Never in a Lifetime

NEVER IN A LIFETIME Lilian Peake

On a visit to her friend in Scotland, Jacqui had met Fraser Grant and fallen deeply and irrevocably in love with him. Then, rather late in the day, she discovered that he was not free to marry her and had, apparently, no inclination to disentangle himself. So could Jacqui be blamed for turning to Fraser’s brother Malcolm instead? Yes, according to Fraser. But what right on earth had he to resent what she had done.

CHAPTER ONE IT was over a sandwich and coffee lunch in a nearby cafe that Gwenda invited Jacqui to Scotland for a ten-day vacation. 'June's a lovely time up there,' she added. 'Sure your parents won't mind?' Jacqui answered, smiling. 'I'd love to go, if they'll have me.' 'I've talked about you when I've phoned them. They know you're a friend of mine. Anyway, I think they'd be glad to have you for another reason. As a kind of test case, if you know what I mean.' Gwenda's grin was infectious. 'They're thinking of turning the house into a small but exclusive hotel.' 'You mean I'll have to pay?' Jacqui pretended to be scandalised. 'Not a penny,' Gwenda answered, smiling. 'But you might have to put up with being pampered.' It was Fraser, Gwenda's elder brother, who met them at Fort William. It was thirty miles from the village of Cariscraig, on the outskirts of which was the Grant family's home. The sight of the man approaching across the station concourse did something curious to Jacqui's heartbeats. It made them jump and trip over themselves, then continue in a disturbing thump. He was a giant of a man, she observed,black-haired and dark-eyed. His shirt was short- sleeved and open-necked and the kilt he wore, dust-layered though it was, held a kind of lawless air. There was that kind of look in his eyes, too, as though the owner of them cared not a snap of the fingers for the rest of his fellow humans— especially, Jacqui gleaned from the cool, slanted look he gave her, the female of the species.

After a brief greeting by brother of sister, and a nod in Jacqui's general direction, Fraser bent to pick up the luggage. Jacqui's rucksack he swung from his shoulder, while his hands and arms gathered the remaining cases. These he dumped in the back of the Range Rover while Jacqui scrambled up into the rear seat. Gwenda occupied the front passenger seat next to her brother. 'If you look back there, Jacqui,' Gwenda remarked, 'you might catch a glimpse of Ben Nevis.' Jacqui twisted round, frowning. 'Which one? There are so many mountains.' 'If you don't know it, it's impossible in this light to pick it out,' Fraser interposed shortly. Gwenda grinned up at him as he swung the vehicle round from the car park to join the busy main road leading out of the town. 'What's the show of the Grant tartan in aid of?' Her pointing finger indicated the kilt. 'It's my wild Highland inheritance coming out,' he answered dryly, voice broad with a deliberately accentuated Scottish accent. They were speeding away from the town now. 'Shall I say that maybe I put it on to impress our visitor?' 'I didn't even realise you were aware you had a visitor.' Jacqui's small, tight comment brought his eyes for a stabbing second to meet hers in the driving mirror. 'You forgot to introduce me to your friend, Gwenda,' he commented with irony. 'A lot of chance you gave me!' was the sisterly remark. 'You marched up to us at the station as if you were the lord of the manor deigning to come and meet his servants --'

'Laird,' Fraser put in casually. 'You've lived away from Scotland so long you're talking like a Sassenach.' 'And who's lived south of the Border for fourteen of his thirty-two years?' his sister prodded. She said over her shoulder, 'For your information, Jacqui, Sassenach is the Gaelic for Saxon. It's not really the term of abuse Fraser's trying to make it.' 'Thanks for telling me, Gwenda,' Jacqui replied with a hint of irony, 'I honestly thought your brother was intending to be insulting.' 'Did you, indeed?' The Scottish lilt was in Fraser's tone. 'Do your duty, Gwenda, and tell me the lady's name.' 'Didn't Mother pass it on? Or weren't you listening? Jacqui, this is Fraser, my older brother.' Gwenda waved a hand from back to front, reversing it as she added, 'Fraser, meet my friend Jacqui White. Okay, big brother?' The answer was a brief nod, then silence for a while. They were well on their way now, speeding through the long, darkening evening. Gwenda looked with absent-minded eyes at the passing scenery. She started talking about family matters, making casual conversation which was at variance with the misting, looming mountains which lifted their time-defying summits towards the ebbing evening light. Jacqui's eyes were drawn to the car's interior to settle on the man seated in front of her. He said little, responding only with nods and staccato comments as his sister talked. Even then, so soon after meeting him, Jacqui felt the strange lure of the man, his very detachment a kind of bait, a challenge to her ego to do something to make him notice her again. The back of his head was just an arm's length away, but it was her eyes that followed the line of his thick black hair, not her hands.

Those she clasped on her lap, feeling foolishly as if they might, on their own, defy convention and reach out to touch forbidden places. Her eyes could roam unchecked, and they watched the competent hands resting so lightly on the steering wheel it was like a caress. The large car, under his control, obeyed every instruction of his hand and brain, easily taking the sharp corners and blind curves with the elan of the swiftest of sports cars. His arms were tanned and the dark scattering of hair on them was caught down by the band of his stainless steel watch. She had complete, confidence in his ability to negotiate every hazard on that winding road, making its way alongside lochs which, even as the last of the sun's glow became a memory, picked up and reflected the mountains at whose feet they lay. All the same, the scenery was overpowering to eyes which had grown accustomed to packed streets and office blocks and crowded department stores. Outside the car, Jacqui could sense the quietness and the air's soundless stillness. Not a ripple disturbed the water's surface, and even the birds seemed to have had the sense to find their nests. Inside the closed vehicle, the atmosphere held no such tranquillity. Jacqui sensed a tension. It seemed to have crept in, missing Gwenda, who continued to talk, but weaving a path between and around the man at the wheel and Jacqui herself, who sat directly behind him. It was there in the lightning glances which were directed at the driving mirror to note the traffic to the rear but which, Jacqui could perceive even in the semi-darkness, time and again seemed to rest momentarily on her.

It had been a long journey and Jacqui felt the strain telling as the end of the drive seemed to be nowhere in sight. She relaxed with an involuntary sigh against the car's upholstery. 'Tired?' Gwenda's voice brought her head upright. 'We're nearly there.' Jacqui felt the need to contribute something by way of conversation and, without thinking, gave voice to her inner thoughts. 'These mountains— they dwarf you. Somehow, they're frightening.' 'It's the mist and the night coming,' Gwenda answered, and Jacqui nodded, glancing at the back of that resolute head in front of her and wondering if, in his thoughts, its possessor wasmocking her for such over-sensitivity to her surroundings. When the car turned off the road into a winding drive, Jacqui felt relief tempered with apprehension. The sight of the slim, greyinghaired woman standing in the doorway of the large stone-built residence, a smile of welcome lighting her face, did just a little to alleviate her nervousness. As she lifted her head, her feet crunching gravel, her system was electrified by the sight of two brown, enigmatic eyes looking into hers. They were serious, those eyes, and questing. 'My—my cases are in the back,' she said faintly, 'with Gwenda's.' 'I know. I was merely doing the gentlemanly thing and helping you out.' The voice mocked, the eyes remained unreadable. 'Hands off my friend!' Gwenda called good- humouredly. 'I haven't touched her. Am I likely to?' The deep voice was clipped, near to anger.

Gwenda's shoulders lifted, but she made no snap retort. Indeed, she answered, 'You could give a girl an inferiority complex with a remark like that. Haven't you noticed how attractive she is, plus her ins arid outs. And she's a blonde. Or have your male reactions gone into hiding? You've been living like a monk, or so Mother says --' 'Be quiet, will you?' The sharp remark brought his sister's eyes up to hfs in quick apology. They began walking towards the patiently waiting woman in the doorway which was half-shielded by a gabled porch. 'Fraser,' said Gwenda, 'can I appeal to your better nature? I know you've got one. Be nice to Jacqui, will you? She's my friend.' 'That doesn't make her mine.' His stare was hard. 'Boy-friend walked out on her, has he?' The brown eyes were callous as they rested on Jacqui. 'You want to know the best remedy? Get yourself another man.' 'Mother,' Gwenda greeted with a kiss the woman in the doorway, 'keep your elder son in order! He's being rude to my guest.' 'Our guest,' Mrs Grant corrected, embracing Jacqui warmly and inviting her indoors. 'Welcome to Lochcraig House,, my dear.' The entrance hall was so large it could have been used as a room. 'And take no notice of Fraser. He's an academic—-aren't you, Fraser?' 'Which makes me as dry as dust, doesn't it?' The brown eyes glinted. 'Feel me.' He thrust his hand towards Jacqui, but she just looked at it. He took her hand and placed her fingers on the back of his. She darted a look upwards. Yes, he had felt the moistness of the skin. Had he guessed that he was the cause, did he know that the dangerous excitement he generated inside her was affecting her whole system?

His hand tipped, making hers slide off. Gwenda said, 'His subject is English Literature. He doesn't even acknowledge that the sort of work we do exists. When I tell him that you're working with me on the magazine, he'll look down his nose at you like he does at me.' His mother looked up at him fondly. 'He lives in a different world from ordinary people like us. Don't you, Fraser?' Jacqui looked at him, too. How was it possible to fit into the framework of learning and erudition this man with a build approaching that of a giant and possessing eyes which contained some of the haunting wildness of the mountains through which they had just passed? She flexed her fingers. The tingle of his skin lingered on them as though she had touched a live wire. 'Well, Fraser,' Gwenda prodded, 'do you rate my friend's intellect as low as mine now you know her job?' A down-slanting glance rayed over Jacqui's shape. 'A woman's intellect is hardly the first thing a man thinks of. Where's Father?' His abrupt change of subject was like a line under a signature. Right, that's it, it said. 'Down among his vegetables. These cases, Fraser...' 'Mother wants you to act as porter,' said Gwenda, glancing impudently up at her brother. 'Carry our cases up and get some practice for the role she's obviously going to give you when she and Father open the place as a hotel.' She shrieked as her brother lifted his arm in a mock-threat. He smiled fleetingly, and Jacqui caught the end of it as his eyes moved to her. He gathered up the luggage as he had done at the station, and indicated with his head that they should follow.

That smile Jacqui had caught had momentarily turned her heart upside down. Its thud inside her chest had nothing to do with climbing the stairs. What am I doing, she thought, letting myself be drawn into this man's ambience? He's impolite, caustic, quite beyond any woman's reach. I've come here for a holiday, she told herself firmly, noting the carved oak grandeur of the wide staircase, and I'm determined to enjoy it. I won't let these ten days be spoilt by an arrogant male called Fraser Grant, even if he is the brother of my best friend. Is it my usual room?' Gwenda called over the banisters to her mother. 'Yes, and Jacqui's room is next to yours. What would you like to eat, dear?' Mrs Grant enquired of Jacqui. 'I could do something with eggs, or make a salad?' 'I'm not really hungry, Mrs Grant,' Jacqui answered. 'We ate on the train. But if Gwenda would like ...' Her voice tailed off in uncertainty. 'Toast and tea, Mother,' said Gwenda. 'Same for you, Jacqui? Make that for two, will you?' Fraser had gone ahead and was standing with every sign of impatience outside the opened door of a room. Nearer, by a closed door, were his sister's cases. 'My brother's being polite again,' Gwenda remarked, taunting her brother with a broad smile. 'He's dumped my things down, but he's going to show you to your room.' 'There's no need, thank you,' Jacqui said stiffly to the tall, aloof man who stood, foot at the door to prevent its shutting, arms folded across his chest. He made no move to go.

Gwenda was opening her own door. 'I'll just let myself in here, then come along to you. You'd better accept his politeness this once,' she added in a loud aside. 'It's so rare, you'd better make the most of it while it's there.' The muscled arms stayed folded, the inscrutable face kept its secrets to itself. 'Thanks,' said Jacqui shortly, passing in front of him, feeling his skin brush hers and jumping at the contact. He moved to occupy the doorway. 'I'm okay now, thanks.' She frowned, out of her depth. 'I'll—I'll be down soon for my cup of tea.' He almost fills that door frame, she thought, although it's high and wide. How can I shift such a human rock? Her gaze met his uncertainly. 'Is there something wrong with me?' It was a direct challenge and he rose to it. 'On the contrary, everything's right with you.' 'I don't know if you're being insulting, or trying the direct approach, Mr Grant, but I'm tired, that's all. I've travelled a long way today.' And I have, she thought, surprising herself, I have . .. But where she had finished up she did not know. One thing she sensed within herself was that the journey wasn't over; that it had, in fact, seemed only just to have begun. Fraser bowed ironically, kilt swaying. His booted feet took him away and the door swung closed. Jacqui let out a breath she did not even know she was holding.

Moaning brightness nudged her sleepily awake and she rolled over face down in the bed. Then she realised where she was and rolled back, staring at the high white ceiling, glimpsing a sun- patch and

tracing it to the window directly opposite. Farther along there was a second window. Flinging the cover aside, Jacqui made for the distant view, gasping at its beauty, drawing into her the greenery, the multicolours and, beyond, the rising gilded mountains. Last night in the half-light she had thought them forbidding. Now their sun-layered heights invited and dared the onlooker to attempt to scale their summits. Nearer home, the bushes and shrubs parted, allowing a glimpse of the loch, its blueness reflecting the sky. Morning lightened the lawn's green, the sun casting tree-shadows over the smooth grass. Jacqui knelt on the window seat, absorbing the beauty and feeling the glass warm to her fingertips' touch. A figure emerged from behind a line of bushes, and the man looked directly up at her. His hands were in his trouser pockets, their belted waistband resting just above his hips. His shirt sleeves were rolled, the neck partly opened. His stare did not spare the feelings of the girl at the window. Looking down at herself, she realised how little her short nightdress concealed, yet she could not tear herself from that gaze. In daylight, his stature seemed more dominating, his shoulders broader, hips strong and lean. He moved to place his feet apart, the better to maintain his bold, audacious stare. Feeling the warmth in her face steal downwards over her body, she stood back from the window and tugged the curtains across. Did he think she had gone to the window merely to attract his attention? An antique bedside chest stood to one side of the bed, a small bowl of flowers in its centre. Its twin occupied the space on the bed's other side. A matching dressing-table spread its elegantly curving self between the two high-reaching sash windows. There were chairs in the same dark wood; on a low oval-shaped table were a pile of glossy

magazines, another vase of flowers and a bowl of fruit complete with small, pearl-handled knife. If this were one day to become the hotel which it seemed Gwenda's parents were contemplating, Jacqui considered, tossing back her curling hair and endeavouring to smooth it, then she would be one person who would surely be unable to afford its prices! The adjoining bathroom was a delight. Its pink-tiled walls called for the white of the bathroom suite it contained. Over the washbasin and make-up area was an illuminated mirror, while alongside the bath was a large square of pink-tinted mirror tiles. There was a separate shower with sliding panels, and it was. this that Jacqui made for, delighting in the warm cascade. She was wondering, which of her selection of clothes to wear when the ring of a telephone surprised her. Looking round for the instrument, she found to her surprise that it rested on the bedside cupboard. Tired as she had been last night, she had missed seeing it. 'Hi, Jacqui.' The voice was bright and, to Jacqui, welcome. 'Gwenda, what shall I wear? I mean, would a blouse and --?' 'Borrow Fraser's kilt, if you like,' Gwenda joked. 'You'd probably be able to wrap it round you three times over and you'd trip over the hem, but…' Jacqui laughed. 'So top and jeans is okay?' 'Fine. Look, Jacqui, don't think you've got to be on your best behaviour here. Go all out to enjoy yourself, relax. See you down at breakfast. Fifteen minutes? It's a big kitchen, so we eat in there first thing.'

'Right. Gwenda, it was only because it's such a beautiful house.' 'And full of beautiful people! For goodness' sake, feel at home.' Her tone changed. 'I do mean that.' She rang off. Jacqui found the kitchen by tracing the source of the sound of clattering crockery. It was a shock to her system to find Fraser standing near the table reading the newspaper. He lowered the paper, noting her figure-hugging white top and jeans, then raised it again. Her surprise at finding him there momentarily tangled up her thoughts, but the silence, broken only by a sizzling and clattering from an adjoining room, forced her into saying the first thing- that came into her head. 'You're reading yesterday's paper.' The sheets were lowered slowly and the eyes which regarded her were impersonal. 'Today's newspapers don't arrive from the south this farnorth until around midday. You must have sharp eyes to have noticed that.' He glanced at the small print of the date, then assessed the distance from it at which she stood. No, only desperate ones, she wanted to say, desperate to find a way of communicating with you. She shook her head. 'I remember yesterday's headlines.' 'Clever you,' was his cynical comment. 'To me, every headline of every day's paper seems the same. They all tell the same story—that all of humanity is crazy. In varying degrees, of course.' Jacqui grasped a chairback. 'You're joking, surely.' His eyes did not waver from her face. She tried to smile. 'Something must have happened in your life to sour you.' 'You must be joking,' he echoed her words, but with bitterness added.

The conversation ended and silence threatened to descend again. A door came open and a plump young woman gazed around. 'Miss Gra- --' She checked herself. 'Och, sorry, I thought it was'Mr Fraser's sister.' Her Scottish accent was pronounced. 'Molly, this is Miss White, Gwenda's friend.' Fraser made the introduction offhandedly. The young woman nodded. 'And I'm Molly Inglis from the village. My sister Lucy and I help Mrs Grant. Eggs and bacon, Miss White, or cereal and toast? Or you can have both, if you like. Miss Gwenda usually does when she's here.' Jacqui shook her head, laughing. 'One egg, one piece of toast, please.' 'Well, you'll no' get fat on that,' commented Molly, withdrawing. The brown eyes had started their slow survey before the door had closed and Jacqui wished she had worn a dress that hung like a sack just to stop those insolent eyes seeing the shape of her. She tugged at the chair and sat down, then looked up to defy those eyes, only to find they were again behind the paper. 'Have I --' She waited for his attention, which was slow to come. 'Have I taken someone's place?' 'Only mine. It doesn't matter.' Jacqui sprang up as though the chair had burnt her. 'So where shall I sit, please?' A hand moved carelessly. 'Next one along, if you must.' It was only as she sat down that Jacqui realised the seat was next to his.

Gwenda came flying into the room. 'I just remembered I left you at the mercy of my prickly brother. Has he been nice to you?' Jacqui smiled. 'Not really.' The paper crumpled as he lowered it quickly and her slanting glance met the sharpness in his. Gwenda said, seizing two cups and pouring coffee, 'Why, what has he done to upset you?' 'What the hell does she mean—not really?' demanded Fraser. 'I've "done" nothing, and I've "said" nothing. Nothing of any significance, anyway.' Jacqui was shaking her head, but Fraser persisted, eyes narrowing, 'Maybe that's what she means.' 'She's here,' remarked Gwenda, drinking her coffee. 'Ask her.' 'It doesn't matter!' Jacqui heard the desperation in her own voice. Fraser seemed to have heard it, too, since he folded the paper to manageable proportions and pulled out his chair. At once, Jacqui regretted her second choice of seat. There had been other places she could easily have chosen at the large table. It could only have been his nearness that made the flesh of her arm tingle, the nerves all over her spring to life. Molly entered, hands full with breakfast dishes. She smiled a greeting at Gwenda, lowering her breakfast in front of her. 'Is that enough, Miss Gwenda? I'm glad you've got an appetite. It's more than your friend here has. Look at her wee bite—one egg, one toast, that's all she wanted.' Gwenda frowned at Jacqui's meal. 'You'll need more than that while you're here, you know. Where will you get your energy from to go walking and climbing? That's what I do when I come here. Just look around you,' she lifted her fork and indicated the scenery beyond the window, 'doesn't it say, "climb up me if you dare"?'

'Okay, you win,' Jacqui conceded, smiling. 'Is there a bit of bacon and sausage going, Molly?' Gladly, Molly returned to the kitchen and brought back a generous helping. 'Tuck into that, 'Miss White,' she said, 'and you'll be able to keep up with Mr Fraser here, let alone Miss Gwenda, when you're climbing those mountains.' Afterwards, with the table cleared, and while Fraser continued to read the paper, Gwenda explained to Jacqui that her parents always breakfasted in their own private apartment. 'It's up there,' she raised her hand, indicating the next floor, 'and at the other side of the house. Malcolm's room, whenever "he comes here, which isn't that often, is near Fraser's.' 'Malcolm?' Jacqui enquired. 'Didn't I tell you I've got another brother? He's thirty-one—exactly a year younger than Fraser. He's unmarried. He's a climber—not social,' she laughed, 'mountain. Very physical,' she added, 'all muscle and brawn.' Jacqui secretly doubted whether the brother railed Malcolm could possibly be more muscular or 'physical' than the brother named Fraser. 'In fact,' Gwenda regarded Fraser with critical, objective eyes, 'in that respect there's not much to choose between Malcolm and Fraser. Except in one thing—Malcolm hasn't got Fraser's brains. He's intelligent, but stupid.' She grinned. 'If you get my meaning.' Her eyes twinkled. 'They have definitely something else in common—they both have a weakness for women.'

'You really surprise me there,' said Jacqui, her stare fixed on Fraser, then she recalled the comment he had made as he showed her into her room last night—'everything's right with you'. The man her eyes were pinioning slapped down the folded newspaper and pushed back his chair. At that moment, the telephone rang distantly and the three of them froze, listening. The face of a young woman resembling Molly's was pushed round the door from the main part of the house. Jacqui assumed she was Molly's sister. 'Call for Miss Gwenda,' she announced. 'Peter!' The name was spoken on a note of delight, and Gwenda raced from the room, calling, 'Lucy, I'll take it in my room. Tell him to hang on a minute, will you? Fraser, be a pal and put the receiver back on when I'm connected upstairs, will you?' Jacqui and Fraser were left staring at each other. Jacqui rose, only to find herself still looking upward at him. Does he have to be so tall? she thought. He's got so much else, after all ... Weakness for women? I bet women don't leave him alone. But there was that manner, detached, aloof—yet with the attracting power of a mammoth magnet. Jacqui, finding the mounting tension becoming unbearable, asked, 'Who's Peter?' 'Peter Barlow,' Fraser informed her as he went to replace the receiver, 'Gwenda's boy-friend.' Jacqui nodded, the action a relief to the tenseness of her neck muscles. 'I've heard her mention him.' She went to the door. 'Please excuse me?

He followed. 'Is there something wrong?' Jacqui frowned, pausing and facing him. 'You mean, why am I going to my room?' He held the door while she moved past him. They were standing in a linking corridor which led to the entrance hall. The narrow passageway was dimly lighted and it was far too intimate a place for Jacqui's comfort. The man was too near, wrecking her composure. 'I mean,' persisted Fraser, 'there's a curious look in .your eyes.' Oh no, Jacqui thought, had he guessed how he affected her? Her blue eyes found his and she hoped she had been able to clear them of all expression. 'I came here for a holiday, Mr Grant. I'm probably looking tired and I'm hoping to recharge my batteries while I'm here. Isn't that what a holiday is usually for?' He gazed back intently. 'So you aren't telling me. Let down by a man, no doubt. That's the usual reason.' She shook her head. 'Wrong track. Sorry.' Making for the staircase, she hoped Fraser would leave her alone, but a hand on her shoulder turned her abruptly. She tried to shake it off, but it would not move. Her Own hand came across to prise it away, and his other hand merely caught hers, holding it. 'I get the feeling that something about me bugs you.' He spoke curtly and his direct approach caught her off balance. She thought, he's so right, there's everything about him. He disturbed her deeply. The vibrations from his body and brain were hitting her like hailstones against a window pane. But it was his insight into her feelings that shook her most, shocking her into a sharp, physical pain.

