‘Ben...’ she shouted. ‘Ben...’
‘We’ll have to start making tracks back to the farm,’ Piers warned her. ‘The light’s already starting to fade.’
Georgia wanted to protest, but her common sense warned her that he was right.
Back in the farmhouse kitchen Georgia wearily accepted the fresh cup of tea Mary Bowles offered her. She was beginning to feel the effects of the previous night’s loss of sleep, her body heavy and tired, but her thoughts, her mind, were almost too alert, as though they had gone into overdrive. Over and over again she kept visualising Ben on his own on the hillside and all the dangers he would be exposed to. Her eyelids felt so heavy; perhaps if she just closed her eyes for a moment...
‘We’re going to need to stay overnight,’ Piers told Mary Bowles softly. ‘Is there somewhere locally you could recommend?’
‘As I mentioned over the phone earlier, you’re more than welcome to stay here,’ Mary returned promptly.
She shook her head when Piers protested that they didn’t want to cause her any trouble, informing him firmly, ‘It will be no trouble at all. We sometimes get walkers asking for a room, and there’s a spare bed already made up. You and your wife would be more than welcome to it.’
You and your wife! Piers opened his mouth to inform Mary that he and Georgia weren’t even a couple, never mind man and wife, and that there was no way Georgia would want to share a bed with him, but before he could say anything Mary was looking indulgently towards Georgia, who had fallen asleep in her chair.
She said softly, ‘Poor girl, she’s worn out. I’ll take you up and show you the room. We don’t keep late hours as Harry likes to be up at dawn.’
As Piers followed Mary Bowles up the narrow, winding flight of stairs that led to the farm’s upper storey, he told himself that there was no point in complicating the issue at this stage by informing her that he and Georgia weren’t married. It was gone ten in the evening, and by the time he had woken Georgia up and they had driven back to the small market town they had passed on the way to the farm it would be close on midnight before they found anywhere to stay—if they could find anywhere! Far easier simply to accept Mary’s offer.
The room Mary showed him wasn’t particularly large, but it was spotlessly clean and comfortably furnished and it had its own shower room.
‘We had that put in when our daughter was growing up. Teenage girls like to spend a lot of time in the bathroom, and her dad got that impatient with her. She’s at university now.’ She gave a small sigh, and Piers could see from her face that she missed her daughter.
As they walked back into the kitchen Georgia woke up and said anxiously to Piers, ‘We need to sort out somewhere to stay.’
‘It’s all arranged,’ Piers told her. ‘Mrs Bowles has offered to put us up here.’
Georgia’s expression betrayed her relief, and Piers suspected that she was as loath as he had been himself to drive back into the nearest town to find somewhere to stay. He would have to wait until they were on their own to explain Mary Bowles’s incorrect assumption that they were married, and to assure Georgia that the fact that they were having to share a room and a bed did not mean that she need have any fear that he would attempt to take advantage of their imaginary status.
‘Oh, that is kind of you,’ Georgia told the farmer’s wife, confirming Piers’s thought as she continued, ‘I must admit I wasn’t looking forward to having to get back in the car. I thought I was a good walker, but these hills have really tired me out.’
‘They’re steeper than they look,’ Mary Bowles agreed with a smile, continuing, ‘I’ll make us all a spot of supper, and then Harry and I will be off to our bed.
‘Try not to worry about the dog,’ she told Georgia gently. ‘Brian—that’s my brother—is in the police, and he’s promised to let us know the moment they hear anything.’
* * *
‘We’ll say goodnight, then,’ Mary Bowles told Georgia after the two of them had finished clearing up from the hearty supper she had given them.
As they heard the couple’s footsteps on the stairs Georgia smothered a yawn and looked tiredly at Piers.
‘I think I’ll go up as well,’ she told him. ‘Which room?’
‘I’ll come with you and show you,’ Piers offered.
Nodding, Georgia followed him as he led the way towards the stairs.
Piers waited until they were both in the room with the door safely closed before breaking the news to her.
‘We’re what?’ Georgia demanded, shaking her head as she told him fiercely, ‘Oh, no; no way am I sharing a room, never mind a bed with you.’