CHAPTER FOUR

CAMPION dressed quickly in the first things that came to hand; a thin jumper and an old pleated skirt. She didn’t want to waste time doing her hair. She went downstairs with it still hanging in damp tendrils around her face.

Her breasts felt slightly sore and tender, an unfamiliar sensation that was extremely disturbing.

She saw Guy look at her as she went downstairs, but he made no attempt to stop her going straight into the study.

In the sitting-room there was a mirror over the fireplace, and Campion flushed with mortification as she caught sight of her reflection there, and saw the way her nipples thrust against the combined covering of her bra and sweater.

Work, that was the answer, she thought feverishly, dragging her gaze away and hurrying into the study. What was it Guy had said to her this morning about Lynsey wanting to experiment with the power of her womanhood?

She found the pages they had discussed, and read them quickly. Her description of Lynsey’s burgeoning feeling for her cousin was flat and uninteresting. She closed her eyes, leaning back in her chair. She saw Lynsey studying herself in the mirror in her room, admiring the curves of her flesh, perhaps touching the high, firm outline of her breasts, and wondering what it would be like if Francis…King Henry’s court had been a licentious one; a girl growing up there could not remain unaware of the reality of sexual communion.

Campion shivered; her body felt so tightly coiled that the tension made her ache. What had seemed impossible to describe now seemed easy; the words flowed from her, so quickly, she could barely capture them. She typed until her wrists ached, and then stared in surprise at the number of pages she had done.

Almost as though he had been waiting for the typewriter to stop clattering, Guy walked in. He reached out to pick up the pages, but she stopped him.

‘No! I haven’t read them myself yet,’ she told him, conscious of how strained and fierce her denial had been.

She didn’t want him reading what she had written until she had read it herself, until she had made sure there was nothing in it to betray her…

But why should there be? Why should that momentary and totally ridiculous surge of desire she had experienced at Guy’s touch have any bearing on what she had just written? It was impossible.

‘What were you doing? Standing outside the door, waiting for me to finish?’ she demanded, desperately trying to find a way to get back to normal.

‘No. You just happened to stop as I came in to ask what you fancied having for dinner. We can eat out, if you like.’

‘No. At least… Look, why don’t you go out. I’ll fix myself something later. I’m not hungry at the moment.’

‘Still trying to get rid of me?’

Her face flamed, and one of the pages she was reaching for slid out of her reach.

Guy retrieved it for her.

‘Small, firm breasts, mmm…I’m glad you liken them to unripened apples, because personally I much prefer a woman’s body when it’s fully developed and mature.’

Just briefly, his glance slid downwards, and Campion felt as though she would choke from shock and disbelief as it lingered briefly on the telltale curves of her own breasts.

Like a current of electricity, she felt her physical response to his glance. She turned away abruptly, not daring to look at him.

‘Lynsey is sixteen,’ she reminded him acidly, ‘and therefore hardly likely to be mature.’

Without looking at him, she knew that he was smiling.

‘She’s very real to you, isn’t she? You know, that’s one thing that never fails to fascinate me about writers—good writers, that is. They become so passionately involved with their characters; they put so much of themselves into them, I suppose. How much of you is in Lynsey, Campion?’

How deftly he had slipped that question beneath her guard!

‘Very little,’ she told him icily. ‘How could there be anything of me in Lynsey? As you yourself pointed out, she is a beautiful, self-confident woman.’

‘Are you trying to tell me you consider yourself to be lacking in self-confidence, Campion?’

She couldn’t believe the cruelty of the softly spoken words. How dared he make fun of her like this? How dared he speak to her in that soft, almost teasing voice, implying…implying what?

‘I’m tired, Guy.’

‘You need some food inside you. You’ll soon feel better. There’s some soup left.’

Why on earth couldn’t he see that she wanted him to leave her alone?

She moved her head, and felt the unaccustomed softness of her hair against her face.

‘It suits you like that.’

Campion froze immediately. How dared he torment her like this, pretending that he actually found her physically attractive, when they both knew that no man, never mind one like him, could possible do that?

‘I…’ The words of denial stuck in her throat. Her chest felt tight and sore. She saw Guy reach out towards her, and flinched back from any physical contact with him.

‘What’s wrong? Every time I compliment you, you react as though I’d insulted you.’

It was the pain inside her that made her cry out sharply, ‘What am I supposed to do? Fall at your feet in gratitude?’

She tried to push past him, and cried out as he caught hold of her wrists, dragging her towards him.

Was it only this morning that she had envied his laconic self-control? Well, it had gone now. Grey sparks flamed in the depths of his eyes, and she could see the rapid rise and fall of his chest as he breathed harshly. ‘Nothing so dramatic, just a smile would be sufficient. The reaction any—’

‘Any normal woman would make?’ Campion finished for him. ‘Is that what you were going to say?’

