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'In that case, I shan't be depriving you. I don't like long pencils myself, they get in the way.' Miles Dorman foiled her half-formed decision to give her uncle the whole box full of new ones. 'I meant to ask you to shade in this map for me,' he went on, and unrolled a piece of parchment and spread it flat on the table. 'You do it so much better than I can. It's just this piece here, where the final length of road is marked.' He traced a roughly drawn line across the parchment.

'I'll do it for you now.' Marion held out her hand for the half pencil. If she could get it back she would give her uncle the whole new box full after all, she could split them in two for him to use. It would give her the greatest pleasure to break them all, she thought vindictively.

'Try out one of your new ones instead.' Reeve picked up the box from where she had dropped it, along with the duster, on the settee, and flipped open the lid, offering it to her like an open packet of cigarettes. Daring her to refuse to take one.

'It'll save me from being held up if you can finish the map for me now,' her uncle said gratefully, and slid the half pencil into the top pocket of his jacket. 'I'll sharpen your new one for you.' He took one from the box Reeve held out. 'Will this number do?'

Marion nodded, dumbly. She felt incapable of speaking. She watched while he sharpened it to a keener end for her, and abruptly turned her back on Reeve when her uncle held it out to her. She took it. It seemed to burn her fingers when she touched it, and she bent over the map, blotting out the sight of the dark, hawk face watching her. The rough sketched line of the road wavered before her eyes, and it took all her willpower to set to work to shade the area to the depth she knew from experience her uncle would desire. She could feel Reeve standing over her, although her eyes were bent on the map, his inflexible determination reached her like a spoken command, which he meant her to obey.

'I'll finish off the finer bits for you tomorrow, in the daylight.' It was impossible for her to do the map justice with Reeve there, his presence destroyed her concentration as well as her will power, and she straightened up with an impatient sigh.

'This is part of the drovers' road you can see from the fells by Fallbeck Scar.' To her relief her uncle made no comment on her reluctance to finish the map right away. Instead he turned the parchment round so that Reeve could see it more clearly. 'I'm not too certain about this end bit, though. I drew that from memory, and thinking back I'm almost sure it should be shown towards the right of that rocky outcrop there, not towards the left.'

'I'll take it with me tomorrow,' Marion offered, 'if it's fine I'll be going up the fell to try and finish off my own sketch. What with one thing and another I didn't manage to finish it today.' She gave Reeve a resentful stare, but he met it coolly and she turned away. 'I can do any alterations to the map for you while I'm up there.'

'Why not take Reeve with you?' Miles Dorman suggested innocently. 'He's seen the road from the air, he might like to see it at closer quarters.'

'I can make sure your map's marked up properly,' Reeve accepted his offer blandly, and Marion's temper flared.

'I'm quite capable of map drawing, I've done it before.' And I've no intention of allowing you to check my work, she added silently. 'Besides, I shall be busy finishing my own sketch,' she went on out loud, and Reeve said smoothly,

'I shan't disturb you.'

That was just the trouble. He did disturb her. Just by being there he took away her poise and the calm stability that until now she had always taken for granted. Until now, nobody had been able to upset it.

'I'll have to disturb myself,' Miles Dorman said regretfully, 'I always spend the last half hour or so with Jim in the bar. It helps ensure we close on time with no argument,' he smiled, and Marion wondered, not for the first time, how it was the scholarly little man came to be in such an unlikely trade. Her aunt had had the business acumen, which probably accounted for it.

'I'll come and see to any bits of washing up that are left,' Mrs Pugh folded up her knitting unhurriedly. 'There's never very much these days,' she said regretfully, 'I mind the time when we had a bus service, the place used to be busy all the evening.'

'I'll come and help you,' Marion offered hurriedly. The last thing she wanted was to be left alone with Reeve.

'There's no need,' Mrs Pugh was maddeningly obtuse. 'There'll only be a few glasses left to wash, I expect. Jim will have done the rest.' And she turned and followed Miles Dorman out of the room.

'And then there were two,' Reeve quoted softly, into the crackling silence that followed their departure.