'I'm sorry,' she replied, maintaining her poise with difficulty, 'if I've given you that impression. I certainly didn't intend it.' Her veins began to throb in the hand he was holding. 'Please?' Her eyes appealed along with her question, and she pulled at her hand. He released her shoulder but not her hand. Instead, he turned it over and studied it, as ifreading her palm. Then he flicked its centre with his fingers, leaving a stinging sensation at which she compressed her lips. 'Thanks,' she said with irony, but he just smiled inscrutably and she turned irritably from him. Gwenda met Jacqui on the upper landing. She was glowing from her conversation with her boyfriend. 'Sorry to leave you with my dear brother, but when Peter rings, I run. He's working in Edinburgh.' They were outside Gwenda's room and Jacqui followed her in. 'He's a lecturer in catering at a college there. But I told you that, didn't I?' Jacqui nodded. 'I know you don't see much of him. I don't know how you can go for so long without seeing him. If I loved someone --' 'If it's real love,' Gwenda put in, 'it stands the test. I know it sounds trite and romantic nonsense, but it's true.' She lowered her voice. 'I haven't told the parents, but Peter and I are engaged. I've got a ring in my bag. It didn't cost the earth, because he can't afford it, but I love it.' She pushed at her short, dark hair, as dark as her brother's. Her eyes were brown too, but lighter, with less depth. She was slim to the point of thinness, but hejr face was round and unlined, unlike Fraser's, whose facial structure was long and grooved by frown marks and lines of resolution and who knew how many corroding past experiences. 'I'm so pleased for you,' said Jacqui touching her friend's shoulder. 'I'll keep it a secret. Does your brother know?'

'Fraser? I think he's probably guessed.' She glanced outside. 'Weather fine, sky almost doudless. Feel like climbing mountains, walking along lochs, or going for a drive? Or,' Gwenda considered her, 'you've still got the look of London about you—how about a restful day?' Jacqui went to the window and stared out at the lush gardens around the house. 'A chair out there? With a book, maybe?' Gwenda laughed. 'Okay, for a while. I thought you might opt for that. After lunch, I'll take you round the gardens. They're pretty extensive.' It was coffee-time when Jacqui's head lifted from her book to find a tall, lazily striding man approaching them, hands in pockets. The sun had grown so warm, Jacqui had changed into a sleeveless sundress, its rounded neckline curving low. She felt Fraser's contemplation, masculine and assessing, on her shoulders and bare arms. He even let his gaze wander down her legs to her feet. Defensively, Jacqui drew them in and under the chair. His smile was full of male knowledge and mocking amusement. His shirt was unbuttoned almost to the waist, his casual trousers following the lean line of his hips and thighs. Again Jacqui felt that leap of awareness, trying to swallow it down with a mouthful of coffee, but it wouldn't go, that electric sensation which his every appearance caused inside her. 'Hi, Fraser,' commented Gwenda from the lounger on which she was half-reclining. 'Help yourself to coffee. There's a spare cup.' Without comment, he lowered himself to a garden chair and reached forward to put cup on saucer and pour. He leaned back to drink, his eyes lifting to the mountains and taking on their own craggy remoteness. Jacqui dared to brave that look. 'Have you been working, Mr Grant?'

The cool eyes swung towards her and he moved impatiently. 'Call me Fraser. And yes, I've been working.' His eyes wandered disconcertingly over her. 'How did you guess?' 'You've got the look of work about you, that's all.' With simulated puzzlement, he gazed down at himself, and Jacqui followed his eyes, her pulses dancing at the sight of the dark chest hair which was revealed by his unbuttoned shirt. 'Something about my clothes?' he asked, half-smiling and looking up suddenly to catch her fascinated stare. 'No, no. Your mind, your thoughts—they're only half here.' A cynical eyebrow lifted, his glance on her again. 'Are they?' 'Jacqui's right,' said Gwenda, returning her cup to the tray. 'Your mind's back in your study, even when you lower yourself to mix with creatures of low intellect like us.' 'I'll take that,' he answered her smile with one of his, 'from whence it comes.' 'Do you work even on your vacation?' Jacqui enquired. 'Don't you ever relax?' 'I relax,' he answered, thrusting out his long legs, and taking a drink of coffee, 'in the right place.' With a flash of his eyes, he added, 'With the right woman.' 'Hey, Fraser,' interposed Gwenda, 'stop propositioning my friend! I didn't bring her here for you to seduce her.' His glance slid sideways, bringing a flare of colour to Jacqui's cheeks. 'Chance would be a fine thing.'

Gwenda sat forward. 'Look, Fraser --' 'Okay, subject dropped.' He spoke with a curious bitterness. 'Let's re-program the conversational computer. Yes,' he looked at Jacqui fully now, expression empty of meaning, 'I work in my vacation. I write abstruse articles on high-flown literary matters for obscure magazines.' He unloaded himself of his coffee cup and slipped farther down the seat, thrusting hands into his trouser pockets. 'I'm surprised to find that people read them. They must do, since I receive quite an amount of correspondence on them.' His eyebrows moved upwards. 'Any the wiser?' Jacqui smiled. 'No, but I enjoyed the explanation.' 'A girl in a million,' he remarked. 'Intelligence plus a sense of humour, as well as sexy.' He held up his hand to silence his sister's imminent protest, then rose to his feet. With a nod to Jacqui, he made his way slowly across the circular lawn, studying the grass his sandalled feet were flipping as if he were intending to pass an examination on the subject. Only when he had disappeared round a corner of the house did Jacqui let out a long sigh. Whether it was a relief, or disappointment at his going, she did not dare to analyse.

CHAPTER TWO FRASER did not appear again until evening dinner. For the first time, Jacqui met Gwenda's father. James Grant was a well-built, tall man, revealing the source of his son's height. He was dark-haired, too, but time had interspersed it with streaks of grey. He greeted Jacqui with an absentminded smile to accompany his nod of welcome. Like his son, also, his mind was on other things. 'James always leaves his gardening with reluctance,' Elizabeth Grant commented, taking her seat at the dining-table and inviting Jacqui to do so too. 'If he doesn't hear what you say first time, you'll know why, won't you?' Molly pushed at the dining-room door with her knee and carried in a tray laden with food. The dishes were placed on the table and Mrs Grant invited Jacqui, as the guest, to help herself to whatever she wanted. Conversation became general, and even Fraser was drawn in by his mother. 'Work?' he responded to her question. 'It's , proceeding at its usual pace, thanks.' He took a drink of wine and leaned back in his chair. Jacqui felt the movement as if he had touched hear, then promptly grew annoyed with her own body for its overesensitivity to the man. It was plain that he experienced no reciprocal sensation where she was concerned. He did look her way, however, surprising her searching inspection of his profile. His head was back, his eyes downward slanted, making her feel like a tiny bookmite crawling through the pages of an ancient literary work. He turned away, lifting his glass to his mouth again. Later, in her room, Jacqui looked out at the darkened mountains, watching the day's light reluctantly ebb away. The trees and bushes in

the garden were clearly visible as the sun's last rays spread defiantly across the sky. Nights were short at that time of the year, in these northern areas, and Jacqui knew that if she stirred in the early hours, the first of the next day's light would be showing itself, colouring in the landscape and coaxing the birds to sing their first songs of the day. After breakfast, Gwenda took Jacqui down steep paths from the house to the vegetable gardens. 'Hi, Dad!' called Gwenda, and James Grant looked up from his work with a brief smile. At once, his mind returned to his task and Gwenda led Jacqui away towards a greenhouse. 'While he's working,' she explained with a rueful smile, 'it's almost impossible to get through to my father. He's like a telephone line that's permanently engaged.' Jacqui laughed, thinking again how alike father and son appeared to be in that respect. Climbing a flight of stone steps to yet another level, they turned towards the view, seeing below a wide, hedged field of sheep. Beyond was the line of nearby hills, backed by the more distant craggy ridge which, with their 'scale me' challenge, drew the eyes constantly. Jacqui's mind went at once to the man who presented a challenge far more formidable, in her eyes, than even those distant heights. She wondered where he was. He had not appeared at breakfast and she found herself looking out for him, hoping he would come round every corner they approached. Returning to the main lawns, Jacqui joined Gwenda on the swing seat, resting back under its dark green awning. The sun was full on them and Jacqui revelled in its warmth, aware that even after two days in that tranquil place, her spirits were reviving fast.

Lucy, Molly's sister, came hurrying from the house, calling to Gwenda. 'Phone call, Miss Gwenda. From Edinburgh.' Gwenda's arm shot up in acknowledgement and she raced up the slope, leaping the steps to the terrace and disappearing into the house. Even Jacqui knew it was Peter calling again and something inside her, very like envy, formed a tight knot. She had had a few boy-friends, none of them serious, and she had never felt foe. any of them an emotion strong enough to have her dropping everything and racing to speak to them, as Gwenda had done. Gwenda ran back down the steps and across the lawn, her face alight with the glow of having spoken on the telephone to the man she loved. 'That was Peter,'. she said breathlessly and, Jacqui thought, smiling, quite unnecessarily. Gwenda took a few gasps and the swing seat's movement slowed. 'He's got a few days off.' Jacqui nodded, then her heart lurched. 'I did invite him here.' Gwenda was speaking more slowly now. 'But his mother's staying in the area and he wants me to meet her.' 'So he wants you to go there, right?' Jacqui wondered how she managed to smile so convincingly. 'I don't mind, Gwenda. I've had a couple of days' rest. I was only thinking just how much better I --' 'Of course you can stay on,' Gwenda said emphatically. 'I'll only be away two or three days.' Jacqui was shaking her head and Gwenda put a hand on her arm. 'Please stay, otherwise you'll make me feel terrible about the whole thing. In fact, I'll call Peter back and tell him it's off.' 'That's blackmail,' Jacqui responded, smiling. 'But what can I do here on my own? Your parents are busy. Your brother would want to dump me in the nearest loch.'

'He'd better not. In fact, he can get himself out of his stuffy old study and act as guide. I'll tell him so.' Jacqui's throat tightened at the thought of Fraser becoming her travelling companion. 'I don't think so,' she answered. 'I'll find my own way around with a map and public transport. Or just stay here relaxing.' 'You must see the area,' insisted Gwenda, standing up. 'Come on, I'll show you the way down to the loch, our own special path. It meets the sea out there.' The walk down to the loch was through gatesand across a field where sheep grazed and wandered. Gwenda led Jacqui over stones and boulders to stand on a headland, its sides sloping steeply away. Even on that warm day a breeze blew, tossing loose clothing and untidying the hair. To one side there was a bay of rocks, smoothed by erosion. To the other was a curving beach of pale sand. The lonely beauty of the place took Jacqui's breath away and she knew that here she could find an inner peace. Across the water the long line of mountains climbed and dropped away. There were islands, some of them little larger than rocks, others with clumps of trees. 'Fraser often comes here,' remarked Gwenda, turning and leading the way back, although Jacqui would have loved to linger. 'Does he like being alone?' asked Jacqui, curious to know more about the man. Gwenda cast a wry glance over her shoulder. 'Ask him. He does spend a lot of time alone? but whether he actually likes his own company, I haven't yet discovered.' They were walking together now, back across the field and through the gates. 'He still thinks of me as

his little sister, although I'm twenty-five. I'm the last person he'd confide in.' They were entering the house by the back way and making for the rear stairs. 'Come up with me and talk to me while I pack,' Gwenda invited. 'I've already told my parents, and my mother said she didn't mind as long as you were happy about it. And if you dare tell her you aren't,' she was opening her door and gnashing her teeth at the same time, 'I'll --' 'Okay, I'll stay,' agreed Jacqui, laughing.

Fraser appeared for dinner that evening. His glance at Jacqui told her as eloquently of his thoughts as the blank pages at the end of a book. His mother gave him a warm welcome, saying she had not seen him all day. His father spoke a quiet 'good evening, Fraser', and took his place at the table, his eyes already inspecting the dishes of vegetables which had been placed on the table. 'From the garden?' enquired Jacqui, looking at them admiringly. If she had thought the comment would encourage James Grant to speak, she was wrong. He nodded and she was rewarded with the faintest of smiles, which could, only mean, she reflected with amusement, that she had at least managed to please him. As she pulled out her chair, she caught Fraser's eye. There was a glint of amusement there, too, as if he had followed the trend of her thoughts. Frowning, she reflected, how is it he sees and intercepts so much of what is going on in my mind, yet I can't even penetrate the outer skin of his? His shirt was a blue-grey and open-necked, his shoulders pushing at the fabric. He sat, elbow on table, chin supported by his long fingers,

waiting for others to be served. Jacqui guessed that his mind was anywhere but in that room. A quick look around showed her an antique china cabinet, a tall, glass-fronted bookcase across the room and along one wall, a large and antique sideboard displaying silverware and valuable painted vases, in some of which delicately perfumed roses had been arranged. Gwenda had taken over the conversation, talking about her coming journey across country to Edinburgh. 'It's weeks since I saw Peter,' she remarked, tackling her meal with an appetite as good as her spirits were high. 'I'll need a lift to the station.' She looked obliquely at her brother. Fraser lifted his shoulders with resignation. 'If I must,' was his brotherly comment. Gwenda smiled. 'I knew you wouldn't let me down.' Mrs Grant looked at Jacqui with some concern. 'It seems very rude of Gwenda to walk out on you like this. I do hope you'll stay on here, dear.' 'Well, I --' 'There's no need for you to go,' James Grant broke in, startling Jacqui, not to say his own family, by displaying a greater awareness than they credited him with of the ebb and flow of domestic events. 'That's kind of you,' Jacqui responded, with a quick smile. 'I—I'd like to stay on.' Of their own accord, her eyes sought those of Gwenda's brother. They were there to meet hers, as unreadable as ever, bringing colour to Jacqui's cheeks. Now why did I have to do that?' she reproached herself. It was almost as if she had been asking his consent.

That evening, Gwenda lingered in Jacqui's room. 'I'll only be away a day or two,' she repeated. 'Sure you don't mind?' Jacqui assured her once again, 'Of course not,' thinking, What else can I answer in the circumstances? 'Fraser will take you anywhere you want to go by car. He's got his own—the small but fast variety.' By the time Jacqui awoke next morning, Gwenda had left for Edinburgh. Her friend had warned her that she would need to leave early for the drive to Fort William. There she would catch the train which would take her on the first stage of her journey eastwards. Fraser, she had said, would drag himself out of bed to take her, then probably go back to it on his return. Jacqui ate a light breakfast, sitting alone at the large kitchen table. A newspaper lay beside the place which Fraser usually occupied. It had been opened out, but since it was dated a day earlier, Jacqui reasoned, he had probably read it yesterday. Leaving the house by the rear entrance, she walked along the terrace and round the side of the building. There she found the path along which Gwenda had taken her when she had shown her the way down to the loch. The gates she passed through she shut carefully behind her. The sheep stared unflinchingly as she approached, only to swerve violently away as she came unfalteringly on. Another gate opened on to a wilder scene and grass gave way to a rocky surface. The raised headland on which she had stood with Gwenda pushed outward into the loch. The water, swelled by the sea's tides to which it was linked, frothed around the shore.- Jacqui lifted up her head and inhaled the smell of the wild breeze, carrying with it the aroma of seaweed and sweet sea air.

The climb and fall of mountains dropped gently to meet the loch, and there were the islands she had seen before, like wide-spread stepping stones leading the way eventually to the sea which became a part of the Atlantic Ocean. Only when the newcomer was an arm's distance away did Jacqui realise he was there. He startled her so much she almost fell. His hand came out and caught her, steadying her. He wore a green round-necked sweater over his shirt. His pants were green too, and creased with wear. Over-sensitive to the touch of him, she pulled to free her arm from his hold. In response, it tightened slightly, as did the line of his mouth. 'Has the desertion of the boy-friend wrecked your trust in every other man?' Jacqui tugged, this time freeing herself. His hand slid back into his pocket. 'There wasn't any desertion of a boy-friend,' she said, rubbing the touch of him from her arm. 'He's still around?' 'I don't know who "he" is. The last boy-friend I had was over a year ago. We weren't suited. Since then I've found no one else.' Jacqui stared across to the grey mountains. The sea-loch washed against the foot of the headland. The sound of sheep communicating drifted from behind them. A cuckoo, quite improbably, sent its song away to the mountain summits, and Jacqui rejoiced in it all. He had come to stand beside her. The blood in her, veins responded to his proximity and she cursed whatever it was in him that made her body's chemistry act in such a way. What was it about him, she questioned herself fiercely, that attracted her? That look in his eyes?

But she found that impossible to decipher. His breadth of shoulder and hip, the strong arms which he had just folded across his chest? And what did all that add up to? she thought. /i very male creature, in total command of his own life and who knew precisely what he wanted from it, doing his damnedest to get it. He was also a man, she was certain, whom no woman would succeed in binding to her through any kind of affection, nor even love. This man beside her, as forbidding as those high-ridged mountains was, for sure, impervious to love. The breeze caught her at the same time as the thought and she shivered, cold inside as well as out. His head turned towards her, although she did not look at him. There were a series of movements, then hands were turning her. 'Here.' His sweater was in his hands. 'Put this on.' Jacqui shook her head, but he ignored the action. He bent her head and slipped the neck of the sweater over it, ruffling her hair. Her face emerged flushed and laughing. 'Lift up your arms,' he said, and took them one by one, pushing them into the sleeves. He went to pull the jersey down over her, but she forestalled him, afraid of what the touch of his hands might do to her. 'Thanks.' She pushed back her hair, only to feel it tousled again by the wind. 'But I didn't need it. Now you'll be cold.' There was a brief silence and his eyes held hers. 'I'm already cold. Ice cold to my very depths.' There was a note in his voice that made her shiver again. There was also a look in his eyes that told her his emotions were frozen into his own personal Ice Age, with not a sign of thaw in sight.

Why did her heart have to sink like a stone thrown into the loch? While Fraser's effect on her amounted to little less than devastating, to him she was no more than a friend of his sister's left on his hands while she was away. Jacqui put on a smile. 'Doesn't the sun warm you? It's a lovely day. Doesn't this touch you, all this—this beauty?' Her sweeping arm indicated the landscape. Had she changed his mood, conjured a smile from his hard face? His eyes did not follow where her hand had pointed. It stayed instead on her face, unsmiling, tracing her features like a walker mapping out a route. They came to rest at last on the deep blueness of her eyes, holding them, probing as if trying to read their message. Had he, she wondered, seen their puzzlement, their uncertainty? Had they let tier down, her eyes, betraying her sensitivity to everything about him? A curl of fair hair blew across her face, and his hand reached out and brushed it back. His fingers seemed unwilling to leave and trailed Sown the soft skin of her cheek. Then he pulled his hand away like a parent disciplining a child. A muscle in his jaw moved and at last he looked outward, over the loch to the grey, sunflecked mountains. Once again he had taken on their remoteness. It was as if the fleeting contact between them had never taken place. Was this how it was, Jacqui surprised herself by wondering, when he made love to a woman? Passion, controlled and deliberate, then nothing? Her arms hugged her waist, holding his sweater close, trying to imagine it was he who was warming her, transmitting his body's heat to her. It was all she would ever know, she told herself. It was the nearest she would ever get to him.

'I've been detailed by my sister to take you around.' His voice came colourlessly, turning the day down momentarily from gold to grey. Her head lifted. 'I'm quite content to stay where I am. You can go back to your work with a clear conscience.' His look was fleeting, his smile dry. 'If I said I'd fancy a day out in the company of an attractive woman, what then?' Jacqui pretended to look about her. 'There isn't one in sight. Sorry about that.' He laughed, head back, muscles of his throat moving, and the sound seemed to echo back from the mountain range across the water. Jacqui laughed, too: Someone had turned the day's dimmer switch up again. Their smiles met, clashed and entangled. Jacqui found it impossible to extricate herself from the maze of feeling into which an emotion beyond reason had led them. He was the first to find the way out. They had not touched, yet her heart was pounding as though he had made violent love to her. His attention returned to their surroundings. 'Where would you like to go?' His voice was neutral to the point of coldness. 'I don't mind,' she answered faintly. 'Everywhere here is new to me.' 'Let's go back to the house.' He turned and led the way over the rocks to the boulder-strewn grassland.

As they walked across the entrance hall from the rear door, Elizabeth Grant came down the wide staircase.

She smiled at once, yet her eyes, moving from Jacqui, still wearing Fraser's sweater, were curious as they rested on her son. 'I should have warned you,' she said, approaching them and speaking to Jacqui now, 'that although we're sheltered here, the breezes all around can take you by surprise.' Jacqui, who had grown used to the sweater's warmth, had forgotten she was still wearing it. She looked down at herself, and it came into her mind that Fraser's action in lending it to her could have been construed as a gesture just crossing the border into familiarity. Hurriedly, to cover her heightened colour at the idea, she lifted the sweater's hem over her head and, to her dismay, became trapped by its npok. Hands came swiftly and surely to her aid, and she emerged confused but smiling to hide it. Fraser pulled at the woollen garment, turning the outside of it back to its rightful place. His mother looked at him and then back to Jacqui. 'Where have you been?' she asked with smiling interest. 'Walking in the gardens?' 'I walked down to the loch,' Jacqui told her. 'Fraser's favourite place. Did you find him there?' Jacqui was shaking her head when Fraser answered, 'I found her there.' The words hung momentarily like a gull hovering on a current of air. They seemed to hold a meaning. Judging by Elizabeth Grant's frown, it seemed she might have discerned it, too, and was disconcerted. Don't worry about me, Jacqui told her silently. It's true I find your son attractive, but it won't last. As soon as I'm back in my own surroundings in the environs of London, everything will fall into

perspective and I'll forget him. Or, she thought, making an effort to joke with herself, regard him as part of this wild, haunting scenery. 'Haunting' ... the word troubled her and she stole a look at the man who still stood beside her. His eyes were on her and she caught back the gasp his look drew from her depths. Yes, he would haunt her. Even after such a short acquaintance, she accepted that. But that, too, would pass... 'Where shall I take her, Mother? I've been ordered by my sister to show her friend around.' It couldn't, Jacqui thought heavily, have been phrased more impersonally. 'There's no need,' she responded sharply. 'I can entertain myself. I've seen books lying around I should love to read.' 'Would you like to see around this lovely area, Jacqui?' suggested Elizabeth. The woman's eyes, so kindly and warm, shared only the colour with her son's. 'I would, yes, but --' Jacqui looked uncertainly at Fraser. 'Right, I'll take you.' Fraser spoke with a decision which gave no indication of his feelings on the subject. Elizabeth made for the kitchen. 'Give me a few minutes to make you a few sandwiches,' she advised over her shoulder. 'I'll be in my room,' Fraser called after her, and made the stairs two at a time. 'Fraser?' He paused at the turn and looked down at Jacqui.

