Force of Feeling

Guy received the telegram at the end of a long, hot Hollywood day which he had spent alternately arguing with the film’s director and placating Julien Forbes, whose book was being used as the basis for the film.

Julien was objecting to various changes the director wanted to make, and, while Guy had every sympathy with him, he was beginning to wish he had never agreed to help. Agents were persona non grata on any film set, and if he hadn’t been desperate to get away from England, and if Julien hadn’t been so insistent, he would have recommended someone else for the job.

He knew damn well what was bugging him, Guy acknowledged derisively: a certain woman whose image he just could not get out of his mind, whose body he ached to have beside him at night when he went to bed, whose conversation he missed damnably. Campion. What was she doing? Who was she with…the same man who had been sharing her room in Cornwall?

When the telegram came, he thought for a moment that she had sent it. She’d decide that her freedom was worth less than what they had enjoyed together, and she’d sent for him to come to her…

He took the telegram from the messenger and read the simple message.

‘Come home immediately. We need you,’ it read, and it was signed ‘Meg and Alison’.

He headed straight for the phone.

* * *

Alison had joined the Drummonds for their evening meal for the second evening in succession; Meg had insisted to her twin that she needed some moral support in case Guy arrived. A phone call to his house had elicited the fact that he was on his way to England, but they had not been able to discover when to expect him. Naturally enough, Tait was aware of his wife’s and his sister-in-law’s tension; the air was practically humming with it.

Both of them literally jumped in their seats when the doorbell rang, and Meg went peagreen when Tait got up and said calmly, ‘Stay here, I’ll answer it.’

He was looking anything but calm when he walked into the dining-room five minutes later, an exhausted, unshaven Guy at his side.

As she looked at her brother, Meg felt a pang of remorse. He looked dreadful—pale and tired, but, more than that, almost haunted.

They had almost finished their meal, and after one look at his wife’s guilty face, Tait said succinctly, ‘Right, kids, out.’ He waited until the door had closed behind them before saying, ‘All right, Meg. What’s going on?’

Meg looked appealingly at Alison, but her twin could only shake her head. She had gone as pale as Guy, and, looking at her stricken face, Meg knew that there was only one person who was going to be able to go through with their plan, and that was herself.

She cleared her throat, alarmed to discover that the look in Guy’s eyes made her feel about five years old.

There was only one way she was going to be able to do this… It was too late for tact or diplomacy. She took a deep breath, and Tait warned her, ‘Meg, you’ve brought Guy rushing half-way across the world in the belief that the family’s suffered some kind of tragedy. I think you owe it to him to tell him why, don’t you?’

Meg discovered for the first time in her life that she was actually frightened of her brother. Gone was the indulgence, the tenderness she had always known, and in its place was a hard, unyielding anger.

‘Guy, it’s Campion…Campion Roberts.’ She gulped nervously. ‘She…she’s having a baby…’

Just for a fraction of time she saw the shock and anguish in his eyes, and then it was gone, leaving them flat and cold.

‘And you’ve brought me God knows how many thousand miles to tell me that a woman I haven’t seen in months is pregnant. Why, for God’s sake?’

He didn’t know! He really didn’t know, Meg realised, and if it hadn’t been for that illuminating moment of betrayal when she had seen the truth in his eyes, she couldn’t have gone on.

Underneath the table, she groped for Alison’s hand and, holding it tightly, she said huskily, ‘The baby…babies are yours.’

There was an electric, humming silence, which Tait broke up by saying dazedly, ‘Meg…’

But no one was listening to him. Guy stood up and gripped Meg’s arm, bruising it without realising what he was doing, his face white and strained beneath the Hollywood tan, and two day’s stubble.

‘Say that again,’ he demanded thickly.

Meg lifted her head and looked into his eyes, her heartbeat slowing back to normal. It was going to be all right… She had been right. He did care.

‘Campion is carrying your child…children,’ she amended, with a brief smile. ‘She’s having twins.’

She reached out and touched him then, her eyes soft and pleading.

‘Guy, she loves you so much. What happened between you… Every time I see her, she asks me about you, even though I can see she’s trying desperately not to. Those poor little babies… Our nieces!’ she added. ‘We had to make you come home, you must see that,’ she persisted when he made no reply. He looked, in fact, as though he had stopped listening to her, an arrested expression, which she had no difficulty in recognising at all, lightening his eyes.

‘Couldn’t you have chosen a less drastic method?’ he asked drily, but the anger had gone from his face and body, and he was even beginning to smile slightly.