Force Of Feeling

‘If I wanted my case, I’d go and get it,’ she told him rudely. ‘And I don’t want a bath. What I want to do is to go to bed,’ she added pointedly.

She saw his eyebrows lift, but there was nothing amused in the way he was looking at her. Rather it was a combination of weariness and pity that darkened his eyes.

Pity. She felt her own eyes grow sore and dry as he stepped back and closed the door. Her throat felt raw and her heart seemed to be beating too fast. How dared he pity her. How dared he … She undressed with rapid, almost ungainly movements, checking that he had actually gone back downstairs before she used the bathroom.

A brief wash, her teeth cleaned, and she was back in her bedroom. As she unpinned her hair, she rubbed the tension prickling against her scalp. Her hair was thick and softly curly. She ought to get it cut into a short, manageable style, she thought as she brushed it. The men’s pyjamas she had bought especially for the cottage were just as warm as she had hoped, but somehow she couldn’t settle. It was all Guy’s fault, she decided bitterly, as the adrenalin continued to pump and her body refused to relax into sleep.

If only Helena had not fallen ill … or, even better, if only her agent had never agreed to go into partnership with him in the first place …

But something made her acknowledge that the faults would still remain with her book, and that they could not be laid at Guy’s door. What was she going to do? How was she going to make her heroine come alive? She forced herself to try and think about her, to imagine what her feelings would have been. Was Guy right in saying that, once she knew of the marriage Henry had arranged for her, she would have tried to overset it? Perhaps. It worried her that he seemed to have a better perception of her character’s probable behaviour than she had herself.

At last she fell asleep, but her dreams were a confused jumble of images and thoughts. In one, she saw her heroine confronting Henry and telling him that she would not marry the man of his choice; she saw her run through the corridors of his palace while Cardinal Wolsey looked on disapprovingly, and the other courtiers turned diplomatically away. She heard her throw the challenge at Henry that she would get herself with child by the first man who crossed her path, rather than marry the man of his choice. She saw Lynsey run out into the gardens, crying out her cousin’s name as she saw him sitting with a group of young men, and then she saw the dark shadow of the man who seemed to come from nowhere to impede her pathway to her cousin, snatching her up at the last moment, when she would have run into him full tilt. As he swung her round to put her on her feet, the sunlight fell across his face, striking a blaze of colours from the sword hilt at his side. He was more soberly dressed than the courtiers she was used to, and she struggled to break free; and then Campion saw his face.

She screamed a denial, her whole body shaking, as she came abruptly awake. Her bedroom was in complete darkness, the silence still and unnerving after the constant hum of London traffic. She was cold, and yet she felt breathless, as though she had been running. The flesh on her arms burned as though someone had gripped it hard. She looked down at herself, confused to see the pyjama jacket where she had expected to see rich satin and expensive lace, and then a hot flush seared her skin. In her dream, she had been Lynsey, and the man who had swept her off her feet had been Guy French. She shivered as she remembered her impulsive words to King Henry, and then shook her head in irritation. Her words … What was the matter with her? She had become involved with her characters before, but never to this extent, surely?

And as for dreaming about Guy French … Well, that was just her mind’s way of dealing with the anger and resentment she felt against him, she rationalised. That was all.

So why the odd sensation in the pit of her stomach? Why the shaky, quivering feeling of unease that tightened her skin and made her feel acutely vulnerable? These were feelings that an impressionable teenager might experience, but hardly applicable to a grown woman of twenty-six. And besides … besides, she was not in the least attracted to Guy—far from it.

Attracted to him? She froze, staring into the darkness, her body tense and still. Where had that thought come from? She shuddered slightly, trying to hold at bay the sick, nervy feeling invading her senses.

She must be sickening for something, she told herself; these odd feelings she kept having, this feeling of vulnerability, they were so unlike anything she was used to feeling. It was because she was upset about her book. Yes, that was the answer; she was upset about her book, and Guy French was exacerbating the situation. If only he had not decided to come down here, she wished cravenly. She didn’t want him here. He unnerved and unsettled her. She wanted him to go away and leave her in peace, and most of all she wanted him to stop looking at her with that infuriating blend of sadness and compassion.

CHAPTER THREE

INEVITABLY, perhaps, after her disturbed night, Campion overslept. When she eventually woke up, it was to the sound of heavy rain outside, whipped against the windows by a buffeting wind.

Her bedroom was gloriously warm and she wriggled her toes blissfully, the comfort of the room and its contrast to the weather outside taking her back to her childhood. She snuggled deeper into the bed and closed her eyes.

‘I thought you came here to work.’

The drawling male voice destroyed her pleasure, and made her sit up in bed with a frown.

Guy was standing beside the bed, holding a tray. The delicious aroma of freshly made coffee tantalised her senses. There was toast as well, crisply golden and melting with butter.