'I—I'll just get a jacket. How will I know when you're ready?' 'Feminine intuition?' he offered dryly, continuing upwards and out of sight. Jacqui felt irrationally annoyed by his attitude. What had she ever done to merit his sarcasm? It took her a few moments to find a pull-on jacket, comb her hair and apply the lightest touch of make-up. Then she wondered why she had made the effort. It would make no difference to Fraser's attitude towards her. Yet she wanted more than anything to go out with him. After a suitable interval, she walked along the corridor, passing Gwenda's door and wishing her frigid was there. The large hall was empty. 'Isn't my son down yet?' Elizabeth Grant came from the door near the staircase and handed Jacqui a zipped bag. 'Your lunch,' she said. 'I hope you like the sandwiches.' Jacqui glanced inside. 'Enough to feed an army!' she exclaimed. 'Fraser doesn't exactly pick at his food,' Elizabeth commented dryly. 'Go and winkle him out of his precious study. I'll tell you where to go.' Jacqui followed the instructions. She did not relish the reception she was certain she would receive from the room's occupant. There were two doors, but there was movement from behind only one. Her hand lifted, dropped, then lifted again, making her presence known with a knock so decisive it took her by surprise. 'Come in,' she was invited irritably. 'Why the hell did you knock?' Fraser was seated at a large table which was covered, every part of it, with paper. He had half turned in his swivel chair, and from under lowered brows he gave her a swift appraisal. This lightning

assessment he gave a woman—Jacqui had no doubt there was nothing special about her which provoked it—seemed to come naturally to him. Maybe Gwenda's comment about her two brothers sharing a liking for the opposite sex had had more truth in it than the mere sisterly taunt Jacqui had assumed it to be. So what? she thought. Why should it worry her? The fact that it did troubled her deeply. 'Your mother said you had two rooms,' she defended herself. 'I couldn't see through the door, so how could I tell that this wasn't your bedroom?' He swung back to his work. 'The bedroom's through there.' Jacquf caught a glimpse of an elegantly furnished room in pleasing colours. Another door, she assumed, led to a bathroom. His study, as his mother had called it, was furnished like a sitting-room, with two or three chairs and a two- seater settee. The carpet was patterned; the fireplace, with an overmantel, was screened by an antique, framed piece of embroidery. 'Another couple of minutes,' Fraser told her, 'and I'll be with you.' Jacqui wandered across the room to a floor-to- ceiling bookcase. Many of the books were classics. Some were modern, others from the past; there were collections of essays and Shakespeare was there, side-by-side with Christopher Marlowe, sharing shelf-space with poets from the famous to the lesser known. 'Any there you'd love to read?' The question came dryly from behind her. Turning, she shook her head. 'You and I live on different mental planes. I'm just a humble magazine writer, while your feet are planted firmly in the past. Mentally, of course.'

'Mental feet—now that's something I've never come across before.' He smiled, swinging his wide, strong body round towards her, his long- fingered hands holding the chair arms. The smile had brought his face to life and Jacqui's pulses leapt at the transformation. He stood up, rolling down his shirt sleeves and buttoning them. He was so tall Jacqui found her head tilting backwards and he was so broad, her thpughts spun as they tried to guess what it felt like to be enveloped by those arms against that chest. His eyelids flickered as he gazed back at her and she was certain he had interpreted her heart's message. Because it had come from the heart. She knew that now. She was in greater danger of falling in love with this man than any other man she had known. And where would that leave her? Loving a man who, on his own admission, was ice cold to his very depths.

CHAPTER THREE FRASER'S car was small and fast. It was also the colour of silver and its roof had been folded back. Jacqui's hair went all over the place as she sat beside Fraser. He drove steadily round the twists and turns and Jacqui felt the smoothness of his driving technique. Her eyes kept straying to his hands on the steering wheel, admiring their perfect control of the vehicle. It said so much about the man, the competence of those hands. How would it feel, she wondered, if they ... She dragged her thoughts from the track they were taking and forced them outwards to the passing scenery. They were well on their way when she asked, 'Where are we going?' 'Glenfinnan. Heard of it?' 'I have. There's a monument there, isn't there?' 'Right. To Bonnie Prince Charlie—or, to give him his real name, Prince Charles Edward Stuart. Born around 1720. He raised his standard there and waited, the story goes, with a gathering of his followers on August 19th, 1745, for an army of men who would go with him on his advance against the English.' 'He claimed he was the rightful heir to the English throne? Am I right?' 'You are.' Fraser negotiated a deeply curving bend. 'If he had succeeded in his aim, they say, the entire history of Britain, and maybe even of Europe, might have been different. The National Trust for Scotland owns the Glenfinnan area now.'

The car, with its powerful engine, sped where it could and slowed where it had to, the road passing through scenery which had Jacqui staring at its beauty. At each twist and turn of the road, another ridge of mountains was revealed. There were rhododendrons in full flower, adding their purple to the grey and the green, the yellow of the gorse enhanced by the sunshine. She rested back against the seat which was built more for function than comfort^ and wondered, in a hazy sort of way, how she came to be seated here in Fraser's car. When she had first arrived, she could not have imagined that the aloof man who had come to meet them would have condescended to take her anywhere. There were cottages here and there, isolated but lived in. Streams which followed roads were surely there before roads were even dreamt of. There was the hump of a grey mountain, toothed-rock ridges along the skyline. Forests sloped down, lines of trees climbed upward. Telegraph poles carried civilisation across the near-wilderness. In the open-topped car, Jacqui's hair streamed as she lifted her face to the wind. She laughed in sheer delight at the sensation, at the barbaric splendour of the landscape, and because she sat beside a man whose appearance of strength and bedrock solidity mirrored the permanence and continuity of the mountains all around. These were the qualities Jacqui had not known since the death of her father and the remarriage of her mother ten years ago. Which she thought in a flash of self-analysis, was probably why something inside her turned like a flower to the sun towards this fascinating stranger. There was the sudden sighting of water, another loch. Clouds turned quiescent mountains into would-be smoking volcanoes. Jacqui gazed at the coldly impassive beauty through which they were passing, and

felt a creeping chill like a cloud winding around her heart. There was an unreachable side to this man's personality, just like those daunting mountain masses. They were descending now, the steep hill curving past the village shop to level out at last, and there, not far away, was the Glenfinnan monument. Fraser turned the car on to a large gravelled area, braking to a stop. His head came round and he gazed with an elusive half-smile at Jacqui's face. Her cheeks were on fire from the exhilaration of the drive, her eyes brilliant with the remembered beauty of the hills. 'You enjoyed that?' he asked. 'Wonderful! It's a dream I've always had, to drive in a car like this with the wind through my hair.' She thought but did not add, with a man like you beside me in the driving seat. He looked ahead, expression changed, amusement gone, staring out at nothing. Then he stirred with a kind of impatience. His head jerked sideways. 'Come on, we'll take a walk. Or,' he paused with his hand on the half-opened door, 'are you hungry?' 'For lunch? Not yet. Where shall we go? It looks so beautiful everywhere, in every direction.' Jacqui joined him outside the car, looking at a nearby building while he attended to the door locks. 'Property of the National Trust,' he told her, following her eyes. 'Among other things, there's an exhibition there—story of the 1745 uprising. The monument over there overlooking Loch Shiel,' he pointed towards the loch, 'was built in memory of the men who fought and died in that struggle.' They started to walk. 'Like a cup of coffee? You can get one at the counter over there.'

'Yes, please.' The cafe area adjoined the one- storey building. There were sandwiches on sale and cakes. 'Just coffee,' Jacqui added. 'No sugar.' They stood together, facing each other, and Jacqui lifted her head, lips damp from a warm mouthful. She gazed into the unreadable brown eyes and felt the overflowing happiness inside her form her lips into a smile. A hand came out and the rough back of it smoothed across her mouth. 'Your eyes are as liquid as your lips,' Fraser said. 'Are they pouring out a message?' Were her feelings there for him to read? she thought, aghast. He mustn't even begin to guess that it was he who was responsible for her soaring spirits. 'It's all --' her arm moved in a circle, 'so—so lovely, no matter where you look. I can— well, feel it in my mind. It's a song in my head...' And you're making my heart sing, she thought, making the blood sting my veins like strong wine in my throat. She had turned away, afraid that he might, with his intelligence and insight, dig down to the truth through the sand of misleading words she had thrown in his eyes. Aiming for the waste bin, he disposed of his throw-away cup, taking hers from her hand and doing likewise with it. Jacqui looked through a door. 'Things to buy,' she exclaimed, starting to enter, but he checked her. 'Later. First, we'll walk. Whet our appetites for lunch.' He went over to a man seated behind a small, enclosed counter. Fraser produced a card, then handed over some money. Turning to Jacqui, he gave her a ticket. "I'm a member of the National Trust.'

'Which means you can visit over there free? And you've just paid for me?' She reached for her shoulder bag,, but he waved away her offer of payment. They passed through a gate and trod a narrow gravel path towards the stone-built monument. At its turreted top there was a giant figure of a Highlander. The monument was encircled by a stone., wall through a gap in which people were walking. 'The loch!' exclaimed Jacqui, and left Fraser, treading over sandy soil scattered with scrub and sparse plants to stand at its edge. She could not remember when she had seen anything so beautiful as the view which spread itself before her. Into the far distance, mountain upon mountain sloped down to the water. Some were tree-covered and green while others were rocky and ridged. The still loch mirrored ruffled reflections, as if the water's soft-textured surface was unfitted to carrying the reflected weight of the dark grandeur of those mountains. At last, she turned to find Fraser standing a few paces behind. His eyes were on her and it seemed he had been watching her as she had gazed at the view. Her mind was still filled with the beauty of it as she smiled up at him. 'You can feel it,' she said, 'it soaks into you, doesn't it?' He merely gazed at her steadily. 'I suppose you've seen it so often, it doesn't touch you any more.' 'Things touch me,' he replied succinctly, but did not go on to explain. His gaze wandered over her face, like a man taking a now-familiar path. It dwelt on her long-lashed blue eyes, the nose with its tilted end, the small, rounded chin and finally, the parted lips. 'Can you --' she gestured, 'can you get up to the top?'

'It's possible to climb the monument, yes. The stairs twist like a corkscrew right up the narrow interior. The view's even better up there. Like to try it?' Jacqui nodded eagerly. 'I warn you, it's hard going—nowhere to stop once you start. Got enough breath in your lungs?' Only when you don't rob me of it, she thought, and nodded again. 'You go first,' she urged, and followed him into the dark tower. The winding staircase was as challenging as he had warned, but she made it, breathless, to the open air. She stared up at the great figure of the Highlander, seeing in the statue the rock-hard, unswerving resolution inherent in Fraser Grant's character. She shivered, hoping that she would never have the misfortune to come up against that side of him. The view from the top was, as Fraser had said, even better than from the loch's edge. In the near distance, almost surrounded by water, was a seeming island swathed in trees. The mountains' slopes looked bare and defiant, the wind blew strongly. Jacqui felt Fraser beside her at the rail and she looked up again at him, smiling in her delight, filled with a sensation of near-euphoria. It was impossible to sort out whether the cause was entirely the magnificent surroundings, or the nearness of the man beside her. 'You shivered just now,' he said. 'Are you cold?' She felt his arm go round her to rest on her shoulder. It was as much as she could do to prevent another shiver from shaking her. 'I told you,' she deflected his probing, 'it goes to my head, all this beauty.' She gestured and he followed the path of her arm. 'Imagine this place in 1745,' he remarked. 'It wasn't tamed as it is now. It was marshy and desolate. And probably windy,' he smoothed back his ruffled hair, 'like it is today.' He removed his arm from around her and pocketed his hands. 'Prince Charles Edward gathered

his small group of followers and waited for others to join than. When they'd almost given up hope of a reinforcement, they came over the hills and mountains there and there.' 'Don't historians regard it as really a rather foolish venture?' asked Jacqui. He nodded. 'But it bore all the hallmarks of defiance and endeavour and romance that have imprinted it on people's memories to this day.' He looked down at her. 'Does the boldness and audacity of my forebears stir your admiration?' She nodded. 'All of that's in you,' she avowed, whispering although there was no one near. 'There's so much strength in you,' she indicated his shoulders, 'there,' then his arms, 'and there.' 'Touch them.' It was a quiet command, and she nearly, concurred, but held her hand back with the other. 'Is there strength in your mind, too?' He laughed, head back, thinking. 'Like those men? Determination to succeed and conquer, no matter what?' His eyes stroked her fitted blue top, the shape beneath the matching slacks. To plunder and ravage?' Before she could take a breath at the veiled barbarism in his gaze, she felt herself in the bondage of his arms, her mouth trapped by his. Despite the force of his hold, the kiss did not break the bounds of the accepted code. Lips parted and warm from the touch of his, Jacqui tipped back her head to look at him. Her mind misted and played tricks. There was the light of fight in his eye, of ruthlessness; in her daydream, his stare was as wild as his dark hair, his clothes like a two-centuries' past Highland warrior's. The leather belt around his waist grew rough and

laden with fearsome weaponry, his arm upraised in an attitude of ferocious defiance, sword aloft... Then she knew the tearing demand of his mouth on hers, plundering and unsparing of its moist cavities and tender inner lips. Voices faded in, shouts, ribald laughter, pipes playing, toasts to the future king ... She felt history jostling her and fought, frightened, back to the present. The pressure came from the angles and bones of his body against hers, the gasping from her own throat, not of fear but a wild abandon to the angry feel of him. The voices were those of tourists, the laughter and shouts came from children trying to climb the twisting stairs. At last Fraser let her go and her head dropped against his arm, her forehead moulding itself to the muscle and flesh of it. She felt like a wounded animal that had just been rescued from a trap, only to feel that another might not be far away, waiting. Others were up there, exclaiming at the view. They were round the other side of the tower's circular shape. The kiss, Jacqui thought, finding a resting-place for her cheek against his chest, was what she had been wanting from the moment she had first seen him. The sudden revelation of her inner longings frightened her, and her hands clutched at his shirt. 'It's what you've been wanting, isn't it?' she heard him mutter, mouth against her hair. It ., dismayed her that she had been so transparent in her attitude to him. Could she lay a trail away from her innermost feelings? 'Is that your usual question after raping a girl's mouth?' she queried, trying to disentangle herself. 'To put the responsibility firmly on her shoulders?'

He half pushed her away. 'I've never known a "rape" to be so eagerly consented to,' he said with an edge. Had he felt the tension, too? She told herself astringently not to get too excited. If he had indeed experienced tension, then it had come from lust. The moment had been spoilt by words, the destroyer of so much that was good. Like a skier on ice, she had descended too swiftly from her precarious pinnacle of delight. By some kind of instinct, she knew it had been a danger even to begin the ascent with this man as her leader, for he had indeed led the way. And she, so trusting, had followed. 'Shall we go down now?' she asked dully. Her spirits had already gone down in front of her. At the bottom there were people, families full of laughter and life and very much of the present. How could she ever have mistaken them for the clansmen and warriors of two centuries ago? It was the effect Fraser Grant had on her. In his arms and with his harsh mouth on hers, he had taken her back to the time of his ancestors. He could, she thought, take her anywhere he wanted. To Paradise—and back.

They had their picnic meal seated on the ground on an old tartan rug spread out beneath them. They ate in silence with Loch Shiel at their feet. The beauty of the place seeped into Jacqui, and the sunshine came creeping back into her mind. Her head moved round and she caught his unsmiling profile only seconds before his eyes came swinging round to hers. They held a question, then the corners crinkled faintly. 'That kiss—it took away your brightness. Did you hate it so much?'

She shook her head, compressing her lips, then brushing them free of invisible crumbs to hide their tremble. 'It's what you said that spoilt it.' Fraser went on to his elbow, legs outstretched. 'But it was true, wasn't it?' She was silent. 'Will you be honest, Jacqui? A mouth can't fool a mouth. Yours has been telling me all along. It's been saying, come kiss me. When mine met yours up there,' his head tipped back, indicating the monument, 'it found a welcome enough to gladden any true man's heart.' Her head was in the act of turning away when he reached out and caught her chin, pulling it back. 'That's not an insult.' 'Thanks.' She had tried to be cutting but had not succeeded. Embarrassed, she coloured, meeting his eyes shyly, her chin still imprisoned. Expression unreadable again, he searched her face. 'You're attractive—too attractive.' He threw her chin away and went back to his elbows, his stare brooding as he contemplated the view. His mind, Jacqui thought, seemed to be climbing the mountains he was staring at. The desire to shiver came on her again, but she tensed, holding it firmly under control. His arm around her now would be her undoing. 'If I'm attractive,' she countered, reacting to his almost accusing praise of her, 'that's a bonus for you, isn't it? After all, you said you fancied a day out in the company of an attractive woman.' He threw her a quick sarcastic look. 'Anyway,' she put away the picnic things, 'I'm not your type—Gwenda told me. She said I'd be quite safe with you.' 'What the hell does "safe" mean? And, with regard to my "type",' his eyes were still on the loch, 'I'm open-minded on that subject.'

'You mean you aren't particular.' He did not react. 'Any woman will do.' Narrowed eyes stung hers. 'For the purpose I have in mind, yes. Well, what do you say?' His look was so brutal she felt the impact physically, as if he had swung that sword the fleeting image of him had held up on that monument. For a moment, she could not reply. When she did, it was through trembling lips. 'Now that,' she said, 'is what I call an insult.' His jaw thrust forward inside his lips. His eyes had grown as dark as a mountain in shadow. He did not apologise. He got to his feet and went down to the loch's edge, watching its to-and-fro movement, hands slipped into his waistband, his broad shoulders pushed forward. It was the picture of his outline that hit at her heart, making her give a mental cry of anguish. He looked so alone and so unreachable in that aloneness. Her instinct was to go to him, offering comfort of some kind. But she sensed he wanted no one. And what use would she, someone forced upon him, be to such a man in such a mood? She did get up after a while, walking over to join him. He did not turn when she stood there, but went on staring down. 'Fraser?' She had not expected an answer. 'Will you take me back, please?' 'There's time to go somewhere else. That's what I'm here for.' She would not let his sarcasm get to her. 'You don't want my company. I don't need yours.'

His head came round unexpectedly and she was subjected to an in-depth stare. Then some tension somewhere in him slackened and his great shoulders shrugged. 'I have work waiting for me. Okay, so I stop acting courier for today. Tomorrow, name your place and I'll take you.' Jacqui shook her head. 'I'll read, like I said. 'I'm --' she tried to lighten things, 'I'm a restful creature at heart.' The piercing stare that came her way yet again made her want to hit out and hurt him as his uncaring attitude was hurting her. Had she let him get under her skin so deeply that she had developed an acute sensitivity to his every word and movement? The answer was that she had. Her mind lashed about for an antidote to the agony which the impact of the realisation caused on the whole of her being. And it had to be this man who made her feel this way—a man who plainly revelled in his solitude as much as that Highlander at the top of that tower. 'So shall we go back?' Fraser looked at her, turning slowly. 'Go back?' It was almost as if he were speaking from another plane, another time. Then he focused and really saw her. 'Return to base? Yes, if you like.' Fraser drove with a forbidding concentration. But, she thought, it could not have been the road conditions which demanded it, since he seemed to know each curve and bend by heart. 'Fraser.' His name coming from her lips took her by surprise. He indicated by a movement of the head that he was listening. His eyes did not shift from their task of guidance and anticipation. 'When you kissed me ... I didn't ask you to. I'd like to get that clear.'

'You didn't?' There was a dryness in his tone. 'If that's what you think, then your brain doesn't know your body's power. And,-' he slowed for a sharp bend, 'your looks don't exactly lag behind the rest of you.' 'Was that a—kind of negative compliment? About my face, I mean?' He laughed. '"Mental feet", "negative compliment"—I must make a note of some of your sayings. "Jacqui-isms". Yes, that sounds right.' 'Something to remember me by,' she offered, looking for more of his laughter, but none came. It had been wiped clean away. 'Have I said something?' 'I don't know why the hell you should think I'd want to remember you.' The tone was so grating, Jacqui drew away involuntarily. Fraser must have felt the movement since he said, 'Okay, I apologise for that remark. It was not intended as an insult, even if you took it that way.' He slowed down for the turn into the driveway of Lochcraig House. They were crunching to a stop. The engine sound ceased. He looked at her. 'Forget the kiss.' The eyes that met the dismay in hers were hard. 'You don't want to forget it? I can't make you, but it's in your interests to do just that.' He threw her a flashing glance, like steel cutting the air. He started to open his door. 'We're here, in case you haven't noticed.' Jacqui winced, uncaring that he saw it, then followed him to the front entrance door. 'Thanks for the outing, Fraser,' she said. He held the door open for her, watching her, and she wished fervently that she could read the look in his eyes.

For dinner that evening, Jacqui wore a close- fitting peach-soft dress with a low-draped neckline and a skirt which fell with a hint of folds to the midway hem, while the sleeves ended just below her elbows. It was after Molly had served the first course that Elizabeth Grant asked Jacqui whether she had enjoyed her day. 'Did my son expect you to know it all by hearsay or intuition?' she asked, smiling. 'Or did he break his customary vow of silence when in company and tell you any interesting historical facts?' 'I jittered a few monosyllables,' Fraser interposed dryly. 'You did more than that,' declared Jacqui, looking at his profile. 'You brought it to life.' His head turned quickly. 'You heard it all, I suppose—the shouts, the curses, the squabbles between the differing clans?' 'Yes,' she whispered, her eyes opening wide,' did.' The sarcastic twist to his mouth faded and he pushed at his empty soup bowl. 'Your imagination is too vivid for your own good.' Even Fraser's father had been shaken out of his own thoughts at his son's tone. 'Don't speak to her like that, Fraser! What harm has she done you?' Jacqui felt her eyes drawn back to Fraser's, and the look they exchanged made her body tingle. He was remembering the kiss, even though he had told her to forget it! By the set of his mouth, it seemed he was still blaming her for what had happened on that tower. 'Harm?' Fraser repeated. 'What harm could a friend of Gwenda's ever do to me?'

Jacqui tore her eyes away and dabbed at her lips with her table-napkin to hide their trembling. Elizabeth's glance moved from her son to her guest, then back to her son. For a moment she watched his bent head, then frowned, but kept her misgivings to herself. Molly swept in to clear away the first" course dishes, and the talk turned to family matters. There was the mention of a phone call from Gwenda. 'She sends her love,' Elizabeth told Jacqui, 'and hopes her brother is being polite.' Jacqui smiled and resisted the urge to look at the man beside her. There was a passing mention, too, of Malcolm who, it seemed, was 'itching to go again'. Go where? Jacqui wondered, but the subject of Gwenda's other brother was dropped. 'Where are you taking Jacqui tomorrow?' Elizabeth asked her son. 'I don't mind if I don't go --' Jacqui began hurriedly., but she was cut off by Fraser's, 'We'll see what the weather does.' 'There's no need,' Jacqui persisted. 'I'm sure your work must be piling up.' 'I'm sure it must be, too,' mocked Fraser, amused by her high colour resulting from his mimicry. 'Fraser!' The rebuke came from his mother, although it was less of a rebuke, really, than an appeal. His eyes moved to his mother, then swung to rest darkly, almost angrily, on the girl beside him. He pushed back his chair and stood up.

