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looking where he was going.’
    Ian’s mouth twisted with a hint of wryness. ‘Before you start apportioning the blame, how’s your driving?’
    Her eyes blazed green fire. ‘I drove for my father. Let me tell you I’ve driven on some of the best roads in Europe!’
    â€˜That may be,’ he said quietly. ‘But this is England. The land of quaint customs. One of them happens to be driving on the left side of the road.’ He nudged the emerald green dress with superior largess. ‘Put this on.’ In other words, wrap up, forget it. But she couldn’t.
    â€˜You mean—?’ Her voice was a croak, a plea; she retreated from arrogance and self-righteous indignation and fell back on a pair of haunted eyes. ‘It was my fault?’ Oh, dear God, no! Not that, not that.
    But his continued silence told her it was, indeed, the truth. The man in the yellow car was blameless. She was the one guilty of driving on the wrong side of the road.

CHAPTER FOUR
    Her thoughts were strewn haphazardly. She began collecting them up. She had set off driving on the left side of the road, but she must have grown careless . . .
    She didn’t want to go with him, his highhandedness was virtually kidnap, but in her present state of weakness, she hadn’t the will to resist.
    . . . The mind does grow careless when the eye is enchanted.
    The dress was a perfect fit. The addition of a bra (Had he really walked into a store, selected and paid for it?) improved her figure. She had got into the relaxed habit of not wearing one. Her own sandals, well scrubbed, were located in the bedside locker. Nothing else, apparently, had been salvaged. He’d forgotten to purchase stockings; not that it mattered, her legs were the colour stocking manufacturers had been trying to create for years.
    With quiet fuss, goodbyes all round, he escorted her out to his car. It was a shadow-grey saloon. Infnitely superior to the one she’d ‘bent’.
    He opened the door for her with polite solicitude. ‘Well?’ he questioned, when she hesitated.
    Surely it’s the easiest thing in the world to get in a car. There are two ways. You sit in, and swing your legs in after you. Or you duck your head and walk in. Not quite as elegant as the first way, but as effective. But she could neither sit in, nor walk in, nor even explain. Her feet had suddenly acquired ton weights, and her tongue was locked solid.
    He tapped his foot in a gesture of impatience. ‘Well? What are you waiting for?’ His shrewd glance, not damning, but not sympathetic either, summed up the situation. ‘Oh, I see! After-crash symptoms,’ he diagnosed. ‘Well, it so happens I know the remedy for that.’
    She felt her elbow taken hold of, and her feet left the ground. It was a dream with rose petal edges; only her relief was real, because he wasn’t going to make her get in that dreaded passenger seat. But the rose petals faded, to disintegrate into black ash; and the dream turned into a nightmarish reality as she realized exactly what he did intend.
    â€˜I . . . ca-can’t. Even you couldn’t be cruel enough to make me drive.’ Her plea was as ineffective as a leaf tapping against the weathered bark of a tree.
    His reply was sharp and woody. ‘Yes, I can be that cruel.’
    Her brow felt clammy and her jaw was slack with self pity.
    â€˜Oh, brace up, girl!’ he ordered, sounding so reasonably exasperated that her limbs automatically reacted and folded into the driving seat. Having installed himself in the passenger seat, he reached over and switched on the ignition.
    â€˜Come on, foot on the clutch and into first gear.’ He sounded like a scornful driving instructor urging a not very bright pupil. She thought, I don’t think I’ve ever hated anyone quite so intensely ever before, and her jaw firmed as her hands tightened on the wheel. ‘Which way?’
    At first it