by Penny Jordan
She woke up early, feeling gloriously, singingly alive. Guy was still asleep, and she crept out of bed and went downstairs to the study.
Barely six o’clock, it was still dark outside, but she had woken up itching to work, and not even the chill of the unheated study could stop her.
The words flowed, unrolling in vivid, quicksilver imagery in her mind. It had been a long time since she had been so captivated by her work; a long, long time, she realised with hindsight, since she had taken such a keen pleasure in what she was doing, since she had felt this sureness that her characters were real and alive.
Lynsey, with her dark curls and quick temper, her pride and her stubborn belief that only she had the right to direct her life; and Dickon, subtle, clever, enigmatic Dickon, who masked his real feelings with his cool courtier’s smile.
She had to stop when her wrists began to ache, and was shocked to discover that it was gone eight.
This morning, she would make the breakfast and, what was more, this time, she wouldn’t ruin the eggs, but first…
When she went upstairs, Guy was still asleep. She smiled as she ran her fingertips along his unshaven jaw, feeling the rasp of stubble against her skin. She bent her head and kissed the tip of his nose, and then, giving in to an irresistible impulse, she traced the shape of his mouth with her fingertip. Such a very tender, caring, compassionate mouth. Like the man himself.
Absorbed in her thoughts, she didn’t notice his eyes open until Guy murmured, ‘Mmm… nice.’ He bit teasingly at her finger, capturing her wrist and turning his mouth into her open palm.
She shuddered at the sensation that rioted through her, and then closed her eyes as he proceeded to lick delicately at her fingers. He found the pulse beating frantically inside her wrist and stroked it. A thousand wild jolts of pleasure burst through her, making her cry out softly.
This need, this passion, this overwhelming upsurge of sensuality—why had she never known them before?
Because she had never known Guy, she told herself unsteadily.
He was gradually eroding the years of loneliness and mistrust; the doubts and the fears whose seeds Craig had planted within her.
‘Guy, let me go,’ she protested huskily. ‘I was just going to make breakfast.’
‘I don’t want breakfast. I want you,’ he told her lazily, and then he started to suck slowly on her fingers, and her resistance dissolved in a haze of blissful need.
‘Why do you keep on wearing so many clothes?’ The words were muffled against her skin as his fingers burrowed beneath her sweater and shirt to find her breasts.
Her breath caught in her throat. In his eyes, she could see the same need she knew he could see in hers.
She was trembling when he finished undressing her. His skin was warm from the bed, and she inhaled the scent of it greedily, biting teasingly at it until he stopped her by taking possession of her mouth with his own.
They made love quickly, fiercely, as though for both of them their time together was precious and threatened.
Afterwards, lying dazed and satiated in his arms, euphoria prompted Campion to ask unsteadily, ‘Is it always like this?’
Guy turned to look at her.
‘Only with you.’
He was lying; he had to be. Flattering her because it was his natural instinct not to hurt. She had learned that much about him already, but even so she couldn’t help treasuring the words, hugging them to her, wondering if he knew how precious they were to a woman who had passed most of her adult life thinking herself sexually deficient. And now here was this man, this very special, wonderful man, telling her that she was wrong, that the pleasure they shared was unique and rare.
She could have loved him for that alone, she admitted later, watching him as they ate their breakfast.
But she had loved him before she had really known him; she had loved him when she had been able to expect nothing from him but contempt and disinterest.
And now?
Now her love had strengthened, grown, and already her mental vow to herself never to tell him how she felt was proving hard to keep.
She wanted to tell him; she wanted to exult in her new-found knowledge about herself, but she knew it would be wrong of her to give him that burden.
She was not a fool; she was not the first woman in Guy’s life, and she would not be the last. She must accept that what they shared was transitory, and not shadow the present with her fears for the future—a future she would have to live without Guy.
‘You’re frowning. What’s wrong?’ Guy put down his coffee-cup abruptly, and caught her pale face in his hand, turning it so that she had to meet his eyes.
‘I…I was just thinking about my book.’
She moistened her lips as he continued to regard her with that same steady look. She suspected that he knew she was fibbing, but he didn’t press her. However, a tiny shadow remained at the back of his eyes and, when he released her, she felt as though she had disappointed him in some way.
After breakfast, she went back to work.
Guy seemed to know instinctively when to and when not to interrupt her. He let her work until lunch time, and then insisted that she leave the typewriter, even though she protested that she wanted to carry on.
‘You’ve done enough. If you don’t rest, you’ll exhaust yourself.’
Irritation at being dragged away from her work made her snappy.
‘What’s wrong?’ she demanded. ‘Don’t you trust me? I suppose you want to check what I’ve done to make sure it’s “sexy” enough, before I do any more.’
She knew that taunt was unjustified, even as she said it, but she was not prepared for Guy’s reaction.
Instead of retaliating, he simply said quietly, ‘We’ll discuss it after lunch.’
She wanted to tell him that she didn’t want any lunch, but somehow or other she found herself sitting down and eating, and it was only as she did so that she realised how tense she had been. Now, with the tension seeping out of her, she regretted her earlier outburst, and said so, feeling slightly shame-faced.