'You'll be having coffee, Fraser?' his mother asked, taken by surprise. -'Tell Molly to bring it to my study, will you?" He was almost at the door when his fathct offered, 'You could take Jacqui to Eigg tomorrow, Fraser. It's the day for the ferry to go there.' 'It really doesn't matter, Mr Grant,' Jacqui intervened. 'You must see everything you can while you're here,' James Grant said firmly. Jacqui could only wonder at her host's emergence from his own thoughts to speak on her behalf/She smiled to herself, touched by the gesture. Fraser's hand was in his pocket, his grey tweed-mixture jacket draped over it. The bright red tie was in startling contrast to the rest of his outfit, but Jacqui could only admire the quirk of taste—or was it character?—that gave rise to the choice. University don he might be in reality, but there was, she sensed, within him the fire of a tiger lurking, ready to pounce.

CHAPTER FOUR THE morning was grey, the view from Jacqui's room misted and blurred through the rain which spattered the windows. Clouds hung low, blotting out the mountains with a kind of contempt, Jacqui knelt on the window-seat and found herself looking for something. When she realised what it was, she turned her back on the muted colours of the gardens. She had been searching for a sighting, of the man who had stared up at her window on her first morning there! Fraser was at the breakfast table, having reached the toast and coffee stage. His quick glance encompassed her slim form, then returned to the newsprint of the paper propped against the honey jar on the table. Jacqui took the seat opposite him and had got some way into her dish of porridge before she spoke. The silence did not seem to trouble her companion, but it certainly irked her. 'So the weather's decided,' she commented. The newspaper was lowered and two impatient eyes met hers. 'We stay in today,' she finished. Since he continued to stare at her, she added, 'You'll be able to get on with your work.' 'You seem very concerned about my work.' 'It's just that I know how I'd feel if the circumstances were reversed and I had work to get through.' His expression turned cynical and she went on defensively, 'Gwenda told me about your attitude to her—and my—occupation. But at least we're in touch with the needs of ordinary people. And we have to write good English. It didn't take a university lecturer on the subject to teach us how to do that.' Fraser took her attack easily, folding the newspaper and putting it aside. He linked his hands behind his head and stretched out his legs

under the table. 'So defensive on your own behalf, and yet I haven't said a word.' He was right, and she reproached herself for rushing in when she had not even been threatened. 'I—I just thought I'd pre-empt your sarcastic comments.' He allowed a goading kind of smile to play over his mouth. "Why should I be sarcastic about the way you earn your living? Each to his own, as they say.' He stood up. 'Excuse me, will you? I must get back to that work that worries you so much.' Jacqui could not quell the sense of disappointment that caught on her breath, making her hold it momentarily. 'So I'm right—the weather's decided for us.' He turned at the door. 'It may clear. If it does, I'll take you to Mallaig.' With that she had to be satisfied. Elizabeth Grant emerged from her private apartment looking her usual neat, calm self. She found Jacqui in the entrance hall, head tilted, gazing at the wall paintings. 'Come along into the sitting-room, Jacqui,' she invited. 'It's warm in there.' 'A fire?' Jacqui exclaimed, following her hostess. 'Isn't it enormous? And look at the size of those logs!' She frowned. 'But a fire in June?' 'Doesn't the sight of that cloud and mist make you feel you need some warming flames to gaze at?' Elizabeth asked. Molly carried in a tray of coffee, saying how well the fire was burning, but how she felt in her bones that the weather would start clearing soon. 'Always an optimist,' Mrs Grant laughed, glancing outside, 'but the clouds are just that bit higher, so she could be right.'

Asking about Jacqui's family, she remarked, 'I know you work in London, with Gwenda, of course. But do you live with your parents?' Jacqui placed her half-drunk coffee carefully on the saucer. 'My mother was widowed—my father died when I was very young. My mother's married again.' The words had been spoken matter-of-factly, but Elizabeth's face softened as if she had picked up a secret pain in them. She nodded and went on, 'So you have a room somewhere? Share a house, maybe, like so many young people these days?' Jacqui shook her head. 'I shared a flat with a friend but her boy-friend moved in, so I moved out.' There was a brief silence. 'I found a small flat south of London.' She looked around her. 'This is heaven compared with where I live.' Elizabeth looked up, smiling over Jacqui's head. 'Well, come in, Fraser. You've been standing there long enough.' Jacqui jerked round. How long, and what had he heard? He looked at the space beside his mother, then made for the settee which Jacqui occupied. He accepted the coffee his mother offered and leaned back, drinking it. He took a quick look at Jacqui. 'Yes, I've been working,' he said, as if their earlier conversation had not been interrupted. 'Are you pleased about that? I expected you to say not just that I have the "look" of it about me but that I smelt of it, too.' Jacqui laughed, eyes sparkling and meeting his. His glance came alive under the fire of hers and Jacqui's heart soared. Elizabeth's smile at her son's remark was topped by a look of puzzlement and, Jacqui was certain, a fleeting tinge of anxiety.

Fraser looked at his mother and could not have missed her frown, but he changed the unspoken subject by saying, 'Where's Father?" He surely isn't down in the garden working in this weather?' 'Who wants me?' James Grant was at the door. From the shoeless state of his feet, it seemed he had not been able to resist at least a walk outside. 'It's all right,' he assured his wife, 'I've left my boots on the doormat.' He, too, accepted a cup of coffee from Elizabeth. 'It's going to clear up.' He addressed his words to Jacqui, then spoke to his son. 'Where are you taking our guest today?' 'It sounds as though you love this area, Mr Grant,' said Jacqui, feeling drawn to this curious mixture of a man. Plainly a solitary by nature, he nevertheless made an effort to avoid the role of social misfit which many men of his character became. 'I was not born in these parts,' James admitted, 'but I've grown to love the place since we came here to live.' His Scottish accent became more noticeable with each word. 'It gets into your system, you know.' 'That's just what I said yesterday,' Jacqui exclaimed, eyes bright as she remembered her pleasure at the beauty of Loch Shiel and its mountains. 'Didn't I, Fraser?' He eyed her lazily and she grew warm, knowing just what he was remembering about their visit to that lovely place. 'You said you could feel it and it soaked into you. You also said it was a song in your mind.' 'I did?' Jacqui frowned, as if she couldn't recall her own words. 'Have you made a note of that, too?' 'As one of your "Jacqui-isms"? I have.' It was almost as though he was touching her, running his fingers down her arm. Yet he had not moved.

'The weather's clearing,' she exclaimed, trying to divert his attention. 'It's getting brighter.' The others turned their heads and looked outside without her conviction that the sun was about to break through. They were not, she realised, looking at the scene through her eyes, which,, were illuminated by the electric sensation the man next to her generated inside her whenever he was near. Fraser's eyes met hers and there was amusement in them. 'I think the sun is shining out of your eyes,' he commented dryly. 'But if you want us to try our luck, I'll take you somewhere.' 'You can't take her to Eigg on a day like this,' James commented gruffly. 'Had to bend down in the garden to see whether the vegetables were growing upwards or down.' Jacqui laughed and James smiled, seeming surprised and pleased that he had made what his guest had plainly seen to be a joke. 'Come on,' Fraser stood up, 'I'll point the car in the general direction of Mallaig and see how far we get.' Molly dashed in to collect the tray and its contents. 'Sun's coming through,' she announced. 'It's going to be a better day than we thought.' 'So I'm not the only one with sun in my eyes,' Jacqui challenged Fraser. 'Like Molly, my bones felt it, too/ Molly smiled, dashing out again. 'Your bones feel, do they?' queried Fraser, his eyes on her hips and moving down. 'I must put that statement to the test some time.'

Mrs Grant seemed confused by her son's familiar manner. 'Yes, well,' she had become a little agitated, 'Fraser --' 'Jacqui, are you ready?' Fraser broke abruptly across his mother's words. 'You'll need a warm jacket,' Elizabeth advised, 'It's cooler than you think out there.' 'I'll get one.' Jacqui hurried up the stairs to change from her skirt into a pair of jeans. She found a white woollen jacket and pulled it on, then tied a scarf around her head, knotting it at the back. Elizabeth was in the hall. 'Sensible girl,' commented Elizabeth, eyeing her jacket. 'Youmight be glad of that later if the mist comes back. Have a happy day.' Jacqui thanked her, secretly surprised by the woman's good wishes. If she was really worried about any possible attraction between her son and her guest, would she have sounded so sincere? As Jacqui emerged outside, she heard a shout from someone disappearing round the corner. She raised her hand in answer to Fraser's father's salute. He too seemed to have accepted her, but in what role? As a visitor in her own right, as Gwenda's colleague and friend—or as their son's chosen companion? The last idea burst on her mind like a firework, only to die away emptily as she saw that son leaning against his car, his posture and expression so resigned as to border on boredom. Companion to Fraser Grant she might be, for a few hours, but chosen—and by him? If the ridiculous thought had not been so painfully sweet, she would have felt like laughing.

He turned slowly as she approached and he eyed her dispassionately. 'Where's the girl who had a dream about driving with the wind through her hair?' 'Where's the wind to blow' through anyone's hair?' she countered. 'I put this scarf on because the mist would make it damp and straight.' 'Mm.' He considered her, then reached out a hand. 'Pity to straighten this curl that's managed to break loose.' He tweaked it and she drew a breath through her teeth, reaching for his hand and tugging it. It would not be removed and she felt the back of it pressing against her forehead. With a catch in her breath, she said, 'Please, stop it.' At once, his hand dropped away and, with it, his teasing manner. Impassively he held open the passenger door. She looked up at him, irritated by his change in attitude, and felt the urge to goad, 'Is this one of your sudden attacks of politeness that Gwenda told me to make the most of because it was so rare?' He watched her settle in the seat. 'If I were you, he retorted, 'I'd be wary of my "sudden attacks". They could make an indelible mark on the rest of your life.' He slammed the door and went round to the driver's seat. 'I don't know what you mean,' she fenced, annoyed with her heart for its hammering beat. His eyes slewed in her direction. 'I think you do. Or maybe that's what you're after?' It's what you've been wanting, isn't it? he'd derided after that kiss on the monument. Was he still asserting that the 'wanting' was all on her side? Then she remembered how much she had wanted him to notice her as a woman, and she could not stop the spread of colour into her

cheeks. She knew he had noticed by the twitch of a smile across his mouth as he put the car into motion. The stait of the drive westward took them first through Cariscraig village. The great bay swept round, boats beached on its shore, waiting for the tide. Fraser knew the road as if he had helped to carve its path in centuries past, alongside his ancestors. His strong hands guided the steering wheel round bends and over hills as they drove onward to Mallaig. Reaching their destination, Fraser found a parking place for the car, and they walked around the town, wandering on to the quay and smelling the aroma of fish stacked in boxes for transport. In the harbour, boats were moored. A ferry boat was taking on cars and passengers, and preparing to sail across to the Isle of Skye which rose hugely through remnants of the mist. They had lunch in the restaurant of a small hotel, then Fraser took her to a craft and souvenir shop. For a long time Jacqui wandered round, entranced by the variety of goods on show. There were brooches and necklaces made of bright polished stones, of shells and mother-of-pearl. There were paperweights and leather-craft and knitted goods. When all the items which Jacqui wanted to buy were stacked on the counter-top, Fraser asked, 'Is that it?' Jacqui nodded and stood waiting while the woman assistant added up the amount, only to find herself edged away as Fraser drew a handful of notes from his wallet. The woman looked up at him, smiling. That's fine, Mr Grant.'

''No, it isn't!' Jacqui exclaimed, holding out her pen and cheque book for the woman to see. 'I'll pay.' Fraser cut in, 'The cash I've given you, Mrs Rose should cover the lot.' Her smile took in both faces, one fair-skinned and troubled, the other strong-featured and resolute. 'It's good to see you here again, Mr Grant. How's your --' she paused to count out the change, and continued, 'your brother Malcolm? He's fine, I hope? Ye've no' been climbing over there lately.' She gestured vaguely in the direction of the Isle of Skye. 'I spend most of my time south of the Border these days, Mrs Rose. And Malcolm's job's in London.' She nodded. 'Always restless, even when he was a bairn.' She laughed. 'And you weren't far behind.' Fraser smiled and nodded, indicating to Jacqui that he would carry out the parcel of gifts. When she spoke her thanks to Mrs Rose, Jacqui was puzzled by a strangely speculative look in the woman's eyes as they moved between herself and Fraser. 'There was no need at all,' Jacqui stated as they walked back to the car. 'I fully intended to pay, and I'm still determined to. I'll write you a cheque——' He put the parcel into the back of the car and closed the lid with a slam. His face was set as he said, 'Consider them a gift.' Jacqui expressed her thanks and he turned the car for home. Some distance along the route, Fraser drew up on a bend of the road and invited her to follow him across it. The way led down through a hedge and on to rocks, beyond which was a loch and a curving beach of white sand. It was a weekday and the place was deserted.

Jacqui gazed around at the low green hills, the sweep of the loch, free now of mist, allowing islands and distant mountains to stand out clearly against the cloud-strewn blue of the sky. 'The Sands of Morar,' Fraser explained, 'sometimes called silver and sometimes white.' Jacqui crouched down and scooped up a handful of grains and let them trickle, egg-timer like, through the slits between her fingers. 'It's soft, it's so pale. I'd like to take off my sandals.' She looked up at Fraser and saw his amusement. She paddled barefooted in the sand, scuffing it up for the sheer pleasure of dabbling in its softness. There were shells scattered around and she darted for them, putting the best into her pockets. Then she ran down to the water's edge, avoiding the rocks and letting the water run over her feet. Fraser had followed and stood just beyond the water's reach. He had removed his jacket and his short-sleeved dark red and green shirt was partly opened. His hands rested on his hips and his green slacks followed the hard outline of his thighs and legs which were placed a little apart. There was a movement at the back of Jacqui's neck. 'It's time you let your hair down,' commented Fraser, and lifted the scarf which bound her hair. She turned from the waist, unwilling to leave the stroking feel of the water which swished over her feet and ankles. 'Now you've untidied my hair. Please give it back.' Her arm stretched out, but Fraser pushed the scarf into his pocket. Jacqui ran to stand beside him and pushed in her hand to retrieve the scarf. He slapped his hand over hers and she felt the hard shape of his

hipbone beneath her palm. He pulled her round and, with his free hand, ran over her hair, resting his fingers against her neck. 'That's tidied it,' he said, eyes glinting. The nerve in her throat was pounding and it was right beneath his fingers. It was such a near-embrace with her hand fastened to his hip and his on her flesh, she grew warm with a longing to be back where she had been when he had kissed her the day before. Had he read it there in her wondering stare? He was impelling her towards him, leaving her hand where it was and putting his on her hip, while his other held the back of her head. The kiss was like floating on water, on that sea- loch near their feet; like treading in the silver sand and sinking down, down into it until the breath was almost taken from her, so suffocating was the tide of feeling he was arousing in her. He eased away and pulled off her jacket throwing it beyond the water's reach. Then she was back, hard against him, and a longing came to life deep down, wanting this man to love her as she loved him... Loved him? Oh, no, she thought, why have I let myself fall in love with this man—ice cold, he'd called himself—who's so beyond me he might as well be an orbiting satellite and me trying to pull him from outer space? After the kiss, they stood together, his arm round her waist, hers round his. Something told her they shouldn't be standing like this, like lovers ... But if someone had asked her why, she wouldn't have been able to find an answer. 'Those islands out there—they're big, aren't they, Fraser?' The words had come cracked and strangely from her lips, as if they had had to force their way through the after-throb of the kiss.

'That,' he pointed, arm stretched, to the island to the left, 'is Eigg, pronounced "egg", the other is Rhum.' 'And Eigg is the one your father mentioned?' Fraser nodded. 'It's possible to visit both, but Rhum is mostly for scientists. It's owned by the Nature Conservancy. Eigg is privately owned but the public are allowed to visit. I'll take you over there some time.' 'They both look fascinating,' Jacqui commented, and made to turn back for her sandals. Fraser's arm around her did not move, so together they made their way to where the shoes lay. White sand clung to Jacqui's feet and ankles and the silvery encrustation fascinated her. She sat down and studied it, playing for time. Even now, she had not completely recovered from Fraser's assault on her mouth, nor from the incredible realisation of how strongly her newly- discovered love for him had taken hold. He crouched down, taking one of Jacqui's feet. Slowly, his palm brushed away the sand, and pushed on a sandal, doing the same to the other. Dropping her foot, he caught her eyes and she saw his mouth curve, but his expression stayed inscrutable. Jacqui felt anger spurt, because of the way things were. Why did she have to be so transparent to him, yet to her, his mind was as unreadable as a book written in an obscure foreign language. 'It's all wrong,' she heard herself say. 'What is?' 'The way you're trying to seduce me.' 'I am? Chance would be a fine thing.'

'You said that before, to Gwenda, soon after we arrived.' 'So I did. We've moved a bit farther since then. Are you giving me that chance?' He reached out for an ankle and fondled it. 'Were the kisses a "come on"? If so, I'm game.' 'So Gwenda was right when she said her brothers had a weakness for women.' Jacqui jerked her ankle from his hold, and he stood up. She joined him, dusting her seat. 'Was she?' he remarked indifferently. His attention was on the distant islands. 'I can't, of course, speak for my brother, but as far as I'm concerned, most women I can do without.' They had reached the car again. As they seated themselves, Jacqui asked, slanting him a bright- eyed glance. 'Do I take that as a compliment?' He eyed her narrowly, then swung to look at the loch. 'Take it how you like,' he answered, and fired the engine. At the house, he left her, making no mention of another outing together.

All the following day, Fraser did not appear. He had sent his apologies through his mother. There was so much work he had to do, he said. That evening after dinner, Gwenda phoned. 'Would you give me just another day with Peter?' she asked, laughter in her voice, then she sobered. 'I can't say how awful I feel about leaving you in my family's clutches --'

'Don't even think about it,' Jacqui assured her. 'And stay as long as you like. I'm perfectly happy, honestly, Gwenda.' 'Okay, I'll believe you. Just as long as you aren't in my big brother's clutches!' Jacqui forced a laugh. 'Do you honestly think Fraser would so much as touch me? He—we --' She paused, alarmed at what she might have given away had she continued. 'He's being the perfect gentleman, professional courier, the lot. Anyway, I haven't seen him today.' Did that have a wistful sound? she wondered, adding hurriedly, 'He's been catching up on his work. I suppose he's making up for the time he's lost showing me around. He's --' she cleared her throat, 'he's good company. I can almost feel I'm back through the centuries when he tells me about your fierce ancestors.' 'He's got a lot of that in him,' Gwenda commented, adding a sisterly 'huh'. 'See you soon, Jacqui. And I do mean soon, honest!' Laughing, she rang off.

CHAPTER FIVE JACQUI prepared herself for the day ahead. She showered and dressed in blouse and skirt, putting on sandals and a hint of make-up. In fact, her body behaved impeccably, like the perfect guest. It was her mind that refused to be disciplined to meet the prospect of another empty day. Her feet took her slowly down the stairs and into the breakfast room. Fraser's place was empty. Well, it was what she'd expected, wasn't it? He had decided to remain incommunicado again. Certain that she had heard a movement, she looked round sharply. He stood by the window, hands in pockets, returning her stare. She could not read his face, but all her heart was in hers and there was nothing she could do about it. Seeing him again was like recovery after an illness, like a rainbow after rain. Her eyes were dazzled by the sight of him and her lashes flickered as if she had been staring at a bright light. Her heart, already beating fast, began to pound. It was powered by a current flowing from him, energised by his electricity, being tugged out of its place inside her by his irresistible magnetism. 'Fraser?' His legs were bringing him across the room, then the bulk of him stood in front of her. 'Have you ' she ventured, not really knowing what she was saying, 'have you finished your work?' 'It's the kind of work that has no end.' As a reply, it was unhelpful. 'So—' she swallowed, but there was nothing there. Why had her mouth gone so dry? 'So you'll be busy all day today, too?' His wide shoulders lifted and dropped. 'We could go somewhere, if that's what you'd like.'

Jacqui noted the twist in the final phrase, leaving the decision to her, as if her answer was of no consequence to him. AH the same, her eyes brightened and her smile slid back into place. 'That island we could see the other day, could we go there? The place your father mentioned?' 'The isle of Eigg? What's today? Yes, it's a day for the ferry.' His hand withdrew from his trouser pocket and a wave of pink silk floated across her face. 'Your scarf. Hadn't you missed it?' She remembered then that he had unwound it from her hair at the edge of the loch the day before yesterday. 'Your perfume's on it.' Jacqui frowned, taking the scarf. 'But I haven't used perfume since I came here.' 'You have your own special scent. Didn't you know? Hasn't any other man told you?' They were tiptoeing on dangerous ground. The earth, all the reasoned world she knew, could crack open and swallow them. 'No one,' she whispered, 'until you.' Had Fraser heard a deeper meaning in her words? . He smiled, tipping her chin and trailing her cheek with his lips, inhaling as he did so. A cold, cold feeling cooled her skin, thai she was on fire under the touch of his mouth and the hand on her throat. 'No!' The cry came from her pitifully, like the call of a seagull swooping low over the sea. Then, in a whisper, 'You shouldn't be doing this.' Slowly, his head lifted, he released her chin. He had retreated to his mountain-top and he looked down at her, unapproachable again. 'Then you shouldn't invite me, should you?'

She frowned. 'I told you, I don't "invite" you. It's just me.' He waited, smiling faintly.- 'I can't help it if my looks send out an invitation without my brain knowing it.' His smile broadened into a laugh. 'Another "Jacqui-ism"! The list is growing.' His glance roved over her features. 'Are you really trying to tell me you don't know what your looks do to a man? You set a man on fire. Physically, of course.' He smiled, eyes full of taunt. 'But of course. I never for a moment believed you possessed any such thing as emotion. After all, you told me—ice cold to your depths.' At once he receded into himself. The mountain- top he was on now, she thought, had snow on it, like Ben Nevis. Molly came in, pushing the door. But it was not the quick draught that made Jacqui shiver. It was the frost in Fraser's eyes.

He took her to Eigg, crossing to the island by the ferry. They disembarked and walked slowly upwards from the harbour, passing sheep grazing amid meadow flowers. The Sgurr of Eigg rose above it all like a ridged and rocky giant. It was a great, towering arrowlike cliff rising, Fraser explained, to a height of around thirteen hundred feet. 'Have you ever climbed it?' asked Jacqui. 'Way back in the past my brother and I cut our climbing teeth on it.' Jacqui nodded. 'I suppose that climb would be nothing to your brother? Gwenda told me he's a professional mountaineer.' Fraser nodded. 'He climbs the giants now, Himalayas included.'

