CHAPTER FIVE

HOW had she got up here? Campion wondered muzzily as she opened her eyes. The last thing she remembered was crawling into the chair beside the fire.

She looked up and saw that the bedroom light was on. Well, at least the power had come back on. And then she remembered why she had worked until she was so exhausted that she could sleep.

Guy had gone.

A horrible empty feeling made her stomach cave hollowly, followed by a fierce flash of anger. She shouldn’t be feeling like that. What was the matter with her? She should be glad that he had gone. But she wasn’t. She shivered under the bedclothes and closed her eyes again, trying to fight the feeling of panic rising up inside her.

She didn’t want to feel like this; there was no room in her life for this ridiculous, adolescent sort of emotion. What had happened to her willpower, to the years she had spent teaching herself how to stop herself from wanting…

From wanting what? Guy French in her life? In her arms…in her bed?

No!

The word was a silent protest that screamed painfully inside her. What was she trying to do to herself? Guy French didn’t want her. How could he? All right, so he had passed her a couple of compliments. So what? That didn’t mean that she had to over-react…like a woman who had deliberately repressed her sexuality for years and was now unable to repress it any longer.

Just thinking about him was enough to make her body tingle. To make her breasts ache and her body contract sharply. She was trembling as she flung back the covers and got out of bed.

Suddenly, she found it all too easy to understand Lynsey’s rebellious emotions. If nothing else, Guy French was having a very definite effect on her work, she acknowledged grimly as she showered and then dressed.

The kitchen was blissfully warm. How on earth had the boiler managed to stay in? And surely she hadn’t brought in that bucket of fuel last night?

Shaking her head at her own inability to remember, she filled the kettle. Outside, the wind seemed to have dropped and the rain had gone.

She was alone here as she had originally intended, but, instead of feeling triumph at having driven Guy away, she was intensely aware of her loneliness.

Why had she never acknowledged this feeling before? It had been there, only she had buried it so deeply that she had never allowed herself to recognise it. It was frightening how much she could miss Guy after such a very short space of time.

As she waited for the kettle to boil, her memory started to play unwanted tricks on her. As a teenager, she had longed for a husband and family of her own. With this mythical family, she would experience the love and security she had never felt with her own parents. But didn’t all teenage girls go through that stage? she derided herself angrily. She had been lucky, she had discovered very early on in life how empty and meaningless marriage could be.

Lucky? To have had her hopes and dreams destroyed so cruelly, and with them all her burgeoning sexuality?

Stop it. Stop it! she warned herself fiercely. There was no point in going over and over the past. It had happened; that was a fact of life. She was what she was: a moderately intelligent woman who had been lucky enough to find she had a talent for writing and, in doing so, had discovered a means of escape from the grim reality of her loneliness.

The kettle boiled and switched itself off. Campion didn’t notice. She was staring blankly at the wall. She wasn’t lonely, she was solitary; it was a different thing. She had friends, very good friends…

So good, that none of them, apart from Lucy, knew about her past—about Craig. She shivered involuntarily. All right, so she didn’t discuss Craig with anyone, but why should she? It was over, finished. And she had come to terms with what had happened years ago.

Had she? Then why did she feel like crying out for someone to tell her that Craig was wrong, that she was desirable? Why did she feel that her life was empty? Why did she ache for—for Guy French?

She shuddered and gripped the worktop. What on earth was she trying to do to herself? Guy would never want…

‘Good, you’re just putting the kettle on. I’m ready for a drink.’

Campion stared at the open doorway, and Guy, as though she had never seem him before in her life. All the colour drained from her skin, leaving it so pale that he frowned and instinctively took a step towards her.

‘Campion, are you all right?’

He was going to touch her and she couldn’t let him do that. Not now… Frantically, she backed away from him and said huskily, ‘You’re back.’

‘Yes, don’t you remember? I came back last night, having spent the evening driving round in circles, trying to work off my temper.’

Last night. He had come back last night. She had a vivid memory of her own surprise at waking up in bed this morning, when she had known she had fallen asleep in the chair. She fought to get hold of another elusive and very worrying memory, but it slipped from her.

‘Miss me, did you?’

He was smiling at her, and her whole body burned with pain and resentment. How dared he pretend that he cared how she felt, one way or the other? How dared he treat her in this mock flirtatious manner, when they both knew he couldn’t possibly find her remotely attractive? It was an insult to her intelligence. It was… She fought to get a grip on herself, to stop herself from betraying to him what she was feeling.

