Celebrate the legend that is bestselling author

PENNY JORDAN

Phenomenally successful author of more than two hundred books with sales of over a hundred million copies!

Penny Jordan’s novels are loved by millions of readers all around the word in many different languages. Mills & Boon are proud to have published one hundred and eighty-seven novels and novellas written by Penny Jordan, who was a reader favourite right from her very first novel through to her last.

This beautiful digital collection offers a chance to recapture the pleasure of all of Penny Jordan’s fabulous, glamorous and romantic novels for Mills & Boon.

About the Author

PENNY JORDAN is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular authors. Sadly, Penny died from cancer on 31st December 2011, aged sixty-five. She leaves an outstanding legacy, having sold over a hundred million books around the world. She wrote a total of one hundred and eighty-seven novels for Mills & Boon, including the phenomenally successful A Perfect Family, To Love, Honour & Betray, The Perfect Sinner and Power Play, which hit the Sunday Times and New York Times bestseller lists. Loved for her distinctive voice, her success was in part because she continually broke boundaries and evolved her writing to keep up with readers’ changing tastes. Publishers Weekly said about Jordan ‘Women everywhere will find pieces of themselves in Jordan’s characters’ and this perhaps explains her enduring appeal.

Although Penny was born in Preston, Lancashire and spent her childhood there, she moved to Cheshire as a teenager and continued to live there for the rest of her life. Following the death of her husband, she moved to the small traditional Cheshire market town on which she based her much-loved Crighton books.

Penny was a member and supporter of the Romantic Novelists’ Association and the Romance Writers of America—two organisations dedicated to providing support for both published and yet-to-be-published authors. Her significant contribution to women’s fiction was recognised in 2011, when the Romantic Novelists’ Association presented Penny with a Lifetime Achievement Award.

Force of Feeling
Penny Jordan

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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CHAPTER ONE

AS SHE stepped out into the busy London street and flagged down a passing taxi, Campion glanced irritably at her watch. She was going to be late for lunch, but luckily she knew that Lucy would wait for her.

How relaxing it must be to be the adored wife of a wealthy businessman, with all the time in the world at one’s disposal and no pressures besetting one at all, other than the need to look beautiful and give good dinner parties. And then she chided herself for being unfair. Lucy was not just a beautiful woman, she was an intelligent one as well. It was having to deal with Guy French that had made her feel like this. She had never liked the man, and when her agent had first gone into partnership with him, she had warned her then that she wanted nothing to do with him.

Helena had been openly astonished.

‘But, Campion, my dear, he’s the best in the business,’ she had told her. ‘The deals he gets for his authors …’

‘He’s not my type, Helena. I don’t like the man, and I don’t like his methods of business.’ Nor his morals, she had wanted to add, but she had kept that bit back. Now, having confronted him face to face, she realised that she had been quite right to protest. She didn’t like him.

Nor had she liked what he had had to say about her new manuscript.

She scowled ferociously to herself, causing the taxi driver to grimace slightly as he caught sight of her expression in his rear-view mirror.

She could have been very attractive; she had a good body, tall with long legs—he had noticed those as she’d got into his cab—and full, high breasts, even though she had chosen to drape herself in what looked like several layers of the same drab, beige fabric, which did nothing for her pale English skin, nor for her fair hair. And fancy wearing it like that! She had it scraped back tightly into a large French pleat, a style which privately he thought did very little for any woman. If she had chosen to wear it in one of the many attractive styles favoured by the new Duchess of York now …

He stopped outside a smart Kensington restaurant, wondering what on earth this unmade-up, rather tired-looking woman was doing lunching in such an ‘in’ place. She paid the bill and tipped him well. She had nice hands, he noticed, with long, tapering fingers, but her nails were cut short and unpolished.

But, oddly enough, he noticed as she walked away from him that she was wearing perfume. Strange, that … In his experience, most women only wore perfume for a man.

Perhaps she was some sort of odd ‘Kiss-o-gram’ girl, and underneath those drab clothes … Whistling to himself as he let his imagination run riot, he drove off.

Campion, with no idea of what was going on inside his head, walked angrily into the restaurant. The perfume the sales girl had sprayed all over her as she had rushed through Harvey Nichols earlier in the morning still clung to her skin. Normally she didn’t like anything the slightest bit scented, but this was rather pleasant, old-fashioned and faintly evocative of a summer garden, heavy with the scent of roses.

For once she was oblivious to the amused glances she collected as she wove her way through the crowded tables full of other diners. They were women, in the main, smartly dressed and made up, all of them paying more attention to their fellow lunchers than to the skimpy food on their plates. After all, that was what they were really paying for, to see and be seen.

At last Campion spotted Lucy. She was sitting at a table for two, in what Campion suspected was the best part of the restaurant.

She was dressed in blue, a soft, pretty, lavender blue that suited her fair skin and dark hair and, as always when she saw her, Campion was struck anew by her friend’s loveliness.

They had been at school together, and then at university, but no one had been surprised when Lucy had married almost immediately upon leaving Oxford. The man she had married had once been her boss, but not for long.

‘Sorry I’m late,’ Campion apologised, as she sat down and took the menu proffered by the waiter.

‘Problems?’ Lucy asked sympathetically.

Campion made a face. ‘Is it so obvious? Helena’s not well, and I’m having to deal with Guy French,’ she frowned, aware that there was a good deal that she was keeping back.

Lucy plainly felt it too, because she pressed lightly, ‘And?’

‘And he’s querying several points in my new book. I’ve been working to a deadline on it as it is …’

Lucy knew all about the book in question. Campion had been a successful writer of historical fiction in a modest way for almost three years, but some time previously, with the encouragement of Helena, and backed by a large publishing firm, she had agreed to attempt to produce something a little more commercial than her usual skilful and very factual blend of historical fact and fiction.

