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The bed was ice-cold, making her gasp, starting her teeth chattering. ‘This is like falling into a snowdrift. I could freeze to death in here!'

He laughed, ‘Not with me around,' and the lamp went out and he was beside her, pulling her close, and the length of his hard lean body against the yielding softness of her own stirred her so that she could no longer hear the wind for the singing in her blood. Masculine, and strong, and infinitely tender, his lips and hands wooed her and warmed her on a rising surge of passion, until she was on fire for the touch and the taste of him, with a wildness she had never even suspected. The whole world seemed shut out. She was coming to life, gloriously and rapturously in the soft silent night, blossoming like a passion flower under the mind-blowing expertise of his love-making ...

It was morning when she woke and the first thing she saw was Duncan, sitting up, propped on one elbow, looking down at her. Joy filled her. She could never remember waking up feeling this happy. It was like the scene in the
Wizard of Oz
film where the black and white world blazes into colour. Just looking at his face, and liking it so much, was wonderful. The right face, the right time, everything right.

They both smiled, slow smiles as though they were savouring each other’s nearness, and then Duncan bent to kiss her bare shoulder and run a stroking hand down her arm, and her senses shivered and thrilled. She would have been willing to stay where they were all day, but his hand strayed no further, and she wriggled a little higher, getting head and shoulders above the bedclothes, wondering what time it was.

The windows were still frozen. She squinted across at them and said, ‘We could be sealed in here for ever.’

‘What a way to go!’ He needed a shave and she didn’t mind. A man’s rough cheek could be very sexy. She had never kissed a rough cheek before, but she tried it now, and it was arousing—it nearly drove her wild—and she thought, my goodness, I mustn’t carry on like this, I must show a bit of self-control. So when Duncan started to kiss her back she shifted slightly and joked, ‘Maybe the Ice Age has come and they’ll find us in a hundred years, lying here, smiling.’

He grinned at her, ‘How about that for a headline?’ Their breath frosted over them, and she hoped the fire was still burning downstairs, although she was sure Duncan could get it going again in no time.

‘How about a cup of coffee?’ she suggested.

‘I do like a practical girl!’ He gave her another kiss, very chaste this time, on the forehead, and she wondered if that was true, about the girls he liked. He must have liked Jennifer Stanley for a while, but apart from being ravishingly pretty Pattie couldn’t recall that she had had any special talents.

She was much prettier than Pattie, but her affair with Duncan was a long time ago. He probably hadn’t seen her for years and now she was getting married, so it wouldn’t matter to Pattie how pretty she was. There would be other girls, out there, who had claims on Duncan, but today nobody could bother Pattie. He was dressing fast because of the cold, and she thought inconsequentially, he isn’t all that hairy. He had said he was a hairy feller, but his back and shoulders were tanned and smooth as bronze. She could see the ripple of moving muscles, and imagined him asking her to sun-oil his back on some palm-fringed beach. Even when he had pulled a vest over his head and knotted a sweater round his neck she knew exactly what he looked like under the clothing, and she smiled as she began to wriggle into her own clothing under the sheets.

He grinned across at her, ‘Aren’t you scared you’ll get something on upside down?’

‘It’ll be a novelty,’ she said.

‘Do you usually dress under the bedclothes?’

‘I don’t usually get dressed in sub-zero temperatures.’ But she would have dressed herself this way in a heatwave. She was still very slightly, and ridiculously, shy, and as soon as Duncan went downstairs she threw back the sheets and put on the rest of her clothes at speed.

Duncan had put several small logs on the embers and they were crackling and flaring within minutes. In front of the fire Pattie changed shirt for sweater and skirt, warmed her hands and face, and then followed him into the kitchen where he had a kettle almost boiling on the gas jet.

It was coffee from a coffee bag, but it had never tasted better, rich with flavour so that she smacked her lips over it like a child with a lollipop. She was hungry too, cooking bacon, and breathing in the aroma.

'I'm not a breakfast eater,’ she told Duncan who was shaving at the sink. ‘Except on holidays I’m a cup of coffee and a half of grapefruit.’

