‘Shush. Keep your voice down,’ Piers warned her. ‘Mary Bowles thinks we’re a married couple. That’s why she’s put us both in here.’
‘Why didn’t you tell her that we aren’t?’ Georgia demanded angrily.
‘I intended to at first, but then I realised she probably only had one room ready for guests. She’s a farmer’s wife, Georgia; I doubt she’s got enough spare time to start making up another guest bedroom. You heard her this evening when she was talking about her life; when she isn’t rearing orphan lambs and feeding hens and ducks, she’s working in her vegetable garden or making jams and chutneys. By the sound of it she never has a second to spare. What was I supposed to do—wake you up and drag you on a long drive into the nearest town and then trail you round its streets whilst we searched for somewhere to stay?’
Georgia grimaced, a fresh wave of tiredness hitting her.
‘Look, if it makes you feel any better, I’ll sleep in the chair or on the floor,’ Piers offered grimly.
Georgia looked at the small nursing chair and then at the floor. There was no way she would have wanted to sleep on either of them.
‘You should have told her,’ was all she could bring herself to say as she looked away from Piers. The stress of the last twenty-four hours was beginning to take its toll; her eyes felt gritty with exhaustion. She was too tired to argue with Piers. All she wanted to do was go to bed and sleep. No, she corrected herself wearily, all she really wanted to do was to find Ben. At least if they stayed here at the farm they would be on the spot to make a fresh search for him first thing in the morning.
‘There’s a shower room through there,’ Piers told her, sensing her mood. ‘You can use it first.’
‘My bag with my overnight things is still in the car,’ Georgia reminded him.
‘Yes, so’s mine,’ Piers agreed. ‘I’ll go down and get them.’
Whilst he was gone Georgia showered quickly, wrapping her damp body in one of the plain clean towels Mary Bowles had provided.
From the bedroom window she could look down into the farmyard, and she paused in the act of closing the curtains. Where was Ben? Could he see the farm...could he see the yard...had he heard them calling but perhaps been too afraid to show himself to them?
Anxiously she stared out into the darkness, not hearing and unaware of Piers’s return until his brief touch on her arm made her spin round in shock.
‘Sorry,’ he apologised as he saw her startled expression. ‘I thought you’d heard me come in.’
‘I was thinking about Ben,’ Georgia told him in a stifled voice. He was standing far too close to her—so close that she almost felt imprisoned between him and the wall—but it wasn’t fear of that imprisonment that was making her heart start to pound so heavily and her body start to tremble, nor were the thoughts or the images which were filling her mind now of the dog. The heaviness which was filling her body now had nothing whatsoever to do with tiredness or a need for sleep. Far from it. The need pounding through her as swiftly as sand in a timer sprang from a far more dangerous source.
Piers could feel his body reacting to Georgia’s closeness. She looked so unbearably desirable, so heart-wrenchingly lovable, he wanted to take her in his arms right there and...
Unable to stem the words, he began urgently, ‘Georgia, about last night...’
This was it; Piers was going to tell her not to read the wrong message into what had happened between them last night.
Frantically she shook her head. There were some things she just didn’t want to hear, some truths she couldn’t bear to endure. Not now.
‘I don’t want to talk about it,’ she told Piers fiercely. ‘Where have you put my things?’
‘Your bag is over there,’ Piers told her, gesturing towards the foot of the bed. As he turned his head Georgia squeezed past him, scarcely daring to breathe in case in doing so she inadvertently allowed her body to touch his; her starving loving senses could only endure so much!
Seeing the look of intensity on her face as she squeezed past him, as though loathing the very thought of touching him, Piers felt the pain of her rejection as sharply as though she had knifed him through his heart. In bed last night he had warned himself against reading anything into her responsiveness to him, but it seemed he had not listened to his own advice. Not daring to allow himself to look at her again, he strode towards the shower room.
Even with her back to him Georgia was acutely aware of him, waiting until she had heard the shower-room door close behind him before reaching into her holdall and hastily removing her damp towel to scramble into the cotton nightdress she had brought with her whilst Piers was safely out of the way.