She had stopped trying to pull away from him. He obviously had no intention of letting her go, and every time she moved his grip hurt her wrists.

‘No, as a matter of fact, it wasn’t. What is it about you, Campion? Why do you go to such lengths to deny your sexuality? I’ve been watching you, and shall I tell you what I see?’

He didn’t need to, Campion already knew. If the image in her mirror every morning wasn’t enough, she still had Craig’s insults burned into her soul to remind her.

‘I see a woman who for some reason is so desperate to conceal her sexuality that she doesn’t even realise what she’s betraying by going to such extremes. By your very desire to appear sexual, you make yourself stand out, do you know that?’

‘That’s not true!’

‘Yes, it is.’

He looked at her broodingly, and the pressure of his grip eased. His thumbs started stroking lightly against the delicate inside of her wrists. Her pulse stopped, and then thudded hectically. She felt as though her blood was draining from every part of her body, to throb frantically beneath his touch.

‘You’re such a very beautiful woman, and yet you behave…’

‘Stop it! Stop it…’

Somehow she managed to wrench herself from his grip, her senses in agonised turmoil as she raced past him and upstairs to her room.

How could he do this to her? What was the point? A very beautiful woman! Did he think she was blind? Her throat was tight with tears of anger she refused to shed. She waited tensely, expecting him to come bursting into her room with every breath she took, but the seconds and then the minutes went past in silence. Then, shockingly, she heard the slam of the kitchen door.

She ran to the window and watched as Guy climbed into his car.

He was leaving. Thank God for that!

And yet she had no sense of relief, no lessening of the tension coiling inside her. Instead she felt empty, aching, unsettled.

She went back downstairs, but she couldn’t work. Dusk gave way to Stygian dark. She made herself a cup of coffee and wandered round the kitchen. How empty the cottage seemed without him, and yet she had wanted him to go. Hadn’t she?

Just for a moment, she tried to imagine what might have happened if he had stayed, if she had really been beautiful as he had cruelly called her…

Her body quivered, tiny flames heating her skin. Her hand shook and she put her coffee down, hugging her arms tightly around herself, as though to reject the sensations she was experiencing.

How long had she felt like this and not known it? How long had she ached like this and not known why? She was behaving like an adolescent, or the archetypal frustrated spinster, she taunted herself.

Guy French had no interest in her other than as a writer. She had no idea why he was pretending to find her attractive; no idea at all. Somehow, she would have thought he was far too fastidious to lower himself to such contemptible behaviour.

She couldn’t eat, she couldn’t work. She might as well go to bed and try to catch up on last night’s missed sleep.

It only occurred to her once she was in bed that, with Guy gone, there was nothing to stop her returning to London herself, but, with Guy gone, what was the point? The book still had to be finished, and she was more determined than ever now to prove that she could finish it.

She slept for two hours, and then woke up abruptly, feeling cold and hungry.

There was no point in dressing again, so she went downstairs as she was in her pyjamas. The kitchen felt cold, and it was only when she walked into it that she realised she had forgotten to stoke the boiler. Luckily, it was still alight, but by the time she had finished feeding it and coaxing it back to life she was filthy.

Since coming to the cottage she seemed to have wasted more energy getting clean than at any other time in her life!

This time she had a bath and not a shower, luxuriating in the heat of the water against her chilly skin. She was just about to step out when the lights flickered and then went out.

For a moment, she was too surprised to move. In London, the lights never went out. She got out of the bath and groped her way toward the towel rail, stubbing her toe against something hard and uncomfortable on the way.

Outside she could hear the fierce sound of the wind. It sounded much louder than it had done earlier. Strong enough to damage the power lines?

There was always the generator in the outhouse, but she hadn’t the faintest idea how to get it going. She had brought a torch with her, but it was still in the car. She had also brought some candles. Had Guy brought them in when he had brought in the other things? If so, where had he put them?

Of course, he would go and leave her on her own to face this…

She only realised the incongruity of her thoughts as she headed downstairs clad only in a pair of briefs, her pyjama top and a pair of pale pink socks—all she had been able to find in the darkness of the bathroom.

She had to feel her way downstairs, almost missing two of the stairs, and bumping her head on the lintel at the bottom. To her relief, she saw that the kitchen was vaguely illuminated by the glow of the boiler. Thank goodness she had woken up in time to attend to it before the power failure!

The kitchen had very few cupboards, and none of them yielded the requisite candles, which meant that she would have to go outside and get the torch from her car.

Where were her wellingtons? She remembered how they had leaked, and flinched from the thought of putting them on, but her shoes were upstairs, and there was no guarantee that she would find them in the darkness.

It would have to be the wellingtons.

She opened the back door and cried out in shock as something whipped cruelly against her face, striking her with scratching fingers.

Her mind and body were thrown into immediate panic. No modern city dweller lived in ignorance of the violence on the streets, and Campion reacted instinctively, tearing at the clawing fingers on her face, only to realise that her assailant was nothing more than a springy branch torn down from somewhere by the wind!

