A fierce encounter

by Jane Donnelly

Martin Jackson was a form of madness

Since their brief and blazing affair five years before, Lacey had not heard a word from Martin. He'd left Chadsford to pursue a brilliant career in television, and she knew he'd forgotten her completely.

So, when he returned, apparently expecting Lacey to pick up where they had left off, wasn't it natural that she should resent his casual possessiveness?

After all, she was engaged to another man, and her love for Martin was a thing of the past...

Genres: Harlequin Romance, Harlequin

187 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1983

About the author

Jane Donnelly began earning her living as a writer as a teenage reporter. When she married the editor of the newspaper she freelanced for women's mags for a while. After she was widowed she and her 5 year old daughter moved to Lancashire. She turned to writing fiction to make a living while still caring for her daughter, she sold her first Mills & Boon romance novel as a hard-up singleparent in 1965. She wrote over 60 romance novels for Mills & Boon until 2000. Now she lives in a roses-round-the door cottage near Stratford-upon-Avon, with four dogs and assorted rescued animals. Besides writing she enjoys travelling, swimming, walking and the company of friends.

Reviews

[Grrrrace · Rating 5 out of 5]

There’s a certain matter-of-fact melancholy to Jane Donnelly’s books that I find very moving. Sometimes her heroines are infuriatingly passive about going after what they want, but because generally it’s due to a sense of duty to family or others and a very understandable wish to protect their vulnerable emotions from the heroes with whom they can see no future, I usually find them quite likeable. Donnelly's stories are on the quieter side but emotionally angsty, and she has a wonderful ability to blend very modern heroes and heroines into settings that evoke the past: small English villages with close-knit and sometimes claustrophobic communities, and the heroines usually imprisoned by familial loyalties and obligations.

This story is no exception. The hero and heroine had grown up in the same village—Martin is three years older than Lacey. They grew up antagonists, but on the night before he left their small Midlands town for good, they came together passionately one stormy night in a derelict old hut on the moors. The next day, Martin was gone, and although Lacey waited for him to call, as he said he would, he never did.

Five years has passed when Martin returns to open a village fesival at the request of a village group that Lacey is a member of. She doesn’t want him back—she has gotten on with her life, such as it is, taking care of her selfish, well-known artist father after her aunt’s death and is in a relationship with the OM, Paul, who is safe and dull. Lacey owns the old town jail, which she has converted to an arts and crafts center, where she leases space to other artisans and sells her just-okay watercolors. Everyone remembers the antagonism between her and Martin (and no one knows about the one night they shared), and she comes in for some teasing, but plays it off casually. Inside, she is very unsettled and upset about his return.

But return he does. The fete is a fundraiser, and to raise money, the committee has decided to recreate a old English custom of the “hiring mop,” a job fair where men and women could auction themselves off for a year to prospective employers. A week or two after the hiring mop came the “runaway mop,” where either employer or employee could back out if the arrangement turned out to be unsatisfactory to either party. The fundraiser is a light-hearted take on the old custom, and the heroine has offered to cook four meals for the highest bidder in her offer. She had arranged with her boyfriend in advance to bid a certain amount, but Martin outbids him.

He is taking a two-week vacation from his demanding job as a well-known television reporter—“unfinished business,” he tells her, leaving her feeling uneasy. She knows she’s the unfinished business—the spark between them is at strong as ever, but very unwelcome to her, and she feels threatened and uneasy and yet more alive than she has ever been. He begins to pursue her. At the fete, they go on the Ferris wheel together and a malfunction has her crashing into him at the top when the ride gets stuck, and they end up kissing passionately, and it’s as hot and irresistible as the one night they spent together.

Her father hates him and blames Martin for the death of the Martin's father, his friend—Martin was wild and selfish, he says, and somehow responsible for the loss of the family fortune, he implies. Lacey’s boyfriend Paul immediately sees him as a threat. He should—the heroine is besotted—her heart beats faster whenever she sees him and everything around them seems to fade until he’s the only real thing in her world. She recognizes the danger but is also so drawn to him that her caution is undercut by a recklessness to be near him.

She’s pretty self aware, our heroine—she realizes that when he walked away five years ago and never contacted her, she turned to safety and security, settling for being a mediocre artist and discovering that while she might not have a great talent for art, she is a good businesswoman and might have made something more of herself if she hadn’t allowed herself to be guilted into taking over her aunt’s role as caretaker of her self-centered artiste father. ”She had never again risked taking chances and getting hurt, although now she knew he could have been the only man she ever wanted. I’m not crying, you’re crying.

