Valentine's Night. PENNY JORDAN

had known one another since their schooldays, and if their relationship lacked a certain sparkle—a certain intensity—Sorrel knew she didn’t mind, and that it wasn’t possible to have everything in life. And besides, she had her own reasons for welcoming Andrew’s calm courtship.

      She knew that her family weren’t entirely happy about her engagement to Andrew, but she was twenty-four, after all, and old enough to make up her own mind. If he sometimes niggled her with his pedantic, slightly old-fashioned ways—well, she reminded herself that she was far from perfect. But increasingly recently she had known that there was something vital lacking in their relationship … that their engagement was meandering towards no very certain conclusion, that Andrew’s reserve and surely too old-fashioned decision that they should not be lovers until they were married was not romantic as she had first assumed, but indicative of some very problematic areas within their relationship. As was her own reluctance to pressure him into making love to her.

      Surely she ought to feel differently? Surely she ought to want him more on a physical level? Was there something wrong with her that made her different from other young women her age? Did she have a much lower sexual drive than her peers?

      She didn’t have enough close female friends to know the answer. Those she had made at art college did not live locally, and the girls she had been at school with were now in the main married with families.

      She knew the cause of her present dissatisfaction lay with her brother and his wife. No one seeing them together could doubt how they felt. Those looks they exchanged, those sneaked little touches … that flush that sometimes darkened Fiona’s skin when she looked at Simon. No one could observe them together and not know how they felt. It was not like that with her and Andrew.

      She really ought not to be sitting here in the kitchen with her mother, but working in the outbuilding her father had converted for her when she’d first set up in business on her own. However, her mother was still frowning over the problem of this unknown Australian female, who had written to them announcing that she had traced a relationship with their family and that, since she had business in the UK, she was coming over early so that she could spend a few days getting to know her relatives.

      ‘So what are you going to do about her visit?’ Sorrel asked her mother, who was expertly finishing feeding one lamb and starting on another.

      ‘Well, it’s too late to put her off. She’s arriving the day after tomorrow. She says in her letter that she’s hiring a car and that she’ll drive straight here. Well, not here, of course, but to the old farmhouse.’

      ‘We’ll have to arrange to leave a message for her at the airport … explaining the position,’ Sorrel suggested practically, but for some reason her mother didn’t seem to find her suggestion acceptable.

      ‘Oh, we can’t do that!’ she exclaimed. ‘It would be so—so inhospitable. Think, darling, how you’d feel if you’d travelled all that way—’

      ‘Uninvited,’ Sorrel interrupted her drily, but her mother made no comment, saying instead,

      ‘And we can’t let her just arrive at the farm, driving all that way to find the place completely deserted. As you know, it’s barely even furnished. Just that one bedroom that Simon uses, and the kitchen. I wish there was some way we could put her up here, but it’s impossible—what with the twins at home and Uncle Giles and now Simon and Fiona, and it isn’t even as though we could get a spare bed in your room, and I won’t have the poor thing sleeping on a settee. What would she think of us? Of course, your uncle Giles is going to visit cousin Martha in Cardiff next week, and the twins are due back at university in three days, so it won’t be for very long.’

      ‘What won’t?’ Sorrel asked suspiciously, suddenly alerted to potential danger by the way her mother was deliberately avoiding looking at her.

      ‘Well, your father and I talked it over, and there’s really no reason why the two of you … Valerie and you … shouldn’t stay up at the hill farm for a few days. Simon could drive up there with plenty of supplies. The house is dry enough. The Aga still works, and there are the oil lamps.’

      ‘Mother, it’s impossible! There’s only one bed up there …’

      ‘Yes, but it’s a double bed, not like that tiny thing in your room. And besides, Valerie specifically said how much she was looking forward to seeing the farm. Did you know that her ancestor was born there? Imagine that—and then to travel all the way out to Australia.’

      ‘Mm. Willingly? Or was he one of the family’s black sheep?’ Sorrel asked wryly. ‘Mother, think, what if we don’t get on? We’ll be stuck up there for three whole days.’

      ‘Well, you could always come here for your meals.’

      ‘Mum, it’s a one-and-a-half-hour drive,’ Sorrel pointed out firmly. ‘I understand how you feel, but surely we could arrange for her to stay at one of the hotels in Ludlow for a few days?’

      ‘Impossible. I’ve already tried that. They’re booked up already with people getting ready for the festival.’

      ‘But that’s months away,’ Sorrel protested, and then, as she saw the tiredness and anxiety in her mother’s eyes, she suddenly relented. ‘Well, I suppose there’s no reason why I shouldn’t spend a few days up there.’

      ‘You used to love staying up there with Gran and Gramps,’ her mother reminded her eagerly.

      ‘Yes, during the summer, not in the middle of March, and in those days I think the main attraction was that I was madly in love with the history of the place, and spent most of my time daydreaming of border skirmishes and valiant Welshmen pitting their meagre forces against the might of their English overlords.’

      ‘And that’s another thing,’ her mother said brightly. ‘Your cousin says in her letter how much she’s looking forward to learning more about the area. She’ll love hearing all about its history, and you’ve always taken far more of an interest in that than the others. Not that I could send one of the twins up there to stay with her …’

      ‘Why not?’ Sorrel questioned mock-innocently. ‘She’s as much their cousin as she is mine.’

      ‘Sorrel, you know exactly what I mean. She’s a girl. It wouldn’t … it wouldn’t be proper. Not with only that one double bed up there,’ she said severely, breaking off as she heard Sorrel laughing. ‘Oh, you knew exactly what I meant all along! I …’

      She stopped talking as her eldest son walked into the kitchen; Simon paused to remove his filthy wellington boots before turning round and saying to Fiona, who was standing behind him, ‘Give me the lambs and I’ll take them over to the Aga.’

      ‘Oh, not more,’ Sorrel complained, her heart stirred to pity, nevertheless, by the sight of the two tiny, immobile creatures.

      ‘Twins,’ Simon told her grimly. ‘We’ve lost the ewe, and by the looks of it we might lose these two as well. Dad’s going berserk. None of them should have lambed so early, and he can’t get hold of the vet.’

      Expertly ministering to the two small creatures, Sorrel was relieved to see that they were still alive. Fiona came into the kitchen on the heels of her husband.

      ‘Simon, you’re going to have to drive up to the old farm when you can. Sorrel’s agreed to stay there a few days with Valerie, just until the boys are back at university and we can find room for her down here.’

      ‘Ma conned you into it, then, did she?’ Simon muttered sotto voce to his sister, and then, turning to his wife, said calmly, ‘Come on, cough up, that’s fifty pence you owe me.’

      ‘What? Oh, I might have known!’ Sorrel grimaced. Her mother was a great strategist, a compulsive plotter and planner.

      ‘Now, Simon, that’s enough,’ she told her eldest son firmly, but when he winked at Sorrel behind his mother’s bent back Sorrel had no doubts at all that she had well and truly been caught.