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There was no point in dressing again, so she went downstairs as she was in her pyjamas. The kitchen felt cold, and it was only when she walked into it that she realised she had forgotten to stoke the boiler. Luckily, it was still alight, but by the time she had finished feeding it and coaxing it back to life she was filthy.
Since coming to the cottage she seemed to have wasted more energy getting clean than at any other time in her life!
This time she had a bath and not a shower, luxuriating in the heat of the water against her chilly skin. She was just about to step out when the lights flickered and then went out.
For a moment, she was too surprised to move. In London, the lights never went out. She got out of the bath and groped her way toward the towel rail, stubbing her toe against something hard and uncomfortable on the way.
Outside she could hear the fierce sound of the wind. It sounded much louder than it had done earlier. Strong enough to damage the power lines?
There was always the generator in the outhouse, but she hadn’t the faintest idea how to get it going. She had brought a torch with her, but it was still in the car. She had also brought some candles. Had Guy brought them in when he had brought in the other things? If so, where had he put them?
Of course, he would go and leave her on her own to face this…
She only realised the incongruity of her thoughts as she headed downstairs clad only in a pair of briefs, her pyjama top and a pair of pale pink socks—all she had been able to find in the darkness of the bathroom.
She had to feel her way downstairs, almost missing two of the stairs, and bumping her head on the lintel at the bottom. To her relief, she saw that the kitchen was vaguely illuminated by the glow of the boiler. Thank goodness she had woken up in time to attend to it before the power failure!
The kitchen had very few cupboards, and none of them yielded the requisite candles, which meant that she would have to go outside and get the torch from her car.
Where were her wellingtons? She remembered how they had leaked, and flinched fro
m the thought of putting them on, but her shoes were upstairs, and there was no guarantee that she would find them in the darkness.
It would have to be the wellingtons.
She opened the back door and cried out in shock as something whipped cruelly against her face, striking her with scratching fingers.
Her mind and body were thrown into immediate panic. No modern city dweller lived in ignorance of the violence on the streets, and Campion reacted instinctively, tearing at the clawing fingers on her face, only to realise that her assailant was nothing more than a springy branch torn down from somewhere by the wind!
Even so, it took several minutes for her heart to resume its normal steady beat, and then, very slowly, her eyes accustomed themselves to the darkness, and she realised that there was a very thin light from the cloud-covered moon, and she could just about make out the shape of the buildings and her car.
It was bitterly cold though, and the temperature must surely have dropped. As she stepped out of the shelter of the house, icy pellets of rain stung her face. No, not rain, she realised, but hail. She reached her car and tugged on the door. Nothing happened.
Frustrated, she stared at it and then realised that Guy must have locked it when he removed her things. Trust a man to do something like that. Where were her keys? She could have cried with misery. What chance did she have of finding them in that dark house?
There was nothing else for it, she would have to go back and wait for the electricity to come back on.
As she stumbled through the doorway, she reflected how galling and infuriating it was to be held at the mercy of the elements in this way, and then she found herself thinking that Lynsey must have felt the same way at being at the mercy of the King. Guy was right—she would have rebelled, would have tried to take charge of her own life. By trying to persuade her cousin to seduce her?
Out of nowhere came a mental image of her dream: the tall man who had stepped across Lynsey’s path. A tiny flutter of excitement started up inside her. Guy had brought her portable machine in, and it was in the study; if she could find it, she could bring it into the kitchen.
Suddenly, she was itching to work. She didn’t need light to type, and she certainly didn’t need electricity to think.
Half an hour later, she was hard at work, the power cut forgotten.
She had stripped off her wet socks, and her long, bare legs were resting on the bar of the table. The boiler kept the kitchen pleasantly warm, and she ceased to be conscious of time or her surroundings as the words flew from the typewriter.
At last it was done, and Lynsey had discovered that the man who had stood so fatefully between herself and Francis was none other than Dickon, Earl of Dartington, the man whom Henry had decided she was to marry. To whom Henry had sold her in marriage, in fact.
Almost too exhausted to move, Campion stood up and pushed away her typewriter. She ought to go upstairs. She felt as though she could sleep for a week, but she was just too tired to move and, besides, it was warm here in the kitchen. She curled up in the chair beside the fire, her body relaxing almost immediately into a deep sleep.
So deep, in fact, that she didn’t hear the click of the restored lights, nor the car arriving outside, nor the opening of the back door.
* * *
Guy shook the sleet from his head and grimaced wearily. He seemed to have been driving round for a lifetime, trying to decide what to do—to go back to London or to stay. Perhaps he should have gone back, but in the end he couldn’t. Too much hung on his being here, and he still wasn’t sure if his decision was that of a fool or a coward.
He started to cross the kitchen, and then frowned as he saw the typewriter on the table.
