LITMIR.BIZ

       Chapter Six

      It was early, the light was thin, weak. Nothing stirred inside the house or out. Gaby turned, squashed up the pillow and burrowed into it. Far too early to be awake. She turned to the other side. But something had woken her, a soft thud and a crunching sound that had somehow become part of a dream about cracking walnuts.

      She sat up, listened. Nothing, just her imagination, but it was impossible to go back to sleep now. She lay and thought about Gray instead.

      Last night at dinner she had thought him subdued, somehow. Polite, careful to involve Jane in the conversation, observant about what they had seen on their walk up through the terraces. And yet it was as though someone had turned down the wick on a lamp. Perhaps he was tired or missing his children, or he regretted committing to stay for a few days and travel down to Porto with her. He had excused himself after the meal and gone back to the Gentlemen’s House. No intimate conversations last night, which was doubtless a good thing.

      Sunlight was penetrating the shutters now. When she slipped out of bed and went to look the morning was perfect: cool, clear, filled only with the sounds of nature. The river, early birds, a distant dog barking. The water would be cold, but the bathing place would be beautiful and she could paddle her feet and watch fish rise and the kingfisher hunting.

      It took minutes to pull an old gown over her head, find some rope-soled shoes and a towel and let herself out into the garden. A blackbird flew off, making its usual overdramatic fuss about nothing. The ginger kitchen cat sauntered out of the wood store, inspected her, sneered in a feline manner and strolled off, tail up, in search of a breakfast mouse.

      Dew-soaked grass brushed her ankles. The air, not yet warmed by the sun, sent goosebumps up her arms and she threw the linen towel around her shoulders as a makeshift shawl. Foolish to even think of wading at this time of year when the river was chill with the very last of the melt water from the mountains, but she was restless.

      The Douro was not a safe river to take risks with, except where it had carved little bays and deposited shingle to protect them. There it was possible to find pools with slow-moving water, deep enough to swim in, safe enough to relax. There was one just upstream of the house, beyond the edge of the lawn, through a thicket of willow. Gaby trod softly, hoping to see the kingfisher on his favourite dead branch overlooking the pool.

      Something was splashing about beyond the screen of low-hanging branches. She moved warily. It might be a stray farm animal taking a drink or it might be a pack of the semiwild dogs that roamed the foothills and were best avoided. She eased the leaves apart and caught her breath.

      Gray was standing thigh-deep in the pool, stark naked. His back was to her, his arms raised as he ran both hands through his wet hair. He had just stood up, she realised, as the water sheeted down from his shoulders.

      His skin below the neck was pale, the muscular definition of his shoulders and back a pattern of light and shade as the sunlight hit him. She followed the dip of his spine down to the narrow waist, the tight, neat buttocks, the horseman’s strong thighs where water droplets clung to dark hairs.

      A river god, magnificent, male. Gaby’s mouth was dry, she could have no more closed her eyes than levitated. Then the kingfisher flew past the mouth of the bay, a flicker of iridescent blue, and Gray’s head snapped up, his arms dropped to his sides. For a moment the man watched the bird and Gaby watched the man, then he turned and she took two hasty steps back among the low-hanging leaves.

      Her foot came down on a dry branch with a crack like a pistol shot. There would be no mistaking it for anything but a footfall. She almost fled, then realised that would betray the fact that she had been watching.

      She cursed in Portuguese, loudly enough to be heard, and pushed on through the wall of greenery, unfurling the towel from her shoulders as she came, as though preparing to stop and undress.