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‘With anyone else,’ he drawled, ‘I’d say you’re welcome.’

He had recognised her. She wouldn’t have thought she looked at all like her usual self, and the light was dim—fireglow, and there seemed to be a lamp somewhere—but maybe he remembered faces the way she did places. She remembered his face all right. Except that if anything he looked even grimmer than the last time.

She began, ‘I’m Pattie Ross ' and he cut in,

‘I know who you are. What I’m waiting to be told is what you’re doing here.’

The lodge was a long way off the road. If Pattie had been taking the track there was nowhere else she could have been heading but here, and she hadn’t the strength to be conciliatory. She could only blurt, ‘I want to interview you.’

‘You
what?'
He laughed derisively. ‘I’d rather be interviewed by the K.G.B.!’

She couldn’t deal with this. She leaned back and said wearily, ‘In that case I’ll have to trouble you to drive me into Grimslake,’ and for a moment she thought he would strike her. He was obviously seething with anger, and it was dark and the drive would be an unpleasant one, and what was she going to do if he took her to the hotel? She had no luggage and no money. Everything was down there in the car. In the morning she could retrieve her belongings, so she asked hesitantly, ‘Or could I stay the night?’

He glared at her from under beetling brows. ‘You’ll bloody well have to stay the night.’

‘Thank you,’ she said, and he snarled,

‘Save your breath, I’ve got no choice.' He looked as though he wanted to smash something, preferably her, and she said meekly, ‘I’ll stay here, shall I?’ The chair was no bed. It was lumpy. But there was no need for him to carry on as though she was going to disrupt everything. Of course she could sleep in the chair.

‘There’s one bed upstairs,’ he said. ‘Mine. You’re not suggesting we share it?’ And he looked at her with a blistering contempt that made her curl up, and brought hot colour to her cheeks. He was a swine—but before she could tell him so he had marched off, picked up the lamp, and vanished through the door to the staircase. Pattie heard boots clattering on stone steps and a door bang overhead, and she was left in the firelight.

The fire was burning low. The log had fallen into grey ash so that all the illumination it gave was a faint pinkish glow. He must let it out at nights, unless he had been so mad at finding her here that he had forgotten to throw on another log.

When she got off the chair she felt stiff and slightly sick. She had had a bad shaking-up, but in retrospect perhaps that large brandy wasn’t such a good idea. Nausea rose in her when she went to pick up a log and she sat back on her heels until it subsided, then placed the log carefully and slowly in the middle of the embers. Her hands were dirty and she looked at them in distaste. It would be pitch dark in the kitchen, she’d have to wait till morning, but oh, how she would love a hot bath.

Her little bathroom at home was palest blue, and she imagined herself going in there, as she did every night, slipping off her clothes and into the warm scented water. If she could do that now all the grime and the aches and pains would float away.

Her clothes felt rough against her skin. They weren’t, she always wore soft pretty undies, and her sweater was cashmere. She hadn’t been wearing a
coat, only a jacket, when the car crashed, and she was still in her boots. Shoes might have fallen off, she was lucky she hadn’t been barefoot on the mountainside, but the green tartan rug she was using as a blanket felt like barbed wire and she prickled all over.

She wished she had stayed with Michael. She clutched her charm medallion for comfort, and promised herself that as soon as dawn broke she would get up and clean herself up. But all she could do now was huddle into the chair, and watch the fire, and try to sleep again.

She couldn’t remember falling asleep in front of a fire since she was a child. There were no fires in her apartment, it was all central heating, but watching the little flames flickering took her back to long-ago days when she had fallen asleep on the sofa and been safe and happy.

She shifted, trying to find an easier spot, and sighed. Any hopes of Duncan Keld agreeing to an interview had gone for sure. He wouldn’t have done in any case, he still harboured a king-size grudge against her, but coming here had really cooked her goose. He couldn’t have been madder. Obviously he wanted to be alone. No phone, nobody. He was probably here to work. If there was only one bed he didn’t do much entertaining here, except for ladies who might share the bed. Roz and Shirley had said he was sexy, but Pattie couldn’t see it. ‘I’d rather be interviewed by the K.G.B.,’ he’d announced—well, she’d rather sleep with Rasputin! Roll on tomorrow when she could get away, and this had to be the most uncomfortable chair she had ever encountered.

