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‘Dear Duncan,' she wrote, ‘Thank you for your hospitality. It’s been a pleasure knowing you. Such a fantastic, unbelievable pleasure. If I was told I had to stay here with you for ever I wouldn't mind, because I can't think of anything outside this house that could make me as happy as you can make me. And that's why I love you, I think . . .'

She looked across again and met his eyes and smiled and looked away, and turned over the page on the writing pad. ‘Dear Joan,' she wrote, ‘Lor', what weather we're having!' and a few minutes later surreptitiously tore out her letter to Duncan, rolled it into a tight ball and tossed it to the back of the fire.

She brought in the same lunch as yesterday, cheese between wholemeal biscuits and a fresh mug of coffee. He thanked her, as yesterday, with the same quick smile, and she almost pleaded, ‘Can't you take the afternoon off? We could go for a walk if we were careful where we put our feet and you know where the drifts are. Or we could stay in. I'm sure we could think of something interesting to do if we stayed in.'

But he had turned back at once to his papers, and Pattie chewed on her knuckle and went back to the fire, building it high until fountains of sparks went soaring up the chimney. No, she decided, I'm not in love. That would be stupid when you’re obviously not crazy for me, but I do like you more than any other man I ever met, and some time in the future I could be in love with you and you with me. And right now is pretty good, so I mustn’t be greedy.

There was an old pack of cards in one of the drawers in the kitchen and she played Patience during the afternoon, with the cards spread out on the flagstones, herself sitting cross-legged on the goatskin rug. Michael’s mother played Patience. She had taught Pattie during a rainy Sunday afternoon when Michael took Pattie home for the day. Pattie had said she couldn’t play Patience, but she could read the cards, having written an article on fortune-telling the week before, but Michael’s mother was having none of that. She had called it tampering with the forces of nature, and Pattie smiled now, remembering.

Probably Michael and his parents would call Duncan Keld a force of nature. Too much strength and raw talent for their tastes. Anyhow, knowing how to play Patience was coming in useful, although Michael probably wouldn’t have recognised Pattie, and suddenly she realised that she could hardly remember his face.

Her hand stilled, in the action of laying one card on another, and she frowned. Of course she would remember him, he looked like she used to look, and she willed him back into her mind in all his immaculate elegance. But for a moment he had been as shadowy as though it was ten years instead of a few days since she had last seen him . . .

She played around with the food, preparing dinner. She couldn’t wait for Duncan’s watch, on the kitchen table, to come round to seven o’clock when he would be finished with work for the day, and she spun out the preparations for the meal to pass the time.

There was a selection of tinned and packed soups. Somebody had once told her that tinned lentil soup improved out of all recognition if you added a little curry powder, and she was surprised to find that it did. She baked potatoes, cut in half lengthways, scored criss-cross and spread with butter and a little salt and dried mustard, and carefully fried the fishcakes heart-shaped. It should have been an ingenious meal, but when she went out to collect the mousse she had a nasty shock.

Something had got in ahead of her. The bowl had been tipped up, some of the contents lapped out, and all around, and heading back into the hills, were paw prints. Pattie had no tracking craft. A wildcat? A fox? What did they have out here? Whatever there was must be hungry. ‘I wish I’d left you something else and kept this in the kitchen,’ she muttered at the retreating tracks, and went back indoors to open a tin of rice pudding.

She had lit the lamps when the light began to fade. Once you had seen it done it was easy. And she had changed back into Duncan’s shirt, which meant keeping the fire high but did make her feel more glamorous than her sweater and skirt.

At ten to seven she went across and put a hand on his shoulder and said, ‘Hi.’ A current of warmth seemed to flow into her from the contact with him and she let her hand fall reluctantly. ‘It’s ready,’ she said, ‘but a fox ate the mousse.’

‘What ate what?’

She grinned, realising how odd that had sounded. ‘Strawberry mousse. It should have been the pudding, but I put it outside to set, and I think it was a fox. You don’t have yetis round here, do you, with very little feet?’

He chuckled. ‘If we do this is the weather to bring them down from the hills.’ He began to put his papers into a drawer and Pattie asked, ‘What’s the book about?’

‘I’ll send you a copy.’

