Valentine's Night. Penny Jordan

they got married they planned to find a house in Ludlow, and she would then use Andrew’s present flat as her workshop; at least, that was what she had suggested, and Andrew had seemed to go along with her idea. It was odd, when she thought about it, how they had got engaged. They had been dating casually for a few months, and then Andrew had taken her to see his great-aunt, and it had been while they were there that the subject of an engagement had first come up.

      The old lady had been extremely forthright in her views and speech, and she had commented that it was high time Andrew settled down and produced his family; he was too old to remain single any longer without becoming eccentric.

      And then it had been on the way home that he had proposed to her … stumbling over the words a little, making her aware of both how much she liked him and how vulnerable he was. He had wanted to buy her a ring, but in the end they had decided to save the money instead. At twenty-four, she felt she was too mature to need the visible trappings of their commitment to one another. Only, recently that commitment hadn’t seemed quite so strong, on either of their parts.

      The sudden sound of someone banging on the outer door made her jump. She got up uncertainly and hurried towards the kitchen door, opening it and stepping into the porch.

      As she reached for the outer door, the knock sounded again, demanding impatiently that she hurry.

      She fumbled with the lock and then turned the handle. The wind caught the door, pushing it back so hard it almost knocked her over, and a very Australian and irritable male voice proclaimed ‘At last! Thank heaven for that.’

      Cousin Val … it had to be. But by no strength of the imagination was Cousin Val what she had expected … what any of them had expected.

      ‘This is the Llewellyn farm, isn’t it?’ the Australian voice demanded, and Sorrel nodded. Her own voice seemed to have deserted her for some reason. Temporary paralysis caused by shock, she told herself, as she stepped back into the kitchen. The shock of discovering that Cousin Val was not, as they had all supposed, a woman, but a man … Very much a man, Sorrel acknowledged as he followed her inside the kitchen, shrugging off a snow-covered sheepskin jacket as he did so, and then bending to tug off his wellingtons.

      ‘I thought I wasn’t going to make it,’ he told her calmly. ‘I had to abandon my car way down the bottom of the lane. Fact is, I had no idea there was going to be this kind of weather.’ He looked round the kitchen and frowned, picking up her tension.

      ‘Is something wrong? You did get my letter?’

      ‘Oh, yes, we got your letter,’ Sorrel told him bitterly. ‘But we assumed, because you signed it Val, that the Val was short for Valerie.’

      ‘Valerie?’ He stared at her. The snow had melted on his head, revealing thick black hair, well-cut and clinging damply now to his skull.

      As he stood up, she realised how tall he was, how very broad-shouldered, even without the enveloping sheepskin.

      ‘We thought you were a girl,’ Sorrel told him tensely.

      He gave her a slow look. His eyes, she realised, were grey—cool and hard as granite.

      ‘Did you, now?’ He seemed faintly amused. ‘I suppose I should have thought of that. The Val is short for Valentine … a family name on my mother’s side. She was part Russian. So you thought I was a girl. Well, as you can see, I’m not. It doesn’t matter, does it?’

      Doesn’t matter? she thought! Just wait until he knew!

      ‘As a matter of fact, it does,’ she said as calmly as she could. ‘You see, this farmhouse is no longer occupied and we didn’t realise you were planning to visit us until it was too late to let you know what a bad time you’d picked—’

      ‘What do you mean, it isn’t occupied? You’re living here, aren’t you?’

      He seemed more annoyed than concerned, and for some reason that annoyed her.

      He had walked past her without so much as a ‘by your leave’, and was standing in front of the range. The small canvas bag he had brought in with him was still on the floor, snow melting on it.

      ‘I left the rest of my stuff in the car. How long is this snow likely to last?’

      ‘I don’t know!’ Sorrel told him grittily. She had seldom experienced the antagonism towards anyone that she was experiencing now, and never without undue provocation. So what was it about this man, with his air of easy self-assurance, that so rubbed her up the wrong way? She could feel herself bristling like a defensive cat confronted by a large dog. She didn’t want him invading her space. She didn’t want him anywhere near her, she realised.

      ‘Mm … Well, someone must know. Where’s the rest of the family?’

      ‘Not here,’ Sorrel told him succinctly, and had the pleasure of seeing him momentarily disconcerted.