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'We'll put a stop to tha' plans,' he growled at Reeve threateningly. 'We'll put tha' helicopter out of action, so you'll regret ever bringing it here '

'Don't be silly!' Marion spun round on the farmer, frightened by what he might say next. Frightened that his suggestion might take hold. 'You can't go around damaging people's property—you'll get yourself arrested.' It might not stop at property, she thought worriedly. Aaron Wade had a notoriously unstable temper, and what started as malicious damage to property could escalate. Reeve could take care of himself, she felt sure, but.... Her mind refused to contemplate a worse possibility.

'What's he going to do to our property?' the farmer shouted back, glowering at Reeve. 'I suppose you think drowning a village with water is legal and right?' His face was rapidly becoming purple. 'Of course, tha'll stick up for him.'

'I wasn't....'

'That's enough, Aaron!'

'Take him home, Zilla, afore he gets himself into trouble,' their daily's husband suggested sensibly.

Marion stole a look at Reeve. He stood beside the bar, tight-lipped, his body taut like a bow string, facing the angry flood of question and counter-question, threat and argument. Without thinking, she backed against the bar next to him and gazed at the familiar faces in front of her, that suddenly seemed strange, and hostile. Any minute now there might be a fight... Reeve's bulk beside her felt distinctly reassuring.

'Time, gentlemen, please!'

The barman defused the situation with beautiful simplicity.

It was almost farcical the way the noise ceased, and sheer habit took over. There was a startled pause, a moment of empty silence, then glasses clinked on table tops, and a gradual stirring began towards the door. One or two 'goodnights' were exchanged, and then unbelievably the bar-room emptied, and through a fog Marion heard Jim lock the outer door.

'Are you feeling all right, Miss Marion?' Jim's kindly voice penetrated the daze that seemed to possess her mind, and she nodded dumbly. She felt anything but all right. Now the tension had gone, she shook all over. Her ashen face gave the lie to her bravado, and with a keen glance at her, Reeve took her by the arm.

'Come on,' he pulled her upright and held her against him with a firm grip. 'Back to Mrs Pugh,' he commanded.

Somehow her legs obeyed him, even though her mind resented his command.

'Where's Uncle Miles?' A spark of defiance made her pause. She could not see her uncle anywhere in the room.

'I told him not to bother to come down, I'd see to whatever was going on here.'

'You told him ...?' She choked on his usurped authority. 'You'd no right!' she began indignantly.

'Would you rather I'd let him face that crowd? Aaron Wade?' he asked silkily.

'No—no, of course not.' She would rather anything happen than that. Anything, except that Reeve should take over.

'And since I'm the only available target they've got as regards the reservoir, I consider I've got every right.'

She felt too shaken for the moment to argue with him. Somehow she responded to Jim's 'Goodnight, miss,' and the next she knew Reeve's hands pressed her down into the big armchair by the drawing room fire, and Mrs Pugh abandoned her knitting to pour out coffee for them both.

'I can see it wasn't easy in there,' she remarked with a searching glance at Marion's face.

'It was mostly Aaron Wade,' she began wearily. 'He went on and on about his farm, and the church ....' She took a hurried gulp of coffee to cover the humiliating quaver in her voice.

'What, Aaron Wade stand up for the church?' Mrs Pugh snorted scornfully. 'He's a funny one to do that, and no mistake. He's kept up a running fight with three vicars in a row for the last twenty odd years, and all because he let one of his cows eat yew from a tree in the churchyard, and it died. It was his own carelessness that did it, but he blamed the vicar at the time, and he's taken it out on the other two who've had the living because of it. He wears a grudge like a coat, does that man,' she declared waspishly.

That just about summed up the whole Wade family, thought Marion, and dropped her head back tiredly against the chair cushions.

'Well, I'm off to bed now things have quietened down.' Mrs Pugh stifled a yawn behind a plump hand. 'And from the look of you, you'd best be doing the same,' she advised Marion.

'I'll come up with you.' Marion started to pull herself up from her chair. She did not want to make the effort, but she did not want to be left alone with Reeve, either.