‘As a matter of fact, I was too busy working to miss you,’ she told him coolly.

‘Yes, so I noticed. I read what you’d done. Didn’t you see the note I left for you?’

He’d read her work, before she’d checked it herself? The same hollow feeling she’d experienced earlier came back, but this time it was stronger, more painful.

‘It’s coming along nicely,’ Guy continued, apparently oblivious to her tension. ‘Will she take him in the end?’

‘Will who take whom?’ Campion asked him, confused.

‘Lynsey. Will she take Dickon? The King’s choice.’

Campion had the uncomfortable feeling that there was more to the casual question than she could see.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.’

Guy was giving her an odd look, a mixture of exasperation and…tenderness. Tenderness? She looked away from him. She was letting her imagination go too far.

‘Your Dickon’s a very strong character,’ Guy told her. ‘Perhaps he won’t give Lynsey much choice. Unlike me, he seems to have an overwhelming passion for small, high breasts…’

He was alluding to the passage she had written describing Dickon’s awareness of her heroine, but, as he spoke, Guy was looking at her…at her body, Campion realised on a sudden flush of anger. He was looking at her breasts, surely hardly noticeable beneath her thick clothes. What was more, he was looking at her as though there was nothing he wanted more than to strip those clothes from her body and to take her breasts into his hands and…

What was she doing to herself? Her mind seemed to have devised its own cruel form of torment for her. She knew that there was no possibility of Guy looking at her with such yearning desire, and, if he was doing to, it could only be to taunt her…to mock her.

On a fiercely protective surve of rage, she retorted dangerously, ‘Yes, I think everyone knows what you have a passion for.’

For a moment, Guy looked almost unsure of himself. Hard colour stung the high planes of his cheekbones, and then abruptly he was smiling at her, his smile loaded with mockery and malice.

‘Do they? What?’

Now, when it was too late, she wished she hadn’t been so quick to challenge him. Instead of responding, she shrugged her shoulders and turned her attention back to the kettle.

‘If you’re making breakfast, I’ll have bacon, eggs and toast. But first I need a shower. I’ve just been out to check on the generator. If we have another power cut like last night’s we’ll need it.’

So he was staying. The relief that filled her also humiliated her. She had to turn away from him so that he wouldn’t see it in her eyes. She wanted to tell him that he could make his own breakfast but, after all, yesterday he had made hers.

He was a very confusing man, she acknowledged as he went upstairs. Before, if she had given any thought to the matter, she would have considered him to be the type of man who expected the woman in his life to be subservient to him, to put him first in everything and to wait on him hand and foot. And yet, already he had demonstrated to her how wrong those preconceived ideas of hers were. He had tackled the household chores willingly, cheerfully and very ably, more ably than she had herself, she acknowledged fifteen minutes later, as she battled with the Rayburn’s hotplates, so different from her own modern gas cooker.

Guy came down as she was staring miserably at the congealing and hard eggs she had just tried to cook.

She didn’t hear him come in, and the unexpected weight of his hand on her shoulder as he leaned over to look into the pan made her jump. She turned quickly and saw him frown as his fingers investigated the narrowness of her bones beneath the thick padding of her clothes.

‘You don’t look after yourself properly,’ he stunned her by saying. ‘You’re too thin.’

‘I’m not thin, I’m slender,’ she snapped at him. ‘Not all men like women with curves like—like Marilyn Monroe.’

As she spoke, she had a vivid mental picture of the woman she had seen waiting for him in reception the last time she had visited the offices. She had been a stunningly curvaceous brunette, her figure encased in a clinging jersey outfit.

Her words had been purely defensive, and so she was surprised to see the anger flash suddenly and dangerously into Guy’s eyes. His grip on her shoulder tightened, and irrationally she began to feel acutely vulnerable and frail. He wasn’t a heavy man, but he was tall and broad and, from the pressure those fingers were exerting, a very fit man.

‘What are you trying to say to me, Campion?’ he asked bitingly. ‘That I don’t have the intelligence to respect a woman for what she is? Do you really think I’m the kind of man who looks for Barbie doll measurements in a woman and nothing else? Or don’t you credit me with the sensitivity to see your insult for what it was? For your information, I like women—all kinds of women, but what I find most attractive and exciting about them is their personalities.’

He was lying to her. She had seen the women he dated.

He was looking away from her now and into the pan.

‘Mind you,’ he added with a grin, ‘it does help if they can cook… What is this?’

He prodded her cast-iron eggs with the fork, and Campion glared up at him.

‘Mmm…not exactly easy-over, are they?’

