more anxious and nervous she would become. Course, those walks stopped when I turned eleven, when I preferred to hide out in my bedroom studying or reading.’
‘I didn’t have country walks—or any walks, for that matter,’ Gabriel heard himself say roughly. Restlessness surged through him, making him feel uncomfortable in his own skin, and he sat up and swung his legs over the side of the bed. Then he strolled towards the window, across which the curtains hadn’t been drawn.
Stark naked, with his back to her, he gazed broodingly out to the dark shapes of fields, hedges, a copse of trees to the right in the distance.
That, Alice thought, was the sound of a door being firmly shut in her face. She sat up and pulled the duvet up to her chin.
Eventually he turned round but he didn’t walk back to the bed.
‘So...’ A slashing smile lightened the passing shadow that had crossed his face. ‘What exciting things shall we do tomorrow?’
‘Aside from the barn dance? We can have a walk, perhaps with Mum, and then look around the village—go to that little shop for tea and scones...’ Enjoy pretending that this is a normal relationship...
‘But first thing in the morning,’ she told him firmly, ‘I will have a chat with Mum.’
* * *
Pamela Morgan was up bright and early the following morning but the coffee was still hot, ready to be drunk, when Alice made her way down.
Her thoughts were still all over the place. She had slept with him; she had lost the fight to put her feelings behind her and allow the common sense that had always ruled her life to take over, as she had told it to. As she had needed it to.
He didn’t know the depth of her feelings—which was something, she supposed—but he knew how much she wanted him and, now, her life had been laid bare for his perusal. Not content with keeping what they had to London, he had invaded her life here in Devon...
And revealed things she herself hadn’t even known about. Which showed just how much he had managed to ingratiate himself with her mother.
But then, he was the man who didn’t have to try; the man who could move mountains with a smile, with a lazy turn of his head, with just a look...
‘Alice, dear...! How was the meal last night?’ Pamela Morgan was beaming. ‘You never told me what a lovely man your boss was! Such a looker...’
‘We need to talk, Mum.’
‘Do we, dear?’ But there was a tell-tale flush in her cheeks as she sat down opposite her daughter and fiddled guiltily with her coffee cup.
‘A man...? A suitor...? You never said...’ Alice had been hurt when Gabriel inadvertently had told her about a man in her mother’s life but that hurt hadn’t lasted. How could it, when her mother’s eyes were glowing as she chatted happily and with relief about Robin, her friend’s cousin who had moved to the village to start up his own small landscaping business. He was wonderful...they had so much in common. They had only seen each other a handful of times but thanks to him she had managed to venture more and more into the village; he had even taken her to see his company, which was still in the process of being set up.
Alice was dazed.
‘But why didn’t you say anything to me all this time?’ she finally asked, but she knew why.
‘Just a few weeks,’ Pamela said uncomfortably. ‘And I knew you’d try to warn me off him, my darling, and I would quite, quite have understood, but...’
But she, Alice, her loving daughter, would have disapproved, would have issued stern warnings, would have dished out helpful advice by the bucket load, and in the end would have stifled anything that had a chance of surviving. Her mother had wanted to take a chance and she would have been afraid that her daughter would have killed that chance dead.
Alice wasn’t hurt, she was mortified. Years of helping to prop her mother up had turned her into a hard-edged young woman who had allowed her own disillusionment to colour her behaviour.
Gabriel’s entrance half an hour later helped to lighten the glum introspection into which she had been plunged and, with an unerring ability to cut to the chase, the first thing he said to her as they were walking out of the house was, ‘You’re upset. You spoke to you mother...and...?’