Martin asks her to paint the hut where they had made love five years before, and she reluctantly agrees, starting on it, remembering it from memory, but sets it aside, knowing she shouldn’t be rekindling those memories—she doesn’t want an affair with him because he will be gone in two weeks and she knows how devastating it will be for her.

But she feels rebellious and reckless, hedged in by her father and OM Paul, and wanting Martin and very very confused. There’s no future for them, she believes, but as time passes she’s not sure she cares, and she’s starting to realize that she certainly won’t be marrying Paul if he asks, feeling as she does about another man, the only man really.

[Here’s a tip: don’t listen to 70s love songs while reading Jane Donnelly because you might cry some. Not saying *I* did...]

She keeps cheating on the four meals she owes him: brandy snaps when they were stuck in the Ferris wheel; filling a plate for him at a party. As part of the fundraising activities, the arts committee is putting on a local production of a Victorian melodrama, and Lacey is the OTT hapless victim. When the villain of the piece becomes ill and the understudy backs out, Martin offers to take on the role. Lacey’s boyfriend Paul, already sullen and withdrawn by all the rumors floating around about Lacey and Martin, is not happy at all.

He does the play with her. The chemistry between them is intense, and their scenes together have none of the fun and laughter of the other melodrama scenes; the audience is held breathless by the tension between them, and when he, the villain, kisses her shoulder at one point, she thinks that if he went further, she’d forget all about the audience and go up in flames then and there. No one knows what happened between them five years ago, but she knows that if this continues, he’ll walk away again when the two weeks comes to an end and she’ll be left humiliated and pathetic and she can’t bear that. So she tells him to keep away from her, and he quietly agrees.

She tries to mend fences with her father and with Paul, even going away with the latter to visit his family over the weekend. His sister asks when they are getting married, and Paul says it’s up to Lacey, but she knows that she can’t marry him—when she sees anyone who even looks like Martin, her feelings go haywire and she knows that there’s no question of marrying Paul or possibly anyone ever.

Martin calls and asks her to lunch, implying the people he is staying with will also be there. The heroine agrees—it will count as one of the meals she owes him. It’s just the two of them—“would you have come if I’d told you?” he challenges and she knows she probably wouldn’t have. They keep it light, but there are undercurrents—his latest girlfriend had come up for the play with other friends of his and they’d all stayed the weekend and the heroine is jealous but doesn’t pursue the topic. He asks her how she spent the weekend and she tells him she went to the seaside with Paul, and he asks her point blank if they made love. She is shocked and angry and tells him it’s none of his business, she told him she was marrying Paul, and Martin grabs her and kisses her, angry, asking why she won’t let him love her (meaning, she thinks, make love to her), why is she such a coward? She doesn’t love Paul, he insists, and is furiously angry but she remembers what is felt like the last time he left and never contacted her, and she runs away telling him again to please leave her alone.

She tries to convince herself that he is just being dog in the manger, that he is so used to getting whatever he wants, with his looks and his abilities, that his pride is pricked by her refusal. She dreads doing the play with him that afternoon and is resolved it’s the last show she’ll do, someone else can take the role of Sweet Alice to his villainous squire. They do the afternoon show, and she is edgy and trying her best to get through it, and in the final scene, he changes his lines and asks her, for her ears only, why she never responded to his letters.

She is shocked. He never wrote her, she tells him, and he said he had, two letters. She said she never got them and he asks why she told him to stop writing her if that is the truth. And she says she never did, and he says that her aunt told him on her behalf when he called her after not hearing back from her. She goes home to confront her father about it, and he denies all knowledge and says her aunt wouldn’t have withheld letters, but the heroine is not so sure—her aunt thought the great artiste’s well-being came before all else—and decides she is going to believe Martin.

By now everyone knows that the two of them had been lovers before he went away, and it’s the talk of the small town, especially given that the current chemistry between them is so obvious. She wants to break it off with Paul as gently as possible, she knows he'll be hurt. She decides that she is going to slip the leash and enjoy the rest of the time Martin is back, and maybe they can even keep in touch after he goes, even if he just thinks of her as another conquest. He comes to see if she wants to walk with him, and she agrees.

He invites her to go away with him for the night, and she agrees, trying to answer lightly. But they get locked in the arts center/former jail, so have to scrounge for food and a place to sleep. They start to kiss, but the dog interrupts them, needing food and outside, and she knows that someone might come back at any moment, so doesn’t want anyone to walk in on them en flagrante. They sit companionably, and she loves the “comfort and delight” of his touch. She is nervous but is going to seize the moment and make love with him, future be damned. But she finds a bottle of homemade wine and, underestimating its potency, gets drunk and just before she passes out, tells him she loves him.