Even so, it took several minutes for her heart to resume its normal steady beat, and then, very slowly, her eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness, and she realised that there was a very thin light from the cloud-covered moon, and she could just about make out the shape of the buildings and her car.

It was bitterly cold though, and the temperature must surely have dropped. As she stepped out of the shelter of the house, icy pellets of rain stung her face. No, not rain, she realised, but hail. She reached her car and tugged on the door. Nothing happened.

Frustrated, she stared at it and then realised that Guy must have locked it when he removed her things. Trust a man to do something like that. Where were her keys? She could have cried with misery. What chance did she have of finding them in that dark house?

There was nothing else for it, she would have to go back and wait for the electricity to come back on.

As she stumbled through the doorway, she reflected how galling and infuriating it was to be held at the mercy of the elements in this way, and then she found herself thinking that Lynsey must have felt the same way at being at the mercy of the King. Guy was right—she would have rebelled, would have tried to take charge of her own life. By trying to persuade her cousin to seduce her?

Out of nowhere came a mental image of her dream: the tall man who had stepped across Lynsey’s path. A tiny flutter of excitement started up inside her. Guy had brought her portable machine in, and it was in the study; if she could find it, she could bring it into the kitchen.

Suddenly, she was itching to work. She didn’t need light to type, and she certainly didn’t need electricity to think.

Half an hour later, she was hard at work, the power cut forgotten.

She had stripped off her wet socks, and her long, bare legs were resting on the bar of the table. The boiler kept the kitchen pleasantly warm, and she ceased to be conscious of time or her surroundings as the words flew from the typewriter.

At last it was done, and Lynsey had discovered that the man who had stood so fatefully between herself and Francis was none other than Dickon, Earl of Dartington, the man whom Henry had decided she was to marry. To whom Henry had sold her in marriage, in fact.

Almost too exhausted to move, Campion stood up and pushed away her typewriter. She ought to go upstairs. She felt as though she could sleep for a week, but she was just too tired to move and, besides, it was warm here in the kitchen. She curled up in the chair beside the fire, her body relaxing almost immediately into a deep sleep.

So deep, in fact, that she didn’t hear the click of the restored lights, nor the car arriving outside, nor the opening of the back door.

* * *

Guy shook the sleet from his head and grimaced wearily. He seemed to have been driving round for a lifetime, trying to decide what to do—to go back to London or to stay. Perhaps he should have gone back, but in the end he couldn’t. Too much hung on his being here, and he still wasn’t sure if his decision was that of a fool or a coward.

He started to cross the kitchen, and then frowned as he saw the typewriter on the table.

He walked over and touched the pages, turning them over and starting to read, slowly at first and then more quickly, his eyes narrowing as he pulled out a chair and sat down, no longer skimming through the typed pages, but reading them properly.

A small sound behind him broke his concentration. He turned in his chair, his eyes widening as he saw Campion.

She was curled up in her sleep, almost like a little girl with her hair tousled softly round her face, but she was no child, he reminded himself.

And then she moved in her sleep, and the illusion was destroyed as the fabric of her pyjama jacket pulled across her breasts. Heat crawled slowly through his skin, and he cursed bitterly under his breath.

What the hell was the matter with him? He frowned and started to turn deliberately away, but Campion moved again, stretching slightly in her sleep as though her body was cramped. She had very long legs and, as she stretched, her pyjama jacket rode up, revealing their slender, pale-skinned length.

He had had enough of this, Guy decided tormentedly. He walked over to the chair, and with one swift movement picked her up.

Her eyes opened and she stared into his face, and said sleepily, ‘Dickon, what are you doing here?’

And then her eyes closed again and her face turned into his shoulder. He could feel the warmth of her breath against his skin, and he was breathing harshly by the time he reached her bedroom. He put her down on the bed and then started to pull the covers over her. A strand of her hair had curled round one of the buttons of his jacket, and he swore softly as he was forced to unravel it.

His hand shook, and he had to grit his teeth and force himself to concentrate. The buttons of her jacket gaped and he could see the soft swell of her breasts. At last he was free, and he straightened up tensely.

Back downstairs, he picked up the pages he hadn’t finished reading. Dickon, she had called him. Of course, she would cast him as the villain. And then he read on, and stopped, a slow smile curling his mouth.

‘So that was the way it was going to be, was it? Mmm… Very clever.’

When he had finished reading, he stacked the pages neatly together and found a piece of paper and a pen.

‘Excellent, I like it,’ he scribbled on it, and put the paper down on top of the manuscript.

When he went to bed, he took the stairs two at a time and whistled softly under his breath. Perhaps he had not made the wrong decision, after all. Perhaps…

He wondered if Campion would remember what she had said to him when she woke up. Somehow, he doubted it. He smiled again and opened his bedroom door.