Pattie caught herself in the middle of another deep sigh of self-pity and checked it. All she had to do was remember the car at the bottom of the hill and she stopped feeling sorry for herself. Things could have been a hundred times worse.

She woke itching, with the blanket scratching her neck and face, and her hair like a bird’s nest. This was disgusting, she had to get washed; and she stood up and winced, sure she was covered with bruises.

The windows were frosted over, in strange whirling patterns, so she put on another couple of logs, because her teeth were chattering, then went into the kitchen. This was a bathroom too. A second door led to a chemical loo, but you did your washing over the sink, it seemed, and Pattie’s fastidiousness revolted against such primitive plumbing. Lord, it was grotty!

She tried to work the little pump over the sink and no water came. Frozen, of course. Of course it would be. Duncan Keld probably never bothered about washing. He looked a scruffy individual.

There was some water in the kettle and she poured that into a plastic bowl in the sink and soaped her hands and face. She couldn’t strip. It was arctic cold in here and he could come marching in any moment. Usually she used a cream and gentle toner on her fine skin which felt tight and tender after the soaping. The towel was rough too, and she longed for the soft caressing towels at home. She had to rub to get her make-up off, but her mascara was probably streaked all over the place and
—
wouldn’t you know it
—
there was no sign of a mirror.

She was trying to smooth her hair by running her fingers through it when she heard him coming and she stiffened, then stood very straight and dignified, her lips a thin disapproving line. He looked everything she disliked most in a man; appearance rough, dishevelled, his thatch of black hair unkempt and the shadow of a beard quite pronounced. Pattie shuddered when she saw him, and he shuddered too and groaned, ‘Strewth, I hoped it was a nightmare!’ He was only wearing trousers. There was dark hair on his chest and arms and she felt goose-pimples on her own skin at the sight of him. He tried the pump, then picked up a big plastic jug from the corner and poured water from that over his head, standing over the sink. He seized the towel and began vigorously rubbing hair and face, at the same time looking at her as though words failed him for the moment but soon he would have a lot to say.

She said, ‘Well, I’m sorry, but the interview was my editor’s idea. I said you wouldn’t talk to me.’ She tried to defend herself. ‘Although I probably did Jennifer Stanley a good turn. If the man she was going to marry was such a wet that he walked out on her because of something that happened before he met her she was well rid of him.’

‘You’ve a point there.’ He dropped the towel and looked at her straight and hard. ‘But thanks to you it was probably the most publicised jilting of the year. Have you ever been rejected, Miss Ross?’

She had always played safe. She had never put herself in a situation that might end in rejection. She admitted, ‘Not like that,’ and he said savagely, ‘Then think yourself lucky, girl.’

She did think herself lucky, every time she remembered the car. ‘My car ’ she began.

‘Where is it?’

She explained, ‘I went off the track. It’s at the bottom of a hill. It’s out of action, you’ll have to give me a lift.’

The same expression crossed his face that she had seen last night, when she suggested he ran her back to Grimslake. A blend of frustration and fury. He almost yelled at her, ‘Damn you, I can’t give you a lift! I don’t have a car.’

Pattie gasped, ‘But how—? I mean –'

‘I come up here to work.’ He sounded as though she was simple-minded and needed every word spoken very slowly. ‘If I had a car I’d get in it if I got bored, so friends give me a lift here and leave me for a month.’

Marooning him, as it were. Marooning her too, God help her. She faltered, ‘What if you were ill?’ and he dismissed that,

‘I never am.’

‘There’s always a first time.’

‘Do you write in clichés too?’ He turned away, and she shouted,

‘There’s nothing wrong with a good cliché if it fits!’ as he slammed the door at the bottom of the stairs behind him.

If he didn’t have a car and her car was out of action how was she going to get away? The enormity of her position was overwhelming her, numbing her mind. She had to get away. She couldn’t stay here. Duncan Keld was back almost at once, but she had had time to start to panic and to bite hard on her lip.