At first, she had been thrilled with the commission. It would give her something to get her teeth into, something with a much broader scope than her usual books, but that had been before she realised what the publishers truly wanted of her. Now she was locked into a contract that demanded that the manuscript be finished and soon, and the changes Guy French was demanding …

She was not that naïve, no matter what he might think, and she had been well aware that she was expected to provide a certain sexual content to her book. Previously her books had dealt more with the historical than the personal aspect of her characters’ lives, but this time … This time her heroine, the Lady Lynsey de Frères, as a very rich ward of court, and therefore a valuable pawn in the hands of Henry the Eighth, would be expected by her readers to do more than simply acquiesce to the marriage arranged for her by Henry.

And the problem was that she knew in her heart of hearts that Guy was right.

He wanted her to be more explicit in her descriptions of the morals and manners of the times—much, much more explicit. He had even pointed out to her that the publishers had already rejected her first manuscript on the grounds that the heroine was too insipid and unreal to hold their readers’ interest. And now she was running out of time, and Helena would not be back at work for another whole month, a full week after her final manuscript was due on her publishers’ desk.

If she tried to cancel the contract now, the publishers would be legally free to sue her and, although she did not think they would do that, it would be a very black mark against her.

Where had it all gone wrong? She had been so thrilled with the original commission, and now …

‘What does Guy suggest you do?’ Lucy pressed her.

‘He wants me to have a secretary.’ She scowled again, as she had done in the taxi.

‘Well, what’s wrong with that?’ Lucy asked her, plainly at a loss to understand her reluctance. ‘I’ve thought for some time that you could do with one. You type your own manuscripts, and it must be very time-consuming …’

It was, but that was the way she preferred it. To Campion, writing was a very personal thing indeed, so personal that on some occasions she could almost feel that she was the character she was writing about, and on those occasions she didn’t want to have someone else with her, watching her, monitoring her reactions. It would make her feel so vulnerable, so … She gave a little shiver, her eyes unknowingly registering her fear.

She had lovely eyes, Lucy thought, watching her compassionately: neither green nor blue, but something in between. With a little care and thought, she could have been a very beautiful woman. They were the same age—twenty-six—and yet at a first glance Campion could have been mistaken for someone easily ten years older. Lucy itched to take charge of her—to make her throw away her hideously drab clothes, to do her face, and to get her to have her hair properly styled.

Her husband, an acute and very shrewd man, had said to her the first time she introduced him to Campion, ‘What happened to her? She’s like a plant that’s been blighted by frost.’

‘A man,’ Lucy had told him carefully. Because, after all, the story was Campion’s and not her own, and she knew how much her friend hated talking about Craig.

‘I don’t want a secretary!’ Campion exploded now. ‘I just want to be left alone to get on with my work.’

‘Well, tell Guy that,’ Lucy suggested reasonably.

‘I have, and he won’t listen. He’s insisting that I must have someone to work for me. It’s almost as though he thinks I need a gaoler, someone to keep me at work. And then there’s this tour coming up,’ she added angrily.

‘Tour?’

‘Oh, you remember. I told you about it. A small publicity tour for that book I did about Cornwall. Guy seems to think that if I can have a secretary, I can somehow manage to dictate huge chunks of the new book in between signing sessions, and she can then presumably type them up while I’m signing.’

Lucy sighed and reached out across the table to take her hand. ‘Campion, be honest, if Helena had suggested this, and not Guy, would you feel quite so strongly?’

Campion frowned and then admitted huskily, ‘I don’t know. There’s something about him that rubs me up the wrong way. I feel as edgy as a cat walking on too hot sand whenever he comes near me …’ She rubbed tiredly at her eyes. ‘I don’t like him,’ she added childishly, ‘but I don’t know why I react so strongly to him.’

I do, Lucy thought achingly, and it’s called sexual awareness, but she knew that there was no way she could say that to Campion.

Instead, she asked carefully, ‘So what do you intend to do?’

‘What can I do?’ Campion asked her bitterly, revealing how much she resented what was happening to her. ‘I have to go along with what Guy’s saying. I don’t have any option. Do you know what he told me?’ She took a deep breath, fighting for self-control as she leaned across the table, her eyes flashing fiercely, ‘He actually admitted that he was the one who advised the publishers to reject my first draft. He had the utter gall to tell me that he thought it wasn’t worthy of me—that he had seen more emotion in the writings of a seven-year-old! He told me my book was flat and boring, and that my characters, especially Lynsey, had about as much reality as cardboard cut-outs!’ Suddenly the fight left her and her eyes dulled. ‘And the worst thing is that I know he’s right. Oh, God, Lucy, why on earth did I ever take on this commission?’

‘Because it’s giving you an opportunity to stretch yourself,’ Lucy reminded her gently. ‘You wanted to do it, Campion,’ she told her.

Opposite her, Campion groaned. ‘Don’t remind me. I must have been mad! I can’t do it, Lucy. I know that I can’t.’

‘Have you told Guy this?’

Immediately her eyes darkened with anger. ‘Throw myself on his mercy? Never!’

‘Then what are you going to do?’

‘Get back to work—not here in London. Helena has a small cottage she lets her writers use. I’m going to go there … that way, Guy won’t be able to force me to have a secretary,’ she added childishly. ‘I’m going tonight. It’s in Pembroke.’

‘Wales, at this time of the year?’ Lucy shuddered. ‘We’re already into November … Which reminds me, have you any plans for Christmas? Howard and I will be going to Dorset as usual, and of course we’d love you to join us.’

Lucy had inherited, from her grandfather, a very lovely small manor house in Dorset, and she and Howard spent every Christmas there, and as much time as they could during the rest of the year.

‘Please do,’ she coaxed. ‘I’m going to need your help this year. I think I’m pregnant.’

Shortly after their marriage Lucy had suffered a very traumatic miscarriage, and since then Howard had flatly refused to even consider the idea of them trying for another child, but now it seemed he had relented.

‘Dr Harrison has finally persuaded Howard that what happened before won’t happen again, and I’m giving you fair warning here and now that I’m going to ask you to be godmother.’

