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'Thank you for the lift.' She said it sincerely this time. She had unexpectedly enjoyed the ride back in the car, and she turned to receive her library books from Willy.

'I'll take those, they're heavy,' Reeve forestalled her.

'I'll put the car away.' Willy manipulated himself into the driving seat, and Marion waited beside Reeve until the big car slid away towards the converted stables at the back of the hotel, which gave more than adequate accommodation for whatever vehicles might need them. The brake lights winked briefly as the Rover turned the corner and vanished, and with its disappearance Marion became conscious once again of the sense of strain between herself and Reeve, like a heavy cloud hovering, now that Willy had left them alone.

'I can manage the books, I haven't got to carry them far.' Once inside the house she could escape to their own quarters, and Reeve could do what he pleased, she thought thankfully.

'In that case I might as well keep them, and carry them in,' Reeve denied her blandly, and short of physical force she could not very well remove the books from his arms. 'You can take this, though,' he handed her a buff business envelope. The top was open, and without thinking, Marion peeped inside.

'My hairband....' She raised surprised eyes to his face.

'Your drawing's there as well,' Reeve told her drily. 'You do seem to leave your property scattered in the most unlikely places,' he criticised, and her cheeks flamed. It was his fault she had left her belongings behind. Both times. The first time she had fled from a shadow, and her colour darkened at the memory of it. The second time she had fled from his kiss. And she could not remind him of that. She bit back the hot words that flooded her lips.

'Did you get the book I ordered, my dear?' Miles Dorman crossed the hall just as she and Reeve came through the door together, and saved her from having to reply. 'Ah, I see you did,' his eyes alighted on the volumes in Reeve's arms.

'You're lucky with this one, sir,' Reeve put down his burden on the hall table, and slid open the cover of the topmost book. 'It's the recently revised edition. I've got the earlier one myself, but this one is supposed to be much more informative from about,' he flicked the pages over, from about 1286 onwards.'

'Mr Harland's interested in history too,' Marion put in tautly, and Reeve paused in his inspection of the book.

'Call me Reeve,' he bade her, 'it's much easier.' He turned to her uncle. 'Marion' told me about the work you're engaged on,' he said, and Marion's lips tightened.

I suppose because he's told me to use his Christian name, he thinks it gives him the right to use mine, she fumed silently, but there was nothing she could do about it now.

'Marion's helped me a great deal,' Miles Dorman was speaking, 'but if you're interested in my work, why don't you join us after dinner tonight, and we could talk about it,' he invited eagerly.

'Oh, no!' Marion groaned beneath her breath. It was bad enough having Reeve beneath the same roof as a guest, without having to endure his presence in their private living quarters as well.

'We won't....' She started to say 'We won't have time tonight,' and then she caught sight of her uncle's face. It was bright with the seldom experienced pleasure of meeting a fellow being who was interested in his somewhat abstruse subject, and the words died on her lips. Miles Dorman, with his white hair and slight, stooping figure, was more of a historian by nature than a hotel proprietor.

'We won't be having dinner until after seven,' she changed her sentence hurriedly, 'so any time after about eight will do. Unless, of course, you've got other plans for this evening?' she asked hopefully.

'Not at the moment.' His look challenged her, leaving her to wonder at what other plans he might have in mind. And who else they might include.

'Bring your friend, too, if he's interested,' Miles Dorman extended his invitation, and Marion's gloom lightened a little. With Willy there to chat to, it might not be so bad. She could leave Reeve exclusively to her uncle.

'I'll tell Willy you asked,' Reeve said politely, 'I'm sure he'll be pleased, but he's got a report to write that will take him most of the evening,' he neatly foiled her half formed plans.

'In that case we won't disturb him, of course.' Miles Dorman could not imagine a worse fate than to be disturbed at his writing, even for meals. Mrs Pugh had a daily battle to keep him adequately fed, but Marion did not imagine Willy shared her uncle's dedication. She had a sudden impulse to invite the pilot herself, but that, too, died half formed. If Reeve had spoken the truth and Willy really had got a report to write, perhaps about his flight over the valleys that morning, her own intervention might get Willy into trouble if he accepted the offer of an evening with the family, as she suspected he would, and neglect his paper work. She liked the pilot, and it would not be fair to sour his relationship with his superior—employer? She did not know which, and the lack of knowledge irritated her. But Willy had his job to look after, and he would have to put up with Reeve long after they left the hotel. Reluctantly she decided to leave things as they were, and live through the evening as best she could.