She clenched her hands so that the nails bit into her palms and thought, he’ll move heaven and earth to get rid of me. I won’t be stuck here. He won’t let it happen. She had never met a man she disliked more, but he did give an impression of power, you couldn’t imagine him submitting tamely, and right now he was desperate to have his house to himself again.

He was wearing a thick black polo-necked sweater and an anorak. ‘Let’s go and look at this car of yours,’ he said.

‘Would you have a coat you could lend me?’ Pattie had reached here just wearing a light jacket over her jumper and skirt, but then she had been running for her life and she had still almost been frozen. She certainly couldn’t start walking in cold blood, dressed like this.

He jerked his head towards the back of the door where there was a sheepskin jacket hanging on a hook. It smothered her. It would have been funny if anything was funny today, the way the sleeves hung down, and the width of the thing. She’d be as awkward as a knight in armour in this, but the fleecy lining should keep her warm and the flapping sleeves would stop her fingers from freezing.

She said, ‘So kind of you.’

He opened the door and she screamed. It was a strangled scream, but it was still a cry of horror from the heart. It couldn’t have stopped snowing all night. The drift came half way up the door and out there everything was pure white, except the sky and that was still leaden grey. It wasn’t snowing now, but there was more to come. She remembered the tiny flakes falling as she’d climbed in through the window and he said, ‘It was thickening up when I got back.’

There was no sign of the track, nothing she recognised except the outline of the rising hills. A terrible hush and an eerie glow was over everything, and she looked at Duncan Keld and felt almost scared enough to start running the six miles to town. If she could reach the road she could hitchhike, except that nothing would come for hours, perhaps not for days.
‘Well?’ he said. ‘Where?’ and her pointing finger was shaking.

‘Round there. Down.’

He strode out, through the drift that had piled against the door, on to hard frozen snow, and Pattie followed, feeling the ice down in her lungs making every breath painful. It hurt her eyes too, it was so bright and so bitter, as she kept close behind him. They couldn’t see the track, but he must know it blindfold because he marched on without any hesitation and when they were roughly the distance from the house that she had covered on foot last night she began to look for her car.

She could have missed it. It was white, covered with white, in a gully that had almost filled with snow, and she called, ‘There it is!’ Duncan Keld looked down for what seemed to her quite a long time. Anyone else would surely have remarked on her escape, but all he did was snarl, ‘Well, we can’t shift it,’ and glare at her as though she had done it on purpose.

The snow was starting again, large flakes this time. Looking startlingly white against his black hair, and she remembered Emily Bronte’s description of Heath cliff: ‘A fierce, pitiless, wolfish character.’

The wilderness all around her seemed the most dreadful place she had ever known. She must have gone crazy, only madness could have brought her here, and she looked down at her car, with her possessions in it, things she needed so badly. ‘I have to get my things,’ she faltered. ‘I can’t be without a change of clothing.’ Her handbag and money and credit cards were down there, but her terror right now was not being able to wash and change her clothes. He looked at her as though she was raving and turned on his heel. She nearly called after him, but if she did he wouldn’t stop, she knew that, so she began to edge her way down the hillside.

It wasn’t sheer. There were hummocks and stunted bushes, all covered with snow, providing a foothold, and she went very slowly. If she could just get her small overnight case out she could clean her teeth and get herself clean, and change her undies and tights. She had her warm camel coat thrown in the back of the car, that would be a godsend, and dresses and jumpers and another skirt in the bigger case.

She was planning as she went, what she should take, how much she could carry, and then her foot slipped and she rolled, too clumsy to save herself in the enveloping sheepskin jacket, until she came up against a bush. Then she sat up, her eyes and mouth full of snow, and more snow falling, and knew she hadn’t a hope of getting anything out of the car and toiling back to the top of the hill with it.

She could drown down there. If he had helped her there might have been a chance, he was so much bigger and stronger than she was. He could have pushed through the drifts at the bottom and dragged something out of the car, but she couldn’t do it alone. She would have to go back, and quickly, because if the falling snow turned into a blizzard she would be lost.