That Would Be a Fairy Tale - By Amanda Grange Page 0,58
as involved as the rest of them. ‘And in the meantime, I have a lot of arrangements to make.’
They made their farewells. Alex returned to the neighbouring town of Karlsbad, and Cicely, together with her cousin and her aunt, returned to the villa.
Cicely felt uncomfortable as she walked through the pine forests surrounding her aunt’s villa on the following morning. She had slept badly, her mind a whirl of dinners and tiaras, but most of all it had been full of Alex. No matter how hard she tried, she could not put him out of her mind.
She turned her attention to the forest, breathing in the heady scent of pine and rejoicing in the beauty of the trees. Beneath their needled branches the path was cool. Blue shadows fell across the undergrowth, pierced here and there by a brilliant shaft of sunlight that lanced into the forest’s cool depths.
She began to feel her spirit calm. Her pace gradually slowed, until she was doing nothing more than strolling along the path. It would soon be over. Martin Goss would be caught. She would return to England. Alex would leave the Manor. And everything would be as it had been before.
But would it? Whilst a part of her hoped that would be the case, another part of her knew that, for her, nothing would ever be the same again.
She forced herself to turn her thoughts into less dangerous channels and began to take greater notice of her surroundings. She took in the ferns and brackens that grew beneath the trees, and stopped every now and again to let her eyes wander down over the glimpses of the spa town, which was just visible through their heavily-needled branches.
By and by she began to feel better. She decided that, on reaching the next bend, she would turn back to the villa. It was already eleven o’clock, and she would have to change for luncheon at twelve.
She had almost reached the bend, and was preparing to turn, when she saw someone round it from the other direction. She stopped dead. It was Alex!
He too, stopped. By the look on his face it was obvious he was surprised to see her.
She took a deep breath to calm her pulse, which had become uncomfortably rapid, and then managed to say a few words. ‘I . . . was just taking a stroll before luncheon,’ she began, suddenly feeling acutely aware of the fact that she had ventured out on her own and was now alone with him in the cool and inviting depths of the forest.
His eyes wandered over her face and she felt him taking in the softness of her hair and the delicate flush that had sprung to her cheek.
‘I arrived early,’ he said, by way of explanation. ‘I didn’t know how long it would take me to find the villa, and so I left in plenty of time. I didn’t want to disturb your aunt before half-past twelve and so I decided to take a walk.’
They stood looking at each other, an indefinable awkwardness hanging between them. It should not have been there. Cicely was merely taking a stroll, and Alex was doing the same. They had simply met on the way. After expressing their surprise at seeing each other, they should have turned and walked back to the villa. Nothing would have been more natural. Instead of which they stood facing each other, neither one of them moving or speaking, as though in the grip of some invisible spell which held them rigid, afraid to move or speak for fear of losing control of what they might do or say.
‘Cicely —’
‘Alex —’
They spoke at last in an effort to break the tension that rippled through the forest air, but they spoke at the same time and it unnerved them, making them relapse into silence again. And it was just as well, for Cicely had the sudden feeling that if they succeeded in breaking the tension the storm would break with it; not a storm of thunder and lightning, but of feelings and passions that would be impossible to control.
There was only one thing to do. She must go back to the villa, and leave this highly charged atmosphere behind. She tried to turn around but it was beyond her power to do it. She made a determined attempt, and this time she managed.
It made things easier. She was no longer looking at Alex, and she began to walk away from him.