Hannah ducked her head. She was beginning to realise how difficult it was going to be to explain to her parents, but more especially to her mother, just why she had resigned from her prestigious job. She even wondered for a craven heartbeat of time if she could possibly pretend that Silas had sacked her, but then dismissed this fiction as unworthy both of herself and him.

She was gnawing worriedly at her bottom lip, her eyes clouded with emotions, when her mother walked into the room and asked quietly, 'What's wrong?'

She had forgotten her mother's almost diabolic percipience, Hannah acknowledged ruefully, too - startled to conceal her expression. She knew that she was guilty of discriminating against her own s.e.x, of making the cla.s.sic mistake of believing that because a woman chose not to have a career that it necessarily meant that she was lacking in intelligence.

In fact she knew quite well that her parents had met while both were up at Oxford, and that her mother had apparently willingly given up the challenge of a potentially promising career to marry her father.

Now, looking into her mother's concerned face, she felt ashamed and vaguely disquieted. What was it about her that made her selfishly cling so single-mindedly to her determination to remain free of any emotional commitment? Certainly not the example set her by her parents. Without being aware that she intended to do so, she heard herself saying shakily, 'I'm going to resign from my job on Monday.'

Aghast, she waited for her mother's cries of astonishment and shock, but instead, and even more shocking, her mother said quietly, 'Because you've fallen in love with Silas...'

For a moment Hannah felt as though her heart was going to stop beating. Then it started to pound with sledgehammer blows that shook her entire body, and she stared at her mother, her colour draining so quickly that the former stretched out a comforting hand to touch her arm and said gently, 'Don't worry. I doubt that anyone else has noticed.' And then, with a small half-smile, she added wryly, 'After all, I am your mother, and despite the fact that all of you appear to think of me as a creature completely lacking in intelligence at times, I know all of you so well that it's easy for me to judge your feelings.'

Mingled with her shock was a fine thread of guilt and regret for the truth her mother had spoken so wryly, but she wasn't given any opportunity to dwell on it because her mother sat down next to her and asked calmly, 'What is it that worries you so much, Hannah? A fear that Silas doesn't return your feelings, or a fear that he does?'

The calm words affected her like an electric shock, making her head jerk up and her eyes widen with disbelief. 'How did you know? How did you know I felt like that?' she asked helplessly.

Her mother smiled.

'Hannah, ever since you were a little girl you've avoided, emotional commitment. I've always blamed myself. All those brothers ... so rough and sometimes unkind to a little girl ... so compet.i.tive, despite all that your father and I tried to do to moderate that instinct.

'There's nothing weak about loving someone, you know, Hannah.

On the contrary, to truly love another human being requires enormous reserves of strength, courage, belief...'

Listening to her, Hannah gave a deep shudder and said rawly, 'But I don't want to love him. I don't xvant that kind of dependence, that degree of need.' She turned to her mother and said bitterly, 'Modern relationships are such fragile things. Marriages break up every day; people hurt one another, and always it seems to me that someone within that relationship is hurt so badly that they never recover.

'That terrifies me, Mother. You see, I know instinctively that once I allowed myself to love someone, once I'd made that commitment...

if the relationship ever broke down, it would destroy * me . . .'

It was only as she heard the echoes of her own voice dying away in the stillness of the room that Hannah recognised the emotion in it, the plea she cried out. Half ashamed of her own uninhibitedness, she added gruffly, 'And then there's my career. I want to work. I need to work.'

Well, there's no reason why you shouldn't,' her mother announced calmly, much to Hannah's astonishment. 'It's my belief that a contented, fulfilled woman makes a better wife and mother than one who feels that her personality is being stifled, who feels resentful of the claims of her husband and children. Hannah,' she took hold of her daughter's hand, turning it over so that she could study her smooth palm, 'Hannah, a man who loves you would understand that need you've just expressed. He wouldn't try to make you conform to a pattern you couldn't fit.'

'Would Dad have allowed you to work if you'd wanted to?' Hannah asked wryly.

Her mother's laughter confounded her.

'My dear, even my generation would take exception to being "allowed" to do anything by their husbands. Had I wanted a career outside that of being a vicar's wife, had he seen how important that career was to me, I know your father would have tried his best to accommodate my need. That's what a good relationship is all about, Hannah . . . trying to accommodate one another's needs, making allowances for them, and understanding that when we love someone we must love the whole person, not just specific bits of them.' She released Hannah's hand and got up.

