That Tender Feeling Read Online Free Page B

in the same line as her father—civil engineering. She had always believed that his admiration of her father had influenced his choice. She wondered as she approached the cottages what Heathcliff had made of his life and where he was. She remembered her father’s once saying that he was brave and reckless and brilliant, that he had the ability to be anything he chose and would go far. She hadn’t thought of him in years. She wondered what perverse twist of fate had made her think of him then and realized with a start of surprise that she had seen a fleeting resemblance to him in the man who had magnetized her thoughts in the Gillybeck Arms.
He
couldn’t possibly have been Heathcliff—could he? No, she’d known an instant aversion to Heathcliff, keen enough to last a lifetime and totally at variance with the feelings that the stranger had aroused in her.
    She brought the car to a somewhat jerky and grinding halt outside Hawthorn Cottage—which arrival, even with due consideration to the appalling condition of the road, was far removed from her usual proficient driving standard. Her concentration was elsewhere.
    She was surprised to observe that the old gate was still tied up with a piece of wire, just as it had been the last time she had been there. That was odd. The same old gate, in the same state of disrepair. She remembered no mention of a new gate on the sheaf of invoices she had received, yet she would have thought that a new gate would have had some priority in the repairs. If that was a small matter of disconcertion, her next finding came as a shock. Her key, the brand-new key that had been mailed to her to fit the newly fixed locks, wouldn’t fit. That was very strange indeed.
    She stumbled back down the overgrown, uneven flags of the path to her car and rummaged in the glove compartment for her flashlight. Playing the beam over the cottage, she saw that the roof, the windows, everything, were in the same state of disrepair as she had last seen, when she came to inspect her inheritance.
    She got back into her car, huddled forlornly behind the steering wheel and shivered, mainly from the cold cut of the wind blowing down from the moor but also from a tiny sliver of alarm. What did it mean? And where did she go from here? She had thrown her old key away, and she didn’t feel like breaking her way in. In any case, what would be the point? The cottage wouldn’t be habitable. The gate hadn’t been replaced, the roof still had a whopping great hole in it, and it would be a fair guess that the inside repairs hadn’t been carried out, either. Tomorrow she’d make an early call on the agent in charge of the work and find out what was going on, but where did that leave her tonight? Right out in the cold. She could, she supposed, go back to Gillybeck and book a room for the night at the Gillybeck Arms, but it was a long way; she had been driving all day, and she was exhausted.
    The next idea that came into her mind was infinitely more appealing. Why didn’t she do what she used to do when her gregarious aunt had filled the cottage with people to bursting point, that is, beg a bed for the night at Holly Cottage? That would only entail going partway down the dark and treacherous road and taking the other fork. She had called at Holly Cottage the last time she was there, but no one had been at home. In the old days, it had been Mrs. Heath’s habit to trek across the moor to the farm in the next hollow to buy dairy produce, so that’s where she could have been. On the other hand, it was possible that she felt too old to be living in such an isolated spot on her own and had found accommodation elsewhere. The thought skipped across her mind that she remembered hearing Mrs. Heath say that if ever Aunt Miranda left, she would make a home for herself with one of her children. She had just one daughter; Ros recalled that her name was Alice. And one son, Howard, who was