She picked up the map from the table, keeping her back towards him. She did not want to turn to face him. Her hands trembled, so that the papers rustled, and she jostled them together, making believe she was trying to straighten them, to cover up the reason for the sound. If he had got any sense of decency, she thought desperately, he would go away and leave her alone. She turned from the table to the settee, and all the while she was acutely aware of him, watching her. Her sketch lay where she had left it, and she put the half-finished map on top, ready for the morning. Why did her uncle have to suggest Reeve should accompany her on the fell? she asked herself crossly. Maybe it would rain, and they would not be able to go. The thought gave her a momentary crumb of comfort.

The small chore done, there was no further excuse to remain facing the settee. But the alternative was to turn and face Reeve. She knew without looking that he had not moved from where he stood. She picked up the map and her sketch and hesitated. The box of pencils still lay on the cushions. Her lips tightened. They could remain there, so far as she was concerned. Her eyes fell on the neatly folded duster beside them. She had come downstairs intending to return them both to Reeve. Now was her opportunity. The duster was nearer to her hand, and she braced herself and picked it up.

'It's freshly washed and ironed.' She held it out towards him, and spoke through stiff lips. Her body felt tense, like a bow string, and she was strangely grateful for the tension, she felt if it left her she would begin to shake, and Reeve would see. Her breath came hurriedly, shallow and unsatisfying, and nearly stopped when he bent and reached for the box of pencils from the settee cushions.

'You've forgotten these.'

Stalemate. The thought flashed across her mind without humour. Somewhere it seemed to have occurred to her before, but she could not think where.

'I'll take this.' He took the duster from her nerveless fingers. 'And you,' his voice hardened with inflexible determination, 'you will take these.' He folded her fingers that had held the duster, firmly over the flat box of pencils, and his own held them there, forcing her to grip it; feeling the sharp edge of the box that began to press into the palm of her hand, with a discomfort that would soon become pain.

'And if you don't feel like thanking me for the pencils,' he went on in an even voice, 'that won't stop me from thanking you for the duster. Thanking you properly,' he mimicked Mrs Pugh. With his one hand still over her own, forcing her to keep her grip on the pencil box, he drew her towards him. He put his other hand round her waist, she could feel the palm of it warm against her back, as she had felt it warm on her shoulder in the airport observation lounge. His touch seemed to take away her power to move, to breathe....

With silent fascination, she watched his face come closer to her own, waited for the pressure of his lips that she knew would come, anticipating the heady sweetness that would course like old wine through her veins. The tension left her, and she began to tremble, and his lips found hers,
touching them masterfully, but at the same time gently, tasting the sweetness of them as a connoisseur tastes fine wine.

Something deep and unsuspected inside her came to life at the ardour of his touch. Emotions that until now had lain dormant, flowered into tender bloom as his lips began to wander, travelling over her eyes, closing each lid in turn, then passing on across the delicate blue veins of her throbbing temples, down across the slender line of her jaw, until they came to rest in the warm, pulsing hollow of her throat. Their touch acted like a golden key, releasing emotions that had lain prisoner for too long. She drew a long shuddering breath, and her arms rose, clasping him round his neck, her hands drawing down his dark head hungrily to her own again when he raised it for an instant to look deep into her eyes.

'Marion!'

The dying embers of the fire made soft shadows on the wall. They flickered like tiny smiles across the ash, as the log burned through at last, and crumbled into the bottom of the grate with a sound like a sigh. The momentarily stronger flame threw into relief two shadows, and died shyly away as the two became blended into one, and first the duster, then the box of pencils, dropped unnoticed on to the floor.

P
erhaps
it was raining.

Marion jumped hopefully out of bed and pulled aside the curtains, and her heart sank. A light morning mist shrouded the hills, thickening as it neared the valley and the line of the deck, but already the sun was busy dispelling it from the nearer slopes, fulfilling its promise of a perfect day. There seemed to be no way she could escape
spending it with Reeve. Her uncle had irretrievably committed her last night. She shook her head impatiently. She did not want to remember last night. Her cheeks burned at the thought of Reeve, and how he must be laughing at her now.

