All her burgeoning femininity told her that Blake was aware of her, that when he smiled at her and watched her he was well aware of the effect he was having on her and that the burning look she sometimes saw in his eyes meant that he too wanted more…
Frustratingly, though, once he had arrived, she never seemed to get the chance to be alone with him; someone else, normally her father or Robert, would appear and the opportunity to show him how she felt, to encourage him to recognise that she was no longer a child, would be lost.
Once or twice they had been alone, but on both occasions she had been stricken by such a paralysing shyness that she hadn’t been able to say what was in her heart.
The first time had been when she had seen him emerging from the guest bathroom one evening, his legs bare beneath his robe, bare and soft-furred. Her stomach had contracted on a sudden surge of shocked excitement, hot shivers burning her skin like fine needles. She had taken a step towards him but he had stepped back, leaving her feeling self-conscious and confused.
The second occasion had been when she had gone in search of Michael to fasten her pearls and had found Blake in her brother’s room waiting for him.
‘Perhaps you could fasten them for me,’ she had suggested shyly, her throat so constricted with her awareness of him that her voice had sounded unfamiliarly husky. She had
turned her back to him as she spoke, lifting the weight of her hair off her shoulders, her body trembling even before she’d felt the heart-stopping cool touch of his fingertips against her hot skin.
She had been standing in front of the bedroom mirror and had watched as Blake fastened her pearls, greedily drinking in the sight of his dark head bent over her fair one, achingly aware of the proximity of their bodies, of the heat she could feel coming off his, of its strength and maleness. All she had to do was to close her eyes and lean back against him…
But, even as the thought had formed, Blake was placing his hands on her shoulders and turning her round, his eyes sombre as he’d begun, ‘Philippa, I…’
She never learned what he had been about to say because Michael had walked in, apologising to Blake for keeping him waiting, teasing Philippa and grimacing as he saw the pearls she was wearing.
‘Daddy likes me wearing these,’ she had told him, not wanting to explain just why it was so important to her to keep her father in a good mood. She sensed instinctively that her father did not particularly like Blake, but she had no idea why. It was true that Blake’s family did not have money or position but Blake was very clever, much more so than either Robert or Michael.
One day he would be rich and successful. Blake himself had laughed when she’d told him so a couple of summers before, plainly amused by her childish defence of him. She had been only sixteen then… a girl still…
As she had left her brother’s bedroom she’d reminded herself that Blake’s visit had barely begun and that there was still plenty of time…
Only there hadn’t been… one afternoon she had come in from a game of tennis to find Robert and Blake deep in conversation.
Blake had looked oddly bleak… angry almost, and Robert’s face had been unpleasantly flushed. At first Philippa had thought they must be arguing about something but it turned out that she had been wrong and that Robert had simply been giving Blake a telephone message.
When Philippa had learned that Blake was leaving she had barely been able to conceal her disappointment, tears all too ready to fill her eyes. She hadn’t even been able to say goodbye to him because her parents had insisted on her accompanying them to a dinner they were attending. When she’d returned, Blake had left. All Michael could tell her was that he had said something had come up that Blake needed to attend to immediately.
Philippa had worried that Blake’s mother, who she knew suffered from some incapacitating disease, had taken a turn for the worse.
She knew a lot about Blake’s background, information she had gleaned and cherished over the years from both her brother and from Blake himself.
She knew that his father had been killed in an accident when Blake was fifteen and that his mother’s illness had developed shortly afterwards. She knew that Blake had had to work to finance his education; and that he had returned to university after a year away working to finish his degree course.
She also knew, but because her brother had told her, that in addition to financing his own education Blake also helped to support his mother.
Tears had closed her throat when Michael had told her this.
Blake had shared a small flat close to the university with her brother; his mother lived several miles away in purpose-built sheltered council-provided accommodation. Philippa had never met her but she’d yearned to do so; she could imagine what she would be like, how much she must love her son and the bond there would be between them.
Philippa had been wretchedly miserable after Blake had gone, her misery compounded by the arrival of her A level results and her father’s irritated refusal to even so much as discuss her desire to go on to university.
‘Daddy is quite right,’ her mother had told her. ‘If you had won a place at Oxford, at one of the good women’s colleges, Somerville, for instance, things might be different, but those new modern universities… Daddy is only doing what’s best for you, Philippa,’ she had added. ‘And I think you might try to appreciate that fact, to appreciate just how lucky you are instead of being so difficult.’
Unwisely Philippa had continued to argue, even being rash enough to say, ‘Blake says that everyone should make use of their intelligence; he says that the only real independence comes from being self-sufficient; he says that everyone, man or woman, should be able to…’
‘Philippa, I’m afraid I’m not really interested in what that young man has to say. In fact I believe he has had rather too much to say. That type always do.’ She had given Philippa a thin smile.
‘This is exactly the sort of thing your father means when he says that university is not the place for you, that it will expose you to the wrong kind of influences… to people… men like Blake…’
‘Michael likes Blake,’ she had protested. ‘They’re friends.’
‘The acquaintanceships a man may make are entirely different from those suitable for a young girl,’ her mother had informed her. ‘Your father and I might have tolerated Blake Hamilton’s presence here in our home for Michael’s sake, but it was obvious right from the start the kind of person he was.’
Philippa had wanted to protest, to object, but she could hear her father’s voice in the hall and knew from bitter experience that she would have no chance of winning any argument with the two of them ranged against her.