‘Don’t apologise. The very fact that you’re so absorbed in the book tells me all I need to know about how it’s going. Do you know the thing that worried me most of all about it before?’
She shook her head, pouring them both a cup of coffee.
‘It was the fact that you were so detached from your characters, especially Lynsey. It was almost as though you felt—I don’t know—distaste for her.’
Distaste. Campion frowned, and tried to judge her original manuscript honestly. Not distaste, but dislike, perhaps…resentment because, in Lynsey, she had created a woman such as she could never be herself.
‘When it came to the historical background, the factual reporting, they were all so good that I knew there had to be a way to make your actual characters come alive to match the rest of your work, and I promised myself that I’d find that way.’
Later, those words were to haunt her, but when she heard them they rang no warning bells.
‘How do you think you’ll feel about being a successful commercial author?’
‘Successful as in “best-selling”?’ Campion teased back.
‘Oh, definitely.’
‘I’m not sure…’
‘Well, if I were you, I’d start thinking about it, because from what I’ve read of the rewrites, this book is going to be successful.’
She ought to have felt elated, but instead all she did feel was a deep awareness of inner despair because Guy had mentioned the future, but only in abstract terms; he had said nothing to her to hint that he felt that they would be sharing that future.
They were only here for another two weeks, and then she was due to start on her small tour. After that, it was Christmas.
Christmas…
‘How about going out for a drive this afternoon?’ Guy suggested. ‘Pembroke is a particularly historic area…’
A historic area it might well be, but it was also a cold, wet N
ovember afternoon, with mist hanging low over the landscape, and rain dripping miserably from the bare branches of the scrubby trees that grew on the sites of the once powerful castles, whose remains Guy insisted she should see.
Even so, it was possible to imagine what they must have been, and it was most probably the weather that caused her to leave them with an awareness of melancholy and pain.
They stopped in Haverfordwest to buy food, and Guy insisted on dragging her into a local bookshop, where they found two copies of her last book.
They bought paperbacks and magazines, and Guy even insisted on buying a complicated and enormous jigsaw puzzle.
‘We always used to get one of these for Christmas,’ he told her when she teased him about it in the car on the way back. ‘I suppose Ma thought it was a good way of keeping us occupied during the school holidays. She always seemed to choose one with lots of trees, reflected in water…’
‘Yes, I know the kind you mean.’
‘The twins used to lose patience with them.’
Campion glanced at him, and saw the way his face softened.
‘What about you?’
‘I often felt like giving up, but something always made me keep on until it was finished. Pride, I suppose. I’ve never liked admitting defeat.’
Why did she have the feeling that she had just been given a warning? A warning about what? Had she been younger, less intelligent, had Guy been a different type of man, she supposed she might have wondered if he had deliberately set out to seduce her because she represented some sort of challenge, but Guy wasn’t that type of man; he did not possess that particular shallowness of nature. They were lovers, and if anything she was grateful to him for breaking down her barriers and showing her how very much of a woman she actually was.
While he had been buying some wine, she had noticed a small shop tucked away almost out of sight, and she had gone into it on impulse.
Her purchases were tucked away underneath the books they had bought, and she was still not sure what had prompted her to make them, or how Guy would react.
‘Tonight we’re going to celebrate,’ Guy told her. ‘This time, I’ve bought champagne.’
They had also bought fresh salmon and other luxuries, Guy insisting he would show Campion how to cook them.
It was dark when they got back, the cottage lights glimmering welcomingly as they turned into the yard.
It took Campion several minutes to analyse the sensation inside her as she got out of the car and, when she did, tears shimmered in her eyes.
What she had experienced was a sense of coming home, of being in a place that was special, of being with someone who was special, she recognised, as Guy placed his arm round her shoulder and they walked together to the door.
Unlike her father, Guy was a very physically affectionate man, a man whose compassion and caring in no way detracted from his intense maleness, but rather added an extra dimension to it. She felt safe with him, Campion realised; safe, cherished and protected.
Perhaps it was silly of her to feel those things; after all, she was a modern woman: self-supporting, capable and intelligent, who did not need to look for security of any kind in a man.
Perhaps some instincts could never be entirely lost, she mused as she walked into the kitchen; a woman’s dependence on a man went back to those first cavedwellers, where woman was, by virtue of her ability to bear children, unable to hunt and fend for herself as freely as a man.
She was so deep in thought that Guy had to speak to her twice before she realised what he had said.
‘The book again?’ he asked.
‘Sort of…’ It was true that her thoughts had led her on to wonder how Lynsey would have dealt with this ancient instinct that still ran so strongly beneath the surface of the female psyche.
‘I see. So you’re going to desert me again, are you?’
He was only teasing her, but Campion didn’t like the need she could feel within herself to please him, and so she reacted defensively, her body tautening slightly as she said, ‘That was what I came here for—to work, and I seem to remember that you were the one…’
Guy put down the parcels he was carrying and came over to her, taking hold of her hands, and keeping them loosely within the grasp of his own.
