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'The Post Office hasn't taken away my licence yet,' the postmistress recovered her courage under Marion's smile, and spoke more firmly. 'They only said they'd have to consider it, because there's so few folk in Fallbeck who need it now.'

'That will make a difference to your trade, won't it?' Reeve spoke sympathetically.

'It won't be worth keeping open just to sell a few sweets and birthday cards,' the white-haired woman agreed, and her lips trembled. 'I could go and live with our Brenda in Dale End, I suppose, she keeps on at me to go. She's got a big house, and I could have a couple of rooms of my own, and take my bits and pieces, but I don't know ... it's the upheaval, and all.'

'Perhaps it won't come to that after all,' Reeve said kindly, and passed his letters over the counter. One was a long package. Willy's report? Marion edged closer to try and see the address to which it was being sent, but Reeve turned the package the other way round so that the writing was upside down from where she stood, and she could make no sense of the letters. The postmistress put out her hand to take them, and Marion moved away again, and pretended to be intent on picking out her packet of paper handkerchiefs.

'I'll take a couple of packets of chocolate while we're here,' Reeve delved deep into his pocket and picked up two of the largest slabs of fruit and nut chocolate from the counter.

'Fancy stuff's no good for you,' Zilla Wade sniffed critically, but the eyes of the little postmistress brightened.

'This is how it used to be, when we had a bus service,' she said wistfully, and handed him his change.

'The lady looked as if a bit of sweet stuff might not come amiss with her,' Reeve remarked ruefully on their way out.

'It'll melt in this heat,' Marion predicted unkindly. She could not bring herself to agree with him out loud, though she doubted if chocolate would do much to sweeten Zilla Wade's tongue.

'We'll eat it.'

'You'll die of thirst, eating sweet stuff when you're climbing. It's getting hot already.'

'In that case, I'll donate it to a worthy cause,' Reeve said imperturbably, and taking her by the arm he crossed the street towards the school where John Cornish was ushering his pitifully small class through the gate.

'I seem to have acquired two surplus blocks of chocolate,' he smiled at the older man. He had an unexpectedly sweet smile. Marion tried not to notice, but she could not help herself. It lit his eyes, and warmed them, curved the clean-cut lips, and softened the stern set of the darkly tanned face. 'I thought perhaps you might find a good home for them,' his glance rested on the suddenly hopeful faces of the children.

'Indeed we can,' John Cornish accepted the unexpected windfall delightedly. 'Two of my class have got birthdays today, we'll have a little party.'

Now he's made another conquest—the thought flashed across Marion's mind. He's won over John Cornish, and his entire class. And that probably means the children's parents as well. There was no reason why Reeve should not be nice to the people he met in the village. And it was her fault that he had jettisoned the chocolate, she had goaded him into it, but the knowledge left her unrepentant, and still suspicious. She wished she knew his motive for coming to Fallbeck in the first place. He was obviously not there merely on holiday, and if he had come to the area on business, then surely Dale End would have been a more logical place in which to stay.

'Is that his entire school?' Reeve asked her casually as they moved away, and Marion answered him absentmindedly, her thoughts still on the conundrum of why he had come to the valley.

'Mmm. It'll be smaller still soon, when the children over eleven years old leave to go to Dale End. There's two sets of twins going, which won't help.'

'How do they get to Dale End, without a bus service?'

'By the post van, of course.' How else did he think they got there? she thought impatiently. 'They go first thing in the morning, and back at night. It makes a long day for them, but there's no alternative.'

'What about the winter, when it snows? How do they get on about schooling then?' Reeve persisted, and Marion frowned.

'The education authorities have thought that one out, too,' she told him drily. Simply because Fallbeck was isolated, it did not automatically mean that they were devoid of intelligence, she thought sarcastically. 'During the worst of the winter the children board in Dale End. The pass gets blocked if we have a lot of snow, and it's better for them to
stay with families in the town rather than risk the journey, or lose their lessons.'

'That can't be very satisfactory from the parents' point of view,' Reeve commented. 'I don't think I'd like my children in the care of strangers for most of the week. There'd be no family life left.'