To her horror, instead of snapping back at him, Campion felt tears begin to sting her eyes.

It was years since she had cried, aeons ago… She never gave way to feminine emotion, and yet here she was, ready to burst into tears simply because a man criticised her cooking.

Even as she derided herself for her weakness, she acknowledged that it wasn’t really the eggs; they were simply the thing on which her emotions had focused.

What she wanted to cry for was the destruction of her womanliness, for the fates that had been so cruel in forming her as a woman who ached and yearned to form a loving bond with a man she could want and respect, and yet whose outward physical appearance made it impossible.

Through a blur of tears, she saw Guy move away from her. Her body felt cold, as though it had enjoyed the warmth of the proximity of his. She was humiliating herself, dissolving into tears in front of him like this. He would be embarrassed and uncomfortable. Men always were when women cried.

She remembered how her mother had cautioned her not to give in to her tears after Craig had told her what he really felt for her. It would upset her father, her mother had told her. Men did not like tears. Tears were a weapon that women used to get their own way, and which men quite rightly resented.

Campion had turned her head away the moment she felt the betraying prickle at the back of her eyes, but she couldn’t see anything. The kitchen was a watery blur. All her concentrating went into trying to control her emotions.

‘Hey, it’s all right. Come and sit down.’

She froze as she felt Guy’s hands on her shoulders, gently propelling her to the table and pushing her down into a chair.

‘Come on, have a good howl, and then you’ll feel better.’

A soft white handkerchief was pressed expertly against her face, and it took her several seconds to overcome her shock and take hold of it for herself.

‘I never cry.’

What on earth had she said that for?

‘Then you should. Women who don’t cry throw things.’

She put down the handkerchief and stared at him.

‘It’s a way of releasing tension.’

Guy was sitting on the edge of the table, looking at her. There was such a tender look in his eyes that she blinked, and then blinked again when it didn’t disappear.

‘Why is it you’re so desperately afraid of showing emotion, Campion? You’re going through a very stressful time,’ he added quietly when she made no response. ‘There’s no reason for you to feel ashamed because…’

‘Because I can’t fry eggs,’ she interrupted savagely.

To her fury, he laughed. ‘Ah, well, that’s another story. Using a Rayburn takes a bit of know-how… Want me to show you?’

She didn’t want him to show her anything. She wanted him to leave her alone and free her from the dangerous spell of his intimacy. He was reacting to her in a way that was totally unfamiliar to her; treating her… treating her as a woman, she recognised with a quick start.

‘Who taught you?’ she asked coldly. ‘One of your women?’

He didn’t like that, and no wonder. She saw the tenderness fade from his eyes, to be replaced with a cool sternness that made her quail slightly.

‘No, as a matter of fact, my mother taught me,’ he said quietly.

‘Your mother?’

‘Yes. I was her eldest child. My father died when I was twelve, and Ma had to go out to work. She taught me to cook, so that I could prepare a meal for the others when we got home from school.’

‘The others?’

He smiled then, and it was a smile she couldn’t wholly interpret; she saw that it held love and resignation, and other things as well, and she was pierced with a pain that was compounded of loss and envy and a terrible, aching unhappiness that she knew nothing in her life would ever totally dim.

She loved him… She loved this intelligent, beautiful man who had women falling over themselves to attract his attention. She loved him, and part of her twisted in mortal agony that she could be so foolish and so vulnerable.

It hadn’t happened overnight. It had to have been there for some time, growing slowly and dangerously. This time together at the cottage had acted like a forcing house, making her recognise what was happening to her.

Before, she had been able to ignore the insidious growth of her feelings, pretending that her awareness of him sprang from dislike and resentment; here, at the cottage, there was no barrier behind which she could hide from the truth. She loved him.

‘My sisters and brother,’ he told her softly.

She turned away quickly so that he wouldn’t see her envy. She had hated being an only child; had longed for the companionship that came from being part of a family. Perhaps she had even turned to Craig out of that need.

‘You have sisters and a brother?’

‘I certainly do. Alison and Meg are twins, they’re three years younger than me, and Ian is the baby of the family. He had just started school when Pa was killed. It was a wrench for Ma to leave him and go back to work. She lost the baby she was carrying when my father died.’

‘What—what happened to him?’ Campion asked, barely aware of saying the words.

It amazed her that he could talk to her like this. She never discussed her private past life with anyone.

‘He was killed by a hit-and-run driver two days before Christmas.’

Champion turned an appalled face towards him.

