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'I'll finish the map, and then go straight back home,' she decided, and with a quick thrust of hands on knees she got to her feet quickly, before she could change her mind. Or before her courage failed her? Reeve's back looked uncomfortably square and unapproachable, and her resolve wavered as she got nearer to him. She wished he would turn round and speak, or at least give some sign that he was aware she was close behind him, but he seemed completely absorbed in the map, and she hesitated, undecided what to do next. What if he refused to give the map back to her? She could not use force to retrieve it. Her own slight figure against Reeve's infinitely superior height left her in no doubt on that score.

'I think your uncle's right, the line of the road does go to the right of the outcrop of rock, not to the left.'

He spoke over his shoulder, without bothering to look at her, and Marion started guiltily, as if she had been caught trying to creep up on him unawares. She resented the feeling. It was Reeve who was guilty, of ruining her sketching trip.

'I'll walk up to the ridge, it's easier to see from there,' she answered him noncommittally. His extra inches made it easy for him to see the line of the ancient roadway, but Marion needed the rise of the hill to give her enough height to make an accurate assessment. It was humiliating, but there was nothing she could do about it. She shrugged and turned away, biting her lip, and his voice checked her.

'You'll need the map to guide you.'

It was so easy. He simply reached out a long arm, and gave her the map. She did not have to demand it from him. She took it with disbelieving fingers. And then she looked up, and saw the half smile on his face, and her own flamed. He was indulging her, knowing she wanted the map. Divining her tension, and uncertainty, and determination to get the map back from him at all costs, and not knowing how.... So he gave it to her. Just like that. And his smile derided her.

She snatched the parchment from his hand, fighting down an almost uncontrollable impulse to throw it straight
back in his face. Pure fury flooded through her, and left her bereft of speech. She turned on her heel abruptly, away from him, hiding her face. The quicker she decided where the road really did run, the better, then she could go back home, and Reeve—she gritted her teeth, and increased her pace—Reeve could stay up on the tops all day if he liked. For ever, for all she cared.

'The map was right in the first place.' She paused on the watershed and managed to find her voice. 'The line of the road goes to the left of the rocks.' She hardly gave the rocky outcrop and its surroundings a glance. It was only a matter of a few yards difference in any case, and at the moment she did not care of it was a couple of miles. The only thing that mattered was to get away—as far away as possible—from Reeve. His nearness had a devastating effect on her poise, and no amount of self-scorn, she discovered, made any difference. His presence—or could it be the memory of his kiss?—aroused longings she had never experienced before. And did not want to now, she told herself angrily. They did not enter into the scheme of things she had planned for her own future. Reeve did not enter....

'The road-goes to the right of the rock,' he contradicted her flatly. 'Look along the line of it, back there across the shoulder of the hill. It's obvious.'

'It's nothing of the kind,' she argued stubbornly, and ignored his pointing finger, refusing to look. Refusing to acknowledge that there was a line there at all, that could have indicated a road. 'Who in their right senses would climb above a rock outcrop, let alone drive cattle above it, when they could take the easy way along the downhill slope?'

'The drovers would,' he stated brusquely. 'They'd drive their animals higher rather than take diem downwards on to the lip of an incline as steep as this one, and perhaps risk losing one of them if it slipped. You've only got to look,' he insisted, 'the line of the road is clear enough from here.'

'I've seen all I want to see,' she snapped back. That line to the right of the rock is nothing more than an old sheep-track.'

'Because the sheep take naturally to the safest way round the rocks, exactly the same as the old-time drovers would,' he retorted angrily. 'The line to the left of the rock is only an exposed stratum showing through, any amateur geologist would tell you that.'

'I'm no geologist, and it isn't clear to me.'

'Then compare it with the map.' He reached out impatiently to take it, and she jerked it out of his reach and let go of the end, allowing it to roll up tightly in her fingers.

'I don't need to,' she told him evenly. 'I've seen all that's necessary, and I'm going home.'