Just after three, they left the restaurant, Lucy to go shopping and Campion to go back to her flat to pack for her trip to Wales.

She had been to Helena’s cottage several times before, but never to work, only as a visitor. She had never before needed the solitude it offered. Writing had always come so easily to her—writing still did, it was the emotions of her characters she was having problems with.

She packed carefully and frugally: a couple of pairs of jeans, seldom worn these days, but they would still fit her, plenty of bulky sweaters, and a set of thermal underwear, just in case. Some socks, her portable typewriter, just in case the generator broke down and the electric machine Helena had installed at the cottage didn’t work.

She would need wellingtons, she reminded herself; she would have to buy some before she left. And food, which meant a trip to her local supermarket. Plenty of typing paper, her notes—the list was endless, and all the time she was getting ready her conversation with Guy French kept going round and round in her mind.

He had the reputation of having a very acid tongue, but he had never used it on her. And yet, this morning, he had virtually torn her apart with what he had said; all of it in that calm, even, logical voice of his, which stated his assembled facts as though they were incontrovertible truths. And the worst of it was that they very probably were. Her heroine did lack emotional depth. Campion sat down wearily, too tired to hide from the truth any longer. She had no idea what she was going to do about Lynsey.

When she had tried to deflect Guy, by reminding him that her heroine was a young girl of sixteen, he had calmly countered by saying that in that age girls of sixteen were often wives and mothers and that, since she herself had described her heroine as being spirited and passionate, couldn’t she see that it just wasn’t in character for her to calmly accept King Henry’s edict that she marry a man she had never seen before, especially not when, according to his notes, she had already hinted that Lynsey considered herself to be in love with her cousin?

‘Wouldn’t she at least have tried to see Francis? Think of it—a beautiful young girl of sixteen, rich and wilful, condemned by the King’s will to marry a man to whom he owes a favour, a man moreover who has the reputation of procuring for that same king women with whom he amuses himself behind his wife’s back. Surely she would be angry and disgusted at such a proposed marriage? Surely she would be desperate enough to make a rash attempt to stop it? Allowing herself to be compromised by another man would be one way. And surely she would choose that man to be her cousin, the boy whom she thinks she loves?’

It all made sense, but for some reason Campion just could not breathe life into her heroine. She just could not even mentally visualise Lynsey doing what Guy suggested, even though she knew what he was saying was perfectly true.

She had told him as much, adding defiantly that the publishers could sue her if they wished, but she was not going to change a word of her manuscript.

He had looked at her then, his grey eyes focusing on her and turning smokily dark.

For a moment she had actually expected him to get up from behind his desk and seize hold of her and shake her. No small task, even for a man of his height and build, because she was well over five foot eight and, despite her fragile frame, no lightweight either. But instead he had controlled himself and said icily, ‘Quitting, Campion? You surprise me. What is it you’re so afraid of?’

‘Nothing. I’m not afraid of anything,’ she had flung at him, and somehow, before she knew where she was, he had tricked her into committing herself to the re-writes.

And now she had to do them. But her way, and not his—and without a secretary.

All this burning of adrenalin had left her feeling oddly tired. She looked at her watch. An hour’s sleep before she left would do her good. Sleep was something that often evaded her during the night, and she had to take brief catnaps during the day whenever she could.

She went into her bedroom and closed the curtains.

Her flat was as drab as her clothes, furnished mainly in beiges and browns, colours bordering on nothingness.

She undressed, wrapped herself in a towelling robe and lay on her bed but, irritatingly, exhausted though she was, sleep would not come. Instead a multitude of jumbled images flashed repeatedly across her brain.

Guy French, tall, and dark-haired; a man she had heard other women describe admiringly as sexually devastating. Perhaps, but not to her, never to her …

Her mind switched to Lucy. How long had they known one another? They had started at boarding-school together, two small, pigtailed girls in brand new uniforms, both wanting desperately to cry and neither feeling they should.

They had been friends a long time. Lucy’s new circle of friends, those she had made through Howard, looked askance at Campion, probably wondering what she and pretty, glamorous Lucy had in common.

She wondered if Lucy had told Howard about her. Probably, they had that sort of relationship, and Howard was the kind of man who invited one’s trust. How lucky Lucy had been in her marriage! How wise to wait a little while and not to allow herself to be swept off her feet in the first rapture of physical desire, as she had been …

As she had been … How impossible that seemed now! Now, she could no more imagine the deep frozen heart of hers being melted than she could imagine flying to the moon. Both were impossible.

Once, a long time ago, things had been different, she had been different.

Once, she had known what it felt like to have her whole body surge with joy at a man’s touch, almost at the sound of his voice, but that had been before …

She gave a deep sigh and opened her eyes, but it was no use, for some reason, the past was crowding in on her today.

For some reason? She knew the reason well enough: it had been the look in Guy’s eyes when he had asked her in that even, calm voice of his if she actually knew what it was like to feel emotion. She had felt as though her very soul had been raked with red-hot irons, but she had kept her expression cool and unrevealing. Let him think what he liked, just as long as he never guessed the truth.

The truth. Her mouth twisted bitterly. How melodramatic that sounded now! And what was it, really?

She closed her eyes again and tried to focus her concentration on her book, on Lynsey, but it was virtually impossible. Guy’s dark face surfaced through the barriers of her will, and then another male face, equally dark-haired, equally good-looking, but younger, shallower … weaker, she recognised.

She had been nineteen when she’d met Craig, and a rather naïve nineteen at that. Her girls’ school had been sheltered; she was an only child, with wealthy parents who spent a good deal of their time out of the country, and consequently she had spent very little time with them until she left school. And in that long, hot summer before she started at Oxford she had felt uncomfortable with them, alien and alone, and had wished that she had given in to Lucy’s plea to accept an invitation from her parents to spend the summer with them in the South of France.

Instead she had mooned about at home, sensing her parents’ inability to understand her, feeling unacceptable to her local peers, with whom she seemed to have little in common. And then she had met Craig.

