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seat offered a refuge, and she shrank further back into it and turned her head mutinously towards the side window.
    'I say!' An awestruck whistle came from Willy in the back seat. 'Does your uncle really read these things?' The tides of the books on the seat beside him were evidently too much for the pilot. A reluctant smile tilted Marion's lips. She herself was deeply interested in her uncle's work, but she had to admit that some of the tomes he used for reference made extremely hard reading.
    'He's writing a book on road building through the ages,' she explained. The engine of the car made no more than a low purr, almost inaudible in the interior, and she found it easy to respond to the pilot in her normal voice. Different from the post van, she admitted to herself wryly. That worthy vehicle echoed every pothole in the road, and defeated reasonable conversation. 'He's ordered a special reference book from the library, and he'll be temporarily stuck without it. That's why I must go back into Dale End today. Otherwise I wouldn't have bothered,' she added deliberately.
    She felt Reeve's eyes leave the road and slant towards her briefly, then away again, as if he had caught her hint that it was only the pressure of necessity that made her ride with him, and she felt an unrepentant satisfaction that her barb had gone home.
    'Your uncle's research must make him appreciate the necessity for change,' he commented casually, apropos of nothing, and Marion turned her head and looked at him, puzzled.
    'Change? What sort of change?'
    'Any sort. Roads, where no roads were before....'
    'But Uncle Miles is writing about Roman roads, not modern motorways,' Marion protested. She had not intended to speak to Reeve during the journey. The things she would have liked to say to him were better left unuttered, she thought grimly. But since Willy had broken the ice with a fairly innocuous topic of conversation, she responded, thankful despite herself to be able to ease the sense of strain that seemed to fairly crackle between herself and the man sitting beside her.
    'Nevertheless, even the Romans must have disturbed the indigenous population by their road-building activities,' Reeve responded drily.
    'I can't imagine a peasant population being consulted by an invading army,' Marion's tone was equally dry.
    'Neither can I,' Reeve responded easily, 'but just the same, the desire to resist must have been there, the same as it would be today. The road-builders would automatically take the easier route, and that would mean cutting through the valleys, and consequently spoiling some of the best grazing land. The owners of the castles and the manor houses of the day wouldn't take kindly to having their flocks and herds disturbed.'
    'But the roads brought benefits,' Marion argued. 'They encouraged trade, and opened up the country. If the peasants didn't see that, the lords of the manors should have done, surely?'
    'I wonder if they did, at the time?' Reeve pondered. 'Afterwards, yes. Because ultimately they'd probably have built the roads themselves across the same routes, and thought the temporary upset to their pasture land a reasonable price to pay for what, when all the arguments were settled, would eventually come to be regarded as the greatest benefit to the greatest number of people.'
    'Reeve's got your uncle's bent, he likes history,' Willy put in with an apologetic note from the back of the car.
    Was it only that? Marion wondered. She felt, uneasily, that Reeve was trying to impress something on her. But what? A point of view? The subject of their conversation seemed innocent enough. It had arisen quite spontaneously, over a few chance library books. And yet his remarks held a subtle insistence she could not put her finger on. Was he a road-builder himself, perhaps? Maybe come to build a road through the valley, that would cause disruption to the people living there? She dismissed the idea as soon as it occurred to her. Fallbeck had nothing to