She made an excuse and ran upstairs to her own room to change. Despite her attentions with Reeve's duster in the car, her stockings were still mud-splashed, and felt uncomfortably grubby. The feeling brought her mind back to the promise to wash the duster for him. She showered and changed, and washed stockings and duster together. It would dry on the rack over the kitchen range, and she could iron it and give it back to him after dinner.

She creased her forehead at the thought of after dinner. It looked as if it was going to be a difficult evening. Although if Reeve and her uncle intended to delve into the new reference books she had brought from the library, it would leave her free to do something else herself. Perhaps finish her sketch. She turned to where she had tossed the buff-coloured envelope Reeve had given her on to her bed. At least he had the decency to keep her sketch flat. She picked up the envelope, suddenly curious. It was a business envelope, the sort that usually had a firm's name and address printed on the back. It might give her a clue to Reeve's firm, and from that, to what he himself was doing in the valley. Her brief excitement flickered out when she saw that the flap of the Envelope had been removed, leaving just the open ended receptacle which—she turned it over—was bare of any marking that might provide her with a useful clue.

Tipping it up made the hairband slip out, and the drawing followed it. And something flat and hard followed
that. She frowned, and reached down on to the counterpane to pick it up. It was a box. Instant recognition came as she turned it over. The flat cardboard container held quality sketching pencils—the kind she always provided for herself, she enjoyed working with good tools, but her indulgence told her they were costly. And there was a box full! She flipped the lid open. Two dozen, of assorted numbers. She ran fingers along the line. Two of each number, and four of the most popular one—the one she had stepped on, and broken.

'He can have them back!' she exclaimed angrily. Willy must have mentioned to him that she had broken her pencil when she stepped on it, and this was his reply—an arrogant presentation of two dozen of the very best leads obtainable. Like tossing pennies to the rabble, she thought angrily. She felt strongly tempted to put them on his dressing table in the next room, then she paused. He might retaliate by simply returning them in the same way. Stalemate. It would be better if she gave them back to him herself, with a dignified refusal, and returned his duster at the same time.

She ironed the check square into neat folds and took it with her, and the box of pencils, into their private sitting room, along with the coffee tray, when dinner was over. Thank goodness Mrs Pugh lived
en famille.
She was relieved to see the amiable little housekeeper already ensconced on the settee with her knitting.

'A jersey?' Marion asked.

'A cardigan for your uncle,' Mrs Pugh replied, absent-mindedly, one needle busy counting up the number of rows she had already done. 'Twenty-three, twenty-four, twenty-five—there, that's the welt done, it's all plain knitting now up to the armholes. His other's giving at the elbows,' she said by way of explanation, 'your aunt was in no fit state to keep an eye on his clothes, and they're beginning to need looking over.'

'Does he need suits, or anything?' Marion knew how absentminded her uncle could be about such matters. She
should have thought of it herself, she realised guiltily.

'Dearie me no, it's only his jerseys, and you can safely leave them with me,' Mrs Pugh smiled. 'It'll be nice for your uncle to have Mr Harland to talk to about his roads and things,' she added complacently.

Nice for her uncle, but Marion had reservations about herself. If they lived in an area where there was somewhere to go, she would have made an excuse to go out, but there was nowhere in Fallbeck to offer a convenient escape route. She resigned herself to the inevitable, and began to pour coffee as her uncle and Reeve came in together, the older man showing an animation she had not seen for a long time.

'You'd be surprised how much clearer it is from the air.' Reeve paused in what he was saying to receive his coffee from Marion with a nod of thanks, and walked over to sit opposite to her uncle across the fireplace. There was a small fire smouldering in the grate, just enough to combat the chill caused by the earlier rain. Marion watched him go with an odd sense of pique. She had come downstairs ready to do battle over the box of pencils, and he seemed hardly to notice she was there. He stretched out in his chair and carried on talking to her uncle. She tried not to listen, but his voice seemed to command her attention, although he was not talking to her.