‘Hey, hold on, I was only teasing! Of course you must work, if that’s what you want to do. As a matter of fact, it would give me an opportunity to do a little work of my own.’
He picked up the carrier containing the paperbacks they had bought, and fished out a handful.
These were the ones he had chosen, and Campion saw now that they were all by the same author.
‘He’s thinking of changing agent, and it may be that he’ll come to us. His style isn’t quite up to our standard, but that may be the fault of his present publishers. We shall have to see. I don’t want to stop you from working, Campion, I just want to make sure that you don’t overdo things. You go at things almost obsessively, you know. When you work, you don’t eat, you don’t relax…’
Obsessive—was that how he saw her? She shivered slightly. Was he trying subtly to warn her that she mustn’t direct that driving obsession into their relationship? If so, there was no need; she already knew the truth. After all, he had made her no promises, no vows, no whispers of love, even in their most passionate moments…
He was putting the books back into the bag and suddenly he frowned, ‘What’s this?’
‘It’s nothing,’ she told him hurriedly, reaching out to snatch it from him. ‘Just something I bought.’
Guy looked at her for a moment, plainly aware of her agitation, and then he handed the carrier to her with a small smile. She reached for it, but in her tension let it slide from her grasp. As it fell towards the floor, Guy caught hold of it, but its tissue-wrapped contents were already revealed as they tumbled out of the package.
All her old uncertainties, her fears and her inadequacies swept back as Campion stood, unable to move, unable to look away from the delicate satin garments the tissue paper had revealed. Her face still burned hot with mortification. If only Guy would say something, instead of just looking at her in that steady way.
It seemed an aeon of time before he did.
‘Come with me,’ he told her quietly, and then, taking her hand, he drew her upstairs to the room they shared.
As he had done once before, he stood her in front of the pier-glass, and then, while she tried not to tremble, he slowly unfastened the buttons of her blouse and then peeled it from her skin. Her skirt followed, and then her underwear, until she was naked, shivering slightly, more from tension than cold.
‘These—’ his hands touched her breasts lightly, and then moved down over her body ‘—you, are so beautiful, so perfect, that you need no adornment, no gilding for me to take pleasure in the sight of you, but, manlike, I can’t help the way I feel, knowing that you wanted to add to such perfection for my benefit.
‘Nothing could feel better than the silk of your skin; nothing could be more sensuous than the way your body responds to my touch.’ He turned her to face him and said with a wry smile, ‘What did you think I was going to say?’
She was really shaking now, as she clutched the underwear to her. It had been an impulse buy, a desperate yearning to celebrate her new sensuality, and yet the moment she was out of the shop she had experienced fear, panic almost, and she had already decided that the underwear would remain unworn. To another woman, there might be nothing provocative about it; it was perfectly decent and very respectable pure satin underwear, designed for a woman who liked to feel as feminine under her clothes as she did outwardly, but it was so different from the utilitarian underwear she ordinarily wore that she felt self-conscious and awkward.
‘I…I thought you might…laugh at me…’
She had made him angry. She could sense that in the very quality of his silence. His body was taut, as tense as her own, but in a different way.
‘Campion, Campion, you still don’t trust m
e, do you?’ he said harshly. ‘Part of you still thinks I’m going to turn into another Craig, doesn’t it?’
What could she say? Because, in a way, it was true, only it was not that she didn’t trust him. More that she didn’t trust herself. Their relationship was still so new to her, the reality of him actually wanting her so…so almost unbelievable, that she was afraid to take anything for granted. She was like a child, given a much-longed-for gift and terrified that it might be snatched away from her again, she recognised wryly.
‘Surely you know by now that I want you. You,’ he emphasised fiercely. ‘You, whether you come dressed in cotton, or silk or lace.’
‘But you prefer me to wear my hair down,’ she reminded him.
‘For purely selfish reasons. I love the way it feels when I touch it, and when it’s all screwed up I can’t do that. Trust me, Campion,’ he urged her. ‘Trust me not to be like Craig. I can’t obliterate the past, but I’m not part of it. This is the present.’
He released her slowly.
‘Right now, there’s nothing I want more than to take you to bed and show you how I feel about you, but that isn’t the answer, and making love shouldn’t be used in that way. I want you to give me your trust freely…when your mind’s clear. I’ll go down and start dinner.’
Campion dressed in a daze, and it was only when she got downstairs that she realised that she was wearing her new underwear. When she moved, she was conscious of the brush of the satin against her skin. It was a pleasurable sensation, not unlike…not unlike the touch of Guy’s hands, she admitted self-consciously.
* * *
The days passed. Her book grew; it had been almost entirely rewritten, so great had become her absorption in the development of Lynsey’s feelings for her husband.
Guy helped her enormously: reading, approving, sometimes pointing out areas of improvement.
She had put on weight, just a few pounds, enough to soften the angularity of her body. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw a different Campion, a Campion whose face and body reflected the way she felt. She moved with a new confidence, her body now something in which she took pleasure.