Past All Forgetting Read Online Free PDF Page A

her evening meal, uneaten, round her plate, but had ac her halting explanation that she thought she might be starting a migraine. Mrs Prentiss had been a migraine sufferer all her life and was always eagle-eyed to detect incipient signs of it in anyone close to her. She had tutted distressedly over Janna, pressed some painkillers on her, and recommended that she lie down in her darkened room.' Janna was thankful to accept the medicine and the advice.
    Now that she was alone, at least she did not have to pretend any more. She turned and lay full-length on her stomach across the bed, pillowing her chin on her folded arms.
    Rian Tempest was back in Carrisford. After all these years without a sign, a word even, he had returned, and now her peace of mind had gone for ever.
    She closed her eyes, trying to erase from her mind the memory of that long look he had given her before he had driven off. It had emphasised more clearly than words could do that he had not forgotten anything which had passed between them seven years before. Not forgotten and not forgiven either. But what else did she expect? What she had done to Rian was unforgivable. She had always known that. 
    She shivered, pressing her body further into the yielding softness of the  eiderdown as if she was seeking some kind of sanctuary. When she had been a child, and there had been some small disaster to be faced, it had always been a comfort to drag the bedclothes round her—even over her head— and tell herself that no one would ever find her now.
    Yet Rian had found her, she thought, as she had always feared that he would even with the false sense of security the passing years had given her.
    But why had he come back? she asked herself almost despairingly, Now that his aunt and uncle were both dead and he must know for certain that the house and estate were not his, what was there to draw him back to Carrisford? The possibilities that suggested themselves were too disturbing to contemplate.
    She turned restlessly on to her side, wishing for the first time in her life that she had a sleeping tablet. Something that would blot out thinking and reasoning—and above all remembering for a few hours. The adult equivalent of drawing the bedclothes over one's head, she told herself wryly.
    What did he intend? she asked herself, but no immediate answer was forthcoming. Rian had always been totally unpredictable, she thought That was why she had continued to pursue him, confident that he was not as impervious to her as he had tried to maintain. She had the memory of his reaction to her while she had been in his arms to buoy up her hopes as well. He might have spoken of his own indifference, but his body had betrayed him with its instinctive response to her proximity. And there was an element of challenge in the affair now. She would make him admit that he wanted her, in deed as well as word. She would. make him grovel.
    Janna gave a groan and buried her face in her hands. Why, oh, why had she been so sure she could do so, when all the evidence suggested the contrary? God knew she had received fair warning, so she could blame no one for what had happened subsequently but herself.
    She had seen little of Rian in the week following the dance, do what she might. It had been during this time that she had paid her abortive visit to Carrisbeck House with the parish magazines, she recalled with a pang. But he seemed to be avoiding his usual haunts, or at least avoiding her while she was there, and she had to be content with a couple of unsatisfactory glimpses of him driving his car, once with Barbara Kenton's blonde head conspicuously close to his dark one.
    Her obsession was beginning to be noticed by her friends, and a few sly hints were dropped, which she ignored in spite of the feelings raging inside her. Geoff Christie, whom she had been dating in a desultory manner before Rian's return, soon became peeved at her indifference and began taking out one of her friends. From being