Mariana (21 page)

I knew whose property it was even before Iain Sumner came whistling round the side of the cottage and paused outside the leaning back shed, fiddling with something mechanical that I couldn't identify at that distance. His back was to me, muscles taut against the fabric of his cotton T-shirt, his red hair washed almost fair by the strong light of the morning sun.

I must admit, when I jumped the fence and began wending my way through the incurious sheep, my only intention was to walk over to Iain and beg a cup of coffee, but as I drew closer to the cottage, with him remaining unaware of my presence, a tiny niggling devil stirred inside me.

Here was my chance, I thought, to pay him back for all the times he had startled me out of my wits by sneaking up on me. I would never have a better opportunity. I slowed my steps to deaden the sound of my approach.

When I was still a few yards away, I saw the reason for his inattention. He was busy working on a heavy wooden block and tackle, the kind that I had often seen strung up in barns. Blue smoke from a cigarette curled above his head
as he bent forward, using both hands to make an adjustment to the unwieldy contraption.

I was less than four feet away, now. One more step, and I could stretch out my hand and touch his shoulder. My hand was actually half raised when Iain lifted his head and angled it slightly, plucking the cigarette from his lips with capable, grease-stained fingers.

'Good morning, Julia,' he said.

Twenty-One

To his credit, he could not hold the innocent expression long. Grinning, he took another pull from his cigarette and straightened away from his work, turning to face me fully. 'My kingdom for a camera,' he said, his gray eyes crinkling in amusement. 'You ought to see your face.'

I closed my gaping mouth and shook my head, amazed.

'How on earth did you know I was there?' I asked him.

Iain braced both fists in the small of his back and stretched. 'I'm no clairvoyant,' he assured me. 'I saw you hopping the fence. Thought you were taking a devil of a time getting here. Besides,' he added, pointing at the clear outline of our shadows on the shed wall, 'if you've a mind to sneak up on a Scotsman, you'd best do it when the sun's not at your back.' He narrowed his eyes a little and looked me up and down. 'You've had a ducking,' he remarked.

I was surprised that I had not noticed the fact myself. Perhaps I had grown accustomed to the feel of Mariana's dripping-wet gown against my skin, to the point where my mind no longer registered discomfort. Faintly curious, I looked down at myself, suddenly aware of the clinging dampness of my heavy denim jeans and oversize shirt. I ran
2o an experimental hand through my hair and was relieved to find it dry, if slightly windblown and unruly. I must have looked a sight.

'I fell in the river,' I told him. 'I'm nearly dry, I think.'

Iain looked at my bare feet and scrubbed face, and raised a russet eyebrow. 'You'll catch cold if you stay like that,' he warned me. 'Come inside and dry off. You can have the loan of some of my clothes, if you like.'

'Well,' I wavered, 'if it wouldn't be any trouble ...'

'No trouble at all,' he said. 'I'm glad of the company at breakfast time.'

Good heavens, I thought, was it only time for breakfast? It seemed incredible, before I reminded myself that I
had
left the house at five o'clock that morning. A wall clock in Iain's kitchen chimed eight times as we came into the cottage through the back door, confirming the earliness of the hour.

'I'll have to wash,' he said, holding up his hands in evidence, 'but you can go on ahead and change out of those wet things. You'll find the bedroom down the hall on your right, and there's plenty to wear in the closet.'

It was odd, I thought as I stood barefoot in Iain Sumner's bedroom a few minutes later, how a man's wardrobe somehow defined him. Iain's closet boasted hanger after hanger of smartly pressed shirts, plain cotton and flannel plaid, flanked by several pairs of trousers and an oddly incongruous dinner jacket. I peeled the wet clothes from my body—leaving my underthings on for the sake of decency— and selected a pair of jeans and a blue plaid shirt from the assortment before me.

The jeans were ridiculously long on me, and stood up stiffly round my waist like a clown suit, but by rolling up the legs several times and leaving the shirttails hanging loose I managed to produce a rather fashionably frumpy effect that might have graced the cover of a teenage magazine.

Iain, ever the gentleman, made no comment on my appearance when I rejoined him in the kitchen. The cottage had a very simple and practical design, one large room split
evenly into kitchen and lounge, divided along the line of the narrow hallway that led to the bedrooms and bath. You could have shot an arrow in the front door and out the back again without hitting so much as a stick of furniture, so open and free of clutter was the room's decor.

