‘What the hell are you trying to do to yourself?’ he demanded gruffly. ‘You don’t have to prove anything to me, Rue,’ he added with a savagery that dismayed her. ‘I know how much you value your independence, how much you hate and abhor the idea of having to depend on anyone, especially on me,’ he added angrily.
Rue had no idea what she had said or done to merit his anger, and as for her independence, she almost laughed aloud. She had lost that the day he had walked into her life.
CHAPTER TEN
IN THE event, it was three days before Rue’s doctor pronounced her fit enough to be allowed to visit the cottage, and then only under Neil’s supervision. She had apparently inhaled some smoke during her frantic attempts to rescue her stock, and this had resulted in a chest infection which made her lungs ache painfully and her body feel unfamiliarly weak.
So weak, in fact, that by the time she had walked round the house and seen for herself that it had not been touched by the fire she was more than glad of Neil’s arm to lean on as he escorted her back to his car. Her head was thumping painfully, and she saw the now-familiar frown on his forehead as he had to match his steps to the slower pace of hers.
No wonder he was impatient with her; he must be sick and tired of the responsibility of her…a responsibility which he should by rights in no way have to shoulder. It was true that he was her closest neighbour, and it was equally true that both her doctor and the police seemed to think it only right and natural that she should be staying with him. She felt increasingly uncomfortable about it, though; she had no right to impinge on his privacy…or on his time.
Since that first night she had had no more dreams about him holding her, and she had come to the conclusion that that dream had been caused by her drug-induced sleep.
If Hannah had not been in Spain she would have got in touch with her and begged for her help, and it struck Rue, as she sat in a wicker chair in the conservatory wondering what on earth had happened to her old strength and energy, that although she had many, many acquaintances, there was no one she could actually turn to for the kind of succour Neil had given her.
He had so many calls upon his time that she could only marvel at and rather envy his dynamism. She had discovered while staying at the house that he kept in daily contact with his factory in Cambridge, via the very advanced computer installed in one of the cellars.
She had also learned inadvertently, through happening to walk past his open study door while he was on the telephone, that in addition to lecturing on the subject of advanced computer science he also gave generously and anonymously to several charities, mainly those that helped the socially and financially deprived.
Once a week a team of contract cleaners came to go through the house and leave it immaculate, but apart from that he had no other help, no housekeeper as her own father had had. He cooked his own meals and presumably dealt with his own laundry, although Rue doubted that he was actually personally responsible for his immaculately starched and ironed shirts.
She had never known a man who was so self-sufficient; her father, excellent scientist though he was, could barely make a cup of tea, and Julian…well, Julian, as she had discovered once she married him, expected to be waited on virtually hand and foot by the women in his life.
Neil, on the other hand, not only didn’t need anyone to perform life’s more mundane chores for him, he actually actively prevented her from doing so. He must want to make it plain to her that there was no role for her in his life. He had given no indication at all that he still desired her and, struggling to control her ever-growing love for him, Rue knew that she must either find a way of excluding him from her life completely, or accept that his proximity meant she would almost certainly spend the rest of her life suffering the torment of unrequited love.
She had spent most of the morning at the house with the insurance assessor, who had reassured her that she was adequately covered for the fire. He had further informed her that, under the terms of her insurance policy for the business, it was the insurance company’s responsibility to provide someone to take charge of the day-to-day work with the flowers for the duration of her own incapacity.
Rue, who hadn’t been able to remember such a clause in the policy, frowned now as she thought about it. There was no doubt that it was a relief to have everything taken care of, every burden lifted from her shoulders. The fire had affected her more than she had at first thought, both emotionally as well as physically.
The knowledge that someone could have set out to deliberately intimidate her without her even suspecting what was going on had left her feeling very vulnerable. Although she wouldn’t for the world have admitted it to anyone, least of all Neil, she was growing increasingly reluctant to move back into the cottage. She was, for the first time since Julian’s death, frightened of living on her own.
She moved restlessly in the cane chair. Neil was in Cambridge on business and, as always when he was away, she missed him. Not that he spent much time with her, seeming actually to avoid her company whenever he could.
Perhaps the best thing she could do would be to sell the cottage and its land to Neil and make a fresh start somewhere else. Somewhere where she wouldn’t be constantly tormented by his presence. As Neil himself pointed out to her, with the money from the sale she could buy herself a small property and live quite comfortably on her investment. It would have to be in the country, of course. Horatio would never adopt to city living. She might even find a job.
Neil walked in while she was mulling over the wisest thing to do.
The sight of him, as always, had a very definite physical effect on her body, its reaction to him so immediate and strong that she still hadn’t found a way to control it. Instead she turned away from him, pretending to be absorbed in the view from the conservatory window. When her father had owned the Court, she had rarely used this room, but now she found it a relaxing and secure haven.
When she had herself sufficiently under control, she turned and looked warily at Neil. He looked drained and tired, tiny lines of exhaustion fanning out around his eyes.
‘Wouldn’t it make life much easier for you if you lived closer to the factory?’ she asked him impulsively, concerned for the strain he constantly put himself under.
Immediately he frowned angrily, and demanded, ‘Still trying to get rid of me, Rue? I’m sorry, but I’m not about to oblige you. I’ve had to work damned hard all my life. My father died when I was seven and I watched my mother struggle to find the money for us to live. I swore then that things were going to be different, and now that they are I sure as hell am not going to spend my precious free time cooped up in a high-rise apartment!
‘There comes a time in a man’s life…and a woman’s…when you have to decide what you want from life…what it is you’re striving for. More success…more money…more pressure to attain more and more power…or something else? My business is successful. I can make as much money as I need without pushing myself any harder.
‘Twelve months ago I came to a decision. I looked around myself and at my own life, and what I saw made me stop and take stock. I’m thirty-five years old. I’ve got a successful business and I’m a wealthy man. During the years I was building the business I deliberately avoided getting myself involved in any kind of committed relationship. There wasn’t time, it was too much of a risk…you name it, I used every excuse there was to keep myself from admitting the truth.’ He swung round and looked hard at her. ‘Shall I tell you what that truth is, Rue? Shall I tell you what I’ve had to learn about myself? You’d do well to listen, because there’s something you could learn from my mistakes…’
He had never spoken to her like this before…never told her so much about his
own background, his thoughts and feelings. Her mouth felt dry, and she touched her tongue-tip to her lips nervously, not sure if she was going to like what she was about to hear.
‘I looked around and saw that the majority of my peers had wives and families…they had homes and hobbies…they went on holidays… In short, they had and did all the things I had deliberately excluded from my life. I looked at them, and I looked at myself, and for the first time in my life I asked myself if the price I had decided to pay for my success had been worth while, and I made myself face up to the fact that it wasn’t because I was building up the business that I had refused to get involved in any kind of emotional commitment, it was because I was running scared. Scared not of commitment, but of loss…of loving someone and losing them, the way my mother had lost my father…’
Rue hesitated for a long time after listening to his impassioned speech, and then she asked him uncertainly, ‘And that’s why you bought this house?’
‘I bought this house as an act of faith…as a commitment to myself, if you like, that my life was going to change, that it was going to contain all the things it had previously lacked. Be careful you don’t make the same mistakes I made, Rue,’ he told her abruptly. ‘Be careful you don’t wake up at night and find out what it really means to be completely alone.’