He reached one hand around her waist, running fingers over her ribcage and making her squeal—she had forgotten she was ticklish—telling her, ‘That’s why you’re so thin, you need feeding up.’

She wondered if he liked plumper girls. ‘It could be because you starved me for the first two days,’ she said. She was joking, of course, she hadn’t eaten because she wasn’t hungry, but now her appetite was sharp. She was cooking eggs too.

‘Your fault.’ Duncan had the little mirror propped up on the window ledge ledge above the sink and Pattie wondered if she could say, ‘I don’t mind if you don’t bother shaving.’ But he was doing this because she was here and it was a compliment. ‘What did you think I’d do if I caught you in the cupboard?’ he asked.

She had been stubborn and angry. And she had been afraid. ‘Well,’ she said, ‘you were angry with me for coming here, and for that gossip item.’

She saw him frown in the mirror, although he went on with his shaving, and she bit her lip and asked, ‘Did he really jilt her because of that?’

‘Yes.’ Everyone in Fleet Street knew that was the reason, but Pattie had hoped he might say, ‘I don’t really know why.’ But he was definite. ‘It started the quarrel that split everything wide. His family were a lot of stuffed shirts. They put pressure on him and the story lost nothing in the telling.’

She bit back the questions she wanted to ask about Jennifer Stanley, how long and how strong had the affair been between them? Had he seen her since? Had he ever loved her? But she knew she could never pry into that area of his life and that she would be taking a chance if she asked him any deeply personal questions. He could close up, the barriers could come down again, and all their lovely intimacy could end.

She said instead, ‘She was well rid, don’t you think? A man who lets his family decide against the girl he wants to marry—she could well have regretted marrying him.’

‘Maybe,’ said Duncan, tight-lipped, and that was the subject closed, and it wouldn’t be Pattie’s fault if it ever came up again. She was anxious to forget it. She finished cooking the breakfast and Duncan finished shaving, then they took the food into the big room and ate in front of the fire.

He produced a small transistor radio, at which she shrieked, ‘I didn’t know you’d got that!’

‘There’s a lot you don’t know about me, lovey.’ He was joking, but it was true, and she would have thought he’d have brought the radio out before, if it was only to play some music. But when he came here to be alone, perhaps he wanted quietness too. They were getting the nine o’clock news now and she grimaced, ‘Doesn’t get any better, does it?’

‘Not much does,’ he agreed, and she thought, except me. I think I’ve improved in the last two days. She needed her hair styling, and her make-up and some decent clothes, but all that was surface stuff. Inside was what counted, and inside she had never felt happier or stronger, and never so alive.

The weather report was snow. Countrywide falls, with the usual resulting chaos on rail and road. Villages cut off and farmers striving desperately to save their livestock. But a thaw was forecast and Duncan said, ‘Thank God for that,’ and Pattie’s heart sank.

Duncan’s neighbours on the moor were farmers and she could understand him putting himself in their position. But while she was saying how terrible it was, what a loss, what a worry, she knew that she would be happy if the snow stayed for a few more days. He was here to work, he didn’t mind being snowed in, but as soon as a way opened he would expect her to leave. At least she supposed he would, although she could stay a little longer if he asked her.

They finished breakfast, listening to the radio, and then she asked, ‘Would music bother you? May I leave it on? Please say if it would disturb you.’

‘If it would disturb me I shouldn’t have brought it down,’ he said. ‘You’re not one of these who have to have it blaring full blast, are you?’ As she shook her head he said, ‘Of course you’re not.’

‘Quiet, you mean? A bit dim?’ She had never been dim, she had always been intelligent. But she had been one of the quiet ones, reserved and retiring, and now although she laughed she was wondering how she seemed to him.

He smiled at her, ‘I mean there’s nothing impaired about your hearing, nor your mind, nor your eyes, nor any sense or part of you.’

‘Thank you,’ she said demurely. ‘You seem in pretty good working order yourself.’

‘Yes, ma’am.’ He gathered the plates to take into the kitchen, leaned across and kissed the tip of her nose, ‘And you haven’t seen anything yet!’

