Free Penny Jordan by [The Crightons 09] Coming Home Page A

there.
    It was a good few miles away, but walking that kind of distance meant nothing to David now. He smiled rather wryly to himself, remembering the other David who would have grimaced in disdain at the thought of walking any farther than a few yards unless it was on the golf course!

CHAPTER FOUR
    HONOR WAS WORKING in her garden when she saw David walking along the bridle path in the direction of Fitzburgh Place. He was, she noticed, moving with the carefully controlled step of someone who was used to walking long distances, yet he did not look like a hiker or a rambler. Although Honor couldn't have said exactly why she thought that something seemed different about him, she sensed acutely that there was something that set him apart from others.
    He was dressed ordinarily enough in faded jeans and a worn checked shirt, his feet encased in sturdy boots, and he had a small canvas haversack strapped to his back. Tall, lean-featured and tanned, he quite definitely merited a second look Honor's female instincts informed her approvingly.
    Straightening her back, she smiled warmly at him and said hello. David paused to smile back.

    Honor wasn't the first person to speak to him on his walk, but she was certainly the most alluring.
    His ex-wife throughout their marriage had used every artifice she could find to at first enhance, and then frantically maintain, the beauty she felt she needed to hide behind, to offer as a sacrificial gift to others in exchange for their acceptance and approval.
    David couldn't remember ever seeing Tiggy in public, or indeed anywhere other than in bed, without any make-up on, but this woman who was watching him with her head tilted slightly to one side, her luminous enchantress's eyes liquid with laughter, wore no cosmetics at all, nor indeed did she need them.
    She wasn't young; he could see the tiny fan of lines around her eyes and the wisdom and maturity that etched her smile. All the same, David suspected that in a room full of much younger and more conventionally pretty girls, she would still be the woman everyone would look at.
    'Are you thirsty?' Honor asked him. 'I was just about to stop for a drink.'
    Thirsty! David's expression showed his surprise.
    As she watched him, Honor wondered if he knew how much his expression gave him away.

    In it she could see not just surprise but also a faint touch of male disapproval, even protectiveness.
    'That's very kind of you,' David began, 'but—'
    'But a woman of my age should have more sense than to invite a strange man into her garden.' Honor chuckled. 'Ah, but you see,' she teased him, 'I have special magical powers that enable me to tell what a person is really like. I'm a witch, you see,' she added mock solemnly, her eyes dancing with laughter as she put down her spade and walked over to the gate, opening it invitingly. 'So...dare you come in?'
    'A witch?'
    The smile David gave her, a flash of white teeth in his sun-browned face, made Honor's heart flip over in a double somersault of heady excitement.
    Careful, she warned herself chidingly as David walked towards her. He really was a quite devastatingly attractive man with an air of unconventionality and uniqueness about him that made her pulse race. She felt secure in her judgement that it was safe to let this stranger enter her home.
    'Well, no, not really,' Honor admitted with a smile as she led the way towards the kitchen. 'I'm actually a herbalist.'
    'A herbalist...?'

    As she heard the interest in David's voice, Honor paused to turn and look at him.
    'Is herbalism something that interests you?'
    Honor asked as she pushed open the kitchen door.
    The room inside was low-ceilinged and dark, too much so for practicality, Honor knew, but she was loath to attempt by herself to cut back the large overgrown hedge that shadowed the kitchen windows. Perhaps when she found her builder, he might be able to recommend a tree surgeon to her.
    'It isn't a subject I know very much about,'
    David admitted