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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 wit
h 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?’