'Where shall I hang these?' I asked him, holding aloft my bundle of sodden clothes.

'I've a clothes dryer in the back shed,' he said, jerking his head toward the back door. 'It's a bit of a relic, but it works all right if you let it know who's boss. You have to be forceful.'

I found out what he meant when I located the dryer beneath a pile of tools in the brightly lit shed. It took four tries and a swift kick to start the machine running, but I returned to the kitchen with a feeling of decided accomplishment.

'Everything okay?' Iain looked up inquiringly, and when I nodded he returned his attention to a sizzling pan on the stove. I noticed he was automatically cooking for two, and a steaming cup of coffee waited for me on the table beside him. 'It's liable to be a bit stewed,' he warned me, when I reached to pick up the coffee mug. 'I made it a few hours ago. You like eggs and sausage?'

I took a cautious sip of coffee. 'Yes, I do.'

'Academic, really,' he said, lifting the pan from the stove and dividing its contents between two plates. 'It's all I can cook. Toast?'

'Yes, please.'

He placed a thick slice of buttered toast on the edge of my plate and set it on the table in front of me, slinging himself into the seat opposite.

'So.' He sent me a questioning look. 'What brings you out this way at this time of the morning?'

I shrugged. 'I just felt like a walk, that's all. I hadn't been down to the river before, and I wanted to see where it went.'

'So now you know.'
2o 'Yes.' I smiled back at him, scooping up another forkful of hearty breakfast.

'You've walked about three miles, you know, if you've
come
the whole way along the river. It's less than a mile
to
your place from here by the road. Shorter still if you cut across the fields.'

'Then that is Exbury I saw, over there?' I indicated the general direction, and he nodded.

'Aye. Did you think you were lost?'

'Don't laugh,' I told him, 'it's been known to happen. I have a terrible sense of direction.

'You can't be a patch on my mother,' he said. 'She takes a tour of the highlands every time she heads out to visit the market, I think.'

I laughed at the image. 'Are your parents farmers, as well?'

'Christ, no.' He took a swig of coffee to wash down a mouthful of toast. 'Neither of them could tell the work end of a hoe from the handle. No, my dad's an accountant, in Balloch. My mother was a lawyer, before she retired.'

Which explained, in part, why their son had gone to Cambridge, I thought. I looked around the large room with a more discerning eye, and saw the scattered evidence of a comfortable lifestyle—a piece of really good-quality furniture, a lovely pair of prints hanging on the wall, a glass-fronted bookcase crammed full of leather-bound volumes ...

Tm not a burglar, in my spare time,' he said, reading my thoughts with uncanny ease. 'Some of it comes from my family, and the rest I bought when I was working for Geoff’s dad, in Paris.'

'You worked for Morland, then?'

'Aye, for a few years. It all but drove me mad,' he confessed. 'I'd rather have my hands in the dirt, thanks all the same. So I chucked Morland and bought this place just after my thirtieth birthday, five years ago. Close to Geoff, it was, and it suits my pace of life.'
I tried to imagine him sitting behind a desk in some modern office, and failed. 'You met Geoff at Cambridge, Vivien tells me.'

'Aye, and a wicked day that was.' He grinned into his cup. 'My grades went straight downhill after that. I'm surprised we weren't both sent down.'

'You studied English?'

He nodded. 'More for interest than anything else. You can't make a living writing poems.'

Somehow, F couldn't picture Iain Sumner writing poetry, either. He was, come to think of it, rather difficult to define. Not handsome, exactly—his jaw was too stubborn and his eyes too shrewd—but, still, there was something ... He was solid, I thought. Solid and warm and dependable, and I felt an odd, seductive comfort in his company. He leaned back in his chair and pushed his empty plate to one side.

'Do you mind if I smoke?'

I set my fork down and shook my head. 'Not at all.'

He lit a cigarette and shook the match out, setting it neatly on the side of his plate. 'You were up to the manor for tea yesterday, I hear.'

'It was more like a five-course meal,' I corrected him. 'Vivien's aunt is a wonderful cook.'

'She is that,' he agreed. 'I've been doing some work in the rose garden the past week, so Freda's been cooking my dinners. I'll not fit my trousers if my work lasts much longer.'