He had come to the house to see her father about something, she couldn’t remember what. Her parents had been out and she had been sunbathing in the garden. She had been flattered by the admiring way he had looked at her bikini-clad body. He had remarked on that and she had offered him a drink.

One drink had turned into two, and in the end he had spent most of the afternoon in the garden with her.

Even then she had sensed a restlessness about him, a yearning—a desperation almost, but she had put it down to the same malaise she suffered herself, too naïve to recognise then their basic differences.

He had asked her out, to a local tennis-club dance. At first her parents had been pleased that she was making friends, and then her father had cautioned her against getting too involved.

She had known by then about Craig’s background: about the father who drank and the mother who struggled to bring up her five children. She had also learned about Craig’s bitterness at not being able to take up the free scholarship he had won, because of lack of money. Her father had told her bluntly that Craig had a chip on his shoulder, but she had refused to listen to him. By this time, she was in love.

Or so she thought.

Her mouth twisted bitterly. She ought to have listened to her father, but she had thought she knew better. She had thought that Craig loved her, when in reality what he had loved was her parents’ wealth and social standing.

As the summer had deepened, so had her feelings. He had known exactly how to arouse her, how to make her ache and yearn for the final act of possession. Even now, remembering, her flesh remained cold and unmoving, her mind unable to really comprehend how she could have felt that way; but she had.

They had made love for the first time in an idyllic setting: a small, enclosed glade in a local wood, a privately owned lane, in actual fact, but with an absentee landlord. Ostensibly, they had gone on a picnic. Craig had brought a blanket, plaid and soft, and very new. Where had he got the money from to buy it? she wondered now. Certainly not from the job he had told her he had, working for a local accountant as a trainee.

He had made love to her with need and passion, or so she had thought, but there had been none of the rapture she had imagined in the ultimate act of possession, and she had rather disliked the heavy sensation of him lying over her afterwards. She had gone home feeling faintly disappointed, until she remembered girls at school saying that the first time was not always very good.

It had been Craig who had first brought up the subject of marriage. What if she were to be pregnant? he had asked her. It could have happened. And because she was genuinely afraid, and because in her innocence she thought that, since they had been lovers, they must love one another, and because she was lonely and desperately in need of someone of her own, she had listened.

No, she had done more than listen. She had married him. Quietly and secretly, one month after he had first made love to her. Her parents were away at the time.

The newly-weds had been waiting for them when they returned.

Campion struggled to sit up, her throat suddenly tight with tension, her breathing shallow.

She would never forget the scene that followed, nor Craig’s fury when he realised that her father was not prepared to either settle a large sum of money on her, or to support them.

To see him change in front of her eyes, from someone she thought loved her to someone who had married her purely and simply for financial gain, had been too much of a shock for her to take in. She had tried to plead with him, to remind him that even without money they still had one another, and he had turned on her then, his face livid with rage.

‘For Christ’s sake!’ he had said. ‘Do you think I would have married you if it hadn’t been for who you are?’

‘You—you said you loved me,’ she had stammered, unable to understand his abrupt change of character.

‘And you fell for it, didn’t you, you stupid little bitch!’ he had snarled at her. ‘Like taking candy from a baby—only it seems that your daddy isn’t going to play along. Well, I’d better get something out of this, otherwise the whole village is going to hear about how easily I got little Miss Goody-two-shoes here into bed, Mr Roberts,’ he had challenged her father.

She had cried out then, but he had turned on her, his expression vicious, quite definitely not good-looking anymore.

‘I should have made sure that you were pregnant, shouldn’t I?’

And he had gone on to make such derogatory remarks about her sexuality that she hadn’t been able to take in all the insults he was hurling at her—not then.

The marriage had been annulled—her father had seen to that, but somehow Campion had felt as though she were encased in ice. She had gone on to Oxford, but she had gone there a changed person. Lucy noticed it and asked her what was wrong, and she had broken down and confided in her friend. That had been the last time she cried. The shock of what had happened wore off, but the humiliation remained. Whenever a man approached her, she froze him off, and gradually she got the reputation of being withdrawn and sexually frigid. She hadn’t cared. She was never going to let a man get emotionally or physically close to her ever again. Craig had held up for her such an image of herself that it had destroyed totally her awakening sexuality. Whenever she remembered how innocently and joyously she had abandoned herself to him, her skin crawled with self-loathing; gradually, she withdrew further and further into herself.

Then her parents were killed in an outbreak of hostilities in Beirut when they were there on business. She had sold the house and bought herself her small flat. The rest of the money she had donated to various charities.

No man would ever again be tempted to make love to her because he thought she could be his ticket to rich living.

Over the years, Lucy had tried to coax her to change, to dress more attractively, to meet other men, but she had always refused. What was the point? She didn’t want a man in her life in any capacity, and what man would want her?

As Craig had already told her, her only attraction lay in her father’s wealth; he had wanted her for that alone. Making love to her had been a necessity, a means to an end, and he had let her know in no uncertain terms just how lacking in pleasure he had found their coming together.

She actually flinched now as she remembered his insults. Her father had tried to stop him, she remembered tiredly. And, afterwards, her parents had both tried to offer her some comfort. They had never criticised or condemned her; she had done that for herself. They had tried to reach her, but the gap between them was too deep. They had never been a close family, and now she was too hurt and bitter to accept their pity, and so she had buried her pain away deep down inside herself where no one could see it.

Why couldn’t she use those memories of how Craig had made her feel to flesh out the character of Lynsey?

She knew why. It was because they had been so false, so dangerously deceptive, and as for the physical pleasure of Craig’s lovemaking … There had been none in his possession, and she cringed from the memory of it, knowing that here again the lack had been hers.

She flinched again as she recalled Guy French’s last words to her this morning.

‘Perhaps you’d have been better off casting your heroine as a nun, Campion,’ he had drawled mockingly. ‘Because it seems that that’s the way you want her to live.’