She would have liked him to tell her about it now. The tape-recordings had all been factual notes and dull listening, but Duncan’s books were never dull. The only one she had read was the paperback in her case in the car, but she knew that from review headlines and hearing other people’s opinions. When she got back home she would read them all, and perhaps he was remembering that she was supposed to be interviewing him and didn’t want his current work discussed in her magazine. She might have told him that she wasn’t thinking of herself as a journalist these days, but she had hoped that he knew that.

He shut the wide drawer under the table into which he had put papers, tape-recorder, half a dozen fibre-tipped pens, clicked the top on the typewriter, set it down on the floor against the wall, and asked, ‘What have you been writing?’

‘Letters,’ she said.

Now that the wind had dropped perhaps it meant that the thaw had started, and soon she would have to leave. She asked, ‘Would you like the news on the radio?’

‘Not particularly.’

She had turned off the radio about an hour ago, but now she wanted to fill the silence that might mean that the snow was melting. She switched on to music and let it play softly in the background, and while Duncan washed she set the table, lighting the candles.

They had burned down about half way last night. They looked bright and colourful in their scarlet candlesticks and she wondered, will they gutter out tonight or be blown out? She brought in the bowls of soup and as Duncan sat down opposite her he said, ‘This could become a habit that’s hard to kick.’

Oh, I
hope
so, she thought fervently. He filled the wine glasses from the second bottle they had hardly touched last night and smiled at her, and she picked up her spoon and started drinking her soup, feeling more at home than she did in her own apartment. Secure and content, and at the same time filled with a passionate longing for the man who was facing her.

He wanted her too. She knew from the way he looked at her. Their smiles, their talk, all seemed to Pattie to carry a deeper meaning, although it was a hilarious meal. Duncan told her about some of the catastrophes that had cropped up during the restoration of the lodge. He described the men who had helped him so that she could see the whole gang. Joe with the red hair, sharp as a ferret; Bert the brickie, built like a tank, whose wife had left him to join the army, and Tom and Dick and Jerry. That was when he first made friends with the family at the nearest farmhouse who had lent him a tractor and learning to drive it he had knocked down a wall five minutes after the last brick had been laid.

Pattie talked about her early attempts at interior decorating. The Christmas after her father died she had thought it might cheer her mother if she colourwashed the lounge. So she roped in a couple of school friends and the three teenagers managed to cover themselves as well as the walls. She went into giggles, recounting it. ‘I got the drip sort of paint, of course, and we did the ceiling and the paint kept dropping on our heads. So then we put on headscarves and Sarah—she was a lovely big bouncing girl and a bit of a disaster area, she was always knocking things over, barging into things—was up the ladder, and her headscarf fell down over her eyes and she fell off the ladder clutching the paint pot. It took hours to wash Sarah and the carpet, but we had it all finished by night.’

‘Did your mother like it?’

She laughed again. ‘That’s the funniest part of all—she never noticed! I’d even changed the colour, from white to pale coral. She’d been taken out by friends, she went straight to bed when she got back. Next day was Sunday and by teatime I had to tell her, and then she said it was nice.’ She went on smiling. ‘Mind you, I told the girls she was thrilled to bits.’

She had been gesturing as she was talking, and Duncan caught her hand, fingers locked, holding palm against palm; and again she felt warmth and energy like a life force flowing into her. We fit each other like trees whose roots are entwined, she thought. I could grow with him.

She said, ‘It was funny.’

‘Of course it was,’ he said, but it was as though he knew why she had chosen Christmas to try to make the house special. Because—except for the year before—her father had never missed coming home for Christmas. She had known he was dead, but she couldn’t accept it. She and her school friends had joked together while they were doing the painting, but that Christmas Day had been bitter for Pattie.

She asked, ‘Do you ever come here for Christmas?’

‘No,' he said.

She had always spent Christmas with friends, last Christmas with Michael and his family. She could see this place with logs burning and a tree sparkling, and a good old traditional dinner which could be prepared in the stove quite easily with a little planning. She murmured, ‘It would be super.'

‘With the right company,' he said, and Pattie almost knew that she would be here next Christmas. He got up. ‘Let's have coffee by the fire.'

'I'll make it.'

‘You cooked the meal, I’ll boil the kettle. Fair division of labour.'

