Comparative Strangers

• CHAPTER ONE
  
• CHAPTER TWO
  
• CHAPTER THREE
  
• CHAPTER FOUR
  
• CHAPTER FIVE
  
• CHAPTER SIX
  
• CHAPTER SEVEN
  
• CHAPTER EIGHT
  
• CHAPTER NINE
  
• CHAPTER TEN
  
• CHAPTER ELEVEN
  

Amanda waited tensely for Malory to reach for her...

But he didn’t. After an endless silence, he spoke, his tone matter-of-fact. "I'll ring you in a few days. Now I’d better see you safely indoors."

Moments later Amanda’s hand shook as she fitted her key into the lock. "Thank you for dinner, the flowers… the ring," she said nervously.

Malory put a finger under her chin, tilting her face to meet his gaze. "Calm down... darling. There’s nothing to be afraid of." Then he turned and walked back to his car.

Amanda leaned against her closed door, trying to still her rapid breathing. He was perfectly correct. There had been nothing to fear.

She should have felt relief. Why, then, did she somehow feel disappointed?

SARA CRAVEN probably had the ideal upbringing for a budding writer. She grew up by the seaside in a house crammed with books, with a box of old clothes to dress up in and a swing outside in a waited garden. She produced the opening of her first book at age five and is eternally grateful to her mother for having kept a straight face. Now she has more than twenty-five novels to her credit. The author is married and has two children.

Harlequin Presents first edition November 1988

ISBN 0-373-11119-3

It had rained during the week, and the river was in spate, crashing between its banks and hurling itself at the stone bridge as if it sought to sweep it away.

A torn-off branch from some tree came whirling downstream, carried helplessly along by the angry brown waters. From her vantage point on the bridge, Amanda watched as it submerged, drawn down by some unseen vortex, and her hands tightened on the stones of the parapet until the knuckles turned white.

A few seconds, said the small cold voice in her head, and then—oblivion. No more hurting. No more betrayal, cutting at you like a knife, slashing away at all that was warm and joyous and trusting in your life. Nothing.

The rush of the water, the roar of the wind in the trees, seemed to fill her head like a scream of outrage at the life which had turned against her.

She lifted her foot, searching for a hole, feeling the rough surface of the bridge ripping at her fragile tights, scraping her legs. Panting, she dragged herself up on to the parapet and crouched for a moment, closing her eyes against the swift giddiness which assailed her.

She thought, ridiculously, I hate heights.

Slowly, gingerly, she uncurled herself, and stood up. One step was all that she needed to take, she told herself, swaying slightly. Or perhaps the force of the wind would do it for her.

She felt herself lifted, snatched, and she screamed aloud as she realised she was falling, not forward towards the water, but back on to the bridge again.

From a thousand miles away, a man’s voice, drawling and vaguely familiar, said, ‘It isn’t as simple as that, believe me.’

She said a name in anguished disbelief, but it was lost in the inner tumult consuming her, overwhelming her, and consigning her at last to the dark forgetfulness she had sought.

She opened her eyes dazedly to movement and the noise of a car engine, found that she felt deathly sick, and closed her lids hastily.

Later, she became dimly aware of voices in the distance, and of the softness of cushions beneath her. The same familiar voice said, ‘Drink this,’ and she drank obediently, too weary to protest. Whatever liquid it was, it seemed to run down her throat like fire, but it dissolved away the last of her resistance, and she slept.

She woke to lamplight and firelight, and lay for a few puzzled moments, coming to terms with the fact that she was at home, lying on the sofa in her mother’s drawing-room.

She thought, drowsily, But I went to Calthorpe to be with Nigel. How did I get back here?

Memory hit her like a blow, and she sat up with a little stifled cry, her shocked eyes meeting the cool, level gaze of the man who sat on the opposite side of the fireplace.

She said, ‘You. Oh God, you…’ Then her voice broke, and she began to cry, her body shaking under the impact of deep, gulping sobs.

‘Why did you stop me?’ she wailed between paroxysms. ‘Why the hell did you stop me?’

He got up silently, handed her an immaculate white handkerchief from his breast pocket, and vanished.

Amanda buried her head in the cushions and wept until she had no more tears left. When she eventually lifted her head, he had come back into the room and was putting down a tray, laden with tea things, on to a table in front of her.

He said, conversationally, They say tea is the best thing for shock. I wonder if it’s true?‘

She said huskily, ‘I don’t want any bloody tea! What are you
doing
here, Malory?’

‘I followed you from Calthorpe,’ he said. ‘I had a feeling you were contemplating something foolish, and I thought I should stop you. That’s all.’

‘All?’ she echoed bitterly. ‘Didn’t it occur to you to mind your own business?’

‘You’re engaged to my younger brother,’ he said. ‘I felt that gave me—a kind of responsibility.’

‘Your half-brother.’

‘If you want to split hairs.’

‘And I’m no longer engaged to him.’

‘So I infer.’

It was that coolly precise way of speaking which had so often needled her about Malory. She supposed it came from a lifetime of analysing things in those damned laboratories of his. But she wasn’t a substance under his bloody microscope—and how dared he be so calm and matter of fact when he knew quite well her heart was breaking?

He poured out some tea and handed it to her. She would have liked to have thrown it over him, to see if that would ruffle that distant poise of his, but instead she sipped the hot brew, watching him sulkily over the rim of her cup. This was only the second time he’d been to the cottage, she realised, and he’d lost no time in finding his way around the kitchen.