'Finish your coffee first.' Reeve nodded pleasantly to the housekeeper, and put Marion's refilled cup back into her hands. She had not asked for another cup, but she had to take it or risk a spill. He stood half in front of her chair, effectively preventing her from rising, and she watched the housekeeper close the door behind her with a feeling of inevitability.

'I suppose you feel satisfied now?' She spoke in a hard voice, into the silence that followed Mrs Pugh's departure. She leaned forward to put her coffee cup on the table near to her chair, her movement obliging Reeve to stand aside. It gave her a small satisfaction that he had to move away, and rejecting her unwanted coffee gave her another. She did not intend to drink it just because Reeve had given it to her.

'You effectively scattered the herd,' she added bitterly, almost to herself. Reeve would not understand the inference, but what did it matter? She underestimated his perception.

'Surely that's the best tactic, when you're fighting single-handed?' He took her point immediately, and pulling up the chair opposite to her he leaned back and crossed his legs comfortably. Marion noticed the knife-edge creases in his perfectly pressed slacks.

'Not so far as I'm concerned, it isn't.' She spoke quickly, reaction to the strain she had been subjected to undermining her caution. 'You deliberately made it look as if I sided with you. As if I knew about the reservoir all along, and supplied you with all sorts of information.' She swallowed convulsively, and started again with difficulty. 'They'll all look on me as some sort of traitor,' she burst out hotly.

'Not for long, they won't.' Reeve seemed completely uncaring of what he had done, and its possible consequences for her, she thought heatedly. 'It'll be a nine days' wonder, then it'll die down, and life will go on just the same.'

'How can it, if you flood the valley?'

'We were talking about your relationship with the valley people,' he reminded her blandly.

'I probably haven't got any relationships left with them now, thanks to you.'

'Do you want them, Marion?' he asked her quietly, and in his voice was an underlying something that brought her eyes up to his in startled surprise. He uncrossed his legs and leaned forward in his chair, his arms resting on his knees, and his eyes bored into her own, questioning, demanding an answer. But she neither knew what the question was, nor what she was supposed to answer. When he looked at her like that her mind went blank. Her powers of reasoning deserted her, and her own feelings threatened to overwhelm her. She dared not give way to them now. Above all, she must not allow Reeve to suspect how she felt towards him. It would undermine her power to fight the plans he had for the valley. If only he had come to the Fleece as an ordinary guest, she thought miserably, how different things might have been then.

'Of course I want them,' she spoke forcefully, trying by words to blot out the train of her thoughts. 'They're my people.'

'They're not.' He contradicted her patiently, like someone trying to reason with an obstructive child, she thought angrily. 'You belong to Miles. Possibly,' he smiled, 'you also belong to Mrs Pugh. But not to the valley people. You can't argue otherwise,' he stilled her protest and went on confidently, 'you weren't brought up in the valley, and now your work, your whole way of life, lies outside it.'

'I came back to live here.' She dared not allow him to go on, what he said was the truth, and she must not admit it, even to herself.

'Only as a temporary measure, to be with your uncle until he found his feet again after his wife died. And he appears to be coping very well, probably the book he's writing has helped.'

Implying that her presence at the Fleece was no longer necessary. Sudden tears pricked the back of her eyes. Fatigue, and strain, and the treacherous morass of her own emotions, took their toll, and she felt a weak desire to cry. She blinked hard several times, and managed to force the tears back. She must not let them fall in front of Reeve, he would scorn her weakness, and regard it as another victory, one of many individual victories which he would win in order to take over the valley. If only things were different, and she could cry out her troubles against his shoulder, let the tears fall, and feel his arms go round her, comforting her. Hear his deep, calm voice assure her that all would be well, and believe it, because he said so....

'You'll soon have to make a decision one way or another, about staying on with your uncle.' Brutally he forced her to look at something which she had managed to push to the back of her mind for many weeks, a growing realisation that her time at the Fleece was nearing its end, and she must soon make up her mind to take up the threads of her old life again. In the face of a family emergency, the decision to abandon it had not seemed too difficult. Now, her previous existence of constant travel and new faces, that had seemed so interesting before, held out no attraction to her. Life without Reeve held no attraction.