She pulled a face at him. ‘I bet that's what you said when you hit the wall with the tractor!'

After they'd carried out the dishes she left him in the kitchen, came back and pulled off her boots. They were soft leather, but they were beginning to rub, and she couldn't borrow Duncan's shoes like his shirts and pull them in till they fitted. The flagstones struck chilly to her stockinged feet until she reached the rug in front of the fire, and then she selected another big log and heaved it on and sat watching it burn.

It was almost like a Yule log. She would love to spend Christmas here. Since she was fourteen she had never enjoyed Christmas much, but a Christmas with Duncan would be something to look forward to, something to remember. With Michael’s family it had been organised from morning till night
—
presents, parties, everything in good taste because his mother had done the organising. Pattie had been grateful, and bought extravagant gifts, and been glad when it was over.

That was only last month, although it was last year, and there was nearly another year to run till Christmas. She wondered what this year would bring her, and she knew what she wanted. She picked up the pack of playing cards as Duncan came back with two mugs of coffee and asked him, ‘Shall I read the cards for you?’

‘If you insist.’

‘You’re not superstitious?’

‘No.’ Of course not. She couldn’t imagine him touching wood or avoiding ladders, or relying on anything but his own skill and strength to make his luck. Nor was she superstitious really, although her pendant had been something else, because that had been her father’s goodbye gift.

‘Fair enough,’ she said, ‘I’ll read my own.’ Duncan sat in the armchair, Pattie sat on the rug dealing herself five cards, face down, with theatrical flourish. Then she put fingertips to temples, closed her eyes and breathed deeply. ‘Calling up the powers,’ she explained.

‘You want to watch it,’ he advised her. ‘A yeti might answer.’

A faint moaning came from the chimney, the wind seemed to be rising again, and she intoned, ‘I hear you. What do the cards foretell?’ She turned up a three of hearts and said, ‘That’s a friendly little card. Threes are letters, you know.’

‘I didn’t know.’

‘Stick around me,’ She fluttered her eyelashes. ‘You’ll learn things.’

‘Boasting again,’ he said.

There’s not much I could teach you, she thought, but it’s lovely to laugh with you, and I would rather be here tonight than be crowned Queen of England.

The next card was the Jack of Clubs and she held it at arm’s length. ‘Well?’ asked Duncan.

‘Man,’ which was obvious. ‘Medium, sort of.’

‘Michael?’ he suggested.

‘Could be.’ Three of hearts would do nicely for Michael, a low-powered card but amiable. ‘Looks like Michael,’ she agreed.

Duncan peered at the one-eyed Jack, ‘Strewth!’ and she grinned.

‘Figuratively speaking, you idiot. Actually Michael looks a bit like me.’ Duncan’s eyebrows rose. ‘I mean he’s got the same shaped features, the same sort of hair. And in a lot of ways he has the same tastes.'

When he asked, ‘Isn’t that boring?’ she hesitated. A few days ago she would have said, ‘Not at all,’ but she thought now that it was. Never to argue, never to spark anything from each other. She shrugged. ‘It seems to suit Michael, he’s always saying we’re two of a pair.’

‘It sounds more like bookends than a flesh and blood couple,’ said Duncan, and that made her smile wryly, while she protested, ‘It’s been a steady relationship.’ But a little short on magic. Michael was no spellbinder the way Duncan was, there was no black sorcery around him.

She sat hugging her knees, chin resting on them, looking into the fire, remembering the last time she had seen Michael. ‘I didn’t mean to come up here when I set off from home,’ she said. ‘Michael had gone down to the Cotswolds for a few days, on business, and I was going to arrive at the hotel and surprise him. I booked myself in and went to the dining room.’

She turned another card and grimaced at the six of spades, and Duncan asked quietly, ‘Wasn’t he alone?’

She shook her head. ‘No, it was nothing as dramatic as that. He was having dinner with these other men, talking business, and he didn’t see me, so I watched him and I just didn’t want to go over. So I went up to my room and I left in the morning and I didn’t bump into him again.’ She bit reflectively on her thumbnail. ‘And I honestly don’t know why it suddenly seemed a good idea to go on driving and come here and try to interview you. I’d phoned your number in London earlier and a man said you were up here.’