'Do you mean to say you've dragged me all the way up here, just for this?' Reeve rounded on her incredulously. 'What about your sketch, that you were so keen to finish?'

'I've done all I can to the sketch of the harebells,' she threw back, 'and as for my drawing of the hare, it's unlikely the animal will come within a mile of here with you tramping around. And I didn't drag you up here,' she reminded him tartly, 'I didn't even invite you.'

She turned away from him angrily, and in her haste she did not see the heather root. It lay gnarled and grey, like a snare to trap unwary feet, and it caught the toe of her shoe as she turned downhill With a startled cry she flung up her arms in a vain bid to save herself from falling. The map flew from her hand in one direction, and the waterproof cover containing her sketchblock went in the other, and she twisted her face frantically to one side as the inhospitable top of a gorse bush reached up spiky fingers toward her cheeks. '

'For two pins, I'd leave you to pick yourself off the prickles.'

Within an ace of the topmost spikes, Reeve grasped her and pulled her upright. With an effortless lift he pulled her over the gorse bush and stood her on her feet in front
of him, and looked down at her with a mixture of anger and impatience.

'If you insist on blundering downhill without looking where you're going, at least find a softer spot to land on,' he told her harshly.

'My hairband slipped. I couldn't see—my hair got in my eyes ' She stammered to a confused halt. She dared not look up at him. Why did he have to hold on to her like that? Did he not know that his touch banked smouldering fires inside her that she had to quench now, while she still had the willpower, for fear they might ignite and engulf her. It would have been better, she thought desperately, if he had carried out his threat, and allowed her to fall. The gorse spikes were cruel, and her face might have been marked if he had not been there to save her, but the scars would have been nothing to the scars that his touch was engraving on her heart now.

'If that wretched hairband slips, it's not much use to you anyway, so why wear it?' he said impatiently. He raised his hand, and with a quick movement he slipped it free from her head, and as his fingers touched her hair his voice softened, unexpectedly. 'There ought to be a law against confining hair like this.' He ran long brown hands across the shining, honey-gold strands, stroking it away from her face, letting it slide through his fingers until it floated free in the breeze across her shoulders. 'It wants to be free.' He held it lightly, fingering it, and Marion quivered under his touch.

'So do I,' she choked. She tried to pull away from him, frightened of the fires that were kindled by his touch; frightened that he might sense them. But she could not move. Like the hare crouching before the approaching shadow of the helicopter, she was rooted to the ground.

'Do you, Marion?' he questioned softly, his eyes raking her face. 'I wonder.' She felt his lips touch the top of her head, and raised her eyes to his, mutely beseeching. Begging him for what? She hardly dared to think. To ask him to stop—or go on? While Reeve held her in his arms, pride left her, and she had no will of her own. He took her raised face as an invitation, and his lips stroked her forehead, moved down across the tip of her nose to the soft, tremulous corners of her mouth. She tried to draw back, to resist the consuming fire of her own feelings, but it was like trying to stem the tide. His lips hardened, feeling her response, and became demanding, possessive. 'Do you, Marion?' he repeated.

She could not answer him. His lips pressed hard against her own, denying her the ability to reply even if she knew what her answer would be. From somewhere far off, a dog barked, herding sheep, the calls of the flock came faintly to her ears like some low-played symphony in the background, with a deep overtone from the drone of an approaching plane. Or a helicopter?

'I'd forgotten Willy.' Reeve drew back first and looked down at her, and quick amusement lit his face. 'There's no privacy, even up here,' he grumbled, and bent to pick up her sketchblock.

'Stay close to me on the way down, it's steep.' He kept the sketchblock in his hands until they neared the Fleece, but he gave it to her then without demur, and they were in the house, and Marion had retreated to the kitchen quarters to find Mrs Pugh before she realised he had not also given her the map, which he retrieved at the same time as he picked up her sketchblock, and which he still retained, neatly rolled, in his own hands.

She
hurried back to the hall.

'I'll take the map tack to Uncle Miles.' With a set face she held out her hand for it, but this time he did not release it to her as he had done on the hill.

