Barbara Erskine 3-Book Collection: Lady of Hay, Time’s Legacy, Sands of Time. Barbara Erskine

Richard’s quick step behind her. ‘What is it? Is anything wrong?’

      ‘Nothing.’ She shook her head. ‘They’re fine.’ She smiled at him. ‘A foolish mother’s sudden fears, that is all.’ She fell to her knees and hugged Will close to her, feeling the softness of his hair against her mouth.

      The little boy wriggled free almost at once and staggered a few steps away from her before sitting down and running the dust once more delightedly through his fingers. Matilda looked up smiling. Her smile faded as she noticed Jeanne’s calculating eye on Richard. The old woman’s face had contracted into a passive mask and Matilda recognised suspicion and hatred in her eyes. Abruptly she remembered the strange events of the night before. She had been inclined to dismiss them that morning as a dream. But it had not been a dream at all. It had been Jeanne. She sighed. If the magic the old woman had woven was a spell to prevent her mistress feeling the pangs of love for this tall, handsome man, it hadn’t worked, she thought sadly. For once, Jeanne my old friend, your magic is not strong enough to save me.

      She picked herself up wearily from the dust and, shaking out her pale green skirts, she turned and walked towards her own lodgings, leaving Richard standing in the sun.

      Behind her she could hear a voice calling suddenly. She stopped and hesitated, wanting to turn, but she was afraid that if she looked at Richard he would follow her inside. The voice was insistent. Someone was running after her. She felt a hand touch her shoulder and heard the soft lilt of a Welsh voice calling her …

      ‘Are you all right? Come on there, wake up, my lovely. Come on.’ The voice swam up again out of the shadows then receded. ‘You’d best go and find a doctor, Alan.’

      Someone was bending over her. Jo opened her eyes slowly. She was lying on the shingle near the river. With an exclamation of fright she sat up, her head swimming. The afternoon had gone. The sun was setting in a sea of golden cloud and two complete strangers were kneeling beside her at the river’s edge.

       21

      The blank canvas beckoned. Judy was standing in front of it, eating a hunk of cheese, the structure of the painting floating in her head, ready to be trapped and laid on the naked background. She had changed her position slightly, studying the fall of light, when something distracted her and she turned towards the door of the studio, frowning. There was someone standing on the landing outside, their weight on the creaky board.

      ‘Who is it?’ she called. She put the last piece of cheese into her mouth and wiped her fingers on the seat of her jeans.

      There was no reply. Frowning, she moved towards the door. ‘Is there someone there?’ she said. She pulled it open, irritated at the interruption.

      Nick was standing, looking out of the high landing window at the sloping rooftops of the house backs. He turned slowly and looked at her without a word.

      ‘Well? What the hell do you want?’ Judy glared at him.

      ‘I thought I would see if you had got back from France safely,’ he said. He did not smile at her.

      ‘As you see, I did.’ She put her hands on her hips.

      ‘Judy –’ He came towards her suddenly. ‘I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have left you like that. It was a lousy thing to do after you had come out to join me. We’d had a good time.’

      ‘Until someone mentioned Joanna.’ Judy stood by the door, holding it open as he walked past her into the studio. ‘How is Jo?’

      Nick shrugged. ‘She’s gone off somewhere. Is this going to be the new painting?’ He was standing in front of the blank canvas.

      ‘No. It’s going to be a sculpture in bronze.’ Her voice was sharp with sarcasm. ‘So, Jo is missing and you decided to visit the first reserve. Dear old unfussy Judy, always there to pat your head and make a man of you again.’ She was still standing by the door. ‘I’m sorry, Nick, but I’d like you to leave.’

      He walked back towards her. ‘Can I have a drink first?’ There was a new harshness in his voice as abruptly he pulled her hand from the door latch and hurled the door shut. ‘A drink, Judy.’

      She took a step back in astonishment. ‘All right! Steady. How much have you had already?’

      ‘Nothing. I’ve been in the office all morning trying to sort out the balls-up Jim Greerson’s made of our best account and I’m going back there this afternoon. This visit –’ he waved his arm around the studio ‘– is lunch.’

      ‘Then I’ll get you some food.’

      ‘I said, a drink.’ His eyes were hard.

      ‘OK. A drink.’ Judy was staring at him as she groped behind her in a cupboard and found a whisky bottle. ‘I’ll fetch some glasses.’

      ‘Do that.’ Nick had not moved. He was looking at the blank canvas with the same intensity he would normally have given to a painting. His head ached and he knew he was tense and irritable, and that it had been a mistake to come. He wasn’t sure why he had. His desire for Judy had gone and yet he had found himself hailing a taxi and giving her address automatically, compelled by a need to be with her which he could not define or understand.

      ‘So what’s wrong? Apart from the office, I mean?’ Judy poured half an inch into the glass and handed it to him.

      He drank it quickly and held it out to her again. As she was pouring he caught her wrist, forcing her to slop the whisky until the glass was almost full.

      ‘You clumsy idiot. Look what you’ve done!’ she yelled.

      ‘Shut up, Judy,’ he said, bored. ‘One tumblerful is the same as the sum of all the prissy little doses you’re going to give me one by one.’

      ‘I am not going to hand you little doses one by one. If you drink that lot on an empty stomach you’ll be flat on your back!’

      ‘Fine. With you in my arms?’

      ‘No!’ She took the glass out of his hand and put it down with a bang on the table. ‘Please leave now, Nick.’

      ‘Oh, come on!’

      ‘I mean it.’ Her eyes were cold with anger. ‘Please get out of here. Go back to your office and sort out your problems there, not in my studio.’

      She pulled the door open and stood by it. ‘I mean it!’

      For a moment he hesitated, then he picked up the whisky glass, took a couple of gulps from it, put it down and strode past her to the door.

      ‘I thought you wanted me back,’ he said softly as he stood for a moment looking down at her.

      ‘Out, Nick,’ she repeated stonily.

      He shrugged, then, with a strangely grating laugh, he walked past her and out onto the landing.

      She slammed the door. For a moment she listened to the sound of his footsteps running down the long flights of stairs, then she turned back into the studio.

      ‘Oh yes, I want you back, Nick Franklyn,’ she said to herself softly. ‘But on my terms. Not yours.’

      Picking up his glass, she began to pour the whisky carefully back into the bottle.

      Alan and Shirley Peters had motored up to the Welsh border from Cardiff that morning.

      ‘We love this part of the country, see.’ Shirley had a firm grip on Jo’s arm. ‘Mind the pebbles here, they’re that uneven. Are you feeling better now?’

      She had Jo’s bag over her shoulder. On Jo’s other side her tall, taciturn husband was holding her elbow as though he were afraid she would try to escape.

      ‘It gave me a real turn, it did, seeing you lying there near the water,’ she rushed