I only said it because it hurt so much that I loved you and that you didn’t love me back and that you couldn’t be the man I wanted you to be, Georgia could have further explained to him, but what was the point when to do so would only expose her to further pain? What mattered most right now was not her own feelings, her own anguished awareness of how much she loved Piers and how impossible it was that her love could ever be returned, but Ben.
‘No doubt you had your reasons for thinking as you did,’ Piers told her curtly. It still hurt that she could have thought him capable of something so cruel and cowardly. His pride still smarted from the blows she had dealt it, but what hurt him far more was knowing how low an opinion she had of him. He had been jealous of Ben, yes—jealous of the way she had taken the dog’s side against him, so to speak, when Ben had chewed his shoe. And, yes, perhaps it had been wrong of him to resent the love she seemed to lavish so tenderly on the dog, whilst treating him with such contempt and scorn, but...
‘I really am sorry,’ Georgia repeated dully, unable to bring herself to look into his eyes, already knowing the indifference she would no doubt see there. Why should Piers care how dreadful she felt? Her feelings were of no concern to him whatsoever!
CHAPTER SEVEN
CAUTIOUSLY Ben poked his nose up towards the half-open rear window of the car, carefully sniffing the air. Country air, he could tell, but not the type of country air that was familiar to him. This air had a different scent about it.
He had been deliberately keeping a low profile under the rug in the rear of the car where he had been asleep when the car had been stolen, controlling his initial reaction to bark warningly at the strangers who had driven off in Piers’s car—the car it was his duty to protect! Intuition had quickly told him that the two men were dangerous and should be left alone. Ben was no coward, but...!
Even more cautiously he looked towards the front of the car, where the two strangers who had driven him off were lolling, half asleep, in a drunken stupor. They had stopped several miles away, having chased a small sports car driven by a pretty girl off the motorway and down a series of narrow, twisting country lanes, hurling taunting comments to her as they did so. She had finally escaped them by driving in through some electronic gates to a large house where the two youths had appeared to decide not to follow.
They had then driven on until they had reached a small village, where they had driven on to the pavement outside a small store, leaving the car engine running whilst they went inside and threatened the shopkeeper, laughing at his distress whilst they took what they wanted from his shelves.
Drinking and swearing at any other unfortunate motorists they’d chanced to come across—fortunately only a few in this remote country area of the Yorkshire Dales—they had finally brought the car to a halt.
‘Better stop,’ one had told the other. ‘Not much petrol left. Need to find a garage...’
‘Won’t find one up here...’ the other had replied, before emptying the can he had been drinking from and throwing it out of the car window.
It was a warm night and they had opened all the electric windows. In the front seat the one doing the driving woke up now and said to the other, ‘Come on, we need petrol.’ He was just starting up the car engine when Ben saw his chance and seized it, jumping quickly through the open window.
‘What’s that?’ the other youth demanded, suddenly alert as he swivelled round in his seat, staring at where Ben was streaking away into the dusk-shrouded countryside.
‘Dunno; I didn’t see anything.’
‘It was a dog...there was a dog here in the car...’
‘No way,’ the driver scoffed. ‘You’ve had too much to drink...and I haven’t had enough. Come on, let’s go and find some more booze...’
‘And some girls...’ his companion suggested.
Booze, girls and petrol... ‘Yeah, cool,’ the driver agreed.
Ben watched from a safe distance as they turned the car round and drove off. The evening air was different from the air at home. There was no river smell for one thing. But he could smell something... On the hillside he heard the baaing of sheep followed by the cry of a fox. Foxes Ben knew...sheep he did not!
* * *
Georgia woke up abruptly. It had been gone midnight before she and Piers had acknowledged that there was no useful purpose to be served in either of them staying up any longer. Neither of them had been able to eat the supper which Piers had insisted on preparing—heaping coals of fire indeed on her guilty head, Georgia had acknowledged later in bed. Anxiety for Ben had given Piers’s face a rather distant and stern expression which had prevented her from trying to make conversation with him. Besides, what was the point? She had already said enough, hadn’t she? More than enough!