His children? So that meant he was married. She stiffened. If Reeve was married he had had no right to kiss her last night. And she had no right to respond. Marion abhorred disloyalty. Marriage was for ever.... Her voice was icy when she replied.

There can't be a lot of family life if the husband is away most of the time,' she pointed out coldly. 'But I suppose it's different, for you?' He pronounced on the rest of the world, she thought angrily, and calmly ignored his own dereliction. He had been at the Fleece for several days now, and showed no signs of leaving, so what was happening to his own family life in the meantime?

'Since I have neither wife nor children, it doesn't apply to me.'

He was laughing at her. His eyes, narrowed with amusement, watched her, reading her thoughts. Knowing she remembered last night's kiss, and sensing accurately the desolate feeling of betrayal that swept over her when she thought he was married.

Speechless with embarrassment, she cast about her desperately for something—anything—to break the charged silence between them. A dog-collared figure emerged from the church and turned into the gateway of a nearby cottage.

'Good morning, Vicar!' Marion waved gaily, and received an answering greeting, and Reeve said,

'I haven't been inside the church yet. What's it like?'

'Architecturally, it's uninteresting,' Marion said curtly, repeating what she had often heard her uncle say to visitors. They had already made one stop at the Post Office, and another at the school, both for Reeve's benefit. If she had been by herself she could have been half way up the fellside by now, while it was still cool enough to make climbing comfortable. As it was the sun was rapidly getting hotter, and it would be a sticky climb before they got to the top. If Reeve had got nothing better to do than stroll about inspecting the village, she had, she told herself resentfully. There was her own sketch to finish, and her uncle's map. She was determined Reeve should not touch her uncle's map. His arrogant assumption that he was more capable of placing the course of the drovers' road than she still nettled her.

'In that case, another day will do.'

Reeve was maddeningly indifferent. In her present mood Marion felt she would almost have welcomed opposition from him, if only to give her an opportunity to fight back. She set her lips and turned upwards, off the road, and blessed the fact that the sheep-tracks across the fellside were narrow. That way, she would not have to walk beside Reeve. Then she realised he would have to walk behind her, and that was even worse. Deliberately she increased her pace, intent on leaving him behind. Since she had returned to Fallbeck she had spent a good deal of her time walking the fells, her slender figure made light of the slopes, and her breathing was scarcely quickened by the time she paused half way up, where the track forked, to decide which path to take.

The clink of a stone just below her made her start. Her deliberate burst of speed should have left Reeve well below her. Instead, he was only about a yard away, and climbing easily. She noticed to her chagrin that his breathing, too, was easy and unhurried. And the laughter in his eyes told her he knew why she had quickened her pace upwards, and because of it he had deliberately quickened his own to checkmate her move.

She compressed her lips and willed herself to remain where she was, looking at the view. It was from about this spot she had first caught sight of Ben Wade and his dog when she was last on the hill. The small Sock of sheep was still in the field where he had penned them, and it was obvious that they had not yet settled down to their new surroundings. They moved restlessly, grazing spasmodically, and raising their voices in repeated calling.

'They're kicking up quite a racket,' Reeve commented, following the direction of her gaze. 'The others seem quiet enough.' His keen glance roved the hillside.

'Ben Wade only brought them here the other day. He bought them from a holding in Merevale,' Marion told him. 'The farmer there is giving up for some reason, and Ben was glad to take some of his stock off his hands at a cheap rate. The Wades can't resist a bargain,' she said drily, 'that was Zilla Wade—Ben's mother—you saw in the Post Office this morning.'

Her lips curved upwards at his expression, and suddenly she found she was laughing with him; tilting back her head and letting the warm breeze riffle soft fingers through her hair, and chuckling at unspoken, shared thoughts, that both knew, and neither wanted to utter. 'They'll quieten soon enough,' she sobered again, 'it's being in a strange pasture that makes them cry, as soon as they get used to it they'll settle down. Sheep are like that.'

'So are people,' Reeve remarked unexpectedly, and Marion looked at him sharply. He had a way of making odd, unrelated comments that she found disconcerting. It was as if there was some deep, underlying meaning, that she did not understand, and it had the effect of leaving her uneasy in her mind.