‘I hope you’ve brought some sensible clothes with you,’ Guy remarked as he settled the tray on the small chest beside the bed. ‘Helena isn’t exactly geared up for anything other than brief summer living here.’

‘How can you say that?’ Campion demanded. ‘The house is centrally heated. It’s beautifully warm in here. If you’re finding it uncomfortable in any way, perhaps you ought to go back to London.’

He gave her a wry look.

‘No way. And for your information, the cottage is centrally heated only because I drove down to the village this morning and begged and borrowed a couple of bags of boiler fuel. Luckily, I’ve managed to get a supplier to deliver some more this afternoon.’ He grimaced in disgust. ‘Trust a woman to have a solid fuel heating system installed, and then forget to order any fuel for it.’

Campion bit her lip and glanced involuntarily at the window. Outside, rain pelted against the glass. If Guy hadn’t been here, she would have woken up to a cold, damp atmosphere, and somehow she doubted that she would have had the self-confidence to march down to the village and acquire the necessary fuel. Even so, she couldn’t bring herself to say anything, other than a grudging, ‘No one asked you to come here.’

There was a long, unnerving silence, during which Guy looked steadily at her, before saying in a quietly even voice, ‘Didn’t they? I rather thought I’d heard a cry for help.’

Colour stung her face as Campion glared at him. He had said nearly the same thing last night, and if he thought for one moment that she had actually expected him to follow her down here …

‘Not from me, you didn’t,’ she told him angrily. ‘If you must know, I came here to get away from you …’

‘Really?’ How dangerous his voice sounded when it took on that silky quality! Dangerous was not a word she would ever have applied to Guy before; in fact, she had rather disparagingly considered him to be something of a lightweight. But somehow, down here, alone with him, seeing him dressed in rugged jeans and casual shirts, she was beginning to view him in a different light. He should have looked odd out of his immaculate suits and shirts, but he didn’t. In fact, he looked very much at home in them.

‘Odd. I distinctively remember you telling me you came here to work …’

‘To work and to get away from your interference with that work,’ Campion countered aggressively after a minute pause. ‘And if you wouldn’t mind, I would like to get up and get on with that work.’

The dark eyebrows rose, and she could have sworn there was almost something vaguely reminiscent of a courtly but mocking bow in the way he moved his arm.

‘By my guest,’ he offered, picking a piece of toast off the plate, and leaning back against the wall, ignoring her.

There was just no way she was going to get out of bed with him standing there, eating her toast, Campion decided grimly.

She had no doubt that he was simply amusing himself at her expense, pretending not to know how much she detested being forced into such intimacy with him.

She moved angrily, her hair swirling into tousled curls. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Guy tense, and then, to her surprise, he said abruptly, ‘I’d better go and check on the boiler.’

He’d gone without even finishing his toast, she realised a few seconds later, as she stared at the door he had closed after him.

An odd feeling crept over her, a sense of loss, combined with a far more familiar feeling of acute self-disgust. Under the bedclothes, her body started to shake and she closed her eyes tightly, trying to ward off her own thoughts.

She knew quite well what had brought that look to Guy’s eyes, why he had been so anxious to get out of the room. He had looked at her and had been repulsed by her, just as Craig had been, as every man who looked at her must be, she admitted bleakly.

What was the point in letting herself be hurt by it? Surely, by now, she was used to the truth? Surely she had taught herself to accept that men found her undesirable, that it was revulsion rather than arousal they experienced when they looked at her?

Craig had made it clear enough all those years ago. The only way he had been able to make love to her, he had said, had been by closing his eyes and pretending she was someone else, and even then … Even then it had only been the thought of her parents’ wealth that had enabled him to go through with it.

Even now, those words still had the power to wound her, to scour her soul and destroy her self-confidence. It was no use telling herself she was a successful writer, that she had a good and fulfilling life, that many, many people would envy her; all she had to do was to remember Craig’s words, to recall how Guy had just looked at her, and she was that same sick, shaking teenager whose eyes had been so cruelly opened to exactly how unattractive she actually was.

Was it any wonder she couldn’t give her heroine the confidence to go out and choose her own lover, that she couldn’t flesh out the sensual, physical side of Lynsey’s nature? There, she had admitted it. She swallowed hard. She had admitted that Guy was right, and that she couldn’t finish the book.

Panic filled her as she fought to deny her own thoughts. It wasn’t true. She would finish it … There must be another way, and she would find it.

Suddenly she remembered her dream. In her dream, she had felt Lynsey’s emotions: her anger, her desperation, her resentment towards the man who had stopped her from going to her cousin. If she could just hold on to those memories … If she could just get them down on paper … Suddenly her doubts were subdued, her mind busy trying to work out how best she could use the avenue opened up to her by her dream.

She washed and dressed hurriedly, pulling out of her bag her clean underwear, and then frowning. No clean bra … She must have left it in her flat on the bed, and the rest of her underwear was in the case in the boot of her car. She eyed the one she had been wearing the previous day with distaste.