Part 8 (1/2)

'I could make the meals you make. Anyone could!'

Once again Joanna kept her temper with difficulty. 'As you probably are aware, I intended to make a proper meal for all of us last night,'

she said pleasantly, 'only a certain person who shall be nameless gave me faulty directions to the village in the hope that I'd fall into the stream!'

Anya's thin face flushed. 'I didn't hope that at all,' she denied hotly.

'There is a path to the village alongside the stream -'

'-which you knew was flooded!' Joanna declared steadily.

'Look, I don't intend to get involved in arguments over the whys and wherefores of what might have happened. Fortunately, Matt had warned me of the dangers -'

'You let me think you didn't know the way,' Anya protested indignantly. 'You tricked me!'

'And isn't that exactly what you were trying to do to me?'

Anya bent her head. 'I came back. I looked for you. But you'd disappeared.'

'Well, I'm sorry.' Joanna had not known this. 'But if you will persist in lighting fireworks, you have to be prepared for them to backfire.'

Anya hesitated. 'You went to Trevors', didn't you?

Daddy told me. He said you'd been there all the time. Why did you go there? Do you know them? Did you intend to go there all along?'

'Heavens, no.' Patiently, Joanna explained how she had climbed up through the wet gra.s.s and met Paul Trevor, and why he had suggested she came home with him. She glossed over Jake's arrival, and their subsequent journey back to Ravengarth, and merely let the child know the facts of what happened.

Anya hunched her shoulders, shoving her hands into the pockets of her jeans. 'Daddy was furious,' she declared, though not with any pleasure at the recollection. 'He said you might have drowned. You wouldn't have drowned, would you, Miss Seton?'

She paused as if to give more emphasis to her last statement.

'Witches always float-I read it in a book.'

Joanna shook her head, regarding Anya with mild exasperation.

'Now don't pretend you think I'm a witch,' she stated firmly.

'You're far too intelligent to believe a thing like that, and if I were, do you think I'd be here, was.h.i.+ng floors and cooking meals? I'd just wave my magic wand and get some genie to do it for me, wouldn't I? So let's stop this silliness and get down to plain speaking. Do you want any breakfast or don't you? And where does your father keep your textbooks?'

Anya tipped her head on one side. 'Do you really think I'm intelligent?' she exclaimed, and Joanna realised that of all the things she had said, that had had the most impact.

'Of course I do,' she said now, setting a clean plate and cup and saucer on the table. 'Now, would you like some ham and eggs, or poached egg on toast, or just toast and marmalade?'

Anya was still regarding her doubtfully. 'The others- the other governesses I had, they all said I was backward,' she declared slowly. 'One of them even said I was men- mentally retracted.'

'r.e.t.a.r.ded,' Joanna corrected flatly, and she shook her head.

'Well, you're not, take my word for it. But if your school work is poor, that can only be remedied by your own efforts, no one else's.'

Anya pulled a face. 'I don't like school. At least, not the schools here. And they didn't like me.'

Joanna shrugged. 'If you make a nuisance of yourself...'

'I didn't. Not all the time, anyway. They just make me so mad!'

Joanna knew she was treading on tentative ground now. 'Did they?'

she asked quietly. 'Why?'

But Anya wasn't listening to her. 'It was different before, in London.

I liked school then. Daddy used to drive me to school every morning, on his way to work -'

She broke off suddenly as if remembering to whom she was speaking, and Joanna, eager not to destroy that tenuous beginning, quickly asked her what she would like to eat again, thus preventing any backlash.

She decided to have poached egg on toast, and was swallowing the last morsels when her father came in at the back door. The morning had turned to rain, and the steady drizzle had left droplets of water gleaming on his dark hair, dampening the shoulders of the brown tweed hacking jacket he was wearing.

Joanna, used now to those dark scarred features, found his appearance disturbing, and she turned back to the dishes she had been was.h.i.+ng in the sink, hoping he did not suspect the emotion he aroused in her. It was crazy, she thought irritably, scouring a saucepan more vigorously than it demanded. He was a man almost twenty years her senior, with a grown-up son to boot, she reminded herself severely, recognising the symptoms of physical attraction and resenting them. She was allowing the unavoidable intimacies of the situation to influence her reaction to him, and the sooner he employed another housekeeper, the better. Then she could take her proper place in the household, and direction all her attentions to the task for which she had come here.

Now, Jake's eyes narrowed as they took in the domestic scene before him, and his first words helped Joanna to dispel the sense of awareness she was experiencing.

'I thought I asked you not to interfere in matters which don't concern you, Miss Seton,' he declared, closing the outer door and advancing into the room. He cast his daughter a reproving look and then added: 'Anya is quite capable of preparing her own breakfast, and while I appreciate your looking after yourself for the moment, I would prefer it if you didn't behave as if I'd hired you as a home help.'

Joanna turned, wiping her soapy hands on a towel and then resting back against the sink behind her. 'Why shouldn't I help, Mr Sheldon,' she asked, refusing to give him the pleasure of provoking her. 'I'm not entirely useless, as you can see, and if I'm not complaining, why should you?'

'I don't want you writing home to your mother, telling her that I've turned you into some kind of drudge,' he snapped. 'My sister already imagines we live like peasants: imagine her satisfaction if your mother confirms that supposition !'

Joanna gasped. 'You don't suppose I'd complain about doing something I chose to do, do you?' she exclaimed. 'And in any case, if I were to explain the situation here, my mother would probably insist I returned home right away!'

His mouth twisted. 'That's the truth!'

Joanna sighed. 'Is it? I don't think you quite understand -'

'Oh, I understand very well. If you described the state of this place to your mother, I've no doubt she would be horrified -'

'I'm not talking about the state of this place!' Joanna interrupted him, unable to keep the note of exasperation out of her voice. 'But you are a widower, Mr Sheldon, and therefore unmarried, and it might seem-improper to my mother that we should be sharing the same house.'

The blood running up under his skin darkened the already swarthy cast of his features as he stared at her. It was the first time she had seen a man colour like that, and it disturbed her almost as much as his words did.

'You're young enough to be my daughter, Miss Seton,' he got out at last, harshly, pus.h.i.+ng impatient fingers through his hair.

'And despite my obvious shortcomings, I'm not a complete Philistine!

Your-virtue, if that isn't too old-fas.h.i.+oned a word, is safe with me!'

Joanna's face burned now, and she was glad when Anya, who had watched this interchange with evident interest, asked: 'What's a Philistine, Daddy?'