When it was over and he pulled away from me I simply sank to the ground and sat there panting. He was also out of breath, leaning against a chair watching me. My skirt was around my waist and my tights and knickers remained wound around one ankle.
‘I must look totally ridiculous,’ I said.
‘Not to me you don’t,’ he said. And his voice was deep and husky. ‘To me you just look inviting.’
He sat down on the floor in front of me, bent his head and buried his face in me and did not stop until I had climaxed again. We still hadn’t moved out of the hall.
‘If only Peter Mellor could see me now,’ I said absurdly afterwards.
‘There is a part of me that would like the whole world to see you now,’ Robin told me, with a wicked grin. ‘To see the state to which Detective Chief Inspector Piper can be reduced by the right touch...’ He ran a fingernail lightly across my upper lip.
‘Beast,’ I said.
He grinned again. ‘I do love you,’ he told me, as he did with reassuring frequency nowadays.
‘I know,’ I responded.
‘Don’t be smug,’ he said, tapping me lightly on the nose with one finger.
Abruptly he stood up, just as I was telling him I loved him too.
‘Come on,’ he instructed. ‘Put your clothes back on and I’ll take you out to dinner.’
‘Don’t you think perhaps I should have a shower?’ I asked.
‘No, I don’t,’ he said.
At the restaurant I was distinctly aware that we both still smelt of sex, which I suspected had been Robin’s intention.
The meal was somehow almost as erotic as the lovemaking which had proceeded it. We laughed a lot. I could think of nothing except my passion for him. The waiters caught our joy, and they warmed to Robin. He had an easy jovial manner and a lot of charm. It was not difficult to warm to him.
At the end of the dinner Robin passed me a small black box.
‘Open it,’ he commanded.
I did so. A door key lay within on a bed of black velvet. I looked at him enquiringly.
‘It’s a key to Highpoint House,’ he said. ‘You’ll need it if you accept what else is in the box. Lift up the velvet.’
By then I suppose I had guessed the second item that the box must contain, but I still could hardly believe it. After all, we had been together for only just over three months — yet I could not imagine my life without Robin Davey, could barely remember even what it had been like before. Already it seemed quite natural that we should be together for ever.
I turned my attention back to the small black box, lifting up the layer of velvet as Robin had instructed. Beneath it was slotted an exquisite diamond ring.
I said nothing. I didn’t know what to say.
Robin leaned across the table so that his face was close to mine and I could smell the sex on him stronger than ever. When he spoke his voice was low and caressing, almost hypnotic.
‘Will you marry me?’ he asked.
Eleven
I woke up the next morning half delirious. My body was glowing. We had made love through most of the night. And the man I was so passionate about had asked me to marry him.
Of course I had said yes. It was a dream come true, wasn’t it? I should have been ecstatically happy. And so I was — almost. I knew that all I had to do was to put the past resolutely behind me, and my future was assured.
Robin’s arms were wrapped around me as usual. It was only just after six, but I still had a job to do, a job of such gravity that even this wonderful moment in my life could not entirely overshadow it. I extricated myself as carefully as possible, but he woke at once as I had known that he would. I had already learned that he was a light sleeper.
He smiled at me lazily. ‘Leaving me already, are you?’ he enquired.
I felt that now familiar heart-leaping sensation. I was head over heels in love, there was no doubt about it.
‘Only temporarily,’ I said. ‘You pledged yourself to a lifelong contract last night. Remember?’
‘Oh yes. I remember. I’m just glad you do.’
I sat down on the bed again, still naked, and gave him one last lingering kiss. He took my hand and put it on his erection.
‘You’re insatiable,’ I said.
‘Only with you. Come back to bed.’
I could feel the heat of him, sense the pleasure again. With a great effort of will I backed off and headed for the bathroom.
‘Later,’ I said. ‘I’ve still got this nightmare of a case to sort out.’
I was still wearing the engagement ring, but to my shame I slipped it off my finger and into my pocket just before I arrived at Kingswood. My affair with Robin might be common knowledge by now, but I was determined to keep our engagement secret for as long as possible. I knew that was wrong really, but I could so clearly imagine the banter. ‘Watch out, Rosie, his intendeds don’t last long.’ And somehow, to begin with, I did not want to share the magic with anyone.
In spite of my work pressure things seemed to get better and better between Robin and I — who knows maybe it was partly because of it, we were not together much. The magic not only seemed to hold, it increased.
He made few demands on my time but did push for me to take a Sunday off to meet his mother. I must confess it wasn’t only my workload which made me stall. Meeting your future mother-in-law is always going to be a little daunting — when you are a thirty-five-year-old cop and you’re marrying a man like Robin Davey, the prospect is quite overwhelming.
Robin’s father had died when he was thirteen and his brother James just eleven. Their mother, Maude, remarried two years later — an Exmoor farmer called Roger Croft-Maple — and that frightened the life out of me too. There is something about double-barrelled names which has always thrown me off my guard.
The Croft-Maples farmed upwards of 1000 acres, much of it the wildest part of the moor between Simonsbath and the sea. Robin wanted to take me there for Sunday lunch where we would be joined by brother James, a painter, who lived in a converted barn on the farm.
‘I’ve told Mother all about you and if she doesn’t meet you soon she’ll go potty,’ he said. ‘You don’t know what she’s like.’
‘No I don’t,’ I said. ‘And I wish you’d tell me — at least I might be better prepared.’
‘I have told you, she defies description,’ he said unhelpfully. And that made me all the more nervous.
Ultimately, just over three weeks after Robin had proposed I caved in. Even though at the time I was going in to the nick every day of the week including weekends, even if only for a few hours, Sunday lunch was duly agreed upon, for the first Sunday in November, which turned out to be a thoroughly awful cold, wet and windy day. We compromised on the arrangements — I got to Kingswood just after seven and spent three hours or so at my desk satisfying myself that the Stephen Jeffries investigation would be able to proceed for the rest of the day without my presence. Robin picked me up in the black BMW he now kept in Bristol just before 10.30, and we ploughed down the motorway through a continuous heavy downpour in terrible visibility which grew even worse when we turned off across the moor, but we still arrived at Northgate Farm in time for lunch — plenty of time as it happened.
Maude Croft-Maple was not at all what I had expected. I knew that she was seventy-seven years old and that she was Robin’s mother. That was about all I knew — and from it I had conjured up a stereotyped image of a blue-rinsed aristocratic lady with a face like a horse, an accent you could cut yourself on and a penchant for well-tailored tweed suits and sensible shoes.