She said, frowning, ‘How did we get in here, anyway?’ Her keys, she remembered painfully, were in the car, parked at the bridge.

‘Luckily, your cleaning woman was still here,’ he said, ‘I told her you weren’t feeling well, and I’d brought you home. I also said I’d stay with you until your mother returned.’

‘Then you’ll have a long wait,‘ she said childishly. ’Mother’s in London staying with a friend. That’s why…‘ She stopped abruptly.

That was why I went to Calthorpe—to be with Nigel. Because it seemed prudish—ridiculous in this day and age—to hold back any longer, with the wedding so close now. Because I didn’t want any more rows—any more accusations about being impossibly old-fashioned, or not loving him enough to trust him.

But that wasn’t something she could confide in Malory, or anyone else, for that matter.

She thought of her mother, happily shopping for something to wear for her important role as mother of the bride, and felt another wellspring of grief rising inside her. Damming it back, she drank some more tea.

Malory said gravely, ‘You probably wouldn’t have drowned, you know. Just injured yourself quite badly. ’

‘I can’t swim,’ she returned defiantly.

‘Perhaps not,’ he said. ‘But, when it came down to it, you’d have fought. You’re a survivor, Amanda. In fact, you were having second thoughts about jumping, even before I got to you. ’

‘That’s not true,’ she said shakily, replacing her cup on the table. ‘I wanted to die. I still want to.’

‘Simply because you found Nigel cavorting in bed with another lady?’ He shook his head. ‘I think you’re made of stronger stuff than that, my child. I think, when you ran, you were hurt and confused and wanting, in some muddled way, to hit back at Nigel—to punish him—hurt him as he’d hurt you. I followed you, in the first instance, because I was worried about you driving in the state you were in. I thought you might crash the car.’

‘I didn’t see you.’

'I didn’t intend you to,‘ he said equably. ’Would you like some more tea?‘

She said an ungracious, ‘No,’ then added reluctantly, ‘Thank you’ because she supposed he meant to be kind, although kindness wasn’t a quality she’d particularly associated with him before.

But then, she didn’t really know very much about him at all, except that he was Nigel’s older brother, and the head of Templeton Laboratories. When she had first met him, she’d been conscious of a vague disappointment, because she supposed she’d been expecting an older edition of Nigel, with the same outgoing charm and rakish good looks.

But Malory Templeton had been totally different, shorter than Nigel—barely six feet, she estimated—and built on a more slender scale, too. Their basic colouring was the same, they were both brown-haired and blue-eyed, but Malory’s skin was almost pale when contrasted with Nigel’s robust tan.

He had been quietly polite, his handshake firm as he greeted her, but Amanda had found his manner chilling, and was absurdly glad that he and Nigel inhabited such very different worlds. He was almost like Nigel’s shadow, she’d thought.

Now, at the worst moment of her life, their worlds seemed to have collided, and she felt uneasy about it.

She said abruptly, ‘What were you doing at Calthorpe, anyway? You don’t usually go to watch Nigel. You’re not interested in rally-driving. He told me so.’

‘I’m not,’ he said briefly, and there was a silence. At last he said, ‘I suppose I went there for a confrontation.’ His mouth twisted slightly. ‘You see, you’re not the only injured party in all this.’ His gaze met hers squarely. The lady with Nigel was someone I’d come to think of as mine.‘

Amanda’s lips parted in a soundless gasp, but she couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

He added pleasantly, ‘Or did you think the sole object of my affections was a test-tube?’

The blunt answer to that was ‘probably’, but she didn’t give it. Yet, if she was honest, it was difficult to imagine anyone as colourless as Malory Templeton being involved in a passionate, full-blooded affair.

She said stiltedly, I’m sorry.‘

‘So am I,’ he said. ‘But at least I had the advantage of suspecting what was going on. I didn’t just—walk in on it.’ He paused. ‘If I’d arrived there sooner, I might have been able to stop you.’

‘But you wouldn’t have been able to stop it happening,’ she said in a low voice, staring at the flames flickering round the logs in the hearth.

‘No,’ he agreed, and there was another silence.

At last, curiosity impelled her to say, ‘And what about you, Malory? Are you a survivor, too?’

He said drily, ‘Well, I’m not leaving here to look for another flooded river. My pride may be damaged, but my heart’s still intact. I hadn’t got anywhere near the stage of offering it—or my hand.’ He flicked a glance at Amanda’s fingers. ‘I note you’re no longer wearing your ring.’

‘I threw it at him,’ she confessed. She had bruised her knuckle wrenching the solitaire off. The slight pain had seemed the only reality in an increasingly nightmare situation: Nigel’s sex-flushed face turned unbelievingly towards the door, the glazed eyes fohis mouth gaping ridiculously, like a fish’s. All that, she thought, would haunt her for ever. A faint flush rose in her cheeks. That, and the image of the naked girl straddling him so ecstatically.

Malory said, ‘It would be far better not to think about it.’ He looked at her expressionlessly, and her colour deepened. Was he some kind of clairvoyant? she wondered angrily. It was bad enough that he was here, intruding on her life at all—prying into her misery. She didn’t want him trampling over her thoughts as well.

She said with faint defiance, ‘You have a better idea?’