She could leave the business in the capable hands of Paul Lyons, her second-in-command; she knew that.
She didn’t love Giles any more. How could she? The man she had thought she loved had never actually existed, but that didn’t stop her heart from thumping crazily every time she saw a man with fair, sun-streaked hair and blue eyes. It didn’t stop her from waking up alone at night with her face stiff from the drying salt of her tears. It didn’t stop her from feeling it was impossible for her to face the world, from feeling that everyone who looked at her knew what a fool she had been.
Tom was right—six weeks away from London, living simply and on her own, was probably just what she needed to get things back into perspective, to recoup her old energy and determination.
They had had lunch together yesterday, and then he had gone back to the house with her, to make sure that she had got the route clear, he had said, but she had known that he was worried about her. That knowledge had warmed her. She and Tom had been friends for a long time. Her mother adored him, and often hinted that they would make a good couple, but, close though they were, both of them had separately and mutually acknowledged that their relationship was more akin to one of brother and sister, that their emotional bonding was such that it precluded any possibility of sexual desire. Tom had recently fallen in love, and she liked his new girlfriend very much.
She had broken her journey in Ludlow to admire the pretty town and have something to eat, and had perhaps, she recognised, lingered there rather longer than was wise, because now it was dark; the country road was unlit, and she was glad of the absence of any other traffic, otherwise she suspected she would have irritated the other drivers by her hesitancy as she searched the roadside for the turn-off for the cottage.
She was becoming increasingly anxious to find it, not just because it was late and she was tired; for the last few miles she had been feeling increasingly unwell. Her stomach hurt, she felt sick, and she was pretty sure that the meal she had eaten in Ludlow was to blame.
She had lost almost a stone in the twelve months since she had parted from Giles. Her friends were beginning to warn her that there was such a thing as becoming too slender, and that her five-foot-seven frame was beginning to look a touch gaunt. She had been forced to acknowledge the truth of their remarks. She could see new hollows at the base of her throat, could feel a new prominence in the bones of her hips, a new slackness in the waists of her discreetly elegant skirts. There were shadows beneath her eyes turning them from grey to haunted violet, the soft black silkiness of her hair was beginning to lose its gloss, and she knew that the emotional devastation she had suffered was beginning to show its physical signs on her body.
She had promised herself that she would spend this break getting herself fit; walking, eating sensibly, living simply and wholesomely instead of picking reluctantly at meals she never seemed to finish and keeping herself closeted in the unhealthy stuffiness of her centrally heated office.
The cottage was spartan, Tom had warned her, but they were having a good summer, and she had felt a sharp relief at the prospect of living alone somewhere where no one would expect her to make any effort to keep up the appearance of the glossy, self-sufficient career woman.
That was the trouble with being a woman, she reflected muzzily; nature had not designed them to be self-sufficient. Nature had ensured that they would always inherit those genes which made them yearn to share and nurture. Nature was a fool and a cheat—just like Giles—and she was a bigger fool for having allowed herself to be deceived.
Too late she saw the turning and had to reverse the car. Doing so made her feel horribly faint and sick. Her head felt as though it were stuffed with cotton wool, while her stomach…
As she drove down the lane between high, hedge-topped banks, she prayed that she would make it to the cottage before her stomach rebelled completely.
She could feel sweat breaking out on her skin, the kind of sweat that heralded a bout of sickness, and then mercifully as she turned a corner the car’s headlights picked out the low stone-built cottage. Longer than she had expected, and was her brain playing tricks on her or did it seem as though it had two separate front doors, and what was that hedge doing in the middle of the front garden?
As she stopped the car, she realised muzzily that it wasn’t one cottage but a pair of semis, in fact. She just had time to realise that Tom hadn’t warned her that the cottage didn’t stand completely alone before violent cramps seized her stomach.
Throwing open the car door, she virtually fell out of the driver’s seat, and was immediately and violently ill.
Shivering and shaking, her body doubled up with the intensity of the violent spasms racking her stomach, she prayed they would abate for long enough for her to make it to the privacy of the cottage. Not that there was anyone to see her. No lights shone from the windows of either cottage, no sound apart from the chattering of her own teeth spoiled the perfect silence. She was alone—completely alone…
Tensely she straightened up, relieved to discover that, while she felt appallingly weak, the pain and nausea had faded—at least for the time being.
Hurrying back to the car, she extracted her bag, and found the large, old-fashioned key to the cottage. Not bothering to lock her car, she opened the wooden gate and hurried down the path to the front door.
The effort of trying to control the pain in her stomach was making her feel positively light-headed, she acknowledged as she tried shakily to insert the key in the lock. A horrible sense of weakness overwhelmed her, the return of the unbearable cramping agony in her stomach bringing a film of sweat to her forehead, and nausea burning in her throat.
As the pain increased, she dropped the key, gripping her stomach, all her concentration demanded by the intensity of her agony.
As she cried out, and half collapsed on to the ground in front of the cottage, she was dimly conscious of a car engine fading into silence somewhere in the distance, but she was far too occupied with her own physical needs to pay it much attention.
She had just finished being violently sick, tears of pain and shock pouring down her face, her throat raw with the violence of her retching, her body still huddled on the ground, as she fought against the dizzying waves of agony beginning to build up inside her again when she heard an irritated male voice demanding from behind her, ‘What the devil’s going on?’
And then as she tried to turn her head, too exhausted and in too much pain to question either the man’s arrival or his anger, he obviously realised for himself how ill she was, because he made a sudden sound of enlightenment and then crouched down beside her, saying in a much kinder tone, ‘It’s all right. No, don’t try to move. What happened? Food poisoning?’
The cramping pains were increasing again. Angelica only had time to nod before they became so violent that she stopped fighting to stay conscious and let herself slide down into the waiting darkness, vaguely conscious of someone lifting her, carrying her, speaking to her before the darkness completely closed over her.
CHAPTER TWO
RELUCTANTLY Angelica opened her eyes, wincing as the light hit them, and closing them again, the mere effort of turning her head in the direction of the light so exhausting that it drained her.
She felt oddly light-headed…empty and fragile. She had a collection of hazy memories and impressions, the sharpest of them being a pain so intense that even to remember it made her stomach muscles tense defensively.
She had been sick, more violently sick than she could ever remember being in her life. So sick and in so much pain that she had honestly thought she was going to die—had even at times wished that she might…
She remembered saying as much, and she remembered another unfamiliar voice cautioning her against such folly, calming and soothing her, just as unfamiliar hands had dealt with the physical agony of her illness.
Who had they belonged to, those hands and that voice? A doctor? Her forehead crinkled in a frown as she tried to analyse why she should reject that thought so rigorously. Not a doctor, then who?
A