‘Christmas! How dreadful…’

‘I can see what you’re thinking, and you’re wrong,’ he told her quietly. ‘Of course, we never forgot, but Ma never allowed the spirit of Christmas to be damaged for us by Pa’s death. They were two separate things, and she treated them as such. She still does.’

‘Where—where does she live?’

‘In Dorset, close to the girls. They’re both married now, with families. Ian is working in Canada… What about you?’ he asked, deftly removing the eggs from the pan he had put down on the table.

‘Me?’

‘Yes, you. Do you have a large family… brothers—sisters?’

‘No.’ Her voice sounded oddly harsh and she took a deep, steadying breath, and said less forcefully, ‘No, I was an only one. My parents died some time ago.’

‘An only one. You must have been very lonely.’

She wanted to deny it, but the words clogged her throat.

‘Come on,’ he added, smiling at her. ‘Here beginneth your first lesson in the correct use of a Rayburn cooker.’

Bemused, Campion allowed him to lead her back to the stove. Silently, she watched his easy movements, and listened as he instructed her.

‘Ma brought us all up to be self-sufficient. We had to be. My father was insured, but that only paid for the house.’

This time, the eggs were cooked perfectly, but Campion couldn’t eat hers.

In the space of a few minutes, her whole world had turned upside-down. How could she have dared to love Guy? How could she have been so stupid?

Guy made the coffee, and watched her as she sat, motionless, staring into space.

‘Something’s wrong,’ he said quietly. ‘Want to talk about it?’

To talk about it? What on earth could she say? I’ve just discovered that I love you?

‘It’s nothing. I was just thinking about the book.’

She saw the shadow cross his face, and for a moment he almost looked rebuffed, as though she had somehow hurt him.

Wishful thinking, she told herself as she got up awkwardly. ‘I’d better go and make a start.’

He didn’t follow her, and she should have felt easier without his presence, but the words just wouldn’t flow. She sat and stared at the typewriter, without seeing anything.

‘Mental block?’

She hadn’t heard him come in.

‘I…’

He picked up the manuscript.

‘She’s a lot like you, isn’t she? Remote… alone…’

‘Like me?’ Campion shook, as she said bitterly, ‘No, she’s nothing like me. For one thing, she’s beautiful, while I…’

‘While you do everything you can to deny that you’re a woman,’ Guy interrupted calmly. ‘But you are a woman, Campion.’

What was he trying to do to her? Didn’t he realise how frighteningly vulnerable she was? Why was he looking at her like that, as though—as though—?

‘Oh, I know you do everything you can to deny your feminity. Scrape back your hair, disguise your body…’

‘What am I suppose to do?’ she demanded, suddenly losing control of her feelings. ‘Deck myself out in make-up and alluring clothes, in the hope that a man might come along who’s deceived into thinking that I’m actually desirable? Don’t you think I have more pride than to…’

‘What the hell are you talking about?’ Guy interrupted flatly. ‘You are desirable.’

What was he trying to do to her?

‘No. No, I’m not.’ She saw the way he looked at her, and laughed harshly. ‘Don’t you think that I wish I was? I know the truth, Guy. I had it pointed out to me and underlined quite plainly when I was nineteen.’

‘How?’

She stared at him, shocked into silence by his question. How had they got to this point? How had she been stupid enough to betray so much to him?

She looked round the small room, seeking an escape.

‘You tell me that you aren’t desirable. Well, I’m telling you that you are. Would you like me to show you just how much I want you, Campion? When I carried you up to bed last night, I wanted to stay with you. The reason I walked out last night was because I couldn’t trust myself to stay. I look at you and I ache to touch you, to make love to you.’

‘No! No, I won’t listen. You’re lying to me. Craig—’

‘Craig,’ he pounced, watching her. ‘Who’s Craig?’

She was shivering with a mixture of shock and pain, but he made no attempt to touch her, to comfort her.

‘My—my ex-husband…’

She had surprised him now. She saw it in his face; in the way he suddenly went very still, his gaze sharpening and hardening slightly.

‘You’ve been married…’

Suddenly, she picked up his thoughts.

‘What did you think? That I was still virginal and inexperienced?’ she asked bitterly. ‘At my age? Yes, I’ve been married. I was married when I was nineteen.’

‘And when did you and your husband part?’

She thought about lying to him, but dismissed the notion and said tiredly, ‘A week after we were married. He didn’t want me. He just wanted my parents’ money, and once he realised that it wouldn’t be forthcoming he couldn’t wait to get rid of me.’