The next morning, she wakes up hung over, and one of the artisans arrives and lets them out, and they drive back to the house where he is staying to get her wallet, which she had left when she ran away from him a few days previously. Martin has messages waiting and makes a phone call. When he comes back into the kitchen, he tells her he has to go immediately, but will try to come back for the last day of the festival. "It’s been fun seeing you again,” he says, and she feels like a fool. The neighbor offers to give her a lift home, and she agrees but realizes she has left the dog with Martin and asks if they should go back. And the neighbor says, “Don’t go back.” The neighbor tells her it was his girlfriend who had called the night before, and that Lacey shouldn’t get too fond of Martin; that he will never get involved with someone from her family, because her father had swindled his years before. She feels she is breaking a confidence, but doesn’t want to see Lacey get hurt more than she is already.

She goes home and confronts her father, and while he doesn’t admit to more than a “deal falling through,” she knows it’s true and knows that while Martin wouldn’t use her to get back at her family, he definitely isn’t in love with her, and she’s too far gone: She was so in love with him that there would never be anyone else and she would be lonely forever. She has a migraine and cries herself bitterly to sleep.

She goes to the arts center later and everyone knows they were locked in all night and it’s a big joke, and she goes along with it, making it lighthearted and funny and making sure no one knows how she really feels. Paul shows up looking to talk to her, and she fobs him off until lunch, but he has his say, he’s not being made a fool of any longer and they’re done, and she tells him he’s had a lucky escape because she’s not the girl he had thought she was.

She gets through the next few days by keeping busy and hiding her feelings and taking sleeping pills at night for the first time ever, and before she falls asleep she imagines him in his cottage, which he had described to her, and calls his name in her head, calls to him, until she falls asleep. She goes through the motions the next few days, keeping up a cheerful façade but feeling empty. Her father tries to play on her sympathy but she is having none of it and asks how much money he swindled and he again denies it and says Martin is a liar. She doesn’t tell him it wasn’t Martin who told her about it.

He doesn’t call, and it’s like five years ago—he means everything to her, but she doesn’t mean much at all to him. Even if she didn’t respond to his letters five years ago, she thinks, if he had felt anything for her he wouldn’t have given up so easily. She doesn’t think he’ll be coming back Saturday or ever. Life is drab but it has to go on, and she has to keep eating and talking and acting like she is still alive.

It’s the night of the “Runaway Mop” dance, the end of the festival,and she puts on a good face. But all night she watches for him, and when he comes, she pushes her way to him, uncaring if people notice, because the world is suddenly bright and beautiful again.

“Coming?” he asks, and she says yes, and they leave the dance and walk through the village and head for the path through the hills. They talk, and when she asks why he didn't try harder to get in touch with her, he asks why she didn't. And she says she didn't think it had meant anything to him and she was scared. But so was he. He doesn't care much about the swindle and they both admit to loving one another, and it's a much deserved and beautifully done HEA.

I loved this one and was very moved by it. Donnelly has a real knack for writing realistic characters but giving the story a dreamy tone, somehow—her style is understated but lyrical and touching. This isn’t so much a story of misunderstanding as it is uncertainty—the heroine realizes she is in a mess, she can’t move forward with the “safe” OM because the hero’s return shows her that she has never gotten over him really, though she thought she had and definitely tried to move on. But it’s not something that she can clear up by talking with the hero, really, because the misunderstanding (the family history, the unanswered letters) aren’t the issue; the issue is that she is in love and convinced that he isn’t and pride forbids her to plead for his love in that case. And he’s in the same boat. And only after spending time together and coming through the fire of their feelings together can they open themselves up to more hurt and be vulnerable and admit their feelings. An intensely ansty read for me and a keeper.

[Bryn]

This was pretty well-written and extremely evocative of the late 70s/early 80s atmosphere in ways I can't really put my finger on, but while I sympathised with Lacey, the protagonist, I did not enjoy her company -- she is very caught up in her issues, and Donnelly does a great job of showing how Lacey misunderstands a ton of things going on due to her assumptions and defenses -- which made it not fun for me to read! I think, really, I read romances for pure escapism, and this was too psychologically realistic for me (although likely perfect for someone else!).

[Aug 2022]

[RomLibrary]

Martin Jackson was a form of madness

Since their brief and blazing affair five years before, Lacey had not heard a word from Martin. He'd left Chadsford to pursue a brilliant career in television, and she knew he'd forgotten her completely.

So, when he returned, apparently expecting Lacey to pick up where they had left off, wasn't it natural that she should resent his casual possessiveness?

After all, she was engaged to another man, and her love for Martin was a thing of the past