She had left the office while she still had some measure of control. She had been tempted to tear up her manuscript in front of his eyes; in fact, when she thought about it now, she was surprised by the violence of her reaction. She shivered slightly and got up. She wasn’t going to sleep, so there was no point in lying here thinking about things that could not be changed.

It was almost six o’clock, and she still had to go to the supermarket. It was a long drive to Pembroke … She almost decided to delay her departure until the morning but, if she did, Guy French would probably be on the telephone, telling her he had already found her a secretary. He was that kind of man. No, she needed to leave now, while there was still time.

While there was still time … She frowned a little at her own mental choice of words. It was almost as though she was frightened of the man; almost as though, in some way, she found him threatening. She shrugged the thought aside. Guy French was a bully; she had never liked him and she never would.

The media considered him to be the glamour boy of publishing, although at thirty-five he hardly qualified for the term ‘boy’, she told herself scathingly. He represented everything male that she detested: good looks, charm, and that appallingly apparent raw sexuality that other women seemed to find so attractive, and which she found physically repellant.

She had seen his eyes narrow slightly this morning as he came to greet her, and she had instinctively stepped back from him. He hadn’t touched her, letting his hand fall to his side, but she had still flushed darkly, all too conscious of his amusement and contempt.

No doubt to a man like him she was just a joke: a physically unattractive woman with whom he was forced to deal because it was part of his job. She had seen too many men look at her and then look away to be under any illusions. She wasn’t like Lucy—pretty, confident. Craig had destroyed for her for ever any belief she might once have had that she had any claim to feminine beauty. Ugly, sexless—that was how he had described her in the cruel, taunting voice of his, and that was how she saw herself, and how she believed others saw her as well.

But there were other things in life that brought pleasure, apart from love. She had found that pleasure in her work. Had found … Until Guy French had started tearing her novel apart, and with it her self-confidence.

That was what really hurt, she admitted—knowing that he was right when he described her characters as unanimated and without depth. But she had been commissioned to write a historical novel with a factual background, not a love story dressed up in period costume.

She could, of course, always back down and admit defeat; she could tell Guy French to inform the publishers that she was backing out of the contract. They wouldn’t sue her she felt sure and with withdrawal would stop Guy from hounding her. There were other books she could write … Moodily, she stared out of the window. Her flat was one of several in a small, anonymous, purpose-built block, with nothing to distinguish it from its fellows. Once, as teenagers, she and Lucy had talked of the lives they would lead as adults, of the homes they would have. She remembered quite sharply telling Lucy that she would fill hers with fresh flowers, full of colour and scent.

Fresh flowers! It had been years since she had last bought any … the wreath for her parents’ funeral.

Impatient with herself, Campion went to get her coat and her car keys, and then headed for her local supermarket.

CHAPTER TWO

SHE must have been mad to have attempted this long journey so late in the evening, Campion admitted bitterly as she stared out into the dark night.

Somehow, out here in the middle of Wales, the darkness seemed so much more intense than it had in London. Almost it felt as though it was pressing in on her, surrounding her. She shivered despite the warmth inside the car, wondering why it was she should be so much more aware of the fact that it was late November, and the weather wet and cold and very inhospitable, than she had been when she had first left.

Perhaps because when she’d left her mind had been full of Guy French, and how angry he would be when he found that she had escaped.

So he thought he could force her to complete the book by taking on a secretary, did he? Scornfully she grimaced to herself. Well, he would soon learn his mistake!

She came to a crossroads and slowed down to check the signpost, sighing faintly as she realised that it, like so many others she had driven past, had been a victim of the Welsh language lobby.

Luckily, she had had the foresight to buy a map that gave both the Welsh and the English names for the many tiny villages dotted about the Pembroke.

At night, the terrain might seem inhospitable but, as she remembered from short summer weekends she had spent here with Helena, the coastline was one of the most beautiful she had ever seen, with mile upon mile of unspoiled countryside, and narrow, winding roads, between deep banks of hedges that were vaguely reminiscent of Cornwall and Dorset at their very best.

Helena’s cottage was rather remote, several miles away from the nearest village, in fact, down a narrow, unmade-up road. She had been left it by a distant relative, and had some claim to Welsh blood. She had spent childhood holidays in the area, and had been able to supply Campion with many interesting facts about it.

The Welsh scornfully referred to Pembroke as being more English than England itself, and certainly a succession of English monarchs had been very generous to friends and foes alike when it came to handing out these once rich Welsh lands.

Sir Philip Sidney, the famous Elizabethan poet and soldier, had been Earl of Pembroke, and there had been others; some sent here as a reward, some as a punishment.

Her imagination suddenly took fire, and she found herself wondering what it would have been like to have been dismissed to this far part of the country, especially for a young girl, more used to the elegance of court living. A girl like Lynsey, for instance.

Within seconds, Campion was totally involved in the plot she was weaving inside her head. She reached automatically for the small tape recorder she always carried with her, the words flowing almost too quickly as she fought to keep pace with her thoughts.

Why was it that she found it so incredibly easy and exciting to imagine the emotions of her young heroine in this context, but, when it came to making her fall in love and having a sexual relationship, her brain just froze?

Impatient with herself, she pressed harder on the accelerator. Nearly there now, surely. She glanced at the dashboard clock. One in the morning, but she didn’t feel tired; at least, not mentally tired. Her brain had gone into overdrive, and she was itching to sit down at her typewriter and work. It would mean altering several chapters she had already done, but that wouldn’t be any problem, and it would add an extra dimension to her book.

Angrily, she dismissed the sudden memory she had of Guy telling her that her manuscript lacked a very important dimension. What was she trying to do? Prove to him that she could make the book work without the sexual content he deemed so necessary? And so it would, she told herself mutinously. But, deep down inside herself, she knew it was not just the lack of sexuality to her heroine, but the lack of emotional responsiveness to the men around her that made the book seem so flat. Campion was not a fool, some of the most emotionally and mentally stimulating books ever written—books that caught the imagination and held it fast, books that conveyed a quality of realism and involvement that no one could deny—did so without any reference description of physical lovemaking between the main characters. But what they had, and what her manuscript lacked, was the special, vibrant awareness of the characters’ sexuality. A vibrant awareness which she herself had never experienced, other than that one briefly painful episode with Craig.

