and his shock of thick dark hair, his amazing topaz eyes and his stunning aura of male sensuality, and Faith had fallen headfirst in love. How could she not have done so?
They had dined on fresh asparagus, poached salmon and strawberries and cream—Philip’s favourite summer supper, as she had later discovered—and even today the taste of salmon, the smell of strawberries always took her straight back to that meal.
It had seemed to her then that the very air in the room was drenched in some special magical light, some wonderful mystical golden glow, that suddenly she was grown-up, an adult, with both Philip and Nash listening attentively to her participation in their shared conversation.
The misery she had experienced at the home had been forgotten; she had felt somehow like a caterpillar, emerging from its constricting chrysalis to experience the exhilaration and freedom of flight.
It was Nash who had driven her back to the home. Faith could still remember the way her heart had started to race with frantic excitement when he had stopped the car just outside the entrance. It had been dark by then, and in the shadowy privacy of the quiet lane, seated next to Nash in the car, Faith had held her breath. Was he going to touch her…kiss her? Did he feel like she did?
A mirthless smile stretched the soft fullness of her mouth now as she relived her naïve emotions and the sharpness of her disappointment when Nash had simply thanked her for her kindness to his godfather.
‘But I enjoyed talking to him,’ she had insisted truthfully.
Less than a week after that she had been living full time at Hatton—an arrangement that had been made after Philip had written to her mother, inviting Faith to spend the rest of the school holidays at Hatton as his guest.
She had been speechless…ecstatic, unable to believe her good fortune when the news had been broken to her. If only she had known then what the outcome of her stay was to be…
Automatically Faith walked back to the window, pushing her memories away. From up here she had a wonderfully panoramic view of the Gertrude Jekyll-designed gardens that were at their very best at this time of the year. She could well remember the long sunny hours she had spent alongside Philip, weeding out the magnificent long borders either side of the path that led to the pretty summerhouse.
Faith froze as a large car pulled up outside the house and Nash got out. Where had he been? Had she known he was out she would have gone downstairs and got herself something to eat. She didn’t want to eat with Nash.
Prior to her arrival Robert had told her that arrangements had been made for her to live in the house, but that she would have to fend for herself so far as meals were concerned.
‘The kitchen is fully equipped, and you’ll be able to make use of its facilities, but we shall also give you an allowance in order that you can eat out if you wish—and I hope you will wish.’ Robert had smiled at her. ‘Especially on those occasions when I come down to the house for our progress meetings.’
Faith had smiled, but Robert’s interest in her was a complication she hadn’t allowed for when she had initially applied for her job.
Faith believed she had every right not to inform her prospective employers about the events leading up to Philip’s death. But to conceal them from someone with whom she might form a close personal relationship was something she would never consider doing.
To Faith, loving someone meant being honest with them, trusting them, and had she and Robert met in different circumstances she knew there would have come a stage in their relationship when she would have wanted to open up to him about her past.
She liked Robert. Of course she did. And, yes, one day she hoped to marry and have children. But…A troubled frown furrowed her forehead.
Why had Nash had to reappear in her life? She shivered as she remembered the way he had looked at her when he had told her that he was determined to seek justice for Philip’s death.
Inadvertently her gaze was drawn downward, to where Nash was striding towards the house, and as though some mysterious force linked them together he stopped and lifted his head, his gaze unerringly focusing on the tower and her window.
Immediately Faith stepped back, but she knew that Nash had seen her.
The summer she had stayed here she had spent more time than she wanted to remember waiting…watching for Nash to arrive. From here there was an excellent view of the drive, and in those days Nash had driven a racy little scarlet sports car.
Although officially he had been spending the summer helping his godfather, he had also, even then, been working on the business venture upon which he had eventually built his current empire.
In those days whenever he’d seen her watching for him he would stand underneath her window and smile up at her, teasingly telling her that if she wasn’t careful one day he might scale the wall to reach her.
Faith had prayed that he might, so deeply in love with him by then that there had scarcely been any room in her thoughts or her emotions for anyone else but him. He had been her ideal, her hero, and as the girl in her had given way to the growing woman her longing for him had increased and intensified.
From hardly daring to look at his mouth, for fear of blushing because of her desire to feel its hard male strength against her own, she had found herself focusing boldly on it, the words she had known she must never speak pleading in silent longing inside her head.
Kiss me.
Well, today, ten years too late, he had kissed her, but not as she had longed for him, dreamed of him doing then, with love and tenderness, a look of bemused adoration in his eyes as he begged her for her love. Oh, no. The kiss he had given her today had been hard, angry, pulsing with the violence of his emotions and his antagonism towards her.
So why, then, had she responded to it with a passion that she had never given to any of the other men she had dated?
The sharp irritation of her inner voice unnerved her. She had responded to him because her memories had tricked her, that was all. She had thought…forgotten…She had believed that it was Nash as she had once imagined him to be that she was kissing. And as for those other men—well, they had just been casual dates, nothing serious, and she had kissed them more out of a sense of fair play than anything else. Kisses were all that she had wanted to share with them.
Only with Robert had she sensed that maybe…just maybe something deeper and stronger might eventually grow to life between them. But these days Faith was very protective of her emotions, very cautious about who she allowed into her life. These days a man like Nash Connaught would have no chance whatsoever of bedazzling her into making the same dangerous mistakes she had made at fifteen.
So far as Faith was concerned now, the most important cornerstone for a relationship was mutual trust. Without that…Without that there could be nothing—or nothing that she would want, that she would ever consider worth having, as she had good and bitter cause to know.
In her bleakest moments after the death of Philip and her mother the only thing that had kept her going had been the knowledge that Philip had trusted her—enough to make that wonderfully unexpected provision in his will for her.
When she had first learned that Philip had left money specially to finance her studies and her passage through university Faith had hardly been able to believe it. Prior to that she had told herself that the only way she had any hope whatsoever of qualifying as an architect would be to find herself a job and then study in her spare time, which she had known meant that her goal would be virtually impossible for her to reach.
But it hadn’t just been the discovery that Philip had left her the money that had meant so much to her. What had mattered even more was knowing that despite everything that had happened he had, after all, believed in her. There was, in Faith’s opinion, no price that could be put on that. It was a gift beyond price; a gift so precious that even now just to think about it filled her eyes with tears and an emotion she knew someone like Nash would never in a million lifetimes be able to understand.
Nash,