They turned back, and after a while Fraser looked down at her. 'You're lagging,' he commented, and looked about him. 'Over there,' he indicated a hollowed area sheltered by a raised and rocky ridge, 'we'll rest.' The tall, untrampled grass formed a green curtain as Jacqui lay back, her head on her upraised arm. Gulls swooped, crying, and flew on; now and then, sheep bleated, a strangely plaintive sound. The singing of the breeze through the bushes added to the island's music and Jacqui closed her eyes, letting it all seep into her. But she could not shut out the face of the man who had dropped beside her and reclined on his elbow. She felt his breathing as her own; her nerves jumped madly under the spell of his vibrancy; she wanted to storm his bastion of unreachability, overthrow his barriers and get to -the centre of his mind. What would she find there? she mused. Reason, rationality ... ice. Sadness swirled within her, that she should have let herself fall in love with a man as out of her league as this one and who, moreover, looked upon women only as someone to 'relax with', for physical satisfaction. Opening her eyes, she found with-a shock that his eyes were on her face. There was a blaze in them like a forest fire barely under control. His shirt was fully open, showing his chest, his ribs and his lean waistline. 'My God,' he muttered, 'if ever a woman's body asked for it, yours does. Not to mention your face, your spirit...' His head came down and his face pressed against her breasts. 'Your scent.' His hand slid under her and lifted her upper half, yet leaving her head hanging down. His other-hand was unbuttoning her blouse, opening it to make way for the kisses he imprinted on her chest and throat.

'Fraser, no! Please, no!' Her appeal went unheeded and she grasped his head with desperate fingers, trying to force his mouth from contact with her skin. But he had pushed aside the liacy cups that covered her breasts and his lips had closed over the hardening tips, making her shudder and press him against her, instead of pushing him away. Then his hand took over, enclosing the fullness of her shape,, moulding and stroking until restraint snapped inside her and she reached up to pull him down again, parting her lips for the takeover of his. Even when he lifted his head, her mouth was still burning from the impact, the rough, demanding exploration. His hair was across hisbrow, his hard-boned face reflecting a ruthless determination to conquer, which his ancestors must have shown at the start of their invasion into the territory of their sworn enemies. Except, she thought, I'm not his enemy ... Am I? Her shaking hand reached up to push his hair aside. He caught her wrist and held her palm to his cheek. 'Woman,' he growled, 'you're dynamite! What shall I do with you?' 'Nothing, Fraser, nothing. Not without love. Oh, Fraser, I --' He threw her wrist away. 'Dress yourself. Hell, woman, hide your body from me! Otherwise I take no responsibility for what might happen between us.' Doing as he said, Jacqui lay for a few moments, winded and empty, as if she had run up that jutting mountain only to find herself alone on its peak with the view blacked out and darkness descended and no light to guide her down. He had stood up, but she felt him beside her again, crouching over her. His hand resting against her cheek. 'Jacqui, shall we walk?'

She nodded, taking the hand held out to pull her up. He had rebuttoned his shirt and tucked it in. He was composed and back to normal, as if nothing had happened. Well, it hadn't, had it, she tortured herself, except that now she was fully awakened to him, to his touch and his desires. Inside her was an overpowering need to give free rein to her feelings towards him, but a wise voice warned—that way lay disaster. Yet, when his arm came round her as they turned their back on that curving, wave-like mountain called the Sgurr, she let it stay. By the time they had boarded the ferry for the return journey, Jacqui still felt she could touch the sky if she stood on tiptoe. Back in the car, she looked at his hands on the steering wheel, his arms tanned and strong. He drove with the same competence, she reflected, as he steered the course of his life. And she had to face it—she was, in these few days they were spending together, playing a minute and purely temporary place in his life. A feeling of urgency speeded up her heartbeats. They were nearing home and—she felt it with a strange foreboding—there was little time left. Quickly, before another moment had passed, she had to tell him . .. Her eyes lifted imploringly to the remoteness of his profile. 'I love you,' she said, 'I love you, Fraser.' A flare came into his brown gaze, then he turned away. For a long time he said nothing. Then, giving her a swift, hard glance, he said, 'At your age, I would have thought you'd have got over the infatuation phase.' 'Infatuation it certainly isn't!' she cried, stung to her depths by his casual dismissal.

'Okay, so it's not.' His jaw moved and he added, 'You'll get over it.' His eyes swung towards her. They no longer held the gold of the evening sun. They were, instead, as dark as a loch's depths. 'If you have any sense, you'll put me out of your mind.' His hard-muscled arms swung the wheel to the right and they were crackling over the gravelled drive. 'But why? Tell me one good reason why.' Her voice betrayed her bewilderment. She had told him her most precious secret, and this was his only answer? 'Fraser, just what are you saying?' ' This is what I'm saying.' There was a grinding fury in his words and the car jarred to a halt. He jerked his head in the direction of the house. 'I have a wife. It seems she's arrived unexpectedly. Let me introduce you.' He slammed from the car and Jacqui scrambled out after him. A woman emerged from the shadow of the entrance porch. Her hair was black, her skin fair, her shape mature and exciting. Her amber eyes were pleading and distressed. They rested for a moment on Jacqui, then her hands stretched out towards Fraser. 'Darling,' she said, 'I've come back to you. Take me, my love. I swear I'll never leave you again.'

CHAPTER SIX WAKENING to the shrill cry in her head, Jacqui stirred. She half-lifted herself and looked around. The clouds had drifted lower and the cries had been the keening call of the gulls. They had been doing the weeping for her. The mountains were veiled to the fringe of insubstantiality by the grey, moist haze, while the nearer hills stood out blackly. Her hair hung damply, her blouse was darkened by the clinging moisture. A chill hung on the air and she shivered. Her breath was caught on a gasp as an alien sound invaded her ears. There was the heavy thump of booted feet coming down the rocky-incline towards the place where she lay. The boots slipped and jerked on the weather-smoothed surfaces, crunching now and then on rubbed, roughened areas. Jacqui tensed, held her breath, let it out. A turn of her head revealed thick socks over hard-muscled legs. The black and red pleats of the kilt he wore rolled, then were still. He was standing, feet apart, beside her. Slung from his waist was a leather belt with a shaped sheath containing a knife—a dirk which, she had observed, Highlanders carried on occasion. The knife went with the rapier-like mind of the man. That much she knew from their brief acquaintance in the past. The breadth of his hips made the kilt move even with his lungs' regular intake of breath. The black, dusty round-necked shirt sharpened the outline of the ribs beneath. His hair was as black as she remembered, but longer, springing thick and unruly, whereas a year before it had been under control. A broad, straight nose pointed the way to the mouth that had once kissed her. It was faintly curled now, upper lip and chin dark and bristle-roughened.

It was the look in his eyes that abraded her feelings like the rock against her arms. There was suspicion in his stare, condemnation and—yes, even hatred. Jacqui scrambled to her feet, hugging a shiver to her. It was the sight of him more than the chill air that caused it. He had changed so much he had almost become another man. Cynicism was pulling at his mouth's corners, ridging his jaw. There were new angles in his face and his whole bearing had in it some of the haunting wildness of the mountains. 'It's a bit late in the day, isn't it,' Fraser said curtly, 'to be weeping for your late fiance? Especially as you were responsible for his death.' Jacqui's brain rang hollowly with the sound of his voice, as if it were a great hall and she the only listener among row on row of empty seats. With each resounding word she had shrunk a little more, as if he were taking parts of her away. He had ripped out her heart a year ago. He had known. She'd told him, hadn't she? 'Malcolm went climbing of his own free will,' she answered, pushing shakily at the damp strands of her hair. 'How could I have stopped him from doing that?' 'You're asking me what you could have done— on the eve of your marriage?' he grated, cynicism flicking through his eyes. 'Be honest and admit that, by running out on him as you did just before the wedding, you precipitated his decision to go climbing as a means of getting away from the mess you'd made of his life.' Even as she shook her head fiercely at the accusation, Malcolm's shattered expression as she had said goodbye to him came back to her. It was a look which had haunted her conscience from the moment she had heard of his death.

'I refuse to discuss it with you. Nor is it,' her head lifted and she challenged him, 'any of your business.' Unable to stand the loathing in his eyes, she turned to search the dark loch waters. For months after reading of Malcolm's disastrous and fatal accident, that feeling of guilt had begun to grow inside her. Eventually, she had managed to persuade herself that the responsibility for Malcolm's accident could not truly be laid on her shoulders. Now the accusation had been put into words, and with such venom by the man she loved, her heart pounded as the awful sense of guilt returned. A gripping hand on her shoulder turned her towards him. 'You've got the bloody impudence to tell me that what happened to my brother has nothing to do with me? When, as the result of your callous treatment of him, he went out and got himself killed?' The blood ebbed from her face. 'He went climbing,' she answered, bewildered. 'You told me yourself that no woman could ever hold him back from it for long.' 'He had no immediate plans for a new expedition,' Fraser returned. 'Nothing lined up for some time, he told me. So what else but your leaving him made him take off without warning or adequate preparation to the high mountains?' Jerking free of his hold, Jacqui turned to stare unseeingly at the distant islands. How could she tell him what had made her alter course so dramatically on the day before the wedding? Even if she did, he wouldn't believe her. Also, he was a married man ... Her answer was trite and noncommittal. 'A girl can change her mind, can't she?' Her seemingly unfeeling reply angered him so much he caught her by the shoulders and shook her. 'It's my brother's life you're talking about,' he gritted, 'my late brother's life!'

He let her go without warning and she thought for a frightening moment that she might fall. She managed to save herself by catching hold of the leather belt lying low round his hips. Despite the tug, he kept his balance, but the knife fell out of the pouch and clattered on to the rocks. Jacqui reached for it instinctively, but it started slipping down the rock surface. She grabbed it wherever she could hold it and went to push it back into the pouch slung from the leather belt, when a sharp pain made her cry out. The knife had found its resting place, but there was a thin scarlet line across her palm. Blood welled from it and she looked at him in horror. He took her wrist and pulled her hand upwards, putting his mouth to the wound. In a primitive, spontaneous action to cleanse it, he sucked at it, then spat her blood from his mouth. He rooted in a pocket for a handkerchief and jerked it out of its folds, binding it tightly round her palm, then thrust it towards her. 'Get it attended to,' he instructed, and swung away, striding upwards, boots crunching on loosened stones. 'Fraser!' she cried after him. He did not turn. 'If I'd known you were going to be here, I wouldn't have come!' she shouted at his broad, retreating back. He did not pause in his climbing. A few moments later he was out of sight. Jacqui crouched down, arm wrapped around her, holding herself like a child in pain. Her injured hand closed over the throbbing palm, pressing Fraser's handkerchief tightly to try to stem the flow. If she bled to death, she thought, she would not care. Nothing mattered any more. Fraser hated her because he regarded her as responsible for Malcolm's death. He had got it all so wrong.

She uncurled and lay down again. Her head rolled round to watch the promontory on which she had seen Fraser. There was a figure, she thought, a tall statue-like creature up there, but there was no one, she was sure. This time she was using her imagination at full power and seeing Fraser Grant when he wasn't there at all.

The mist had thickened, but she did not notice how damp she had grown. The tranquillity she had sought by coming to that place had evaded her because she simply hadn't yet purged herself of the past. And how else could she exorcise the ghost of Malcolm except by summoning him back into her mind? She would have to go painstakingly over the events that followed her discovery that the man she loved had a wife. In the eveningj Gwenda had returned. Jacqui had been sitting in her room, staring out at the dying, gilded day. The azaleas and the rhododendrons were losing their colours to the approaching darkness which rolled down from the high mountains. Inside her, there was no feeling. From the soundless scream her mind had given the moment she had seen Fraser's wife, she had been mentally, if not physically, dead. Grief had numbed the life out of her. It was only when Gwenda came knocking, announcing her return and pleading to be let in, that Jacqui had unlocked the door. 'What's wrong?' asked Gwenda. 'My mother's so worried about you. She's scared you might have ... She was right, wasn't she? You've fallen for Fraser? But that's terrible, Jacqui! I wish I'd never gone to see Peter now, never left you with my brother.' 'Don't worry about me,' Jacqui replied, but could not stop Gwenda's self-reproach.

'I know I warned Fraser, although that was only in fun. I should have warned you, shouldn't I? But Jiis wife's been away from him for so long, we just don't think about her most of the time.' Jacqui shook her head wearily, trying to say it didn't matter, but the words wouldn't come. By the following morning Fraser had gone, apparently having taken his wife with him. Two empty days and nights later, Jacqui and Gwenda were on their way south. They were returning to London, having one day left, as Gwenda had said, to get into the mood for going back to work. Gwenda had spent most of the time since leaving her fiance talking about him. She had come back wearing the ring 'she had told Jacqui about. This time she showed it proudly to her parents, telling them of her engagement to Peter. He was sorry, she had told her father, that he couldn't come across and ask his permission in the good old-fashioned way, but his work kept him so busy he couldn't leave it. James Grant had grunted and commented that the fact that Peter had even thought of such a thing surprised him in these uncaring times. He admired the ring, told his daughter how pleased he was and went back to his gardening. Jacqui had been content to let Gwenda talk. It had meant listening to the chatter of a young woman so deeply in love with her man that she could not find a single fault with him. The numbness which had neutralised every single one of Jacqui's emotions allowed her to listen, smile and occasionally even laugh, without a single touch of pain. It was a few weeks after their return that Jacqui met Malcolm. Gwenda invited her to meet Peter. It was only a short visit, she explained, but she wanted to show off her fiance.'Got a boy-friend to bring?' Gwenda had asked. At her friend's slow shake of the head,

Gwenda added, her voice full of sympathy, 'You're not still feeling that way about Fraser? Jacqui, forget him, will you, or I'll never forgive myself. Both my brothers should carry the label, "Danger. Do not touch. Or come within an inch of..." At least Malcolm is legally free, but Fraser --' Jacqui had shaken her head, compressing her lips and turning away. 'Okay, pal,' said Gwenda. 'Sorry I mentioned it. Anyway, come to the party—not a real party, just a few friends. I'll find someone for you.' In the end, Jacqui found herself paired off with Malcolm, who seemed delighted to have Jacqui as a partner. He looked at her in the same appreciative way as Fraser had, Fraser's expressions came and went across his face. But there was a subtle difference. Jacqui could not pinpoint it, and it was all the more difficult because Malcolm was so like Fraser, they might have been twins. Malcolm was big, Malcolm was strong. His arm muscles bulged—he showed them to her at the party, rolling back his shirt sleeves and inviting her to hit them as Gwenda had. Delicately, Jacqui did so, laughing and shy. He grasped her fist and rammed it down hard. 'See,' he said, 'I didn't feel a thing.' It's the drink he's had, thought Jacqui, feeling happier than for some time. As the evening passed, she acknowledged that Malcolm and Fraser might be each other's lookalike, but in temperament they were as different as the Arctic from the Mediterranean. Gwenda, seated on Peter Barlow's lap, beamed at them. Peter approved, too, grinning across his future wife and making suggestive remarks. 'I've made her blush!' exclaimed Peter, his light brown hair curling over most of his head. His face was rounded, his blue eyes telling of a

perpetual enjoyment of everything life offered him. He would, Jacqui thought with a twinge under her ribs, make Gwenda a fine husband. Straightforward, uncomplicated, honest ... she mentally pressed the 'off' button and her thoughts came to an abrupt stop. Beside her was a tall, dark man, with the family's good looks and more than his fair share of the family charm. 'I regard life,' he had told her in one of the pauses in the music from the radio, 'as a challenge. All the time, it's saying, Be happy if you dare. I dare. Not like my brother—he's a misery if ever there was one!' Jacqui turned her head and closed her eyes. Never for one moment had she found Fraser 'a misery'. Serious, thoughtful, fathoms deep ... mysterious, an enigma to whose personality no key would ever be found. 'Is that,' queried Jacqui, forcing her mind back into contact with her companion's good humour, 'why you go and scramble up mountains? You regard them as a dare put there by life?' His eyes widened. 'What an understanding girl you are! I couldn't have put it better myself.' She knew he was teasing her, but his comment brought back the memory of Fraser's classification of her spontaneous and slightly offbeat expressions. 'Jacqui-isms', he'd called them. She took a hold on her thoughts again. She would forget Fraser Grant if it killed her. Others stood up, starting to dance. Gwenda slid off Peter's lap and, with his and Malcolm's help, pushed aside the furniture. Malcolm held out his arms and Jacqui went into them, closing her eyes and dancing, feeling him hold her close to him. Too close? she wondered, but let the music guide her movements. To hell, she thought, with discretion. Where does it get you, but head-on into misery?

When Malcolm kissed her under the low- turned lights, she felt the faintest stirrings of a feeling she thought she would never know again. It couldn't, she assured herself, be love, because she'd put all that behind her. Desire, that's what it is, she decided hazily, so what was wrong with that? It might—just—lead to something deeper, mightn't it? If it did, she went on thinking, would it matter? This man who held her so closely it was almost as if he ... as if he loved her? Her eyes sprang wider as she looked up at him. He would be laughing, teasing—but he wasn't. There was something there. What was it? It tantalised, it was just out of her reach. Then he smiled, and his face was asking a question. 'Malcolm?' she whispered. 'Know something?' he asked. 'I'd like to sleep with you.' His openness threw her off guard, but she recovered quickly. ,'Are you seeing me as one of life's challenges?' she countered. 'Am I daring you to—to conquer me?' 'Maybe, Jacqui. Know something else?' He whispered in her ear. 'I'd like to scale the heights with you.' Her heart was beating fast. Her eyes flickered shut, then they opened. 'You'd --' she moistened her lips. 'You'd have to lead the way.' He lifted her chin. His brown eyes shone down on her, brighter than the lights. 'Darling, is that a "come on"?' 'Malcolm,' called Gwenda from the enclosure of Peter's arms, 'keep your big paws off my friend!'

It was just like the warning she had given Fraser that first evening at Lochcraig House. Hands off my friend, she'd warned. To which the clipped answer had been, 'I haven't touched her. Am I likely to?' Now, Jacqui thought bitterly, she knew the reason for that comment. 'I'll put my paws where I like, Gwen,' was the younger brother's reply. 'Hands off, I said,' Gwenda shot back. 'And don't call me Gwen.' 'Jacqui,' Malcolm whispered in her ear, 'Big Paws has taken a strong fancy to you.' He drew out the words, making her laugh. 'Can Big Paws' owner take you home?' 'I told you, Jacqui,' Gwenda called across the room, 'my two brothers are womanisers. Didn't you get the message?' 'Gwenda,' Jacqui called back, 'this one—this particular brother of yours is so nice. Really, Idon't mind the --' she gave him a quick glance, 'the way he talks.' It must have been her emphasis of the word 'particular' that brought Gwenda across the room, freeing herself from her frowning fiance. 'Don't you ever learn, Jacqui?' Gwenda sounded anxious. 'Don't get mixed up with him.' She shot her brother a withering look and he pretended to cower. 'A different girl's waiting at the foot of every mountain he climbs.' 'Oh, no,' admonished Malcolm, pulling Jacqui back into his arms, 'you're not warning this one off me, my sweet little sister. This one's different. Get it? I. go for blondes, remember? And this blonde I'm going for in a big way. She's --' he made a 'go away' gesture with his hand, 'I'll tell her privately.' With great reluctance and a look full of warning at Jacqui, Gwenda returned to a still frowning fiance.

'Now, I'll tell you,' Malcolm said into her ear. 'You're juicy, you're dynamite...' Fraser's words, Jacqui thought with a jerk of her heart. 'You've got the lot, and I certainly could use a girl like you in my life—permanently.' Jacqui pulled away, staring at him. 'You've had too much to drink, Malcolm,' she admonished. 'In the morning you'll regret every word you've said- to me. And if you think I'd take you seriously for one minute, you must be drunk to your eyebrows.' 'Thanks a lot.' To her astonishment, he seemed serious! 'And I can count the number of drinks I've had on less than the fingers of one hand. Which means I'm sober, not just to my eyebrows, but to the top of my head. Okay, Jacqui Sarcastic?' Jacqui coloured, looking away across the room at other couples dancing even more closely than she and Malcolm were. 'Sorry, But I don't --' 'Don't? Ever?' Did she have to give away to every man how small her experience of them had been? she reproached herself. Fraser must have guessed by her ingenuous confession of her love for him. Now she was practically telling this man that she had never known any man intimately. 'What I meant was,' she tried to cover up, 'I can't—take you seriously, I mean. Permanently, to me, only means one thing. Marriage, and that's not something someone like you would go for, is it? Nor me,' she added, crossing her fingers on the lie.

His expression changed subtly to one she found unpleasant. 'It's like that with you, is it? I'd never have guessed.' The music for dancing went on and on. Smoke from other people's cigarettes moistened Jacqui's eyes. She would have—once. Only once, with only one man. A man whom, she gritted her teeth inside her lips, she had sworn to forget. But with his face—almost his face—looking so intimately into hers, how could she forget? Lifting her head, she smiled. 'What's it like with you, then? Any girl, any time, any place? Any country in the world?' 'Until now, yes. Until tonight, I've never cared. Now I do. And if you dare to say I'm drunk, I'll throttle you!' He kissed her softly, gently, raising her face with his thumb. 'Jacqui,' he murmured, 'will you marry me?'

He did not take her refusal seriously. He phoned her every day for two weeks. He took her dancing, dining, making London come to life. The great parks, even in the autumn sunshine, looked green. The golden-brown leaves did not fall to the ground. They stayed on the trees, turning London landscapes into Impressionistlike paintings as they waited, swirled around with early October mists, for the tug of winter gales to tear them down. I'm in love, Jacqui found herself thinking. She rejoiced in the urgent, pleading little looks he gave her, gazed into his face and saw what she wanted to see on the face of a man ... desire and warmth. 'Yes, I'll marry you,' she answered when he had asked her for the third time. Why not? she thought, defying an inner warning voice, why

shouldn't I marry him? They were seated together in a large chair in his three-roomed apartment to the west of London. He let out a shout and covered her face with kisses. That day they had phoned Gwenda. Jacqui had spoken first and it had taken her friend a few moments to answer. 'Well, I don't quite know what to say,' she had said at last. 'Except I hope you'll be happy. Both of you, I mean. Could you put me on to Malcolm?' Jacqui handed over, then she wandered into the kitchen to put the kettle on. She could think of nothing else to do. Gwenda's restrained reaction had toned down the excitement that had put colour into her cheeks and gilt into the day. No, she corrected herself, gold, not gilt, and her subconscious mind's curious trickery gave her a twinge of anxiety. Why had Gwenda not been as pleased as she had assumed she would? Malcolm's not tied legally, she had said. More brawn than brain. Well, she'd had enough of brains—Fraser was the intellectual, Malcolm the physical one. She didn't give a click of the fingers for intellect; it made a man cold and emotionless. When Malcolm followed her into the kitchen he was frowning. 'My sister can be sour when she likes.' He put out cups and saucers for the coffee Jacqui was making. 'Sour?' Jacqui turned to him. 'Why? What's wrong about us becoming engaged?' He shrugged, and Jacqui saw a flash of stark ruthlessness in his eyes. It was so different from the fun-loving, soft-tongued man she had come to know, it jolted her into a state of unreasoning pain. It must be yet another family trait, she soothed her fears. It was something he would need, wasn't it—sheer determination—when hacking his way up the side of a mountain; camping for the night on a ledge,

withstanding all that the treacherous mountain weather could throw at him? The sound of his laughter melted the layer of frost that had started to form around her happiness. 'She had the cheek to warn me to reform my immoral ways, as she put it, and prepare to settle down into a nine-to-five job.' Jacqui's heart leapt in anticipation. 'What answer did you give?' 'I told her to mind her own business.' He moved his head towards the living-room. 'Come on, honey, we'll show them. We'll decide the date and take it from there.' I'll need time, she thought, panicking again, and told him. 'Three days is all I'll wait.' he told her. 'You've kept me on a string so long, I can't take it any more.' He pulled her on to his lap. 'We won't tell the parents,' he decided. 'They'll want a big wedding—Fraser did them out of one when he married Maura.' If Jacqui felt a stab of disappointment that he had made such a decision without even asking her opinion, she hid it from herself. If Malcolm wanted it that way, she wouldn't complain. All she wanted, she reminded herself, was to become his wife, wasn't it?