'Believe me, Hannah, I'm not trying to pressure you into anything, but, my dear, I'd hate to see you ruin your whole life simply because you're afraid .. .'

Afraid. How easily her mother had read her, Hannah realised when she was alone. How small and immature her mother had made her feel with her wisdom; how shallow and selfish in her judgements and motives.

She moved restlessly around the room. None of what her mother had said made any difference, though; she was still determined to hand in her notice.. She couldn't afford the risks, the potential anguish that loving Silas would bring . . . not so much because she couldn't bear to relinquish her own plans for her life, but because she couldn't endure the thought of loving him, of being loved by him . . . only to lose him. There was to be no going back. She had made up her mind, and she intended to stick to her decision to hand in her notice, no matter what emotional anguish that decision brought her.

CHAPTER TEN.

IN THE END, Hannah didn't return home to her docklands apartment until late on Sunday evening. She was unwilling to be alone with her own thoughts, desperate to prevent herself from weakening and letting her emotions triumph over her resolution.

The train seemed to stop at every station and to take for ever to reach London, and then there was the lengthy tube journey across the city itself, but at last she was back in her own private place.

Too weary to do anything other than go straight to bed, she showered briefly, and then, before she could weaken completely, she sat down and typed out her resignation.

There was no need to use specifics, and she took refuge in the lie that she felt her skills were incompatible with the job, knowing that Silas wouldn't have any problem at all in finding someone to take her place.

She then went to bed, so exhausted that she fell into a deep sleep almost straight away. But an observer would not have found her sleep untroubled. She moved restlessly from one side of the bed to the other, calling out Silas's name several times in a hopeless, yearning way that reflected her inner feelings, tears she didn't know she cried dampening her face, as though that part of her nature that her waking mind deemed weak and vulnerable was already mourning the death of something special that would never come again.

She was awake early and at the office for eight, relieved to discover that she had arrived before Maggie and Sarah.

She slipped into Silas's office and left her resignation on his desk, knowing that he would see it the moment he walked in, since Maggie never produced the post until fifteen minutes or so after his arrival, and then she went back to her own office and waited in a fret of tension while conscientiously, trying to sort out anything of priority on her desk.

She had closed the communicating door between her office and Silas's, but even so she heard the outer door open and knew that he had arrived.

She tried to ignore the small sounds coming from his office, to ignore the tension that built up inside her with every pa.s.sing second, not to visualise what he was doing, how he would look when he found her letter and read it, not to look fearfully at the closed communicating door.

When her intercom bleeped, she stared numbly at it, reluctantly depressing the answer key.

'Hannah, come in here, will you?'

No 'please'. No question of his order-because order it was-being refused.

Hannah got up on shaky legs, trying to master her apprehension as she walked towards the communicating door and opened it.

Silas was seated behind his desk. He looked up at her with a frown as she walked towards him. Her letter lay opened on his desk.

'Sit down,' he told her grimly.

Weakly she did so, her heart quailing as he got up and walked around the desk towards her, perching on the edge of it, not perhaps deliberately intimidating her, but the effect was there, none the less.

It was intimidating having him so close to her that the scent of his body, mingling with the soap and cologne he used, should torment her own senses into flaring awareness of him . . . not as her boss, but as a man.

'What exactly is the meaning of this?' he demanded silkily, holding her letter.

Hannah couldn't look at him. Instead she focused on the window behind his desk, as she said as steadily as she could, 'I thought my letter was self- explanatory. I'm handing in my resignation.'

'Because you find your skills are not compatible with the responsibility of the job,' he taunted her bitingly, reading from her letter. 'Come on, Hannah. You know that's nonsense. If that had been the case, you'd never been offered the job in the first place.

What's going on? Or can I guess?' he suggested softly.

So softly that she was trapped into looking directly at him, and then wished she hadn't as she found herself mesmerised by the silky challenge of his gaze.

'You want to leave because of what happened between us the other night, don't you?' he challenged.

Hannah swallowed. Her voice seemed to have become trapped somewhere in her throat. She shook her head, and then said explosively, her voice raw and husky, 'I don't want to discuss it.'

'No, I can see that. For pity's sake, Hannah, you're a sophisticated, educated woman. What was it about one kiss that makes you turn your back on a job we both know you're ideally suited for? If it bothered you so much . . .'

'It didn't,' Hannah lied desperately, stepping back from him, suddenly so desperately aware of him, so conscious of her danger, so terrified of what she might betray if she stayed and let him continue to question her that she fled to the door before he could stop her, saying huskily as she reached it, 'I'm leaving, Silas. That's all I need to tell you.'