'Even if the reservoir project doesn't go ahead, would you be content to remain here in the valley indefinitely?' he persisted. 'Among the valley people? Do you really have enough in common with any of them to make you want to stay? All those who are left are either a lot older or a lot younger than you are. Ben Wade's about the only one who's anywhere near your own age.' His expression told Marion quite plainly what he thought of Ben Wade as a suitable companion for her.

'I'm quite capable of making my own decisions,' she snapped. 'And finding my own friends, without your help.' She jumped to her feet abruptly, and her hands came up in an instinctive gesture, as if to ward off his questions. Or to ward off the answers that she found she did not want to listen to? Frighteningly, she discovered she did not even like the valley people much any more. The glimpse she received of their faces in the uproar of the bar-room had classed them all as strangers, with whom she had nothing in common, not even the fight for their homes.

Reeve was right—again—she admitted despairingly. She had no place in the valley. It was she who was the stranger, not the valley people. She did not belong, except to her uncle and Mrs Pugh. But they were family, and did not count.

'Why did you have to come here, upsetting everything?' she cried passionately. 'Everything was peaceful until you came.' She had not made any close friends in the valley, but she had not made any enemies either, and now, she realised with a sick feeling of dismay, she had probably made more than one of the latter after the events in the bar-room that evening. Until Reeve arrived, her work had been sufficient to keep her happy. Now that was spoiled too, because of him. She found it difficult to forgive him for spoiling her joy in her work.

'My being here doesn't alter the fact that you'd have had to make a decision about leaving your uncle and resuming your own life sooner or later.' He spoke sharply, as if her thrust had gone home.

'Whether or not I decide to stay with Uncle Miles is none of your business,' she retorted angrily. 'Because you're trying to take over the valley, it doesn't give you the right to take over our family life as well.' He could take over her own life any time he pleased, simply for the asking, she thought drearily. But he would not ask. She had made an enemy of Reeve, as well as the rest of the valley.

'I'm going to bed. I'm too tired to stand here and argue with you. Goodnight.'

She turned abruptly towards the door. He rose as she came to his chair and stood silently watching her. She paused. She did not want to. She wanted to sweep out of the door and slam it behind her, but her feet would not obey her will. They obeyed her treacherous heart instead, and brought her to a dragging halt, facing him. Why was it she had to remember so clearly what happened the last time they were in this room together? To feel his arms around her—her whole body ached for the feel of his arms. Her look was unconsciously appealing, but it did not soften Reeve's expression. He looked back at her, making no move to touch her, but standing rigidly apart, and his voice was as hard as his face as he replied curtly,

'Goodnight!'

Just that, and nothing more. She winced as if he had struck her. The pain of the blow that did not fall galvanised her feet into action. Unerringly they carried her through the door she could no longer see, up the stairs that felt as steep as the fellside by the waterfall, and into the blessed privacy of her own room, where her brimming eyes spilled over, and she tried with desperate hands to stifle the sobs that racked her shaking body until it felt as if her heart must surely break.

She
awoke the next day with a headache. Sleep eluded her until the early hours of the morning, the torment of her mind denying her exhausted body rest, until the first faint streaks of daylight appeared through the curtains, and she finally dropped into an uneasy doze. As a result, she slept late.

'Heavens, is that the time?'

By now she had usually taken Gyp for a walk and had a critical look at her previous day's work on the woodcut to see if there was any final touching up to be done before she took it a stage further.

'Where's the haste?' Mrs Pugh enquired placidly when she hurried downstairs, tugging her sweater into place over her slacks with fumbling fingers.

'Gyp hasn't had his walk vet.'

'Gyp took himself off for a walk, when you didn't appear,' the housekeeper told her comfortably.

'On his own?' Marion looked up sharply. 'Where is he now? Has he come back?' Alarm bells rang in her mind, and she looked round the kitchen urgently.