'He's won Uncle Miles over, now I suppose he thinks he's won me as well,' she derided herself bitterly. Just what he might want to win her over to escaped her. It all seemed to be bound up in the inexplicable mystery of Reeve himself, and why he had come to the valley.

'He'll find this morning I'm a different proposition,' she vowed to herself, and her lips set determinedly. If Reeve thought he could gain her trust by a few casually dispensed kisses in the firelight, he could think again.

But had they been so casual, to her?

'Of course they were,' she assured herself aloud, and forcefully, as if hearing herself speak might serve to convince her. A flash of temper, a clash of wills, and manlike Reeve had chosen that way to settle it, to get his own way. She tried to ignore the fact that her own feelings would not settle down. The unexpected emotions his kisses roused in her would not return dutifully to hibernation again, and she felt disturbed, and restless, and angry with Reeve because of it. Why, oh, why had Uncle Miles suggested Reeve go with her today? But despite her anger against Reeve, she could not find it in her heart to vent her feelings on her scholarly relative, particularly when he told her amiably,

'I've sharpened two more of those new pencils for you. You left them in the sitting room last night.' He handed them to her in the hall on her way out, and she accepted them in silence and tucked them inside the rubber band stretched round her clipboard.

'I've got your map.' To be on the safe side she slipped a waterproof cover over the block of papers. The weather could change with dramatic suddenness on the high tops, and her uncle's parchment was precious.

'I'll carry that for you.' Reeve appeared and held out
his hand, but she clung to her clipboard stubbornly.

'It's not heavy. Besides, you've got your letters to carry.' To her relief he did not insist, he merely nodded and said,

'I'll drop these in at the Post Office on our way out, they'll go by the next delivery.'

'That won't be until this evening, the post van's already gone this morning.' She felt a malicious satisfaction that in this one thing, at least, Reeve could not have his own way.

'No matter, there's no great urgency,' he spoiled her slight triumph. 'If there had been, Willy would have taken them with him into Dale End.'

'Aren't you going with him?' She grasped at the final straw. Perhaps after all he might change his mind about coming with her.

'I promised to come with you, remember?' He eyed her quizzically, and she felt her colour rise.

'In that case let's go. It's a long climb,' she told him shortly.

'The Post Office first,' he insisted, and she followed him reluctantly. She would have preferred to walk on and assert her independence, and let him catch her up as best he might, but she wanted a packet of paper handkerchiefs. They would have formed part of her shopping yesterday afternoon if the rain, and Reeve, had not prevented her from doing any. A rising sense of irritation took her at the seeming inevitability of it all. Even the weather conspired to throw her into Reeve's company.

Her irritation rose still further as she stepped into the tiny overcrowded shop and saw Zilla Wade already at the counter, deep in conversation with the postmistress. The advent of other customers did not check the fanner's wife's diatribe, if anything it served to increase its venom.

'It's disgraceful, that's what it is. First they stopped the bus service, and now it's the Post Office.' She caught sight of Marion, and her sharp black eyes glowed spitefully. 'They'll be taking the licence off the Fleece next, you mark
my words. And then what?' she asked the world at large, not giving it time to answer before she went on, the words tumbling over one another in bitter recrimination, 'it's the only place the menfolk have got round here, it's bad enough trying to scrape a living off the holding, goodness knows, without having nowhere to go at the end of the day,' she cried.

'There's Dale End,' the postmistress put in timidly, and the farmer's wife snorted.

'Dale End takes time, and petrol costs money, and we've got neither to spare. We have to work for our living.' The last, Marion knew, was aimed at herself. Zilla Wade had made plain her opinion of art as a livelihood on more than one occasion. She ignored the jibe, and approached the counter.

'I've heard nothing about the Fleece losing its licence. I'm sure Uncle Miles would have told me, if he had.' She wondered, uneasily, if he would. If, indeed, these days he would even have bothered to open the notification in the first place, but she suppressed her doubts, conscious of Zilla Wade's sharp eyes on her face, noting her every change of expression, and ready to make capital out of it.