'She says you ought to be able to work it all off

'Does she, now?' He puffed at the cigarette, smiling. 'Well, I expect she knows best. She usually does. That's what the name Alfreda means, you know—"supernaturally wise," or something to that effect. Vivien looked it up in a name book, once.'

'It doesn't surprise me.' I picked the plates up from the table and carried them over to the sink. 'Names are funny things, aren't they?'
'I suppose.' His voice was absent. 'I got stuck with a boring one, though.'

'What, Iain? I think that's a nice name.'

'Boring,' he maintained. 'Just a Scottish form of John, for all that. No imagination involved. Iain, Evan, Sean, Hans— they're all variations on a theme.'

The plates went clattering into the sink with an ugly splintering sound, and Iain turned in his chair to look at me.

'Sorry,' I said, 'I think I've broken one.' I looked down at the wreckage, my heart pounding.
Evan ...

'You didn't hurt yourself?'

I surfaced from my daydreaming, and shook my head. No. Just the plate, I'm afraid.'

'No harm down,' he assured me. 'That's one less I have to wash. D'ye want some more coffee?'

'I wouldn't mind.'

He rose from his seat and filled both our cups. 'Fancy a tour of the estate?' he offered grandly. 'It's not as impressive as the Hall, I'll admit, but there is a lot of it.'

I pushed myself away from the counter. I’d like that.'

'You'd best nor go barefoot,' he advised, sweeping me with a glance, 'or you'll be stepping in something you'll wish you hadn't. There's a spare pair of wellies behind the kitchen door, I think.'

I found the boots and slipped my feet into them, feeling more like a dressed-up clown than ever. Iain looked at me and grinned.

'A bit large, aren't they?' was his comment. 'Don't worry, I'll walk slowly.'

I grinned back at him. 'Never mind that. Just don't let anyone else see me looking like this.'

'Only the sheep,' he promised, 'and I'll warrant they've seen odder sights.'

I shifted to let him move past me, and one of my ludicrous boots knocked a ceramic dish sliding.

'I didn't know you had a dog,' I said, looking down.

'I don't.' His smile was self-conscious. 'She died a few
months back. I just haven't had the heart to move her things, yet.'

'You ought to get another one.'

'I'll have to, eventually. It's no small task herding sheep without a dog. I've a neighbor that gives me the loan of his collie, when I need it, for the time being.'

He held the back door open for me, and we went out into the sunlight, Iain walking ahead with his easy, athletic stride, and me squelching after him in the oversize boots. It took us well over an hour to circumnavigate the property, and by the time we made our way back to the cottage there was a faintly scorched smell in the vicinity of the back shed, and my clothes were completely dry.

'If you want to get changed, I can give you a lift into town,' Iain offered. 'It's quicker by car, and you shouldn't be walking on the road in your bare feet.'

'I don't want to be a bother,' I began, but he brushed my protestations aside.

'It's no bother. I have to stop by the Lion for a few minutes, anyway. I can run you home afterward.'

It took Iain a few tries to get his aged car started, and I accurately guessed that he hardly used the vehicle, since every time I saw him, he seemed to be on foot. It was, as he said, a very short run to Exbury, scarcely worth the bother of starting the car. The fields and hedges flew by us, and before I had time to really register them, they had been replaced by houses and gardens, and we were pulling into the parking lot of the Red Lion.

Vivien was outside washing windows, and she came over to greet us, folding her arms across her chest as we climbed out of the car.

'I've just had your brother on the phone,' she informed me.

'Tommy?' I raised my eyebrows in surprise. 'What was he doing calling you?'

'He was trying to hunt you down, from the sound of it,' she said, smiling brightly. 'He's up at your house, eating his
way through your refrigerator and waiting for you to come home.'

"This would be your brother the vicar, I take it?' Iain checked, and I nodded.

'You didn't meet him last time he was here, did you, Iain?' Vivien looked at him. 'You were in Marlborough that day, I think. He's quite a lark. I say,' she turned to me with a sudden thought. 'Why don't you ring him up and tell him to come and meet you here? I don't have to open up for two hours yet; we can sit in the bar and make a party of it.'

Iain looked over at her. 'It's a little early for drinking, don't you think?'

'You don't know Julia's brother,' was her reply. 'Come on around to the back, Julia, you can ring him from there.'

My brother restrained his curiosity admirably when I talked to him on the telephone, showing no surprise when I rather cryptically asked him to fetch a pair of shoes from my closet and drive in to meet us at the Red Lion.