The Timber Baron's Virgin Bride. Daphne Clair

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      Rachel followed Bryn up the staircase to one of the big, cool bedrooms. The door was ajar and Bryn pushed it wide with his shoulder, strode across the carpet to a carved rimu blanket box at the foot of the double bed covered in dusky-pink brocade, and deposited the suitcase on top of the box, the smaller bag holding her reference books on the floor. “Do you want your laptop on the desk?” he asked. “Although you’ll probably be working in the smoking room downstairs.”

      It was many years, Rachel knew, since anyone had smoked in what was really a private library, but it retained its original name within the family.

      She nodded. “Thank you,” she said, and Bryn placed the computer on an elegant walnut desk between long windows flanked by looped-back curtains that matched the bed cover.

      He looked about at the faded pink cabbage roses that adorned the wallpaper. “I hope you’ll be comfortable,” he said. Obviously he wouldn’t have been.

      Rachel laughed, bringing his gaze to her face. His mouth quirked in response, and the skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled a little. “My mother’s right,” he said. “You have grown up beautiful.”

      Then he looked away. “Your bathroom’s over there.” He nodded to a door on one side of the room. “You’ll have it to yourself. If you don’t find everything you need, I’m sure my mother will provide it. I’ll see you downstairs.”

      He crossed to the door, hesitated a moment and turned. “Welcome back, Rachel.”

      She heard his soft footfalls on the hall runner, then on the stairs, still muffled but faster, as though he were hurrying away from her.

      After freshening up and exchanging her shoes for cool, flat-heeled sandals, Rachel went downstairs and crossed the big dining room to the French windows that led onto the brick-paved terrace.

      Bryn and his mother were sitting at a glass-topped cane table. A large tray held cups and saucers and a china coffee pot with matching milk and sugar containers.

      Bryn got up immediately and pulled out another cushioned cane chair for Rachel. The grapevine overhead on its beamed support shadowed his face, and dappled his mother’s dress.

      While Lady Donovan poured coffee and talked, he sat back in his chair, looking from her to Rachel with lazy interest that might have been feigned. There was a vitality about Bryn, a coiled-spring quality that didn’t fit easily with leisurely afternoon teas. He curled his hand around his cup as he drank, and his eyes met Rachel’s with a hint of amusement as his mother opened a barrage of questions about life in America.

      When their cups were empty Rachel offered to help clear up. But Pearl, who had insisted Rachel was old enough now to call her by her given name, shook her head. “I’ll deal with these. We haven’t brought you here to do housework. Bryn, take Rachel around the garden and show her the changes we’ve made.”

      Bryn, already standing, raised an eyebrow at Rachel and when she got up put a hand lightly under her elbow, his fingers warm and strong.

      “Who does do the housework?” she asked him as they descended the wide, shallow steps that brought them to ground level. Surely it was too much for one person.

      “We have a part-time housekeeper.” He dropped his hand as they reached the wide lawn. “She comes in the afternoon three times a week but doesn’t work weekends.”

      They crossed the grass, passing the solar-heated swimming pool that had been retiled in pale blue, refenced with transparent panels and was almost hidden among flowering shrubs. Their feet crunched on a white-shell path winding through shrubs and trees underplanted with bulbs and perennials and creeping groundcovers.

      The Donovans had allowed Rachel and her brothers free rein in the garden on condition they didn’t damage the flowerbeds. She had loved playing hide-and-seek, stalking imaginary beasts, or climbing the trees, and knew all the hidden places under low-hanging branches or in the forks of the old oaks and puriris.

      “The fish have gone,” she said as they walked under a sturdy pergola—a recent addition—smothered by twining clematis, into an open space paved in mossy bricks. Two rustic seats invited visitors to admire a bed of roses instead of the goldfish pond she remembered.

      “Too much maintenance,” Bryn told her, “and mosquitoes loved it.”

      Wandering in the shade of tall trees, they eventually came to a high brick wall. Where there had once been a gate giving access to the house her family had lived in, an arched niche held baskets of flowering plants.

      “You know we leased out the farm and cottage?” Bryn asked her, and she nodded, hiding a smile. Only someone who’d lived in a mansion could have called the estate manager’s house a cottage.

      The path veered away from the wall towards an almost hidden summerhouse, its tiled roof moss-covered and latticed walls swathed in ivy geranium and bare winter coils of wisteria.

      Rachel hoped Bryn hadn’t noticed the hitch in her step before they walked past it. She didn’t dare look at him, instead pretending to admire the pink-flowered impatiens lining the other side of the path, until they came to another pergola that a star jasmine had wound about, bearing a few white, fragrant blooms.

      Rachel touched a spray, breathing in its scent and setting it trembling.

      A lean hand reached past her and snapped the stem.

      She looked up as Bryn handed the flowers to her. “Thank you,” she said, suddenly breathless. They stood only inches from each other. His eyes were on her face, his expression grave and intent and questioning. She ducked her head to smell the jasmine and, turning to walk on, brushed against him, her breasts in fleeting contact with his chest.

      Heat burned her cheeks, and when Bryn caught up with her she kept her gaze on the jasmine, twirling the stalk back and forth in her fingers as they walked.

      And because she wasn’t looking where she was going, a tree root that had intruded onto the path took her by surprise and she tripped.

      Bryn’s hands closed on her arms, his breath stirring a strand of hair that had fallen across her forehead. “Are you all right?”

      “Yes. Thanks.” Her bare toes stung but she didn’t look down, giving him what she hoped was a reassuring smile.

      He drew back, checked her feet and hissed in a short breath.

      “You’re bleeding.” He released her arms to hunker down, his hand closing about her ankle. “Lean on me,” he ordered, lifting her foot to his knee so she had no choice but to put a hand on his shoulder to balance herself.

      “I’ll bleed all over you,” she protested. “It’s nothing.”

      His hand tightening as she tried to withdraw her ankle, he glanced up at her. “Looks painful,” he said. “Let’s get you back to the house.” Standing up, he placed a firm hand under her elbow again. Inside, he steered her to the downstairs bathroom and, ignoring her claim that she could manage on her own, sat her on the wide edge of the deep, old-fashioned bath and found a first-aid kit in a cupboard. He let her wash her injured foot, then patted it dry with a towel, dabbed on disinfectant and wrapped a toe plaster СКАЧАТЬ