'Hannah!'

She froze as he bellowed her name, knowing that he was going to come after her, and then to her relief Gordon Giles, who had returned that morning, walked into the room, smiling genially at her, and saying urgently to Silas, 'Silas, I need to talk to you.

Something's come up with the Howland people. Can you spare me ten minutes now?'

Almost tangibly aware of the frustration he was experiencing, Hannah didn't wait to hear what he replied. Instead she went into her own office, checked through the already tidy drawer, picked up her coat, and was half-way towards the lift before she realised that she was safe and that Silas wasn't going to come after her.

She didn't want to go straight home, unwilling to face the silence of her flat, but she knew she had little alternative. She was going to have to start looking for a new job immediately, and she was probably going to have to reclaim her car from her father. She felt guilty about that, but she knew he would understand.

The phone rang a couple of times during the day, but she was terrified of answering it, just in case it was Silas trying to persuade her to change her mind.

A week pa.s.sed; the longest week of Hannah's life. Even though she knew there were things she had to do, she felt no sense of urgency, no motivation, no purpose. For the first time since she had left university, her life was not directed towards a specific goal.

For some inexplicable reason, her career, the cornerstone of her life, meant nothing.

Instead of scouring the papers for a new job, instead of approaching the upmarket and discreet agencies which handled the high-powered positions for which she was qualified, she found herself simply sitting and staring into s.p.a.ce, watching the river for hour after hour.

Her mother was concerned enough about her to make the trek to London, arriving anxiously and unexpectedly on Friday morning, and insisting on dragging Hannah out to do some shopping when she discovered how little food she had in her fridge.

'Starving yourself isn't going to achieve anything,' she announced forthrightly, causing Hannah to object and then fall silent as she realised how long it actually was since she had last eaten properly.

'Hannah, it isn't too late ...' her mother said softly once they were back at the apartment and sitting down to the meal she had prepared.

'Get in touch with Silas. Tell him you made a mistake.'

But before she could finish Hannah was shaking her head. 'It's no use,' she said dully. 'If he'd wanted me back, he'd have been in touch with me himself.'

She turned to her mother and said self- contemptuously, 'He probably recognised the way I feel about him. Just as you did. The cla.s.sic office syndrome . . . falling in love with one's boss.'

While her mouth turned down bitterly with the full painful weight of her own self-a.n.a.lysis, her mother watched her unhappily.

'Hannah, come home,' she suggested impulsively. 'It will do you good . . .'

Hannah gave her a wry smile.

'Crawl back into the safety of the parental nest? You don't know how tempting that is.' She stood up and paced the small room like a caged animal, her body wild with tension and pain, and much as her mother ached to help her she knew there was nothing she could do.

'It's ironic, isn't it?' Hannah said at last, swinging round to look at her. 'The ultimate career woman. That's me. I've done exactly what I know is right, and yet I feel as though my whole life has suddenly blown up in my face. If I come home now, I'll never find the guts to leave again,' she said tiredly. 'I've got to work this out for myself, and the first thing I've got to do is to find another job.'

She spent the entire weekend doing so, only giving in to the exhaustion and misery on Monday evening when she got home from a round of agency interviews, during which she had inexplicably found herself totally uninterested in every position that had been suggested.

Too exhausted to change out of her interview uniform of pin-striped suit and tailored silk shirt, she slumped into a chair and lay there with her eyes closed, trying to summon the will to fight the feeling inside her which grew every day.

Being apart from Silas hadn't killed her love for him. On the contrary, her feelings only seemed to grow sharper and more intense with every day that pa.s.sed. Instead of being free to concentrate on her career and her life plan, she found herself dwelling almost obsessively on every second of the time she had spent with him, going over and over again every small incident . . . not as she had fully intended, putting her time with him in the past as a closed incident, so that she could go on into her carefully planned future, but totally abandoning that future in favour of minutely reliving every small particle of time she had spent with Silas.

She could barely understand it, or the change in herself, and could only cling grimly to her faltering belief that she had done the right thing.

Common sense urged her to get up and make herself something to eat. She had gone out without breakfast and been out all day without a meal. Her appearance was beginning to suffer for it: her hair and skin becoming lackl.u.s.tre, her energy levels dropping dramatically.

In the distance she heard her doorbell ring. Reluctantly she opened her eyes. Not her mother again,, surely? And yet there was a tiny betraying spark of hope that it might be. A telling weakness that showed her more than anything else how vulnerable she had become. Telling herself that it was probably* only one of her neighbours on the cadge, she went to answer the bell's sharp summons.