‘You’d been lovers…’

‘Yes. Before we were married, we—he made love to me. He told me he thought I might be pregnant. I believed him, and so we ran away and got married.’ She shrugged. ‘I was very young…very naïve.’

‘And because of this—this man, you really believe that you’re undesirable? Because one man—’ he began incredulously. ‘I don’t believe I’m hearing this!’

‘No, Craig made me see the truth, that’s all. I’m just not the kind of woman that men desire.’ She wasn’t going to repeat the insults and taunts that Craig had thrown at her; words that she could never forget, wounds that would never heal.

‘I don’t want to talk about it any more. I’ve got work to do.’

‘Because of one man, you’re going to shut the rest of the male sex out of your life, is that it? Because you’re afraid…’

He was going to touch her. Campion could sense it, and suddenly she was panic-stricken. If he did… She stood up abruptly, pushing past him, ignoring him as he called out her name. She had to get away. She had to be on her own. Her mind and emotions were in such turmoil.

He caught up with her in the kitchen.

‘I’m going for a walk. I want to be on my own.’

Perhaps something in her face warned him not to touch her, because he stepped back slightly.

‘All right, if that’s what you want, but you’re wrong, you know, Campion. And he was wrong, too…’

As she pulled on her boots, she turned on him, her expression fierce and proud.

‘I’m not a fool, Guy, not any more. I realise that flirting comes as naturally to you as breathing, but that doesn’t disguise the truth. Physically, men find me repellant. I know that, and no amount of you pretending it isn’t true is going to change things.’

He looked angry now, really angry. He came up to her and grabbed hold of her arm so that she almost fell over. Instinctively, she clung on to him, and then wished she hadn’t as her senses were overwhelmed by the nearness of him. She started to shake, but he seemed unaware of her vulnerability. His grip on her arm tightened as he looked down into her face.

‘Do you know what I think?’ he said softly. ‘I think you’re a coward, Campion. I think you’re afraid. Afraid of living, afraid of loving, afraid of… And so you’ve shut yourself away behind a wall of pride and resentment. So you made a mistake, an error of judgement… Don’t you think we all make those mistakes at one time or another? But the rest of us have the guts to pick ourselves up and go on with life. It isn’t desirability you lack,’ he added in disgust. ‘It’s guts.’

‘Really!’ The smile she gave him felt as though it was pasted on her face. ‘Haven’t you left something out?’

She watched as he frowned.

‘You haven’t told me yet that I’m frigid,’ she added bitterly. ‘That is what you were going to say next, isn’t it?’

Before he could say anything, she pulled out of his grasp and opened the back door.

This was the second time she had run from him like this. Her heart thudded painfully in her chest, although she knew without looking over her shoulder that he wasn’t following her.

Oh, God, what had she done? What had she said? Why hadn’t she kept quiet? Why had she allowed him to needle her into betraying so much?

How could she ever face him again? She started to shiver.

She couldn’t go back. He was an intelligent man. When he had time to think over what she had said, what was there to stop him from guessing how she really felt?

She stumbled on, sliding on the muddy path, turning instinctively towards the coast.

The cliffs on the headland were steep, and the home for a variety of sea birds. The wind coming off the sea was still quite strong. She had walked blindly while she was angry, but now her anger had gone and reaction was setting in. She couldn’t go back to the cottage. How could she face Guy?

She sat down on the wet grass and stared out to sea. Why had he said that he desired her? Probably out of some misguided attempt to flatter her. He couldn’t have realised the avalanche of emotion his words would release, and he was probably feeling as battered as she was herself. She ought to go back and make her peace with him, but she couldn’t.

She got up, shivering in the cold wind. A bird screeched mockingly overhead, and as she looked up it seemed to dive towards her. She ducked instinctively, and cried out as she felt herself slipping.

She fell heavily, but, instead of solid ground beneath her, she felt the earth moving, sliding, taking her with it as it broke away.

She knew that she screamed, but the sound was lost among the wild cries of the sea birds disturbed by the small avalanche.

Quite a large piece of the cliff had fallen away, and she had fallen with it. Below her she could see the foam-capped waves; above her was the clifftop. She was perched on less than four square feet of rock and earth that was somehow wedged between a rocky outcrop six feet below the top of the cliff.

Six feet, that was all, but it might just as well have been sixty. There was no way she could clamber up that almost vertical rock-face and back to safety. In fact, she dared not even move, terrified in case she destroyed her fragile security.

It had started to rain again, and surely the wind was harsher, buffeting against the cliff-face.

