Force of Feeling

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…’