She was so deeply immersed in her private thoughts that she almost missed the turn-off for the cottage. Braking quickly, she turned into the unmade-up lane.

Surely it had not been as pitted with pot-holes the last time she’d driven down it? Her body lurched against the restraining seat-belt as she tried to avoid the worst of the holes. Muddy water splashed up over her car as she drove straight into one of them, and she cursed mildly.

Although Helena was in Greece, recuperating from a severe bout of pleurisy, her housekeeper had been quite happy to supply Campion with the keys for the cottage. Campion knew Mabel quite well, and the small, dour Scotswoman had warned her that the cottage was not really equipped for winter living.

Campion hadn’t been put off, and anyway she wouldn’t be staying there very long. She had to be back in London in a month for the book tour, which was a week or so before Christmas, and then she would be spending Christmas with Lucy and Howard. If it was anything like their usual Christmas house-parties, it would be a very sybaritic experience indeed. Howard liked his home comforts—the more luxurious, the better.

The car’s headlights picked out the low, rambling shape of the cottage, and thankfully she eased her aching leg off the accelerator.

Now she really was tired. It would be bliss to get into a really hot bath and then just drop into bed, but she suspected the luxury of a bath would have to wait for another day. If she remembered correctly, the house was equipped with an immersion heater, but it would take too long to heat water tonight.

Thank goodness she had had the sense to pack a few basic necessities into one bag. She could take that in with her now, and the rest of the unpacking could wait until the morning.

Carefully easing her aching body out from behind the wheel, Campion found the bag, and a carton of typing paper. Locking the car, she made her way to the cottage.

The lock on the door must have been oiled recently, because the key turned easily in it, and the door yawned open of its own accord, making a creaking sound that made the hair on her scalp prickle, until she remembered that Helena had often laughed about this and other small idiosyncrasies that the cottage possessed.

It was very old, and had once been part of a large local estate, probably a small farmhouse. Helena’s great-grandparents had lived here all their married lives, and then Helena had inherited it from a great-aunt when she had died.

The kitchen was stone-flagged and consequently very cold. She shivered as she walked into it, reaching for the light switch and then remembering that it was on the far side of the room. The cottage’s wiring was rather haphazard, with light switches and sockets sometimes placed where one would not have expected to find them.

She started to cross the kitchen, and then froze as the lights suddenly snapped on.

For a moment, the brilliance of the unexpected light blinded her; and then shock followed hard on the heels of her initial astonishment.

‘What took you so long?’ a cool male voice drawled nonchalantly. ‘I thought you’d be here hours ago.’

Campion blinked and stared at the man leaning against the wall; and then she blinked again, trying to clear her vision.

Guy French, here? Impossible! She must be imagining things. But no—for one thing, this morning he had been wearing a suit—a very dark wool suit with a crisp, white shirt and a neatly striped tie—and now he was wearing a disreputable pair of jeans and a very thick jumper over a checked wool shirt. He was even wearing wellingtons. She goggled slightly as she noticed this. No, she was most definitely not imagining things! Had her mind been playing tricks with her, and superimposed Guy’s image against the homely background of Helena’s cottage kitchen, she was sure it would not have also seen fit to dress him in anything other than the immaculate suits and shirts she always saw him wearing.

‘Guy.’

Furiously, she realised that he actually had the audacity to laugh at her. How dared he? And anyway, what was he doing here?

The grin that curled his mobile mouth brought her back to reality. Staring stonily at him, she said as cuttingly as she could, ‘I suppose this must be your idea of a joke, Guy, but quite frankly I don’t think it’s funny. I don’t understand what you’re doing here, but, since you are here, you’ll understand, I’m sure, when I tell you that I’m leaving.’

‘Not so fast!’

She had never dreamt he could move so quickly, nor that he could be strong. She gulped as he barred her way to the door by placing his body in front of it, and gripping her arms with both his hands.

‘Let go of me!’ She jerked back from him instinctively, her whole body tensing against his touch, her lips drawn back from her teeth in a feral snarl, her eyes spitting furious green sparks.

He looked at her, and seemed about to say something, and Campion tensed against a further sarcastic retort. But, to her surprise, he complied with her demand, gently pushing her back from him.

‘This is no joke,’ he told her calmly. ‘Far from it. I meant what I said about your manuscript, Campion. It’s got to be finished, and you need help to get it finished on time, you know that. Running away down here won’t solve anything.’

‘I’m not running away.’

How dared he suggest that? She longed to tell him that if it wasn’t for his relentless bullying she wouldn’t be here at all.

‘Then what are you doing here?’

‘If you must know, I’ve come here to work …’

‘Really? A sudden decision, I take it, since you didn’t see fit to inform me of it this morning …’

‘Perhaps with good reason,’ Campion told him nastily, adding bitterly, ‘What business of yours is it where I do my work, Guy?’

‘Since I’m your agent, for the moment, I should say it was very much my business,’ he responded mildly. ‘You won’t solve anything by running away, you know.’

This was the second time he had made that accusation. Through gritted teeth, Campion told him curtly, ‘I am not running away. I’ve come here to work. Alone …’ She waved the typing paper at him. ‘See … I’ve even done some dictating on the way down here, and if you don’t mind, I’d now like to get it typed up …’

‘Dictating … Something along the lines we discussed, I hope …’

Campion refused to answer him.

‘Ah, I see … Just as well I’m here, then, isn’t it?’

A tiny sensation of something alien and rather alarming skittered down her spine, and Campion turned to look at him.

‘Why are you here, Guy?’ she asked him slowly. ‘And how did you know that I’d decided to come here?’