'I'll give it to him myself. I want to discuss where the road should go.'

'Where it's marked now,' she insisted, 'to the left of the rock outcrop.'

'No, it goes to the right, above the rocks.'

'Well now, I hoped you two might reach agreement on that, and settle the matter for me,' her uncle said mildly, coming through the door.

'I'm sure it's to the right of the rocks,' Reeve began, and Marion interrupted him angrily.

'That track's nothing but an old sheep walk, the line to the left of the rocks is clearly the road.'

'The line to the left of the rocks is clearly a stratum of rock exposed by the weather,' Reeve said coldly, almost, she thought furiously, as if he was talking to a particularly obtuse student.

'That's the difficulty with this sort of work,' Miles Dorman observed in his gentle voice, 'there are so many controversial points.'

'There's an easy way to settle this one,' Reeve spoke directly to her uncle and ignored Marion, 'come up with Willy and me in the helicopter tomorrow, and decide for yourself. The line of the road is clear enough on the hill.'

'It isn't clear to me....'

But Reeve ignored her, and went on as if she had not spoken.

'It's even clearer from the air, you'll know then that the road lies .....'

'To the left of the rock,' Marion butted in triumphantly.

'To the right of the rock,' he finished adamantly. 'There's almost a precedent in another similar track north of the Pennines. It's mentioned in one of the reference books I've got at home. I've sent for it, so that you can see for yourself. That was one of the letters I posted this morning.' He addressed Marion now, and the steely look in his eyes told her that he knew that she had tried to read the addresses on the envelopes he pushed across the Post Office counter, and had deliberately put them so that the writing was the wrong way round for her to read, in order to foil her intention.

Her colour rose. She had never done such a thing before, prying was alien to her nature, but she squashed her conscience ruthlessly. If Reeve persisted in behaving in a mysterious manner, he must expect to invoke curiosity, she told herself resolutely, and ignored the small voice inside her which said that the business of the guests who came to stay at the Fleece was no concern of the proprietor or his family.

'I'll look forward to reading your book,' her uncle's gentle voice brought her back to her surroundings. 'It'll make an interesting comparison with the road here.' He was completely taken up with the world of the book he was writing, and remained blissfully ignorant of the antagonism its subject had caused between his niece and the guest, and Marion gave a gesture of impatience.

'I'm going to the stable,' she announced shortly. The block of stables at the rear of the hotel had been converted into garages, and a studio for herself in which the barman had erected a bench for her, which enabled her to leave her woodcut and tools undisturbed when she was not working there. They offered a haven now, and she took it. She had the greatest difficulty to restrain herself from running out of the room, but she managed to make a dignified eat, and reached the stable block with a sigh of relief. She could forget Reeve, and the road, and everything else while she was here.

Her woodcut was propped up on the bench facing the windows, which had been considerably enlarged in order to give her adequate light. She pulled away the covering cloth, and felt the tension ease from her as she looked at the long, narrow panel, one of a set of six, and already half carved. Her glance was critical, seeking faults that no other eyes would see, and her concentration acted like a door to shut out the world outside. Reeve, and the drovers' road, and the petty irritations that seemed an inevitable part of their everyday contact with one another, receded from her
mind. She put down the waterproof cover containing her sketchblock, and drew out the work she had been engaged on that morning. Most of it was scored over, but what she had drawn previously remained untouched, and a small, satisfied sigh escaped her.

'This will just finish off the corner,' she murmured to herself. 'The hare can go further along the panel.'

It already held an intricately carved selection of animals and birds, set among their natural habitat, and captured in mid-movement with an almost uncanny lifelikeness that made the carved creatures seem to the casual observer merely to have paused to gaze back for a moment at the looker on, before resuming whatever activity it was they were engaged upon when interrupted. It was this ability to capture the spirit of pulsing life in her carvings that stamped Marion's work as peculiarly her own, and made it in universal demand, and was the result of long hours of patient observation, and a deep knowledge and love of her subjects. She reached for her chisel.