‘I can hardly wait!’ She put on a look of wide-eyed innocence and he chuckled,

‘It’s a temptation, I can tell you, but talking of work ’

‘Oh yes,’ she said, ‘so I’ll take the plates. Perhaps you’d let me have some of your paper and lend me a pen, and later on I can do some writing too. But you carry on now and pretend I’m not here, and then I shan’t feel I wrecked your schedule by barging in on you.’

She would have loved it if he had said, ‘I don’t want to work. I’d rather sit here and talk to you.’ Better still if he had taken her in his arms and kissed her properly, because a thaw was on the way and their time together like this had to be limited. But he did say, ‘You’re no wrecker,’ and looked at her with an expression she couldn’t quite fathom before he went across the room to his working table.

She thought about that look while she was in the kitchen, washing up after breakfast and then washing herself and combing her hair. Duncan didn’t have a particularly expressive face, but she was almost sure the look was half way between tenderness and amusement.

There were no immediate signs of a thaw. When Pattie put on the sheepskin jacket and went outside the snow still seemed hard, although her footsteps crunched a trail around the yard and the wind was still bitterly cold. Somewhere out here she had lost her pendant, and she looked on the ground and peered into the woodpile as she pulled out a few more logs. No luck, but it would turn up eventually and in the meantime the snow wouldn’t hurt it. Gold didn’t rust, old gold coins and jewellery came up from the sea-bed as shining as the day they went spiralling down and down through the water.

She
wished
that Duncan had taken a break. This morning everything seemed sharper and brighter and more exciting. She would have liked him out here with her. She would have liked to build a snowman or throw snowballs. She cut a pattern of two huge interlocked hearts in the snow with the shovel, then wrote her initials in one and D.K. in the other with her finger. Then she decided it looked a bit too soppily sentimental and scuffed it all out again. But it made her smile, and she thought, I don’t just fancy him, I’m falling in love with him, so what shall I cook us for supper tonight?

She was beginning to feel quite proprietorial about the kitchen. She had the radio playing quietly, and she sang along, very softly, with some of the tunes, as she sorted through the cupboards again and set out the ingredients for tuna fishcakes on the table. She scrubbed two large potatoes from a bag of potatoes under the sink, and whipped up a mousse with a tin of evaporated milk and a tin of strawberries. That took a long time, with only a fork for a whisk, but today she had time. Then she put it outside in the snow to set. She was a good cook, when she was entertaining she used exotic ingredients and tried out adventurous recipes, but here it was all convenience food. When they were back in London she would ask Duncan round for a meal and set something really mouthwatering before him. And she would make herself so beautiful. She would buy a new dress. That would really knock him back, because he had never seen her glamorised.

She did a lot of daydreaming that day. Nothing seemed impossible, and all her dreams included Duncan. He had put a pad of lined foolscap writing paper and a fibre-tipped pen on the armchair, and Pattie sat in front of the fire and tried to do some work. Usually she used a typewriter, a pen slowed her down, and she had no clear idea what she intended writing. Her assignment up here was to interview Duncan, but she couldn’t start on that. He’d know what she was doing somehow even if she didn’t show it to him, and it would put him on the defensive. She couldn’t even make notes about him, and she didn’t want to. This was personal, sweet and secret. All she had learned about Duncan she would never tell a living soul.

So she wrote letters instead to friends with whom she kept in touch by mail, cheerful and chatty, not even mentioning where she was, because if she did she would have to say who she was with, and she would like it best of all if that never came out. She wasn’t thinking very logically today or she would have known that there wasn’t a hope of getting herself, let alone her car, back to civilisation without questions being asked. But today she wrote letters as if she was still in her apartment, or snatching a spare half hour at work.

Even to her mother she wrote as though the clock had stopped some time last week. She had always censored her letters to California, never dwelling on anything remotely distressing. ‘Your mother has a very sensitive nature,’ they had told her when her mother broke down after her father’s death, and Pattie had never sent a letter that could disturb her.

Not that there was anything to worry about in this situation, but she had long ago got out of the habit of confiding in her mother. She didn’t want anyone to know. Not yet. She looked across at Duncan and remembered what a critic had said about his last book—‘a writer of powerful passion'—and that applied to him as a man too.