‘Simple—Mabel told me.’

‘Mabel?’ Campion stared at him.

‘Yes. I went round this afternoon to collect Helena’s post and go through it for her, and Mabel told me that you’d been round for the cottage keys. Luckily, she had a second set.’

He was dangling them from the tip of one strong, long finger, and a feeling of weakness and disbelief filled Campion as she stared at him.

‘And so you decided to come down here yourself … but why?’

‘Do you remember any of what I said to you this morning?’ he asked her softly.

Did she remember? How could she forget?

‘Yes.’ Her terse answer made him smile slightly, and for one mad moment she had to stop herself from responding to that strange little smile.

‘Then you’ll remember that I told you I’d given the publishers my word that your manuscript would be on their desk on time …’

‘Yes,’ she agreed woodenly, remembering, too, that she had told him it was impossible. That was when they had had their argument about her having a secretary.

‘I even offered you the services of a secretary to help you,’ he added gently.

Campion’s chest swelled with indignation and fury.

‘I don’t want a secretary!’ she told him through bared teeth. ‘I don’t work that way. I don’t need any help with this book, Guy.’

‘Oh, yes, you do,’ he told her unequivocably. ‘But you’re right, you don’t need a secretary; at least, not the kind I had in mind.’

He was looking at her in a way that made danger signals race from one nerve-ending to another, and a tiny prickle of awareness of him touched her skin. He was standing too close to her, and she instinctively took a step back from him. He smiled when he saw her betraying movement, but there was no humour in his smile.

‘Tell me something,’ he encouraged softly. ‘Your heroines, Campion, do they have much of you in them? Or to put it another way—do you imagine yourself to be them when you’re writing?’

A hot wave of colour scalded her skin before she could hold it back.

‘No,’ she told him forcefully. ‘No, I don’t. Why do you ask?’

‘All in good time.’ He looked at his watch. ‘It’s going on for two, and I, for one, am tired. I think we’ll both be in a better frame of mind to discuss things in the morning. I’ve taken the smaller bedroom. Women always seem to need more room.’

The smaller bedroom? Campion gaped at him.

‘You’re … you’re not staying here?’

His eyebrows rose. ‘Of course I am! Where else would I be staying?’

‘But—you can’t.’

‘Can’t?’ He smiled grimly at her.

‘All right, so you can stay,’ Campion amended, ‘but I’m not staying with you.’ She headed for the door, determined to walk over him to get it open, if she had to. But she was brought to an abrupt halt as he virtually swung her off her feet, and deposited her down on the floor again with such force that her teeth actually rattled.

‘Now, let’s get one thing straight,’ he told her savagely, all pretence of calm good humour stripped from him now. ‘I’ve given my word, both professionally and personally, that your manuscript will be delivered on time. I’ve laid myself out on the line for you and your damn book, Campion, and no matter what it takes, you are going to deliver …’

No matter what it takes …’

His eyes seemed to bore into her skull, and she found she was too petrified to even open her mouth. All she could do was to stare at him with mesmerised astonishment.

‘It’s been one hell of a long day already, needlessly complicated by your unwarranted feminine tantrum and melodramatic flight. All right, so you’re having problems with the book, we both know that …’

Suddenly, Campion got her senses back. Gathering herself up to her full height, she raised her head and said angrily, ‘I’m not staying her listening to any more of this …’

‘Oh, yes, you are … You’re staying here until this damn book is finished, and to my satisfaction. We’re both staying her until it’s finished,’ he added.

‘You … you can’t make me do that …’

‘No. No, I can’t, but if you walk out of here now, Campion, that’s the end as far as I’m concerned, and you might as well throw that manuscript on the fire. Is that what you want? Do you want to quit? To give up? To admit that you simply haven’t got what it takes to …’

She went white, and swayed where she stood, her whole body filled with pain. His words came so close to the insults hurled at her by Craig. So very close that she denied them instinctively, and only realised as the pain subsided exactly what she had committed herself to.

She had committed herself to staying here and finishing her book. And Guy was making it plain that he had every intention of staying here with her.

Suddenly, she was too exhausted to argue the point any further, and besides, her pride would not allow her to back down now. He had virtually told her that he didn’t think she was capable of bringing her characters to life, and suddenly it was very, very important to her that she prove him wrong. She would finish the book, and when she had done it it would be so real, so alive, that … that … Muzzily, she touched her head. What was happening to her? She felt so weak, so drained …

‘You’re tired. Why don’t you go to bed? You can fight with me all you like in the morning.’

Why did the terse words have such an edge of rough pity? She flinched back from it instinctively, giving Guy a single baleful glance as she picked up her bag and headed for the stairs.

‘Admit it, Campion, coming here was a form of running away. A cry for help, if you like.’

The quiet words froze her on the stairs. She turned on him like an angry tigress, the cool aura of remoteness she generally projected for once gone.

‘If I was running away from anything, it was you,’ she told him furiously. ‘You and your interference in my life!’ She stopped abruptly, conscious of an odd tension in the small room. It made her skin tighten slightly, and she was intensely aware of the man watching her. ‘You’re the last person I’d cry out to for help, Guy,’ she added recklessly. ‘The very last.’

‘I see. Very well then, you must stay or go as you please, Campion, but remember one thing, if you leave here …’

‘I’ll be admitting that you’re right and that I can’t finish the book,’ she flung at him. ‘Oh, I’m not going, Guy. I’m staying, and I’m going to make you take back every insult you’ve made about my work. You wait and see.’

A strange look crossed his face, a combination of weariness and triumph, and it made her feel as though somehow she had stepped into a cleverly baited trap. But how could that be? Guy wouldn’t stay on at the cottage for very long, she assured herself as she made her way to the larger of the two bedrooms. He was a city creature; someone who fed off the bright lights and excitement the city generated; he would be bored out of his mind within a very short space of time, and then he would go and she could get on with her work in peace. Until then, she would just have to ignore him. It shouldn’t be that difficult; she had managed well enough for the last ten months. Determinedly, she ignored the small voice that reminded her that during those months she had had Helena to act as a buffer between Guy and herself.