CHAPTER SEVEN THE throbbing of her palm brought her back to the reality of her present plight. The once-white handkerchief with which Fraser had bound her injured hand was soaked with blood. She had not slept. Her thoughts had been no kind of dream, but a nightmare that left her sobbing without tears. Her body was shivering with the chill of the thick mist that had come down to ground level. She was alone in a blanket of greyness and she was immobilised with fear. She had not eaten since breakfast and now her watch told her it was early afternoon. There was the sound of footsteps again, heavy and sure. Her heart leapt and raced as if it were running from an enemy intent on revenge. He trod the wet and sloping rocks as easily as if they were a smooth, manicured lawn, and his boots came to rest beside her half-reclining figure. He bent to take her hand, pulled it upwards to get a closer look and let out an expletive. 'I told you to get it seen to.' His coldly burning eyes looked her over, taking in her soaking clothes. He still wore his kilt, but the leather belt and knife-pouch had gone. A blouson jacket had been pulled over the black cotton shirt and this he now removed. Stooping, he hauled her to her feet and held out the jacket for her to wear. 'No, thank you,' she refused. 'I don't want anything of yours to touch me.' His teeth snapped together and he took her arm, pushing it roughly into a sleeve. Despite her protest that he was hurting her, he did likewise to the other. 'My hand!' she cried, 'please mind my hand—it's painful!'

Before she had stopped speaking, he had swung her into his arms. Picking his way with some care, he carried her upwards to the edge of the rocks. The soft turf on to which he stepped was wet, but his heavily shod feet made unwavering imprints. Sheep bleated plaintively in the mist, moving hurriedly away as the tall figure with his burden appeared out of the gloom. Jacqui, limp in Fraser's arms, felt some sympathy with the woolly-coated creatures. The size of him, she thought, his half-tamed appearance and his heavy, resolute tread were enough to frighten anyone, even, she imagined, his own family if they had come across him without warning. 'There's no need to carry me back to the house,' Jacqui declared from the human cradle into which she had found herself unceremoniously hoisted. It was a cradle of such Strength she could feel the hard tension of the supporting muscles all around her. He offered no reply. In his face was a grim determination, his jutting jaw telling of a refusal to make a single concession, and Jacqui's head sank against him. In such a situation, she was forced to acknowledge that no useful purpose would be served iii fighting him. They had passed through so many gates, Jacqui lifted her head to find they were on a winding roadway which she had not seen before. To one side was a rising bank along which another path ran. To the other side were the lapping waters of the loch. 'We're off course,' she declared. 'You've lost your way in-the fog.' Ignoring her statement, he strode on to stop at last outside a white-painted cottage whose garden was bounded by a low hedge and whose front door opened off a stone-covered path. He turned the handle and carried her in, closing the door with his shoulder. They had stepped straight into a living room where a log

fire roared in the grate. He let her slide from his arms to stand on a thick-piled hearth-rug. Jacqui looked down at it. 'My shoes—-they'll spoil it,' she protested, 'they're dirty and wet.' Fraser lifted a shoulder, then bent down to remove them. He put them near the fire to dry. 'We'll do likewise to the rest of your clothes when I've seen to this.' He lifted her hand and unwound the bloodstained handkerchief. Without a moment's thought, he threw it on to the fire. 'It could have been soaked and washed,' Jacqui protested. 'It was a good handkerchief.' '"Was" is correct. Past tense. Soiled beyond redemption.' 'Is that,' she asked, pale-faced, 'how you look on me? Soiled beyond saving?' He impelled her towards a small kitchen. 'You know what I think of you.' He let the cold water run. 'Fraser, you must believe me, I can't be held responsible for Malcolm's death. You just have to hear my side of the case!' In answer he pulled her hand under the cold running water, and she yelped with pain. 'What are you trying to do,' she asked, only just managing to suppress the tears, 'punish me for a crime I didn't commit?' He was drying the cut now. 'Why are you being so gentle?' she asked. 'Oh, yes, of Course, if it turns septic you'll be blamed because it was your knife that inflicted the wound.' 'Don't try to unload your feeling of guilt about past events on to my shoulders,' he clipped.

'No, I shouldn't, should I?' she fought back. 'That would give you a double load to carry.' He applied healing cream to the cut on her palm, then looked at her with surprise. 'Double load? Why the hell should I feel guilty?' The plaster was in place now and he gave her back her hand. 'You let me fall in love with you,' she cried, 'although you were a married man!' 'Let's re-run that tape. You allowed yourself to fall in love with me.' He put away the things he had been using. 'Oh, yes, I do remember now. You told me you loved me.' He swung round, his eyes raging. 'Then, a few weeks later, you became engaged to my brother. Some love that was!' As she started to protest, he commanded, regarding her bedraggled form, 'Go back in there to the fire. You're shivering.' Jacqui did not have the strength to continue the argument. The fire reached out with its roar and its heat fanned all over her. Her clothes started steaming and the shivering increased. Fraser saw it. 'Go into the bedroom and strip,' he said. 'I'll find something for you to wear.' 'No, thank you,' she answered through chattering teeth. 'I told you, I don't want anything of yours touching me. Just take me back to Lochcraig House so I can get into my own bath and soak for a while.' 'I'm not taking you back like that. You can soak in my bath while your clothes dry. And you'll wear something of mine if I have to dress you in it myself. And,' he added again, 'if you dare to say I'm concerned about you because I don't want you to catch pneumonia since I'd be blamed for it, I'll throttle you,' he came towards her, fingers curled, 'with my own two hands! Better still,' he paused, looking at the clinging, soaked blouse and wet skirt that moulded around her thighs, 'I'll join you in the bath and take it from there. You know the facts of

life by now, if you didn't before. That much my brother would have taught you in the course of your short and disastrous acquaintance with him.' Jacqui took a breath to reply, realised how useless it would be to attempt to defend herself against this man and released it. 'Where's your bathroom?' she asked, looking round. Fraser indicated a door and she opened it. The room was low-beamed and half-tiled, with soft carpeting and the best fitments. 'Luxury encapsulated in a one-time peasant's dwelling,' he commented with irony. The heat from the radiator under the window drew Jacqui forward and she glanced over her shoulder. 'It's beautiful, Fraser.' There was a look in his eye she could not read. The clean towels on the heated rail were soft to the touch. On a note of unconscious wistfulness, she asked, 'Is this your wife's taste?' He did not reply immediately and she realised she was holding her breath. Why had she not said to herself over and over, this man is married? He also thinks his brother died because of me. That makes him doubly beyond my reach—not that he was ever within it. 'No,' he answered at last. 'My wife is away.' Jacqui turned quickly, but the questions she wanted so much to ask remained unspoken. His private life was his own concern. 'The water's hot,' he cautioned, leaving her. 'Help yourself to towels.' Jacqui closed the door, searching for a lock. There was none, she noticed with dismay. Looking around, she saw the soft-covered stool and carried it across to place against the door. It was a foolish,

pointless act of defiance, she told herself, because Fraser wouldn't bother her, disliking her as he did. Undressing, she put her shirt and skirt outside the bathroom door, hoping Fraser would find them and put them to dry. Pushing the stool back into place against the door, she swished the water, testing its temperature. She pinned up her hair until only the curls spilled over, then stepped into the bath. The plaster stretched across the palm of her hand. It was of the waterproof type and she hoped it would live up to its description. So far the water had not stung the wound, which gave her hope that it would stay that way. There was a sound outside and she held her breath, standing and listening. 'What about the underwear?' Fraser called out. 'You were wet through.' 'That's—that's okay.' He mustn't come in now, she thought. 'They're so small, they'll dry on the radiator before I'm out of the bath.' There was one brief sardonic laugh and the footsteps moved away. Sighing with relief, Jacqui lowered herself, savouring the enveloping warmth. She lay back in the bubble-filled water— ' she had found a container of perfumed liquid on a shelf—and rested her head on a small bath pillow. Closing her eyes, she drifted back to her wedding eve. The day before the wedding, Malcolm had taken her to a small, select restaurant. The meal had been excellent, but Jacqui's appetite had not risen to the occasion. Malcolm had not noticed, having ordered the best wine the establishment possessed in its cellars. He had drunk liberally, refilling Jacqui's glass, despite her protests, every time she had taken a few mouthfuls. Afterwards, he had taken

her back to his apartment, although she had told him that convention dictated they should not see each other the night before the wedding. Irresolutely, she had stood in the centre of the room while he got himself a drink. Then he approached her and took her face in a gentle hold. His mouth descended and his kiss was soft and coaxing. Removing her jacket, he threw it aside. 'Twenty-four hours,' he said, 'and you'll be my wife. I don't want to wait, Jacqui. I want you now.' His tone had changed, Jacqui thought, it had hardened, she was sure. He took up his drink, and watching him swallow it was like having another herself. The room started moving like a sad, slow, merry-go-round. He approached her again, steps slightly unsteady. The room reversed on itself, coming to a stop. He started to kiss her before her eyes had closed. The face, she thought, the face is wrong. Wrong, so wrong—the shriek filled her mind, but not a sound escaped. Wrong place, wrong kiss, wrong man! I've been so wrong . .. They were out of control now, the thoughts that came. They broke free like caged, wild birds suddenly given their freedom. All the time, I've played a game, pretending to myself that I'd really fallen in love with Malcolm, when all the time it was Fraser I was seeing ... Like twins ... each other's lookalike ... she recalled it all now. Her subconscious mind had played tricks. It had always told her the truth before, so why had it let her down all these weeks? Or had she subdued it consciously, suppressing its efforts to warn her? And now that the alcohol she had drunk had dissolved mental barriers, it was getting through at last? Malcolm drew her into the bedroom and fumbled with her buttons. The blouse caught on her shoulders, then fell to the floor. Her breasts

were held by lace and satin, and he looked down at her with a smile. Had she imagined the way that smile shook minutely, like a hand unsteady after too much drink? He took her in his arms and she shivered with dread. What could she do to stop him, without goading him? He held her away, asking with a curious laugh, 'Nervous? You must be a collector's item, the one virgin left in your age group.' He walked her to the bed. 'No,' she protested, but he ignored her refusal. Again, she thought, How can I stop him? He pushed her back, then leaned over her. Her legs, weakened by terror, gave way and she sank to the bed. He half-twisted over her. A new kind of look entered his eyes. It was predatory, desire-filled. She had seen such a look in his brother's eyes, but Fraser's desire had blazed and roared. These eyes had a different temperature, one that made her freeze up inside. His hands came at her, gripping her, almost as if she were a jutting rock, one he was determined to conquer. Her mouth was dry, her body shaking. 'It's all been a terrible mistake.' She heard her own strangled outcry, heard the heavy breaths of the man she was struggling with. 'Mistake?' he asked, his voice strangely questioning. 'On whose part?' 'I don't know—mine, mine!' Had she imagined a look of relief? When she looked at him again after diving for her blouse, she saw only fury and frustration. 'So you don't want to sleep with me? You still want to wait for the starting pistol?' He pulled himself heavily to his feet. 'Tomorrow you'll be my wife, then you'll have to --'

Jacqui shook her head. 'The wedding's off, Malcolm. I'm sorry but --' 'You 're sorry! What about me?' He noticed that she had dressed in her outdoor clothes. 'What are you doing? Running out on me?' Before he could stop her, she was at the door. In a whisper she said, 'All this time I've fooled myself that you were Fraser. Right from the start, I've loved him. When I discovered he was married, I hated him—at least, I thought I did, but I've just realised how wrong I was. I still love him. I'm sorry about it, Malcolm, so very sorry.' As she turned to go, she saw his expression. It was one of disbelief and devastation. It had happened nine months ago. Two months later, Malcolm Grant had been reported missing by other members of the climbing team he had joined. Someone had seen him fall to his death.

The bath water had cooled and Jacqui stood up, still dazed from remembering. She watched the bunches of bubbles slide down her silky skin. The door was being pushed, coming up against the barrier of the stool. There was a shout, an expletive and a 'What the hell do you think you're doing trying to keep me out of my own bathroom?' Fraser pushed harder and the stool fell with a thump. He bent to retrieve it, draping a shirt and shrunken jeans across the seat. Then he looked up, anger about to flow like lava from his lips. He saw her and his mouth was stilled. His eyes conversed with the picture she made, small patches of bubble still sliding downwards. 'Please go out,' she declared indignantly. 'I didn't want you to come in—that's why I put it there.'

He ignored her outburst. 'There she stands,' he said, his voice clipped, 'looking a lie, looking as innocent as a babe and as naked as the moment she was born.' He kicked the door shut and went to stand beside the bath. He stared, her pink, heated skin deepening in colour with every desiring movement of his eyes. 'Still dynamite,' he brooded, 'still able to fire my insides and make me want that beautiful body, despite its treachery.' Jacqui could not move under the power of his gaze. She wanted to run while there was still time, yet she wanted to stay, to reach out and touch that hard-carved face she still loved so much. 'Yes,' he drew out the word, 'callous bitch though you are, I can't purge myself of this insane desire to take you here,' his foot hit the bath mat, 'on my bed, then for good measure on the hearthrug in front of the fire.' His arms came out and lifted her to stand in front of him. She caught the mirror reflection of the two of them, she with her face uplifted, clinging, he looking down, his face tautly male, heated with desire. How could I ever stop loving him? she thought. How could I ever have thought I could? His hands slid up and down her shape, resting on her hips, her waist and finally, cupping her breasts. Everywhere he touched came to electric life until her pulses throbbed in one great beat of desire. 'I should have taken you that day on the island,' he muttered, his mind only half on what he was saying. 'I should have got the taste and feel of you, taken the heat of you into my loins.' His thumb flicked at the hardening nipples. 'How you would have loved me then! And I'd have had the best of you before my brother got to you. Would you have

promised to marry him then, I wonder, and would he now be alive if you hadn't?' Anger rasped his tone and he pulled her the length of him. The friction of his shirt and trousers against her sensitively heated skin had an exquisite roughness all its own. His mouth firmed into an angry line, and when it took hers, it showed no mercy. Still the kiss held as he swung her into his arms and carried her through to the bedroom. He lowered her to the bed and let his fingertips run over her shoulders and throat while his mouth continued to hold hers to ransom. Reason fought for dominance through the mist of sensation that was clouding her mind. There was a difference, she thought, between the lovemaking on the island a year ago and what was happening now. A world of difference, because they would never entirely trust each other again. How could they? Fraser held her responsible for the ending of Malcolm's life. She knew he was a married man. Dragging herself from the demi-paradise to which his hands and his mouth on her body were taking her, she started pushing him away, half- sobbing. 'Stop, Fraser! You have to stop. It's not the same as it was before. I know now that you have a wife.' He paused and she snatched the moment to slide from under him. 'And I won't be your woman!' He stood up, staring with half-glazed eyes at her seated form, her arms around her waist as if she were protecting herself from him. He pulled her up by her forearms and with burning eyes cut a snaking path down her body. He let her go and she sank down on to the bed, watching as he walked to the window. Beyond it, she could glimpse the loch and part of the small bay alongside which the cottage stood.

'You talked about my wife,' he said at last, his back to her. 'I have no knowledge of her whereabouts. For seven of the eight years of our marriage, she has been consistently unfaithful to me, living with one man after another.' 'Fraser, I'm so sorry,' Jacqui whispered. 'I didn't know.'

It was three days before the cut on Jacqui's hand had healed sufficiently to remove the plaster. Gwenda had been shocked to see it. 'However did you manage to do it?' she had asked. 'Did you cut it on the rocks or something?' 'On the --' Jacqui had nodded, finding it impossible to tell her the whole truth. 'Oft the rocks where—where Fraser found me.' Fraser had driven her back to the house that afternoon. He had offered her a meal, but despite missing lunch, her appetite had gone. She had dressed in the clothes he had lent her, taking her damp ones in a bag. Mrs Grant had been worried enough to telephone her son asking if he had seen Jacqui wandering through the gardens. He had reassured her of her safety, telling her in a matter-of-fact tone that he had found her lying on the rocks like a piece of limp seaweed and had insisted on her taking a bath and drying out at his cottage. His mother would never know, Jacqui thought, overhearing, what tumultuous an episode those plain, unvarnished words had hidden. Only the briefest of exchanges had taken place between Fraser and herself after she had dressed. Not a word had been spoken as he had driven her the short distance to the house. He hadn't even got out of the car, but waited, staring ahead as she opened the door and thanked him.

It was a year since her last visit to Cariscraig, and she felt bruised and scarred inside by the events that had happened in the months between. When recently she had telephoned the two people who had so nearly become her parents-in-law, she had half-expected an abrupt rejection. She could not, she had thought, have blamed them if they had decided they wanted nothing more to do with the ex-fiancee of the son they had lost. Jacqui was warmed through by their affectionate response to her question as to whether she could stay with them for a longer-than-usual summer holiday. It seemed that they, unlike their son, did not blame her for Malcolm's death. After Gwenda's marriage to Peter some months earlier, she had given up her job, and the position of fiction editor on the magazine had passed to Jacqui. Gwenda had gone with Peter to live Math her parents, and the four of them had turned Lochcraig House into a high quality hotel. Elizabeth now had Gwenda's help in running the place, while Peter, using the catering skills on which he had lectured at college, had turned chef. He planned and cooked the delicious meals which the large number of guests who visited them so appreciated. The room Jacqui had been given was situated in the family's private quarters. Her view from the window was similar to the old one in almost every way, except that it was one floor higher. The room was a little larger, too, providing an area for relaxation and, if she wanted, a meal on her own. During the three days that had passed since she had seen Fraser, he had scarcely been out of her mind. Most of them she had spent in her bedroom, gazing towards the mountains and the loch. Sometimes she had wandered through the grounds, doing her best to keep away from guests who were exploring the gardens.

Every day, all day long—despite telling herself how stupid she was to pine for a married man- she listened for the sound of Frazer's voice, watching for a sight of him round every comer. There were guests, friendly and smiling. But there was no tall, aloof man with brown eyes burning with fire whenever they rested on her, making her crackle every time he came near. 'Frazer's clothes have been washed and ironed,' Elizabeth Grant said one morning as she caught Jacqui leaving the breakfast room. 'The ones he lent you, remember? Would you like to take a walk later on and return them to him?' She smiled. 'Could you ask him, too, why he hasn't been near his family for days? I've tried ringing him, but he never answers.' 'I'll take them,' Jacqui agreed, keeping her voice as steady as her increasing heartbeat would allow. Now the chance to see him had been offered her on a plate, nervousness was mixing with the anticipation, but this again she hid from the smiling woman in front of her. 'You'll need a jacket,' Elizabeth advised. 'It's a bright morning, but there's a chill in the breeze.' Jacqui nodded, going to her room to pull on a woollen cardigan. It was heather-coloured and had a stand-up collar and turn-back cuffs. It had been in the window of a shop in London's Regent Street and boasted the proud statement that it had been made in Scotland. The tourists stood admiring it. On a high pocket, a thistle had been embroidered in matching cotton thread. In the shop, she had found wool mixture trousers, and these she put on, too, leaving in place the white cotton blouse she had chosen to wear that morning. Having combed her hair and watched the end curls bounce back, she left her face clear of make-jip. It was too much

to expect that Fraser would spare her a single glance. He would probably tell her to put the parcel down and go. Gwenda had told her of an alternative way to reach the lonely cottage in which Fraser had chosen to live. 'Don't go all the way round by the road,' she advised. 'It's pleasanter to walk through the grounds. You'll know when you're there. You can't mistake his little hideaway once you've seen it, can you?' Part of the way she already knew, since it led down to the loch's edge and the promontory she knew so well. The first half of the walk took her through £r circle of tall trees which were full of bird song, filling her head with music. Underfoot, brown leaves of autumns gone by crackled with every footstep, and patterns of sun and shadow rippled across her as she walked. Great bushes of orange and white rhododendrons were brilliant against the soft and varied greens. She passed by a pool of fallen purple petals as if the flowering bush was basking in its own reflected beauty. The final gate closed behind her and across a stretch of grass she noted the place at which it met the road. Lifting her eyes, she saw Fraser's cottage, and her mind ran ahead of her, flinging open his door and running into his arms. Her feet, more sober, facing reality, took her at a slower pace on to the crunching Stones of the neglected road. Poles at wide intervals carried the power supply to the small cluster of white cottages. Fraser's seemed to be the only one which was occupied. Last time Jacqui had passed through his entrance door, he had been carrying her in his arms. Now, her hand trembled a little as it lifted to knock. There was no reply, so her second knock was louder. She caught the sound of a cutoff shout and turned the handle.

A kind of ordered chaos greeted her. Sheets of typewritten paper were scattered over the country-print-covered furniture. On a low table pulled close to the settee was an ancient typewriter. The long arm of technology had not, she thought with a faint smile, reached these distant, secretive sanctuaries from the over- civilised world. Her eyes stared around, but there was not a human being in sight. The one she sought was there; she could hear him. He lay on his side on the bed, half covered by a sheet, the top half of him naked. On his hip was balanced a large notepad. Around him on a double bed were ripped off, discarded, handwritten sheets of paper. Jacqui stood uncertainly, clutching the small parcel, staring at him. His hair was disordered, his eyes filled with damped-down fury. 'What are you doing?' she asked, astonished. He rolled on to his back and the pad unbalanced, sliding to the floor. He ignored it and answered, 'Thinking. What the hell does it look like?' His brow descended on a frown as he looked at her. 'A very relaxed work-style,' she answered with a smile, putting down his parcel of clothes. 'Or it could just be called sleeping in. Or laziness. If this is the way you spend your vacation, how did you grer manage to develop those muscles in your arms, not to mention ...' Her glance strayed down to his chest, his lean waist which just showed above the thin cover draped across him. The hand gripping the sheet tightened into a fist. 'I'll show you how. By grappling with women.' He flung aside the sheet and swung his legs to the floor. He towered above her and as she gasped, covering her mouth, he seized her shoulders.

