Rescue Operation. PENNY JORDAN

her in case the sound alerted Slade to her escape, she fled downstairs and into the cold darkness of the night.

      By fortunate chance she was able to pick up a taxi just outside the apartment, and within ten minutes of leaving Slade she was inserting her key in her own front door.

      Once inside she locked and barred the door, quickly stripping off everything that she had been wearing and hurrying into the bathroom, where she quickly showered, grimacing with distaste as she tried to banish from her mind her fevered response to Slade’s touch.

      By the time she was dried and dressed in her nightclothes she had managed to persuade herself that she had over-exaggerated her own response, and that far from experiencing pleasure in Slade’s arms what she had actually felt was revulsion. How could she feel anything else when not even Darren had been able to arouse her to desire? She stifled an hysterical laugh as she dwelled on Slade’s reaction to finding that she had fled, leaving merely her dress. That dress—she shuddered. If she never saw it again she would be more than happy. Thank God Slade didn’t know her address. He had been so determined to make her pay for the pleasure of his company that she wouldn’t have put it past him to suddenly arrive at her flat, demanding that they take up where they had left off. It was ridiculous really, but just before the phone rang she had had the impression that he resented her. He had told her that he ‘wanted’ her, but men were notorious for their purely physical desire. Sickness welled up inside her and she raced to the bathroom, gagging suddenly as reaction set in. Dear God! To think it could have been Kirsty in her place tonight. Knowing that made everything’ she had endured worthwhile. Her last thought as sleep claimed her was that she was glad that she would soon be going north and that there was scant chance of her ever meeting Slade Ashford again. Lutons was only one of the companies he owned, and once the takeover had been sorted out to his satisfaction Ralph was doubtful that Melchester would see very much of him. Thank goodness!

      The impatient ringing of the telephone penetrated the deep layers of sleep blanketing her, and Chelsea reached muzzily for the extension phone at her bedside.

      ‘Chelsea—thank God, for a moment I thought Slade must have done away with you! I’ve rung twice already. I thought you weren’t there.’

      ‘I’m fine, Ann,’ she lied numbly. If Slade Ashford had had his way she wouldn’t have been, unless it was his practice to send his women home once he had finished with them.

      ‘Thank heavens for that!’ her sister breathed. ‘Ralph was furious with me for letting you leave with Slade. He told me that after the way you’d been playing up to him all night Slade might quite naturally have thought that you wanted to spend the night with him as well as the evening.’

      ‘I’m fine,’ Chelsea lied again. She had no wish to remember the black anger in Slade’s eyes when he had touched her body. Disgust for her own behaviour flooded through her. She had never thought of herself as sexually repressed, ‘sex-starved’ to the point where she would respond physically to any experienced man—just the opposite; and yet last night …

      ‘How’s Kirsty?’ she asked her sister, trying to obliterate Slade Ashford from her mind.

      ‘She seems fine,’ Ann told her. ‘In fact she seemed more puzzled than distressed about you going off with Slade. Perhaps she’s just trying to put on a brave front—I don’t know, but I do know one thing—she’s going out with Lance James tonight, to some disco. All we have to do now is to make sure that the rift becomes permanent. I don’t suppose you …’

      ‘No way,’ Chelsea told her firmly. ‘I’ve done my femme fatale bit to death—besides, I’ll be leaving at the end of the week.’

      ‘Ralph says I’m not to worry. He persists in believing that Slade was merely indulging Kirsty. He says a man like Slade doesn’t need to chase after seventeen-year-old schoolgirls, no matter how pretty they are … Are you sure you’re all right?’ Ann persisted. ‘You sound strange. Look, why don’t you come over …’

      ‘Ann, I’m fine,’ Chelsea interrupted firmly. With the night behind her it was easier to convince herself that she must have exaggerated her body’s response to Slade’s skilled lovemaking.

      With a sudden start of horror she relived her flight from Slade’s apartment, shuddering with distaste as she recalled the way she had been dressed. Her dress! Hysterical laughter bubbled up inside her. What was more important—the loss of a dress, or the loss of her self-respect? Besides, something told her that she would never have been able to wear it again, because at the back of her mind was the knowledge that it was tainted for her by the way she had behaved while wearing it.

      For Slade Ashford it had been nothing more than simply another brief sexual encounter; an automatic male response to an available woman; a casual acceptance of a way of life which was totally alien to her.

CHAPTER THREE

      IT seemed impossible to believe that she had been at Darkwater for nearly a month, Chelsea reflected, walking up the overgrown lane which led from the Dower House to Darkwater. Her task was turning out to be one of the most demanding she had ever undertaken, but instead of depressing her, the restoration work on the tapestry promised to be so potentially rewarding that even the problems it caused her were a challenge rather than a chore.

      The National Trust officials who had been working on the house had now completed their work—as it had been inhabited until the death of the owner very little had needed to be done, and Chelsea knew that the Trust had high hopes of opening the house to visitors the following summer.

      Because Darkwater was so remote—ten miles from the nearest border town of Jedburgh—Chelsea was staying at the Dower House. The new owner, whom Mrs Rudge the housekeeper referred to in a rather tight-lipped fashion as ‘Mr Harold’s newphew’, was apparently away—Mrs Rudge had grudgingly informed her that he had considerable business interests which took him away a good deal.

      ‘Not that we ever saw much of him at all before he inherited,’ she had told Chelsea that morning at breakfast. ‘Born and brought up in the South, he was. Mr Harold’s sister married one of them stockbrokers. It would break Mr Harold’s heart if he knew what was going on with the house an’ all.’

      ‘It’s probably for the best,’ Chelsea had told her gently, guessing that the housekeeper’s feeling towards her late employer’s nephew sprang from resentment at what she saw as a callous indifference to his family home. ‘With death duties many families find keeping on their homes an impossible burden. At least endowing it to the Trust will ensure that it’s preserved.’ She knew that the Trust very rarely took on houses unless the donors were prepared to include a substantial sum of money for upkeep, which was why so many people were forced to sell their homes to developers, to be converted into flats and hotels.

      Her walk took her past a newly ploughed field. Mist clung to the hedgerows as the ground dipped away; a faint riming of frost reminding her that it was less than a month to Christmas.

      The red tractor in the distance executed a neat circle, its driver lifting a checked shirt-clad arm.

      Chelsea waved back, her lips curving into a warm smile. The Littles, who farmed High Meadow, which had once been the home farm, had made her very welcome, especially Tom, the son of the family. Two years Chelsea’s senior, he had been farming in New Zealand when his father had suffered a heart attack, and as he ruefully told Chelsea, it was sometimes hard after living one’s own life to return to the parental roof.

      Chelsea had found his mother to be a mine of information about the Darkwater family, although she had been surprised when Chelsea told her what she was doing in the Borders.

      ‘Restoring a tapestry?’ she had murmured. ‘Well, there’s a thing … a firescreen, is it?’

      Chelsea had laughed, visualising the thirty-odd-foot length of mediaeval tapestry obviously designed to cover one of the walls in a huge baronial hall, and Mrs Little had joined in her laughter when she had explained.