Edwin, holding her comfortingly, turned away. ‘I should have realized the Ghyll would fill up. We’ll have to turn back and go down over the ridge to the beck, cross it, and make for the lower road to the Hall.’

‘But won’t the beck be flooded as well?’ Emma suggested, biting her lip.

‘Most probably. But at least it’s a bit narrower and not a ravine like the Ghyll. It shouldn’t be too deep. We can swim across.’

‘I can’t swim,’ Emma wailed.

‘Don’t worry. I’ll look after you, Emma. I told you before, you will always be safe with me. I’ll never let any harm come to you. Ever.’ He hugged her to him affectionately, hoping to allay her nervousness, took her by the hand, led her back along the track and down an incline, reassuring her gently all the way. Unfortunately, Emma’s prediction was correct. The little beck, where they had washed earlier that afternoon, had become a fully fledged and gushing stream, water spewing over the rocky hillside with remarkable swiftness, an eddying whirlpool foaming whitely against the banks. Edwin threw the picnic basket on the ground, gritted his teeth, and lowered himself cautiously down the bank and into the swirling depths. The water rose up to his chest. ‘Leave the sack, Emma,’ he shouted, ‘and get on to my back. Put your arms around my neck, and hang on for dear life. I’ll swim us both across.’

Emma hesitated. This girl, who was not, in reality, afraid of anything, had a strange and incomprehensible fear of water. Even as a small child, when her mother had washed her hair, she had always screamed, ‘Don’t get the water on me face, Mam,’ the panic rising in her inexplicably.

‘Emma, come along!’ Edwin called. ‘This water’s freezing.’

Quelling her apprehension, Emma followed his instructions and tremblingly climbed on to his back. Edwin struck out across the beck, but he had misjudged the force of the water and several times he thought they would be dragged downstream, as if there were a rapid current sucking at his legs like a vortex. Yet he knew this could not be so. They went under once, but he valiantly struggled to the surface, spluttering, and pushed forward, swimming with all of his strength. It was an exhausting battle for Edwin, and a terrorizing experience for Emma, who clung to him tenaciously. Finally they reached the opposite bank. Edwin panted and gasped and spat out water, catching hold of a small shrub miraculously intact on the side of the bank. He paused to regain his breath, grasping the roots of the shrub, and then he hauled them both up out of the swirling beck, stumbling and sliding in the process. They fell on to the ground and lay there for several minutes, chests heaving, coughing and rasping and wiping the water from their faces.

At last Emma said, ‘Thank yer, Edwin. I thought we’d drown once. I did, really. But yer a good swimmer.’

Edwin’s chest was congested and tight, and he was unable to speak, but he gave her a lopsided smile and shook his head wearily.

‘Do yer feel all right?’ Emma regarded him with some misgiving. In the moonlight he looked extraordinarily pale and depleted, and he shivered more violently than she herself did.

‘Yes.’ He groaned, sitting up. ‘Let’s get going. It’s cold, Emma.’ He grinned ruefully as he looked at her dripping hair and face and clothes. ‘We’re like a couple of drowned rats again.’

“But we’re safe and we’ll soon be at the Hall,’ she responded, adopting a cheerful tone.

The lower road had turned to mire and was also strewn here and there with rocks and branches. In spite of its slimy surface, and the various obstructions, they managed to walk at a brisk pace, and once Edwin’s breathing was more normally restored they began to run, holding hands tightly, only slowing their pace when they had to skirt boulders and dismembered trees, arriving at the main entrance to Fairley Hall much sooner than they had anticipated. One of the great iron gates, bearing the Fairley family crest in polished bronze, had been half ripped off its hinges, and dangled precariously from the high brick wall surrounding the grounds. Walking up the gravel path, they saw that even here the storm had wreaked its havoc. Flower beds had been flattened, bushes shredded, hedges crushed, and some of the box and yew topiary specimens, clipped into fantastic shapes, had been smashed beyond recognition.

To Edwin’s immense distress one of the great oaks had been struck by lightning, split asunder, a monument to time finally felled by God’s wrath and nature’s unpredictability. It was here that Edwin paused and took Emma in his arms. He pushed back her dripping hair and gazed down into her face, its loveliness unmarred by the water and mud streaking it, palely gleaming in the moonlight shafting through the bower of green oak leaves drifting above them. He bent down and kissed her fully on the mouth and with passion, but it was a passion tempered now by tenderness. They clung together, swaying gently. After a moment of silent communion, Edwin said, ‘I love you, Emma. You love me, too, don’t you?’

Her green eyes, iridescent with light and glittering catlike in the darkness, swept over his face, and a swift pain shot through her, piercing and poignant and she was filled with a strange emotion she had not experienced before. It was a sweet emotion, yet one tinged with sadness and a vague and curious yearning she did not understand. ‘Yes, I do,’ she answered softly.

He touched her face lightly, returning that penetrating look concentrated so ardently upon him. ‘Then you will meet me up at the cave at the Top of the World, later in the week when the weather has improved, won’t you?’

She was silent. Up until this moment Edwin had not contemplated the possibility that she might refuse, but now the idea struck him so forcibly he was filled with panic. ‘Please, please say you will,’ he entreated, conscious of the protracted silence, her hesitation. He pressed his body closer to hers and cajoled, ‘We can have a picnic again.’

Still she remained silent. ‘Oh, Emma, please, please don’t spurn me.’ His whisper was hoarse and a new desperation had crept into his voice. Edwin held her away from him and examined her face, so pale and inscrutable. There was a look in her eyes that baffled him, one he was quite incapable of inter-preting. ‘You’re not upset about-about-what happened? What we did, are you?’ he asked gently, wondering with rising alarm if this was indeed the reason for her unexpected and sudden unresponsiveness to him. Then in the faint moonlight sifting through the trees he saw the deep flush rising to her neck to flood her face with dark colour, and his heart sank. She was angry with him.

Emma turned away. But Edwin’s harsh breathing stabbed at her and she quickly brought her face back to his, peering deeply into his bluish-grey eyes, and what she saw there made her heart lift on a crest that was joyous and it overwhelmed her. His eyes were full of love and longing but, hovering behind these mingled feelings so clearly apparent, she saw a flicker of fear. Emma knew then with the utmost certainty that Edwin Fairley did truly love her, just as he had said he did. And she loved him. He was part of her now. She marvelled that this one person in the whole world could suddenly mean so much to her, could have become, within a few hours, so necessary, taking precedence above all else. It was a possibility she had neither anticipated nor bargained for. She could no longer bear to witness the pain in his eyes. ‘Yes, Edwin, I will meet yer up at the cave, and I’m not angry about what we did.’ She smiled and it was that same smile that always suffused her face with radiance.

Edwin’s facial muscles, tight and intense with apprehension, relaxed, and he too smiled, taking her into his arms with a rush of relief and happiness. ‘Oh, Emma, Emma, my sweet Emma. You’re everything to me.’

Poised under the old oaks, locked in an embrace that was further sealing their destinies, they were oblivious to their dripping clothes, their shivering limbs, the cold night air. They were conscious only of each other and their fierce and flaring emotions, not realizing, in their euphoria, that emotions could wreak devastation as horrendous as the ripped and shattered landscape surrounding them. Eventually they drew apart, searching each other’s face for confirmation of their love. Edwin nodded, his eyes awash with tender lights, and Emma smiled, and then silently they went up to the house, hand in hand. Edwin was jaunty and seemingly untroubled, but Emma, pragmatist that she was, had suddenly begun to consider the welcome they would receive. She was patently aware that it would be far from cordial and certainly one of furious reprimands.