Gulls cried and swooped, and far out to sea she could see the grey outline of a boat. She dared not look down. She had always had a thing about water combined with height. If she looked, she would be drawn downwards, she knew it. She shivered, her jacket no protection against the wind and rain. And then, incredibly, she heard Guy’s voice.

He was calling her name, his voice harsh.

Less than ten minutes ago she had felt she could never face him again, and yet now she would have given anything to get up and run towards him.

It was several seconds before she could call out to him, and then several more before she could hear his voice again. Closer this time.

‘I’m here, Guy. There was a landslide, the cliff… Be careful!’ She stopped as she saw him looking down at her.

It must be the cold that was making him look so tense, as though at any second he feared his control might shatter.

‘I think you’ll have to go to the village to get help.’

He looked away from her, and she thought he said something, but she couldn’t quite hear.

He disappeared completely then and, even though she knew he had to leave her to get help, she felt more abandoned than she had felt when her parents died, more alone than at any other time in her life.

Her ankle had gone numb and she moved instinctively, tensing abruptly as she felt her perch begin to tilt.

She had a momentary and unwanted view of the rocks below her, and the sea frothing angrily around the rocks, throwing up showers of grey-white spume. The tide was coming in. It couldn’t reach her up here of course.

She shivered and bit down hard on her bottom lip. What was the point in crying now? It was her own folly that had brought her here. Her own crazy stupidity…

‘Campion!’

She stared up at Guy. He hadn’t left her, after all. He was leaning over the edge of the cliff. He must by lying flat on the ground, she recognised.

‘I’m going to pass my jeans down to you. I want you to hold on to them as tightly as you can. I’m going to use them to pull you back up the cliff.’

Her mouth went dry. She wanted to refuse; what he was suggesting was madness! He was a very fit man, but she was no lightweight, and what he was suggesting could mean them both plummeting down on to those viciously sharp rocks and that icy-cold sea.

‘Stand up slowly and carefully.’

Incredibly, she found she was doing as he told her and, even more incredibly, beneath her fear she felt a calmness, a sense of trust so new to her that she paused for a moment to marvel at it. Fear obviously bred strange emotions. Very strange emotions.

‘Now, get hold of my jeans. Hold the fabric tightly, wrap it round your wrists. Yes, that’s it.’

Panic flared inside her, but she fought it down.

‘Now, I want you to put your feet as flat as you can against the cliff-face…’

He wanted her to what? She felt sick at the thought of what he was suggesting. She couldn’t do it. If she even tried, she would fall.

‘You’ve got to do it, Campion.’

Was that desperation she heard in his voice? She looked up at him, and then gasped as she felt her small island of security tilt a little further.

‘Now! You’ve got to do it now.’

She heard the skitter of rocks as they fell away beneath her, and perhaps it was that that gave her the courage to move, or perhaps it was the sheer strength of Guy’s voice, she didn’t know, but suddenly she was stepping off her perch, placing her feet as he had told her, leaning out slightly, gripping the denim fabric until her arms ached, as Guy slowly pulled her up the cliff-face.

All she could do to help him was to gain a little extra leverage by using her feet. Her fear for herself vanished as, slowly, inched by inch, he pulled her to safety, and all she could think was that, if she didn’t do all she could to help him, she could fall, and take Guy himself with her. And then, unbelievably, her eyes were on a level with the top of the cliff.

‘Hold on,’ Guy instructed her tersely.

It was bliss to feel the cold, wet grass against her skin as Guy pulled her the last few feet to safety, before grabbing hold of her and dragging them both well back from the cliff edge.

‘You saved my life!’

He was kneeling on the ground beside her, breathing harshly as his body reacted to the strain.

She wanted to reach out to him and hold him, to tell him that he was right and that she was a coward, but even as she moved she saw his face close up and an icy coldness filled her. She had been right, after all. She hadn’t missed that brief but unmistakable movement away from her just then. He had lied to her. He didn’t desire her, and she was a fool for ever letting herself think he might.

She started to stand up. Her whole body threatened to buckle under the efforts, but she was too proud to let Guy see how she felt. He had just shown her how he felt about the thought of any physical contact between them.

‘Come on, let’s get back to the cottage. It’s going to start pouring down.’

They should have looked idiotic. A woman almost plastered in mud all down her front, and a man wearing a thick shirt, a heavy sweater, briefs and socks, but Campion didn’t care how they looked. Guy had saved her life, but for… Reaction started to set in. She was shivering… She looked instinctively at Guy, but he turned away, his face bleak.