'Configurations show up much more clearly from above, lines and ridges, and the overall shape of things that may not be obvious when viewed from eye level, become a coherent pattern if they're looked at from the air. There's the line of an old road or track of some sort crossing the hills here, I noticed it while we were travelling above them the other day.'

There's an old drovers' road hereabouts,' Miles Dorman answered him eagerly. 'It's never been possible to trace the entire route of it. Bits of it are known, but they peter out, and the rest has had to be guessed at by piercing together knowledge and assumption.'

'You must come up with Willy and me in the 'copter one day and have a look for yourself,' Reeve urged him. 'The evidence of the road that I saw seemed fairly conclusive, and it ran for a number of miles without a break, although it was much fainter here and there. That's where you'd lose track of it, I expect, trying to follow it from ground level, but if you agree to fly with us you may be able to log the missing bits, if you've got a map?'

'Indeed I will, at the first opportunity.' The older man could not believe his good fortune, and showed it. His face was as eager as a child's.

'It makes a difference, doesn't it?' Mrs Pugh spoke softly from beside Marion. 'Having someone to share with, I mean?'

'All the difference in the world,' Marion agreed reluctantly. Her uncle looked years younger, and she should have felt grateful to Reeve. One part of her did, but the other part watched him suspiciously, with the uneasy feeling that for some reason best known to himself, he was making up to her uncle, using their mutual interest as a lever to gain the other man's trust. There was no doubt that Reeve's interest in her uncle's subject was genuine, he was almost as knowledgeable as his host.

'He sounds a bit like an archaeologist,' Mrs Pugh suggested
sotto voce
from beside her.

'He seems to know a lot about it,' Marion felt herself relax. If Reeve was an archaeologist, it would explain a great deal, although—she wrinkled her forehead, trying to remember what it was the pilot said when he jumped out of his machine at the airport.. It's an ideal site.' Surely archaeologists called them 'digs', not sites? But perhaps a 'dig' was after they had started excavating whatever it was they were looking for, not before? She gave up the unequal struggle and tried to concentrate on finishing her sketch.

'I haven't seen that one before.' Mrs Pugh forsook her knitting for a moment to peer over the tops of her spectacles to see what it was she was drawing. 'Is that the one you did on the fell? Why, that was the day we saw your helicopter for the first time, Mr Harland,' she remembered.

Marion tensed. Would Reeve comment on her craven behaviour on the fell? She sent him a look that was unconsciously appealing. He met it, but she could not read the expression in his eyes. They were darkly shadowed in the evening dusk of the low-beamed room. Hooded by the shadows, like the eyes of a bird of prey. Dark pools, of an unknown depth, into which she dared not dabble for fear she might drown....

'It's time we had the light on.' She jumped to her feet, spilling the pencil from her lap. It was the longer half of the broken one, resharpened, and shorter than she liked it, but she would rather put up with that than use one from the box Reeve had given to her. She clicked the light into instant brilliance, dispelling the shadows, and she turned back towards the settee as Reeve bent to pick up her pencil. He looked at it, balanced it in his palm, deducing from its size which pencil it was she was using, and why she was using it. And then he straightened up and looked at her, and his eyes were hard, like steel, challenging her refusal of the gift. Telling her that she would accept it, because he said so. She faced him defiantly, felt the force of his will as his eyes locked with her own, and determined not to give way.

'Is that a short pencil, my dear? I could do with one, I've used all the others you let me have.' Her uncle smiled and took it from Reeve's hand. 'I use up Marion's short pencils, they're ideal for map-making,' he explained. 'Have you got plenty yourself?' he asked her, always considerate.

'She had a new box from Dale End this morning.' Reeve spoke deliberately into the silence, answering for her. He addressed her uncle, but his eyes held Marion's, deliberately imposing his will on her own; forcing her into a position where she would have no option but to accept his gift, and use it. He did not say he had bought the pencils for her, even through the hot surge of anger that consumed her, she noticed that.