'Let's get on.' She turned abruptly and moved upwards again, but her pace was slower now, and when the bracken and heather began to thin, giving way to sparse turf and rock, Reeve moved up and walked beside her. They reached the ridge in silence, and Marion turned along it, seeking the rock where she had sheltered before. And from where the helicopter had flushed her like a frightened quail. She smarted at the memory.

'This is as far as I go.' She dropped on to the patch of turf beside the rock. Reeve could do whatever he liked, she thought mutinously. She did not invite him to come with her, and she did not feel obliged to entertain him now he was here. The hare had gone, of course, and with two people moving about it was unlikely it would come back. If she had been on her own, it might have done, she thought resentfully. But the clump of harebells was there, exactly as she had started to sketch it, and left off to draw the hare while she had the opportunity. She stripped the waterproof cover from her clipboard. She felt Reeve's eyes on the pencils, and shrugged. She would have to use them now, she had no others with her.

'While you're finishing your sketch, I'll do the map for you.' He leaned nonchalantly against the rock and reached down to remove the map from under the clip.

'No!' She covered it with her hands, gripping the edge of the clipboard with knuckles that showed white. 'Ill do it myself, I'm quite capable,' she told him in a taut voice.

'Please yourself.' He straightened up and shaded his eyes with one hand, looking across the sunlit fellside. 'Is that the rock over there, where your uncle marked the drovers' road?' he asked interestedly, and she relaxed, and let her hand fall away from the clipboard.

'Yes, I'll go over there afterwards and make sure which side of the rock it runs. It'll be simple enough to alter the marking on the map if it's necessary,' she added firmly.

'I'll borrow it to guide me in the meantime.' Before she realised what he was about to do, he leaned down again, lithely bending from the waist in an effortless movement, and took the clipboard from her hands, and deftly removed the map from beneath the clip, leaving her sketch where it was.

'I told you....' She went white with fury, and he gazed at her coolly.

'I know what you told me, and I won't mark your map,' he said smoothly. 'I merely want to borrow it for a moment to guide me in the right direction. That's what maps are made for,' he taunted her softly. 'Now I'll leave you in peace to get on with your sketch.' And he walked away, with the map in his hand.

'You—you ' she breathed chokingly. She stood rigid against the rock, and hated him with a force that frightened her. She glared at his retreating back, and wondered if he could feel her loathing, as she had felt his look from the helicopter when she descended the hillside. But if he did he gave no sign. He paused once, but he did not turn to look back. She saw him straighten the parchment in his hands, holding it flat against the tug of the light breeze, and then he looked away downhill towards the rocky outcrop, as if comparing it with the map, and debating on which side of the rock the line of the drovers' road ran.

'I don't care what he says, I'll decide for myself, so he's only wasting his time,' she muttered rebelliously. She sat down on the turf and reached for her sketchblock. 'He can wander as far away as he likes, I don't care so long as he leaves me in peace to finish my work,' she addressed the clump of harebells. They nodded gently in the breeze, as if agreeing with her, and she started to sketch. But although she had no trouble concentrating before, this time her pencil refused to do as she wished, and twice she scored through the lines she had done, impatiently.

'If I was using my own pencil, it wouldn't have happened,' she blamed her tool unjustly, and for the umpteenth time her eyes strayed from her drawing, magnetised against her will by the tall, dark figure standing near the rocky outcrop. By just being there he destroyed her powers of concentration, and she glowered at him resentfully.

'I'll try shading instead, it might look better.' But although she resolutely tried to ignore Reeve and concentrate solely on her work, the figure that broke the skyline drew her eyes against her inclinations, until eventually her pencil slowed to a halt, and she scowled critically at the results of her efforts.

'It looks like a schoolchild doing art for 'O' levels,' she muttered disgustedly, and thrust the sketchblock back into the waterproof cover with a gesture of despair. She should have refused Reeve's company, even at the risk of upsetting her uncle, she might have known it would be useless to try and work while he was there.