The evenings were drawing in early now; they were well into autumn, and the coolness of the air as she opened the door made her shiver convulsively, and think longingly of the vicarage's large open log- burning fires, forgetting in the nostalgia of the moment the inconvenience of cleaning them out.

Lost in her own private thoughts, the figure outside the door remained only a shadowy ent.i.ty in the darkness until he stepped forwards and into her hallway, enunciating fiercely, 'Hannah!' as he saw her shudder in recognition and mistook its cause.

At the sound of his voice, every nerve-ending in her body had become alert.

Silas! Silas, here . . . The joyful leap of her heart, the fierce, pounding, dizzying pleasure that rocked her, told their own story, even though in their aftermath she might feel dread and anger that he had breached her defences and invaded the privacy of her home.

She shivered again, her teeth chattering, and this time he realised it wasn't revulsion at the sight of him that caused her tremors. Seizing her arm, he slammed the door and bundled her towards her sitting-room, wincing a little in the harshness of the overhead lights, and glaring belligerently around the starkly furnished room as he muttered, 'Haven't you heard of subdued lighting?'

Almost as though it was someone else who spoke the words, Hannah heard herself saying quietly, 'Subdued lighting is for lovers.

I don't need it.'

Her emotionless words seemed to set off some kind of explosion in Silas, as he thrust her down into her sofa. He stood towering over her and enunciated bitterly, 'Just as you don't need me, is that it, Hannah? You've made quite a career out of not needing things-and people-haven't you? Of standing alone, of doing your own thing and to h.e.l.l with anyone else ..."

Hannah felt her face burn; there was just enough truth in his accusation to make her feel uncomfortable, but she tried to defend herself by saying quickly, it's my affair how I choose to live my life!' And then she got up and put as much distance between them as she could, standing defensively with her back to him as she stared out of the window' at the Thames so that she wouldn't have to look at him.

'I don't know why you've come here, Silas.'

'Oh, for pity's sake!' he exploded, and even without looking at him she could feel his anger and winced beneath the force of it. 'Let's forget the obligatory opening pa.s.sages, shall we, Hannah? They aren't true, anyway. You know d.a.m.n well why I've come here. The same reason I kissed you, the same reason you gave in your notice, the same reason you haven't got the guts to turn round and look at me now, d.a.m.n you . . .'

And, without her knowing that he had moved, he was suddenly behind her, turning her round, holding her with such fierce urgency that her blood started to beat a wild tattoo of delirium through her veins, despite her attempts to stop it.

'I've tried not to do this,' she heard him saying in an unfamiliar, thickened voice, while his mouth was buried in the warmth of her throat, caressing the softness of her skin, making her tremble and turn weak in his arms.

'I've tried to listen to all the logical arguments I've had with myself about the potential impermanence of love, about the problems of sharing my life with a woman who's as goal-orientated as I am myself, about the difficulties we'll face, but none of it makes the slightest d.a.m.n difference. I close my eyes, and I can see you and feel you, and my body dissolves in the kind of heat I haven't felt in ten years, if then; and all I want to do is to hold you like this ... to touch you ... to kiss you . . .'

His voice faded-m.u.f.fled by her hair-as his mouth caressed the silky skin behind her ear, making her quiver, sending startlingly powerful darts of sensation racing through her body.

His teeth nipped her earlobe, his breath warm and moist against it, causing her to draw a deep breath and cling desperately to her rapidly disappearing self-control. As his hand slid inside her jacket and unerringly found and moulded her breast, she reached out to him with agitated hands, pushing firmly against his collarbone with the heel of her palms, while demanding unsteadily, 'Silas, are you mad? How dare you come in here and . . .'

'And what?' he asked her, his mouth so close to her own that she hardly dared to breathe. 'And do this? Or this? But I do dare, Hannah, because I know it's the only way I have of breaking through those defences of yours, of proving to you that you and I can have something worthwhile together.'

She opened her mouth to protest, and found the words silenced as he kissed her. Not tentatively or questioningly, but as though they were already known to one another, as though he was already familiar with her needs and pleasures; as though the mere feel of the moistness of her lips beneath his own was enough to send him out of his mind.

Indeed, he devoured them as though it was, stroking, biting, sucking on their soft outline until Hannah couldn't resist him any longer, and opened her mouth to him with an eagerness she would once have scorned.