Force of Feeling

Why had she never acknowledged this feeling before? It had been there, only she had buried it so deeply that she had never allowed herself to recognise it. It was frightening how much she could miss Guy after such a very short space of time.

As she waited for the kettle to boil, her memory started to play unwanted tricks on her. As a teenager, she had longed for a husband and family of her own. With this mythical family, she would experience the love and security she had never felt with her own parents. But didn’t all teenage girls go through that stage? she derided herself angrily. She had been lucky, she had discovered very early on in life how empty and meaningless marriage could be.

Lucky? To have had her hopes and dreams destroyed so cruelly, and with them all her burgeoning sexuality?

Stop it. Stop it! she warned herself fiercely. There was no point in going over and over the past. It had happened; that was a fact of life. She was what she was: a moderately intelligent woman who had been lucky enough to find she had a talent for writing and, in doing so, had discovered a means of escape from the grim reality of her loneliness.

The kettle boiled and switched itself off. Campion didn’t notice. She was staring blankly at the wall. She wasn’t lonely, she was solitary; it was a different thing. She had friends, very good friends…

So good, that none of them, apart from Lucy, knew about her past—about Craig. She shivered involuntarily. All right, so she didn’t discuss Craig with anyone, but why should she? It was over, finished. And she had come to terms with what had happened years ago.

Had she? Then why did she feel like crying out for someone to tell her that Craig was wrong, that she was desirable? Why did she feel that her life was empty? Why did she ache for—for Guy French?

She shuddered and gripped the worktop. What on earth was she trying to do to herself? Guy would never want…

‘Good, you’re just putting the kettle on. I’m ready for a drink.’

Campion stared at the open doorway, and Guy, as though she had never seem him before in her life. All the colour drained from her skin, leaving it so pale that he frowned and instinctively took a step towards her.

‘Campion, are you all right?’

He was going to touch her and she couldn’t let him do that. Not now… Frantically, she backed away from him and said huskily, ‘You’re back.’

‘Yes, don’t you remember? I came back last night, having spent the evening driving round in circles, trying to work off my temper.’

Last night. He had come back last night. She had a vivid memory of her own surprise at waking up in bed this morning, when she had known she had fallen asleep in the chair. She fought to get hold of another elusive and very worrying memory, but it slipped from her.

‘Miss me, did you?’

He was smiling at her, and her whole body burned with pain and resentment. How dared he pretend that he cared how she felt, one way or the other? How dared he treat her in this mock flirtatious manner, when they both knew he couldn’t possibly find her remotely attractive? It was an insult to her intelligence. It was… She fought to get a grip on herself, to stop herself from betraying to him what she was feeling.

‘As a matter of fact, I was too busy working to miss you,’ she told him coolly.

‘Yes, so I noticed. I read what you’d done. Didn’t you see the note I left for you?’

He’d read her work, before she’d checked it herself? The same hollow feeling she’d experienced earlier came back, but this time it was stronger, more painful.

‘It’s coming along nicely,’ Guy continued, apparently oblivious to her tension. ‘Will she take him in the end?’

‘Will who take whom?’ Campion asked him, confused.

‘Lynsey. Will she take Dickon? The King’s choice.’

Campion had the uncomfortable feeling that there was more to the casual question than she could see.

‘I don’t know. I haven’t decided yet.’

Guy was giving her an odd look, a mixture of exasperation and…tenderness. Tenderness? She looked away from him. She was letting her imagination go too far.

‘Your Dickon’s a very strong character,’ Guy told her. ‘Perhaps he won’t give Lynsey much choice. Unlike me, he seems to have an overwhelming passion for small, high breasts…’

He was alluding to the passage she had written describing Dickon’s awareness of her heroine, but, as he spoke, Guy was looking at her…at her body, Campion realised on a sudden flush of anger. He was looking at her breasts, surely hardly noticeable beneath her thick clothes. What was more, he was looking at her as though there was nothing he wanted more than to strip those clothes from her body and to take her breasts into his hands and…

What was she doing to herself? Her mind seemed to have devised its own cruel form of torment for her. She knew that there was no possibility of Guy looking at her with such yearning desire, and, if he was doing to, it could only be to taunt her…to mock her.

On a fiercely protective surve of rage, she retorted dangerously, ‘Yes, I think everyone knows what you have a passion for.’

For a moment, Guy looked almost unsure of himself. Hard colour stung the high planes of his cheekbones, and then abruptly he was smiling at her, his smile loaded with mockery and malice.