She stalked angrily round the small room, wishing for the hundredth time that her agent had not seen fit to go into partnership with such an irritating man.

She knew that her opinion was a minority one. Everyone else seemed to think that Helena was very fortunate indeed in having as her senior partner a man whose reputation in the literary world meant that he had authors clamouring for him to represent them.

Well, she would never clamour for his services, Campion thought fiercely, and a sudden dark tide of colour washed her pale skin as she realised the significance of the double entendre conjured up by her thoughts. Guy had no permanent relationship in his life, but that did not mean that he lacked feminine companionship. Far from it! Her mouth tightened as she recalled the seemingly endless line of beautiful women who Helena had told her flocked around him.

Well, they were welcome to him, and she just wished he would take himself off back to them.

It was unfortunate that Mabel had so unwittingly told him what she was planning to do. She ground her teeth as she remembered his accusation that she was running away. From him and his threat of a secretary, yes; from her work, no—never—she loved her work.

She froze as she heard footsteps on the stairs and then a brief rap on her door. Guy opened it before she could protest, poking his head around the small gap.

‘Anything you want bringing in from your car? I take it that small carry-all isn’t the only luggage you’ve brought with you? Water’s hot, by the way, if you want a bath.’

Did he really think she was incapable of carrying her own suitcase upstairs if she wanted to?

His pseudo-concern made her feel angry. Did he really think she was stupid enough to believe he was the slightest bit concerned about her comfort? All he wanted from her was a successful book. She frowned, confused by the contradictions in her own emotions. She was tired and on edge, and he was the last person with whom she wanted to share such confined quarters as the small, remote cottage, but she had told him she was going to stay, and she wasn’t going to be the one to back down.

‘If I wanted my case, I’d go and get it,’ she told him rudely. ‘And I don’t want a bath. What I want to do is to go to bed,’ she added pointedly.

She saw his eyebrows lift, but there was nothing amused in the way he was looking at her. Rather it was a combination of weariness and pity that darkened his eyes.

Pity. She felt her own eyes grow sore and dry as he stepped back and closed the door. Her throat felt raw and her heart seemed to be beating too fast. How dared he pity her. How dared he … She undressed with rapid, almost ungainly movements, checking that he had actually gone back downstairs before she used the bathroom.

A brief wash, her teeth cleaned, and she was back in her bedroom. As she unpinned her hair, she rubbed the tension prickling against her scalp. Her hair was thick and softly curly. She ought to get it cut into a short, manageable style, she thought as she brushed it. The men’s pyjamas she had bought especially for the cottage were just as warm as she had hoped, but somehow she couldn’t settle. It was all Guy’s fault, she decided bitterly, as the adrenalin continued to pump and her body refused to relax into sleep.

If only Helena had not fallen ill … or, even better, if only her agent had never agreed to go into partnership with him in the first place …

But something made her acknowledge that the faults would still remain with her book, and that they could not be laid at Guy’s door. What was she going to do? How was she going to make her heroine come alive? She forced herself to try and think about her, to imagine what her feelings would have been. Was Guy right in saying that, once she knew of the marriage Henry had arranged for her, she would have tried to overset it? Perhaps. It worried her that he seemed to have a better perception of her character’s probable behaviour than she had herself.

At last she fell asleep, but her dreams were a confused jumble of images and thoughts. In one, she saw her heroine confronting Henry and telling him that she would not marry the man of his choice; she saw her run through the corridors of his palace while Cardinal Wolsey looked on disapprovingly, and the other courtiers turned diplomatically away. She heard her throw the challenge at Henry that she would get herself with child by the first man who crossed her path, rather than marry the man of his choice. She saw Lynsey run out into the gardens, crying out her cousin’s name as she saw him sitting with a group of young men, and then she saw the dark shadow of the man who seemed to come from nowhere to impede her pathway to her cousin, snatching her up at the last moment, when she would have run into him full tilt. As he swung her round to put her on her feet, the sunlight fell across his face, striking a blaze of colours from the sword hilt at his side. He was more soberly dressed than the courtiers she was used to, and she struggled to break free; and then Campion saw his face.

She screamed a denial, her whole body shaking, as she came abruptly awake. Her bedroom was in complete darkness, the silence still and unnerving after the constant hum of London traffic. She was cold, and yet she felt breathless, as though she had been running. The flesh on her arms burned as though someone had gripped it hard. She looked down at herself, confused to see the pyjama jacket where she had expected to see rich satin and expensive lace, and then a hot flush seared her skin. In her dream, she had been Lynsey, and the man who had swept her off her feet had been Guy French. She shivered as she remembered her impulsive words to King Henry, and then shook her head in irritation. Her words … What was the matter with her? She had become involved with her characters before, but never to this extent, surely?

And as for dreaming about Guy French … Well, that was just her mind’s way of dealing with the anger and resentment she felt against him, she rationalised. That was all.

So why the odd sensation in the pit of her stomach? Why the shaky, quivering feeling of unease that tightened her skin and made her feel acutely vulnerable? These were feelings that an impressionable teenager might experience, but hardly applicable to a grown woman of twenty-six. And besides … besides, she was not in the least attracted to Guy—far from it.

Attracted to him? She froze, staring into the darkness, her body tense and still. Where had that thought come from? She shuddered slightly, trying to hold at bay the sick, nervy feeling invading her senses.

She must be sickening for something, she told herself; these odd feelings she kept having, this feeling of vulnerability, they were so unlike anything she was used to feeling. It was because she was upset about her book. Yes, that was the answer; she was upset about her book, and Guy French was exacerbating the situation. If only he had not decided to come down here, she wished cravenly. She didn’t want him here. He unnerved and unsettled her. She wanted him to go away and leave her in peace, and most of all she wanted him to stop looking at her with that infuriating blend of sadness and compassion.

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