'What's wrong? Never seen a man in the nude?' he jeered. 'After being engaged to my brother? Go tell that to the mountains!' The mountains—where Malcolm had died ... Fraser's kiss blotted out her ability to think. His body, tight against hers, made her heart go wild. He tugged off her cardigan and threw it aside. His fingers went through the buttons on her blouse and it followed the cardigan. Her efforts to stop him were too ineffective to work; her will power had ebbed out of sight. Under his feathering touch down her arms and around her throat she shivered and moaned, and still the kiss held, forcing back her head. There were electrical storms in her mind and she felt her mouth returning all his own were giving her. When he stopped at last, she was gasping for breath and her cheek had found itself a place against his hammering chest. Under her hands were the strong shoulders and she held on to them like a mountaineer his rope on a dangerous climb. 'Open your eyes,' he commanded, and forced her chin upwards. She moved to free herself but he held her so firmly she could not escape the sensation of his arousal. 'Why are you doing this?' she whispered. 'I've told you I'll never be your woman. Go and find your wife and release your frustrations on her!' He jerked her away and the back of his hand hit her cheek. The gasp she gave nearly choked her. She turned away, feeling the pain of tears in her chest, the sob that rose like a bursting bubble to her throat. 'Why did you agree to marry Malcolm?' rasped Fraser, unmoved by her tears. He started to dress. 'Did you love him? But of course, no,' he went on sarcastically,'/ was the one you said you loved.'

'You lied about yourself,' Jacqui exclaimed thickly, 'you lied by omission. You didn't tell me from the start that you were a married man—at least, not until it was too late.' 'You didn't ask.' It was so true it stopped the tears. She had assumed so much—that he was free, that maybe one day, he might come to love her—if he ever so much as came down from his academic clouds and noted her existence. 'Did you expect me to wear a label, "I am a married man"?' He glanced in the mirror and ran a comb through his hair. 'Also, how was I to know you'd., develop an emotional fixation for me?' His words, she recognised, were chosen deliberately to hurt her. He went on, 'Women these days, in my experience, will agree like that,' he clicked his fingers, 'to sex without any accompanying affection.' 'So you assumed I was one of those women,' she said dully. Having put on her blouse and jacket, she stared at the view. A rowing boat was beached and on its side on the loch's shore across the road. 'You became engaged to my brother,' he pressed, 'after what's usually called a whirlwind romance. In retaliation against me? Out of spite? Or maybe you told him you "loved" him, and he, poor devil, believed you.' He turned her roughly. His eyes were contemptuous, his jaw dark and unshaven, probably from neglect the day before. The stubble had left a roughness around her mouth and chin.

Looking up at him, Jacqui held her cheek which still stung from the impact of his hand. 'If I told you why I nearly married Malcolm, you wouldn't believe me.' 'Tell me, and I'll be the judge of that.' She shook her head. If she told him, it would be telling, too, how much she still loved him, and that wasi something he would throw back in her face at every opportunity. 'Why,' she demanded, 'should I say I would marry another man to spite you? Spite, retaliation—they both imply an attempt to hurt someone who's vulnerable to that hurt. You're not vulnerable where I'm concerned. You couldn't possibly be, with a wife of yojir own.' 'Haifa wife. Not even that.' Fraser fastened his buttons and pushed in his shirt, then stood in front of her, hands loosely on hips. 'Vulnerable?' He rubbed his rough chin. 'I find you almost impossible to resist. One little beckoning movement of your finger, and I'd have you down there on the floor any time you like.' 'Lust, bodily satisfaction,' she hit back, 'that's all you think of!' 'I'm all man,' he mocked, and put himself in front of her. 'Did my brother make love to you? Tell me his tricks, his subtleties, his different approach.' 'How could you ask such a thing?' Her large blue eyes gazed up at him and he flicked a fair curl from her brow. He lifted the hand that was nursing the sore cheek and she winced. He frowned, put her hand against his chest, then lowered his head to place softly moving lips against the bright pink patch. As he lifted his head, Jacqui stared at him. Her heart was nearly melting with the fire of her love for him. His unexpected gentleness

was almost her undoing. She wanted to throw herself at him. Instead, she ran out of the cottage, swinging the door shut behind her.

CHAPTER EIGHT SINCE Jacqui's last visit, the terrace at the rear of the house, which overlooked the mountains and the distant loch, had been paved and furnished with white-painted iron tables and chairs. She chose to drink her coffee there, enjoying the morning - sun. There was no sign of the guests. They had gone out for the day, as most of diem did. Jacqui put her book on the table, but despite her firm intention of reading it, her attention wandered. Her mind played truant and ran to lurk outside the small white cottage by the loch's side. 'Have your coffee on the terrace, Mr Fraser?' It was Molly speaking. She was busier than ever now the hotel had become a reality. 'Miss White's out there, too.' The firm footsteps approached, but Jacqui held her head rigidly where it was—facing the mountains. Even when the iron chair scraped and a cup rattled on a saucer, she did not move. 'You can't,' the male voice said, 'do both things at once.' Her head swung round, then she cursed herself for moving. 'What things?' 'Sit still and run away at the same time.' He crossed his legs and took a drink. 'And you know all about running away, don't you?' 'You mean from you yesterday morning?' 'I mean,' his eyes slitted, 'running out on a fiance.' 'Can't you leave the subject alone?' She had meant to convey anger, and cursed the appeal she heard in her tone of voice. 'Don't you understand? I knew the marriage wouldn't work.' She added, in her

own defence, 'You told me yourself no woman would keep him for long.' 'There's no doubt that he had his faults,' Fraser conceded, stretching out his legs. Jacqui looked hard at him. 'So you admit he had some weaknesses, despite the fact that you and he were near-twins?' He glanced at her obliquely. 'One of them was an inability to judge a woman's integrity,' 'Don't malign my integrity! It's as good as yours, if not better.' He laughed derisively and she pushed back her chair to leave, but he caught her arm and pulled her round, forcing her into the chair beside him. 'Running away again?' he asked smoothly. Jacqui pulled her arm away. 'I came out here for peace and quiet, not a verbal fight with you.' His eyebrow lifted. 'We could make it a physical fight, if you prefer?' 'Physical, physical... That's all you ever think about, isn't it?' 'When you're in my vicinity,' his eyelids drooped, his lazy gaze moved over her, 'that's all I can think of.' 'Stop making fun of me!' Jacqui heard her throat thicken and wanted to make a second run for it, except that she knew he would catch her again. 'I was never more serious. Look at me. Look at me, I say!' Slowly, reluctantly, she complied.

'I want you physically.' His expression was intense. 'I want you—I've wanted you ever since I set eyes on you. You do something to me. I've told you often enough.' 'You're a married man,' she whispered. 'Am I?' he contended bitterly. There was a brittle silence. 'Now I know,' she whispered, 'why you want me. To work out your --' Her hand flew to her cheek in a protective gesture. The last time she had said those words, he had lashed out at her. Fraser watched the movement, a curious expression in his eyes. 'Did I remember to apologise? It's not in my nature to hit women— unless strongly provoked.' 'And I spoke the truth yesterday, which you regarded as provocative?' 'There are ways of telling the truth. The one you chose had a blade like a dagger on it. You drew blood.' Jacqui looked at the palm of the hand she had cut on his knife. The scar was still visible, although fading. 'You drew my blood. I didn't hit you.' 'A verbal wound can cut more deeply than any dirk, any dagger.' 'You mean it hurt you that you didn't know where your wife was?' Abruptly, he rose to his feet and left her staring at the view.

The following day, Jacqui went to her room for the book she had just begun to read. The weather was so warm she removed her blouse and

put on a white, low-backed suntop which tied at the nape of her neck. Her skirt was pink and white striped and caught the breeze as she made her way through the gardens and by the side of the woods to the lochside. On the way, she passed bushes frosted with blossom, while a morning-time rabbit sat on its haunches until it picked up the scent and sound of her approach then leapt away. A gate swung shut behind her and she made her way across the sheep-speckled meadow, the animals more scattered that morning, therefore more distant. The turf gave softly under her tread. The day was so beautiful, she felt the spring it gave to her footsteps transmit itself to her heart. For a while, she thought, I'm happy. Instead of making for her favourite place on the rocks, she swerved left and climbed round the side of a hillock, clambering down over rocks to a small curving bay. The beach had the silver- white colour of the sand where Fraser had taken her that day a year ago. The sun entered her metabolism, its caressing warmth slowing her down, tranquillising her pulse beat until the clamour in her mind died away. A cuckoo called across the bay and Jacqui listened, enthralled by its enticing song. Was it, perhaps, the same one that had called across the hills to her last year? A cuckoo in woods, that was no surprise, but a cuckoo among the mountains and lochs? The idea intrigued her, the sound in such surroundings making her spirits soar. The gulls swooped and cried, the faraway sheep bleated, the sea-loch whispered, its waves small and creeping. The buzz of an insect woke her and she half sat up, peering across the water. A rowing boat had come into view. As it came nearer, the oarsman's large frame, the strength in the arms that pulled him nearer, speeded the blood in her veins and made her breath come quickly.

He hauled the boat on to the sands and stowed the oars inside it. Wiping his hands on his hips, he approached. His short-sleeved shirt hung loose and open and the muscles in his thighs moved fluidly as his wide-spaced strides brought him closer. He looked down at her, hands spread over his hips. The admiration was there again in his eyes, but even so, she could not judge his mood. Her gaze went its own way, lingering on his lean waist, the breathing movement of his chest, the strongly handsome face. She caught his quizzical expression and drew her eyes away confusedly. 'Did I disturb your dreams?' he asked, dropping down beside her. He stared across the calm water. 'Penny for them.' 'Penny for a dream?' Jacqui smiled. 'That's a new twist to an old saying.' She shook her head. 'I don't lave dreams as such any more. Dreams imply unattainable daytime longings being fulfilled, out-of-reach things suddenly there in your hand. The only thing out of my reach is --•' Her hasty side-glance showed her the quick gleam, the hand moving to rest on her bare waist. Her fingers plucked at his, trying to move them. Her skin was tingling under their pressure. 'It's within your reach, Jacqui.' The way he said her name made her heart trip, but she shook her head. 'I meant peace, tranquillity.' He reclined on his side, his hand splayed out over her waist. 'I can give you those.' 'No, no!' She pulled furiously at his wrist in a vain attempt to move his hand. 'Whatever Malcolm gave you—and he must have given you something before you ran out on him—I can give you more.'

He was moulding her flesh and she wanted to lie back and let him take over—take her over. But she rallied her reserves and fought him. 'You still blame me for what happened to Malcolm.' His shoulder lifted, but she persisted. 'You do. You've just said it again—that I ran out on him. The implication was there—I deserted him. He went off, you're implying, a broken man, his spirit crushed by my rejection. So he had a fatal fall while climbing ... because of me ... It was all there in your words, your voice.' 'If it wasn't true, why are you so much on the defensive about it?' The deep-down guilt niggled at her, but she retorted, 'There you are! You're as good as saying it again.' She managed to dislodge the hand and rolled away. 'I could attack you. I could say, "you're a married man, you've no right to be touching me --' He cut off her words with his mouth, moving on to Jier with lightning speed, pressing the breath out of her. His chest was like a wall, his ribs compressing hers. His hand supported the back of her head and his mouth ground into hers, teeth on teeth, tasting her, savouring her. His other hand moved behind her and a moment later she felt the roughness of his chest hair abrasive against her breast. She tried to free her mouth to cry, No, no ... Then his palm eased between them and took into its keeping the full and hardened shape of her. His thumb teased the nipple and she found her mouth returning the pressure of his. When he sensed her submission, Fraser lifted his head, smiling triumphantly. He did not release her breast. Instead, he bent his head and his lips caressed her other one, making her curl up inside with wanting him. 'No more, Fraser,' she breathed, 'stop now, stop!'

He heard the desperate urgency and his head lifted. His hands dropped away and she was freed from his weight. His eyes had dimmed to zero, making her skin creep with gooseflesh. 'So that's how it was,' he rasped, 'with you and Malcolm. How many times, while he was making love to you—and knowing my brother, he must have done during your engagement—did you say "stop"? Every time you came together? Suddenly, you couldn't take it any more? His normal sexual appetite sickened the puritan in you, so you ran away?' 'Carry on,' Jacqui took him up, voice shaking, lips still throbbing from the pressure of his. 'Why don't you finish your summing up of my trial? He was left on his own, rejected by a frigid wife- to-be, and he decided on the spot that life was no longer worth living. He would go on his last climb and end it all?' Fraser stood up, grabbing her top, which he had removed. He formed it into a ball and hurled it at her, hitting her breasts. 'You're nothing but an unfeeling, self-seeking little bitch! As far as I'm concerned you can go to hell!' His strides took him down the beach to the rowing boat. He righted it on to its keel and pulled it into the water until it floated. He climbed aboard and was away, his arms pulling on the oars until he was a blurred, receding speck in the distance. Jacqui rolled on to her front and cradled her face on her arms. Her body shook, the tears forced a way and mingled with the grains of sand j beneath her.

Gwenda knocked on the door that evening and i asked if Jacqui would mind if she came in.

'Are you okay?' asked Gwenda. 'You've looked pale the last day or two. Mother's noticed", and Dad—and if he sees a change in you,' Gwenda laughed, 'then something must be wrong!' She sat in a low chair near to the window. 'Like the view?' she asked, looking out. 'It's grand even at this time of the day, isn't it? Now,' she clasped -- her hands and leaned back, 'tell Aunty Gwenda what's wrong.' Her smile was bright, her cheerful face reflecting her complete satisfaction with her lot in life. She had matured in the months since her marriage and Jacqui thought how well the Grant family's dark good looks became her. -Jacqui summoned a smile. 'I'm fine, really I am.' She looked away, hoping Gwenda wouldn't notice the tremor around her mouth. 'You,' said Gwenda, leaning forward, 'have been crying. Now who on earth—in this house, in this family—could have made you do that? Are you-—' She looked into Jacqui's face. 'Tell me to mind my own business if you like, but would you still be hating yourself for leaving Malcolm and pining for him?' Jacqui's head shot round. 'Malcolm?' The way she said the name was a good enough lead for Gwenda to make an instant deduction. She looked aghast. 'Jacqui, not—surely not Fraser again?' Jacqui lifted her shoulders despondently and stared at her twisting hands. 'Jacqui,' Gwenda moved to sit on the arm of her friend's chair, 'for heaven's sake! Fraser's married, you know that. You found that out a year ago.' 'You think I haven't tried telling myself that it's no use, he's married?'

Gwenda's arm rested lightly across the drooping shoulders of her friend. 'You'll forget Fraser after a while. You got engaged to Malcolm. You must have loved him to have agreed to marry him—in fact, I know you did. I saw you together, I saw your face as you looked at him.' There was such a long silence, Gwenda rose and returned to her chair. She rested her head on the chair's back and stared at the ceiling. 'Would you,' Jacqui began, 'would you be horribly shocked if I told you --' she took a deep breath, needing its boost to her courage, 'if I told you I fooled myself into believing, right deep down, it was Fraser I was going to marry? Not consciously, but by a terrible twist of my imagination? And I didn't realise it until it was nearly too late?' Gwenda lifted her hands and covered her face as if trying to shut out the almost unacceptable truth which Jacqui had just confessed to her. 'I'm sorry, Gwenda. I'll leave here if you want me to.' 'Leave?' Gwenda stared. 'Of course you won't! It's Fraser's fault. I've seen how he behaves with you, how he looks at you.' She shook her head despairingly. 'You should have realised what he was after. Didn't you think twice before letting him get under your guard?' 'It was beyond my control, Gwenda. If anyone had told you not to fall in love with Peter, would you have listened?' Gwenda shook her head. 'I couldn't have helped myself. It was almost first sight.' 'Me, too,' Jacqui said miserably. 'Anyway, don't worry about me. Fraser won't forgive me for Malcolm's death. And how do I know ---' her voice wavered, 'how will anyone ever know, whether Fraser's right?'

Jacqui twisted and turned until morning. Between the brief intervals in which she had dreamed about Fraser, she had thought about him. When her eyes were closed, he was there. When they were open, he got himself between her and whatever she was looking at. It was eating into her that he still blamed her for what had happened to Malcolm. She had to clear herself in his eyes, she had to make one last effort before attempting the almost impossible task of putting Fraser Grant out of her mind and out of her future for ever. No one else was in the breakfast room, and fortunately, Molly was in her usual hurry. A number of guests were leaving that day, and another party was expected that evening to take their place. 'It's all go, Miss Jacqui,' said Molly as she brought in the coffee pot. 'I've just a wee while before I'm away upstairs to clear the rooms and clean them.' Jacqui drew a smile from her diminishing store. 'You're happy being busy, aren't you, Molly?' 'Oh, aye, I'm happy, Miss Jacqui. And so's my husband, Donald. He helps Mr Grant with the garden and does all the heavy jobs. Now, if you've got all you want, I'll be on my way.' Jacqui nodded and thanked her, pleased to be alone to sort out her thoughts. She swallowed her coffee, then returned to her room before meeting any members of the family. It was too early for guests to be walking in the grounds. From the window, she could see that James had not yet gone out to his gardening. A few minutes later, she slipped through the rear entrance and made her way across the lawn and through the woods to the path that led to Fraser's cottage.

Before her courage failed her, she knocked on his door, turning the handle. It was locked, and she felt irrationally that it was intended as a personal insult to her. After her second knock, a key grated and Fraser stood there, unsmiling, unwelcoming and seeming ready before two seconds had passed to slam the door in her face. 'Please, Fraser, I'd like to talk to you. It won't take long, a few minutes.' He didn't respond, just looked coldly down at her. 'Don't shut me out, please. It's something I have to tell you.' It might have been her despairing tone of voice, the appeal, maybe, in her bright blue eyes, but he opened the door wider, allowing her to step inside. There were books and files everywhere. He must surely have been up and about for some time. Had he, too, found it difficult to sleep? There was a shadow across his face. It might have been the small windows of the cottage not letting much light in. It might have been his state of mind. It could even, she reasoned, have been the amount of work he had to tackle. Judging by the scattering of paper piles and folder-mountains around the living-room, it could easily have been that. But something else, some intuition told Jacqui it was none of these things. His aloof silence was intimidating. The great bulk of him, standing with hands on hips and feet slightly apart, was like a tree with no footholds in sight and challenging everyone to climb up if they dared. 'Are you going to talk?' he asked coldly. 'I have work to do, which is why I've been up much of the night.' He hasn't shaved, she thought, then had to restrain herself from reaching up and running her finger-tips round his chin.

'I want to tell you something,' she began, 'about—about why I became engaged to Malcolm.' He moved and she saw that he was reaching for the door. 'You won't show me out!' she cried. 'You will hear what I have to say!' He walked away, walked back, then pushed his hands into his waistband. 'Right,' he clipped, 'convince me—if you can.' It was as if he had pointed a gun at her, more of a threat than a challenge. What chance did she stand against a mind so inflexible? 'You have to try and understand,' she told him. 'You have to believe me when I say that it wasn't really Malcolm I became engaged to. When Malcolm talked, something inside me persuaded me it was you.' He half turned away with irritation, but her hand on his arm pulled him back. 'What I'm telling you is the truth. When Malcolm kissed me, my subconscious mind substituted you for him without my even knowing it.' Was he with her, taking in what she was saying? Was he believing her or building up a cynical resistance in his mind? He gave nothing away, moving not a single muscle. His whole demeanour daunted her, but she forced herself to continue. 'What I didn't realise until it was almost too late was that my mind was playing aterrible game of self-delusion.' Jacqui looked around. 'Could we sit down?' Fraser indicated the settee, but he did not join her there. 'Fraser,' her eyes strained upwards to his face, 'I got engaged to Malcolm because he talked like you, he was physically strong like you. You were almost identical in looks. I—I told myself he was brave and courageous. I reasoned that he had to be, being a successful mountain climber.'

Anxiously, she scanned his face, but could read nothing from it. 'But,' she continued, 'there was a kind of missing ingredient in his character. It puzzled me, but I couldn't even put a name to it, so I gave up searching.' His raised eyebrows told without words of his scepticism, but she went on determinedly, 'Malcolm didn't give me a chance to think. In the end, I must have persuaded myself that whatever it was I'd been looking for didn't matter anyway. It wasn't until later, much later, that I realised what it was I couldn't find in him.' 'And what was that?' He spoke at last, and his words were full of irony. 'Things like intellect, insight, compassion, strength of mind as well as body.' 'You're saying in a roundabout way that I've got those qualities?' Had he finally understood how, quite unwittingly, she had almost made the most terrible mistake of her life? 'Those qualities you've just mentioned,' he said, 'they're all a plus characterwise? On the other hand, I'm neither brave nor courageous? Which is a minus?' He bent and tilted her face. 'Agreed?' 'No,' she whispered, 'I see you still don't understand. Listen to me again. I imagined he was you!' 'That in your imagination it was Fraser Grant you were marrying and not Malcolm Grant?' Jacqui nodded eagerly. Was he understanding at last? 'Maybe I can accept that—up to a point.' He was talking detachedly now, using cold reason to unravel the motive behind an action, a

sequence of events that had been entirely emotional. 'We were very alike, physically.' Having allowed her hopes to rise, Jacqui began to despair again that he would ever accept her explanation. 'What I can't get my brain to wrap around,' he was saying, 'is how you could have been duped by your imagination right up to the evening before your wedding.' 'Believe me, Fraser,' she said with more than a touch of desperation, 'I'm not unusual. Thousands of people can live out their whole lives, not just a few weeks, in a cloud of self- delusion. Also, things moved so fast. Almost,' she frowned, 'as if Malcolm was deliberately pressurising me. Don't you understand? It was self-deception, plus Malcolm's persuasiveness.' 'Add to that the fact that some weeks earlier you'd discovered I was married? Malcolm was available, you reasoned. You couldn't have me, so you agreed to take him instead?' 'No, no! I didn't have time to "reason". I was carried along by events,' she cried. 'I told you Malcolm gave me no opportunity to realise what was happening.' She touched his arm, leaning forward and rubbing his skin agitatedly. 'You have to believe me. I've never stopped loving you.' He looked at his arm in her grasp. He looked at the fair skin of the face staring up at him with mute appeal. He saw the tremulous mouth, the light of hope in the blue eyes. 'If you reject me, Fraser,' she whispered, 'I'll leave this place and never, ever, see you again, because I simply won't be able to bear it.' He threw her arm away. 'Don't threaten me. Don't give me an ultimatum.'

Jacqui rubbed her cheek convulsively, then stood up and went slowly to the door. Turning for a moment, through swimming eyes she saw his back, rigid and determined. He swung round and two strides brought him to her. He took her shoulders in a grip and pulled her against him. 'Who said I'd rejected you? If you run away, I'll pursue you without mercy. Get it?' Jacqui held herself stiffly. If she surrendered now, there would be no going back. 'You've got a wife,' she persisted. 'I haven't forgotten that fact, even if you" seem to have done.' His mouth twisted and he turned away. 'Maura is a wife in name only. In fact, she's more other men's wives than mine.' 'Then why haven't you divorced her, Fraser?' 'Why?' He swung round, and Jacqui saw that in the few minutes in which his back had been towards her, his features had become almost haggard. 'I haven't bothered. I vowed that no other woman would get through my defences, so what better defence than to have a legal wife? In any case, if I wanted a woman, I guessed they would come easily enough. And they have.' Jacqui's throat tightened. 'So where do I fit into all this? I suppose I'm just one of those "easily obtained" women.' Threatening tears thickened her voice. 'You?' He gripped her shoulders. 'You've got under my skin. You're part of my life. Damn you, woman, I can't get you out of my dreams!' She shook her head. 'You only really want me as an analgesic, to ease the pain your wife's desertion has caused.'

