These were the ones he had chosen, and Campion saw now that they were all by the same author.
‘He’s thinking of changing agent, and it may be that he’ll come to us. His style isn’t quite up to our standard, but that may be the fault of his present publishers. We shall have to see. I don’t want to stop you from working, Campion, I just want to make sure that you don’t overdo things. You go at things almost obsessively, you know. When you work, you don’t eat, you don’t relax…’
Obsessive—was that how he saw her? She shivered slightly. Was he trying subtly to warn her that she mustn’t direct that driving obsession into their relationship? If so, there was no need; she already knew the truth. After all, he had made her no promises, no vows, no whispers of love, even in their most passionate moments…
He was putting the books back into the bag and suddenly he frowned, ‘What’s this?’
‘It’s nothing,’ she told him hurriedly, reaching out to snatch it from him. ‘Just something I bought.’
Guy looked at her for a moment, plainly aware of her agitation, and then he handed the carrier to her with a small smile. She reached for it, but in her tension let it slide from her grasp. As it fell towards the floor, Guy caught hold of it, but its tissue-wrapped contents were already revealed as they tumbled out of the package.
All her old uncertainties, her fears and her inadequacies swept back as Campion stood, unable to move, unable to look away from the delicate satin garments the tissue paper had revealed. Her face still burned hot with mortification. If only Guy would say something, instead of just looking at her in that steady way.
It seemed an aeon of time before he did.
‘Come with me,’ he told her quietly, and then, taking her hand, he drew her upstairs to the room they shared.
As he had done once before, he stood her in front of the pier-glass, and then, while she tried not to tremble, he slowly unfastened the buttons of her blouse and then peeled it from her skin. Her skirt followed, and then her underwear, until she was naked, shivering slightly, more from tension than cold.
‘These—’ his hands touched her breasts lightly, and then moved down over her body ‘—you, are so beautiful, so perfect, that you need no adornment, no gilding for me to take pleasure in the sight of you, but, manlike, I can’t help the way I feel, knowing that you wanted to add to such perfection for my benefit.
‘Nothing could feel better than the silk of your skin; nothing could be more sensuous than the way your body responds to my touch.’ He turned her to face him and said with a wry smile, ‘What did you think I was going to say?’
She was really shaking now, as she clutched the underwear to her. It had been an impulse buy, a desperate yearning to celebrate her new sensuality, and yet the moment she was out of the shop she had experienced fear, panic almost, and she had already decided that the underwear would remain unworn. To another woman, there might be nothing provocative about it; it was perfectly decent and very respectable pure satin underwear, designed for a woman who liked to feel as feminine under her clothes as she did outwardly, but it was so different from the utilitarian underwear she ordinarily wore that she felt self-conscious and awkward.
‘I…I thought you might…laugh at me…’
She had made him angry. She could sense that in the very quality of his silence. His body was taut, as tense as her own, but in a different way.
‘Campion, Campion, you still don’t trust m
e, do you?’ he said harshly. ‘Part of you still thinks I’m going to turn into another Craig, doesn’t it?’
What could she say? Because, in a way, it was true, only it was not that she didn’t trust him. More that she didn’t trust herself. Their relationship was still so new to her, the reality of him actually wanting her so…so almost unbelievable, that she was afraid to take anything for granted. She was like a child, given a much-longed-for gift and terrified that it might be snatched away from her again, she recognised wryly.
‘Surely you know by now that I want you. You,’ he emphasised fiercely. ‘You, whether you come dressed in cotton, or silk or lace.’
‘But you prefer me to wear my hair down,’ she reminded him.
‘For purely selfish reasons. I love the way it feels when I touch it, and when it’s all screwed up I can’t do that. Trust me, Campion,’ he urged her. ‘Trust me not to be like Craig. I can’t obliterate the past, but I’m not part of it. This is the present.’
He released her slowly.
‘Right now, there’s nothing I want more than to take you to bed and show you how I feel about you, but that isn’t the answer, and making love shouldn’t be used in that way. I want you to give me your trust freely…when your mind’s clear. I’ll go down and start dinner.’
Campion dressed in a daze, and it was only when she got downstairs that she realised that she was wearing her new underwear. When she moved, she was conscious of the brush of the satin against her skin. It was a pleasurable sensation, not unlike…not unlike the touch of Guy’s hands, she admitted self-consciously.
* * *
The days passed. Her book grew; it had been almost entirely rewritten, so great had become her absorption in the development of Lynsey’s feelings for her husband.
Guy helped her enormously: reading, approving, sometimes pointing out areas of improvement.
She had put on weight, just a few pounds, enough to soften the angularity of her body. When she looked at herself in the mirror, she saw a different Campion, a Campion whose face and body reflected the way she felt. She moved with a new confidence, her body now something in which she took pleasure.
She had even learned to laugh a little at herself, something which was a totally new experience.
She had expected as their time together grew that Guy’s desire for her would mellow, but instead it seemed to grow more intense.