Carmichael's Return. Lilian Peake

last night, and as a result he picked up things like fevers. So what he did for a living was none of her business, was it?

      Strange, she pondered, remembering her conversation with Uncle Redmund that morning—he had been the second person she’d heard describe himself as a wanderer. But thousands of people wandered the world these days—young women, unattached men, as this man seemed to be.

      ‘You make your living as an artist?’ he queried, watching the movements of her hand but, low down as he was, unable to see what they were reproducing.

      She nodded. ‘Waiting for the next commission, wherever it might come from. Getting this job looking after Mr Gard’s house was a great help in plugging the hole I would have made otherwise in my bank balance.’ There was another pause, then, as her heartbeats revved to overdrive, she added as casually as she could, ‘Did I give you a definite answer to your question about whether you can stay here? Anyway, the answer’s yes.’

      She glanced at him. Would he turn her down flat?

      ‘Indefinitely?’ An eyebrow lifted.

      ‘If you like.’

      ‘Thanks.’

      It wasn’t until she heard his answer, delivered in an equally casual tone, that her heart returned to its normal beat. Then a small, annoyingly sane voice asked, Have you done the right thing? How long will he stay? Can you honestly trust him? For heaven’s sake, who is he?

      For a while he seemed to be sleeping. As she worked Lauren tuned in to the sounds around her—the birdsong, a humming bee, a dog’s distant bark, leaves moving in the breeze.

      He stirred and stretched his long body, and Lauren’s awareness of him immediately came to life. Why should her senses start reeling at the nearness of the man? OK, he was good-looking and clearly of high intelligence, with a magnetism about him that any woman would find difficult to resist.

      So what? she tried telling herself. He was just another human being, wasn’t he? No, he wasn’t. She had to acknowledge that no other man had ever affected her in the way this stranger did.

      She looked at him, and her pulses raced at the discovery that he had been watching her. He switched his attention to their surroundings.

      ‘The quietness,’ he commented, ‘is so loud it almost deafens.’

      ‘Do you prefer noise and bustle?’

      ‘It’s what I’ve had for months—years now.’

      Every time he referred to his normal way of life— which just had to involve some occupation—it made her want to say, Tell me more about yourself. But once again she suppressed the urge.

      It wasn’t that she preferred him to be mysterious, she told herself, just that if—when—she did discover what he did for a living, it would—well, kind of break the spell.

      Knowing so little about him—wasn’t that part of the charm?—and liking him as she did, she felt it in her bones that if reality intruded it would bring an unwelcome end to the magic of the situation.

      ‘You—you’ve left that behind, Mr Carmichael?’ she ventured, then reproached herself for tempting that reality she dreaded into coming a little nearer. So she added quickly, ‘What are you immediate aims?’ That, she scolded herself, was also the wrong thing to say. Did she really want him to get up and go?

      ‘The name’s Brett,’ he put in, adding with a quick smile, ‘Lauren.’

      She echoed that smile, nodding.

      It took him a few moments to answer her question, then, rolling his head towards her and holding her gaze, he answered, ‘I guess all I want at present is a bit of peace. Tranquillity of the soul.’ He looked away, appearing to consider the words, as though they pleased him. His eyes sought hers again. ‘I have this deep-down yearning for it. You know a place I could get that?’

      His penetrating gaze seemed to be looking into her soul, and she caught her breath. Who was this stranger who had come into her life—disturbing her, agitating her more than any other man had ever done?

      ‘Maybe…here?’

      The words had slipped out, and once again she grew angry with herself for allowing them to do so.

      His expression altered so subtly she thought she had imagined it, until his eyes, with a look that was entirely male, flickered over her. Then it was gone.

      She shivered slightly, knowing that her suspicion that his normal masculine reflexes had merely been overlaid by his indisposition and not obliterated had been correct When he transferred his gaze to their surroundings again, relief flooded through her.

      ‘Thanks for the offer,’ he responded casually, then stopped.

      Was he going to turn it down? Her hand trembled just a little as she endeavoured unsuccessfully to continue with her sketching. Her heart began to sink, and angrily she told it that it was a fool to have got so involved. No, it answered back. It wasn’t involvement, only sympathy and compassion. How could it be anything else?

      He spoke again, startling her from her thoughts.

      ‘You could be nght, Lauren. Here I’ll stay, until… You agree?’

      Until…? her mind echoed, and she wished he had not left the sentence unfinished.

      ‘I agree, Brett.’ That small voice added mischievously, And you never want him to go, do you? Never, she answered it. Never. Not even if he turns out to be the devil himself.

      

      A few days later Lauren discovered Brett browsing in the library. It was a long room—probably formed, she estimated, when the cottages had been joined.

      From ceiling to floor, its walls were lined with books. An ancient open fireplace, its stone hearth decorated with long grasses and artificial blooms, filled one end of the narrow room, while a writing desk and two upright chairs occupied the other.

      It was in front of some shelves stacked with leatherbound, gold-embossed volumes that Brett stood, a book opened between his palms. He held it as if it were itself made of gold, almost as if it had some special meaning for him. But how could it? she argued. He was as new to this house as she was, and as unfamiliar with its contents.

      She had entered quietly, and he only became aware of her presence when she turned to close the heavy wooden door. By the time she turned back he had replaced the volume and was inspecting the other shelves, his hands having found his pockets. Had he something to hide? The thought darted in and out of her mind.

      A frisson of fear ran through her. Who was he? He might have been around the place for a few days now—though it seemed to her that it was more like two or three weeks, so accustomed had she grown to his being there—but she hadn’t got to know him any better in that time.

      He seemed to have taken on an air of remoteness, of holding himself apart. Was he, perhaps, going through a time of readjustment from whatever had plunged him into the low state in which he had picked up that fever?

      She recalled his words: ‘Tranquillity of the soul. I have this deep-down yearning for it.’ The words still moved her deeply, and an overwhelming sense of empathy, of longing to comfort him, swept over her once again.

      He had been friendly enough, she granted him that, and he had praised her cooking, joking about his own poor showing in that respect, but there was still this gulf between them, with not a bridge in sight to cross to the other side—to his side.

      Now and then she had caught him watching her, but his expression had been so inscrutable she had been unable to decipher it. There had been more than a touch of male interest in it, which had caused her skin to prickle. There had been something else too, and it maddened her that yet again she was unable to read it.

      ‘How high a star-rating would you give this library?’ she asked, crossing the room. If she could join him before he moved, she calculated, she might just be