'Do I? Is that how you see it?' His voice had lost its abrasiveness, his eyes held a glint as they looked her over. 'Is that how you feel it is between us?' The breath she took filled her lungs and her expiration of it was a surrender in itself. 'Fraser, oh, Fraser,' she put her arms around him and the spilled tears on her cheeks dampened his shirt, 'I don't know what we can do or where it's all going to lead, but all I know is I love you, and it hurts,' she put a hand to her chest, 'here, in my heart and here, in my mind.' His hand took the place of hers on her chest, sliding down to hold and mould her breast. The material of the blouse irritated him and he lifted it free of the waistband of her skirt. Then he found her soft and pliant flesh, dipping his headand kissing it into an aching sensitivity to his caressing lips. 'I want you,' he muttered, 'I want you near me. I want you so close nothing can get between us.' Jacqui was shaking her head, trying to push him away, yet wanting to hold him against her. She felt his acute need of her, yet something was saying over and over in her head, You mustn't agree, it could only be a passing affair, his wife isn't here, but she's somewhere ... 'I have to go,' she gasped, as he pushed the blouse aside and completely uncovered her breasts. 'Please, Fraser, I can't, I won't...' He stopped, slowly lifting his head. 'Won't? Why not? You know it's inevitable.' 'Not—not yet. It doesn't mean I don't love you, it doesn't mean I never will let you—let us, but --'

His eyes flared with a consuming anger. Afraid of running into their fire instead of running from it, Jacqui made for the door. 'Oh no.' Fraser caught her by the waist and swung her back to the centre of the room. 'This is one man you won't rim away from.' 'You can't stop me!' she blazed. 'Can't I? Want to bet?' There was a dangerous light ia his eyes as he tore open the two buttons she had managed to refasten, and tugged the blouse from her shoulders. Their mouths collided after his chased hers, pinning it down after a side-to-side evasion, and her head went back under the abrasive pressure he was using to invade her mouth. His hand tugged at her skirt, freeing it. The cool palm slid slowly upward over her shivering skin to settle over her breast. His moulding movement and endless, intoxicating invasion of her mouth was depriving her of all resistance. Of their own volition, her fingers were reaching upward to clasp behind his neck, thus abandoning the rest of her to his plundering hands. He spread his fingers low down behind her and jerked her against him in a calculatedly intimate action. Then he prised his mouth from hers at last, and urged her head against his chest. 'Hear my heart pounding. Feel me,' he commanded, and directed her hand, 'feel how much you arouse me. That's how hungry for you you make me. What do I do to you? Do I start a fire in your loins like you do in mine? Do you throb for me, burn for me like I burn for you? Now tell me you won't be my lover!' She saw the barbarism in his eyes, the rough cruelty about his mouth, the rock-hardness of his jaw. Every beating pulse within her body cried out for his possession. She did not know how she found sufficient command over her muscles to make her head move

negatively, to make her lips and tongue contrive to work together to form the word 'no'. 'I will not be your lover.' Fraser stared at her as if he could not believe her. Then fury blasted away the limits of his restraint and his hands turned savage, taking her by the upper arms and shaking her, forcing her backwards to the door. 'Get out of here,' he muttered through his teeth. 'Just remove yourself from this place before I really behave like those ancestors of mine you keep comparing me with and do you an injury you'll never forget for the rest of your life!' At the door, she struggled. 'Please, Fraser, see reason! There's your family, the future—what would it hold for us?' With all her strength she tried to prevent him from throwing her out, but he renewed his grip on her arms and half walked, half lifted her through the open door. 'My jacket,' she cried, 'I want to get it.' He found it and hurled it with all his strength to land at her feet. Jacqui bent to pick it up, crushing it to her and staring at him with brimming, despairing eyes. Turning, she made her way slowly across the road. With the lapping loch water at her feet, she sank down on to the silvery sand and let her head fall forward to rest her cheek on the soft comfort of her crumpled jacket.

She stayed there until the sun started on its downward journey. The water ebbed seawards, leaving moist, grooved sand behind. The bird calls went unheeded by her ears, the scenery's gilded beauty unseen by her eyes. Her. mind dwelt with dismay on the falling apart of her hopes and her life. Then it curled up exhausted and refused to think any more. When

she finally left the loch's side, she did not even glance at Fraser's cottage. As she pulled on her jacket, her watch told her that, back at the house, it would be almost time for dinner. Better, she decided, if she were not absent from the meal, since questions would be asked, questions she could not possibly answer. Her face was not tear-stained. There had been no tears. Dreams, she discovered, shattered silently, no matter into how many pieces they were splintered. If any of the family met her on her way upstairs, all she would have to do was to arrange her face into a smile and tell them what a lovely day she had had. She made it unnoticed up the stairs. Thirty minutes plus a shower was sufficient to revive her physically, even if the water had not washed away the hopelessness that clouded her mind. It was fortunate that Gwenda was talkative during the meal. She spoke almost continuously to her mother about the running of the hotel, with occasional, relevant queries which she addressed to Jacqui about her opinion from the guest's point of view. Later, having no desire to occupy herself either by going for an evening walk or losing herself in a book, Jacqui decided to have an early night. But she found herself having to take her thoughts to bed with her, and this, in itself, became an unbearable torture. All she could see was Fraser's angry face, all she could hear were Fraser's furious word^. The pain from his savage kisses still lingered on her mouth, the pressure of his fingers had not left her arms from the moment he had thrown her out of his cottage. She gave up trying to sleep when the hands of her watch told her it was approaching dawn. From the window, she watched the sky

lighten. It had not been dark for very long, the end of one day almost merging with the start of another. The mountains' outlines solidified and filled in, the birds began to waken. Jacqui felt a longing to be out there with her heart, rising with the sun and her mind filling with peace. How would she ever find peace again, with Fraser no longer in her life? How would she feel, knowing he was somewhere in the world, walking around, living a life of his own, one in which she played no part? Haunted by the thought, she gazed in the direction in which his cottage lay. Swinging round, she grabbed jeans and a sweater, pulling them on over her pyjamas. Her actions were swift, giving her mind no time to catch up with them and call a halt. She ran a comb through her hair and pushed her feet into sandals. Hanging a jacket across her shoulders, she moved out into the corridor, creeping along it and down the stairs to the kitchen. Hoping the bolts on the outer door were not stiff, nor the key hole in need of oiling, she entered the room—and jerked to a stop. James Grant was at the sink, rinsing a cup from which it seemed he had drunk some tea. He started, at the sight of her. Had he, too, been unable to resist the call of the dawn, the sweet smell of the early morning earth? There was mud on his boots which stood on the doormat. 'I—I'm going out.' Jacqui stammered, 'for --' 'For a walk? It's like a drink, the air's so fresh.' She nodded. 'I'm going --'

He did not look at her. 'There's no need to tell me. I understand, my dear.' Jacqui fled, silently crying out her thanks to the understanding man who had within himself his own personal oasis of peace and refreshment. The way seemed farther than ever before, each gate more distant from the other. The sheep, having sensed daylight's coming, were calmly, self-sufficiently standing, pulling at the grasses. One bleated, and the sound found an echo in Jacqui's despairing, hoping heart. Her hand reached out to try the cottage door. It was open. Oh no! she thought. Had Fraser gone? He was half lying, half sprawling on the couch, shirt unbuttoned, cord trousers rumpled, a cushion stuffed behind his head. He had not even gone to bed! He did not smile, reach out with his arms, whisper, 'Darling, you've come.' How could the imagination, she thought, weave such lies? He looked ravaged, his face riven with a savage bitterness. He half sat up, his shirt falling open to reveal his lean, strong torso. 'What the hell are you doing here?' he demanded, eyes dangerous and hard. Slowly Jacqui closed the door behind her. The jacket started slipping from her shoulders and she let it fall. 'Come to sacrifice yourself at my altar?' he sneered. 'I'm not a god.' 'Don't reject me,' she answered, her voice low and intense. 'Don't tell me to get out.' 'What?' He rose slowly, his tall frame bending slightly under the weight of sleep denied. 'You've come to say "yes" at last? What about

the opinion of my family, what about the future?' Viciously, he used her words. 'And what, may I be permitted to ask,' he added with heavy cynicism, 'about your tender memories of your late fiance, the loving relationship you two must have shared?' 'We had no relationship in that sense.' 'That I don't believe, I knew my brother's capabilities in that respect. Nothing would have stopped him enjoying everything you had to offer. And,' he gave her an indolent examination, 'as I've said before, you have so much to give a man.' 'Then take it,' she cried, fatigue and despair bringing her near to breaking point, 'take everything you want!' Feverishly, she pulled her sweater over her head, unfastened her jeans and shed them, leaving her pyjamas in place. 'Yesterday—a few hours ago—you said you wanted me to become your lover.' Fraser made no move and a chasm of angry silence separated them. Disquiet at his lack of response heightened her tone. 'I want you to be my lover!' Still he did not stir. She went across to him, stepping out of her sandals to stand on tiptoe in front of him, gazing up, searching his face. Her shaking hand moved upwards to his mouth. 'Fraser?' He looked at it, he looked at her, eyes harsh, unsparing. Then he gripped her upper arms. 'Look at me. My name is not Malcolm. I am not my brother. I may look like him, sometimes even act like him, but I am not him! I'm Fraser Grant, understand?' He shook her once, twice. 'Are you listening?' 'I hear you, Fraser, I hear you,' she whispered. He lifted her into his arms and carried her into the bedroom. He stood her down and unfastened the pyjama top buttons one by one, kissing

her skin at each new opening of them. He peeled the top away, holding her Waist and lowering his head to kiss her breasts, first savouring one, then the other. Her head went back and her hands clawed at him madly, finding the bare skin of his shoulders at last. She felt the rest of her clothing slipping to the ground, and Fraser lifted her free of them. There was a moment's pause, a rustle of clothes being discarded, then he was pulling her against him, his hand, moving from her shoulders downwards, moulding her nakedness to his, letting her experience his intense arousal, his heated body. Her hands felt his muscled, rock-like frame. Her breath came quickly, her body's heat melting into his. She let herself go into the keeping of his caressing hands, his exploring, arousing mouth. 'I love you,' she heard herself saying, 'I love you.' 'Open your eyes—that's better. Now say my name. Say it, damn you!' 'Fraser, Fraser—oh, Fraser.' She could not speak his name enough. This was the man she had subconsciously agreed to marry, whose face she had seen each time she had looked at his brother's. 'I want to be your wife. Oh, please make me your wife.' The words came from her almost without her knowledge. 'I can't, my God, you know I can't. But I'll make you mine.' He was speaking through his teeth, as if gripped by a simmering anger. Seconds later, she was on the bed and he was beside her, trailing his fingers into her most intimate places, his teeth teasing her thrusting, pointed breasts. At last, he moved on to her, and her pleasure at the total touch of him made her gasp.

'Fraser, Fraser ...' She was whispering, trying to tell him as he parted her thighs, I'm not experienced. But before she could do so, he had discovered for himself. 'Oh, God, why didn't you tell me?' 'Please don't go from me,' she cried out. 'Take me completely. I want to be yours so much!' She felt the pain of his possession, but it was nothing, because he had made her his at last. The pleasure continued, but it ended. It had had to end, she knew that. What would he say to her now? They separated, but Fraser lay where he was, his flesh moist and perspiring against hers, his head sharing her pillow. 'You're mine, entirely mine.' His voice was muffled, his lips moving against her throat. Jacqui nodded, rubbing her fingers over the soft hairs on his chest. She blotted from her mind the past, which had gone beyond recall, and the future which did not yet exist. The present was here, in Fraser's arms and that, she told herself, was all that mattered.

CHAPTER NINE THEY slept until midday. Jacqui stirred first. Startled, she looked about her. When the memory returned to her of all that had happened between them a few hours earlier, she closed her eyes again. Two strong, tanned arms still held her and she in turn held them. When Fraser awoke, what would he think of her? At the time, it had all seemed so right. But now? What did their lovemaking make her now? I want to be your wife, she had cried. In her longing to be his, her mind had totally blotted out reality. Now she realised just what she had become in Fraser's life. Breaking from the circle of his arms, she rolled on to her side, hands to her face. If I'd wanted a woman, he had said, I guessed they'd come easily enough, and they have ... She had gone to him, hadn't she, and so easily! Strong hands fastened on to her arms and pulled her round. 'I want you,' he said softly. Jacqui shook her head. 'I'm just your woman now. I was "easy", wasn't I, just like all those others.' His arms closed round her. 'Shall I tell you how I regard you?' She shook her head, but his fingers gripped her chin. 'As the only woman in my life. In my esteem you stand higher than any other woman I've known.' Hope illuminated her eyes. 'Does that mean,' her arms lifted to his neck, 'you've now absolved me from blame for Malcolm's death?' He frowned, his eyes fleetingly cold. Then his body heat seared her skin and she guessed he had dismissed everything from his mind but his impending possession of her. Or had he? she wondered. His

passion was less gentle now, roughened with a hint of anger. Her need of him was rising again, making her throb and ache. She felt with fondling palms the strength of his body, knew the power of his mind and loved every part of him. 'I'm yours, Fraser, for the rest of my life I'm yours,' she whispered, and held out her arms. He kissed her slowly, from her eyes and throat downwards, widening his hungering mouth over her soft and feminine shape. His hands stroked and teased, finding vulnerable areas all over her, making her writhe and cry out and hold him against her. Then he possessed her, this time being gentle ,at the start but increasing the intimate pressure until together they reached their own shared and private paradise.

It was late afternoon before he let her go. They had slept again, made love again, then lay still with the tiredness of deep contentment. Jacqui rested a hand on his hip, delighting in the new intimacy that permitted her to touch any part of him. 'I'm rumbling inside,' she said against the bristling roughness of his neck. His palm slid to rest over her stomach, moulding it, and he smiled at the leap of urgency his hand detected in the muscles beneath. 'Is it a hunger I can appease?' he asked, stroking her lips with his. 'Not—not this time,' she managed, between catching her breath at his inciting caresses. 'We haven't eaten since yesterday, remember.' He laughed and his chest, half over her, vibrated with it. 'I'll let you eat. Come on, woman.' He swung from the bed and pulled her to the edge until she pleaded with him to stop, because she was sure she would hit the ground.

He took her into his arms and the friction of their skin was sufficient to illuminate his eyes with renewed desire. He satisfied himself with a deep, possessive kiss and let her go. 'Race you to the bathroom,' she said over her shoulder, and beat him to it. He came in when she took her shower, standing in the bath. He joined her there, and she was breathless by the time they were finished and dry. Jacqui cooked a simple meal and they ate it seated cm the couch, listening to music from a collection of Fraser's tapes. He spent the afternoon working, but Jacqui did not mind. She sat curled on the couch, reading. Now and then, she felt his eyes on her and hers lifted to his, smiling and full of love. He had said that putting a desk between them was the only way he could keep away from her. 'Now I have you, I can work,' he avowed. 'I'm able to think coherently again.' Jacqui had to quieten her heart and still her limbs from their spontaneous wish to go to him. Towards evening, she stretched and went to stand beside him, winding her arms round his neck. He put down his pen and pulled her on to his lap. 'Insatiable, aren't you?' he murmured, his lips moving beneath her ear. 'No, no, we must rest,' she urged, her hands linked behind his head. He laughed, the muscles of his throat moving, then his head dipped and he was kissing her breasts, cursing the thickness of the sweater she wore. There was something she had. to say. The world was creeping into her mind and it would not let her alone. 'I have to go back to the house for dinner,' she told him. He uttered an oath, but she closed his lips. 'Please, will you come with me?' He agreed at once. 'The family might just be a little difficult.'

They entered the house hand in hand. Elizabeth met them in the corridor. Her eyes were anxious as she searched her son's face. Then they moved to Jacqui, seeing the flushed cheeks, the brilliantly blue eyes. 'Fraser?' she queried uncertainly. 'Yes, Mother,' he answered her question with a rare gentleness. 'The feeling was—is mutual. And very special.' 'I'm sorry, Mrs Grant,' said Jacqui, and meant it. Elizabeth shook her head. 'It's all such a—such a disaster. Your life, Fraser's ... I sensed what might be happening between you last year, but at the time, no one had thought to tell you that Fraser was married. When you eventually became engaged to Malcolm I hoped you had found happiness, both of you.' 'The whole thing was a terrible mistake,' Jacqui assured her earnestly. 'I wish I could explain.' 'My dear, I think you're making yet another mistake. Fraser still has a wife. Don't you see how impossible it is for the two of you?' Jacqui turned away, eyes filling as reality came head-on at her with the question. She tried to free her hand from Fraser's, but he would not let her go. 'You know how much of a wife Maura has been to me, Mother,' he replied. Elizabeth put a hand on his arm. 'I understand your bitterness, Fraser, but --'

'Mrs Grant?' A guest called across the hall and Elizabeth moved, smiling, to greet her. Fraser led Jacqui through to the family's living-room, but Jacqui tugged her hand away. 'The family—you're quarrelling with them over me, worst of all with your mother. They were so good about Malcolm, about the broken engagement.' She paused, staring through the window. 'About the way he died.' She looked at Fraser, towering above her. 'It's all such a mess. What are we going to do?' He lifted her chin, brushed her lips with his. 'Carry on with --' 'With what? Our affair, our—relationship?' she asked sadly, then turned her head away. 'If only I didn't love you so much!' His arms came round her and hers lifted to link around his waist. Her cheek found his chest and they stood silently, while laughter and chatter and the clatter of crockery ebbed and flowed outside the room. 'Get your things and come back with me,' said Fraser at last. Her head moved against him negatively. 'It's no use. It's not going to work, is it?' The door burst open and Gwenda came in, rushing madly. She stopped in her tracks, seeing them locked together. 'Sorry,' she offered. Then, 'Oh, heavens, no!' She came a little nearer. 'Fraser, how could you?' He did not move, but Jacqui felt the tautening of his muscles. She pressed her face against him, urging restraint. 'It just happened, Gwenda,' she mumbled, the words muffled by Fraser's shirt. 'I tried to warn you, Jacqui,' Gwenda declared.

'To hell with your warnings!' snapped Fraser. 'Keep out of what's not your business!' 'But this is my business. I brought Jacqui here in the first place.' She looked from the angry eyes of her brother to her friend's pale face. 'I'm sorry, you two, but there's something I've got to say.' She looked at Jacqui. 'I think you're on the way to making another one hell of a mistake where my brothers are concerned.' Jacqui shook her head. 'I told you why I thought I was in love with Malcolm—because of his uncanny resemblance to Fraser,' she glanced at him quickly, 'the man I really loved.' 'I know you thought you loved Fraser, Jacqui, but—well, I saw you with Malcolm. I saw you laughing together, having fun, going places. I'm not saying you ran after him --' Jacqui stared at her friend. 'How could you say that—even so much as hint it? You must have seen how he set the pace. He didn't give me a single moment to think what I was doing, where I was going.' Fraser released her and moved away. 'Malcolm's not here now to defend himself, is he?' Gwenda declared. White-faced, Jacqui exclaimed, 'So you don't believe what I've told you?' 'I'll tell you what I believe,' she looked from one to the other, 'and I'm sorry, but I've got to say this. I believe it's the other way round—that you see Malcolm, who nearly became your husband, in Fraser.' 'But I left Malcolm the moment I realised what a terrible mistake I'd made,' Jacqui replied in anguish.

Gwenda shook her head and began to speak, but someone called. 'I must go,' she said, and left them. There was a silence so deep that Jacqui felt she would drown in it. 'So that's how it was,' said Fraser, his eyes as cold and barren as mountains under winter snow. 'I swear it wasn't!' Jacqui cried. 'I swear it was as I said, the other way round.' He regarded her stonily. Despairing now, she sought for a spark of understanding in his face. She looked in vain. 'So you don't believe me either?' His answer was to widen the space between them. 'Thanks for the memories,' he rasped. Hiseyes blazed. 'If they were tangible, I'd crush them to pieces in my hands and hurl them back at you!' He left her standing alone, her rejected hand held imploringly towards his retreating figure.

Gwenda came knocking next morning, waking Jacqui from the light sleep she had drifted into after a long, empty night. 'Sorry to disturb you.' She frowned at Jacqui's pale face. 'Look, pal,' she sat on the bed, 'I know you won't accept an apology, so I won't make one. What I said was the truth as I saw it. Anyway, someone had to do something to stop your mad rush to hell on earth. The break had to come some time.' 'Please don't tell me again that Fraser's married,' begged Jacqui. 'It's something I can't forget, even in my dreams.'

Gwenda's sigh was sympathetic. She pressed Jacqui's hand as it lay on the cover. 'You'll forget Fraser,' she affirmed with a bright confidence that made Jacqui wince. She left with a wave. At breakfast, Elizabeth saw Jacqui's wan face. 'My dear, you look so ill. What can I say except that I'm so sorry about everything?' Jacqui attempted a smile. 'I'll get over it.' As she spoke the empty phrase, she twisted up inside. A year ago, she had told Fraser, I love you. You'll get over it, he had averred. Leading the house, she walked through the grounds, forcing herself to smile at the guests wandering round the lawn. She made her way down to the loch. There was no ghostly outline to haunt her gaze as she approached, no tall, broad figure of a man called Fraser Grant. The place was empty. She was alone, and she stared across at the mountains, massing darkly as the sun shone behind them on to the rippling loch. There were bushes and grasses growing between the rocky slabs, a tree grew at an angle. At the base of the small peninsula on which she stood, there was a gurgle of water as it flowed into an inlet. Moss gentled boulders, and here and there, fern peeped out. Jacqui felt she was not alone. Was Fraser there after all? There was a sound of someone walking, climbing and crunching, the step firm as if the person knew every inch. Jacqui swung round, her face lighting up. 'Fraser?' 'My dear Miss White,' the low, feminine voice drawled. 'I'm so sorry to disappoint you, but my name is Maura—Maura Grant, wife of Fraser Grant. Maybe you remember me? We have met before.'

How could I ever forget? Jacqui thought. She could not hide her shock, nor quieten the drumming in her ears. 'When did you arrive?' she asked. 'A couple of hours ago, travelling overnight. I had a phone call.' 'Gwenda?' 'Oh no, my sister-in-law has never liked me enough to invite me here. It was a friend of an acquaintance in the village. She told me you were having an affair with my husband. It was common knowledge locally, she said.' Jacqui shook her head, but Maura would not let her speak. 'It was the same acquaintance, in fact, who told me a year ago about the girl my husband had been seen around with. Which, you may be surprised to hear, is why I came back to him then. Call it dog-in-the-manger if you like, but I was determined to get that "girl" out of my husband's life. I succeeded then, didn't I? I intend to succeed now. This time, I warn you, it will be for good.' 'You're wasting your time, Mrs Grant.' Jacqui tried' to counter the woman's attack with a cultivated calm. 'Whoever told you that was wrong. You came all this way for nothing.' In the breeze, the black hair broke loose from its back fastening. The grey eyes burned with hatred, the pale, beautiful face twisted with rage. 'You're the one who's wasting your time. You took one of my men away from me, sending him to his death. You're not taking the other, the only one to whom I'm legally tied.' Jacqui's legs weakened at the onslaught, at the vicious accusation. 'What man are you talking about? Sent who to his death?'

'Your late fiance, Malcolm Grant, the only man