by Penny Jordan
‘Yes,’ Kate agreed, hiding a small smile as she saw the speculation in Lisa’s eyes. ‘One of us is going to run out of words—but I promise you it won’t be me.’
‘Fantastic meal, Kate,’ Alan praised when they had all finished. ‘Kevin is bringing you to the Hunt Ball, isn’t he?’
‘Umm, I asked her last week,’ Kevin confirmed, ‘births and accidents permitting.’ There was general laughter, and Lisa explained to Jake that there hadn’t been a single year when Kevin had managed to stay the entire length of a Hunt Ball, without a call.
‘Do you hunt?’ Alan asked him.
‘I haven’t done, but I do ride.’
‘Well, you’ll have to join us one Saturday.’
‘Don’t forget next Saturday we’ve got a meeting of the Dale Rescue Group,’ Kevin reminded him. ‘Kate, would you take the minutes for us again this time?’
‘I always know winter’s on the way when the Rescue Group starts meeting again,’ Mary sighed. ‘Last year they must have had at least two dozen call-outs over the winter period, mostly from hikers and walkers who simply ask for trouble.’
‘Yes, and we’re one down this year,’ Kevin pointed out. ‘Sid Rowanthorpe has dropped out. He’s coming up for retirement, and he just doesn’t feel he can go on with it, so we’ll have to look round for someone else.’
‘What’s involved exactly?’ Jake asked, and when Kevin briefly explained that they needed an extra team member skilled in climbing and mountaincraft, to act as a stretcher bearer for the more severe accidents, he promptly informed them that he had some experience. ‘I’m not suggesting I’m up to your standards, it’s something I was keen on in my teens, and I’ve spent several holidays in the Alps and the Rockies.’
‘You sound like manna from Heaven,’ Kevin said fervently. ‘Why don’t you come with us on some of our practice climbs? We can see how we all work together as a team.’
Surely she didn’t resent the way Jake was fitting into her circle of friends, Kate thought incredulously a couple of hours later when Alan and Mary made a move to leave. She wasn’t as childish as that? No, she was still suffering from the strain of seeing him after so long. She had been prepared for it, but still it had been an ordeal, something she had had to steel herself for, and now she was feeling the strain.
‘Of course, you won’t be leaving, will you, Kate?’ Rita said sweetly as she stood up. ‘It was so funny when we arrived,’ she said to the room at large. ‘There was Kate still in her bathrobe, trying to fix Kevin’s bow tie…’
‘I’m not staying, Rita,’ Kate said evenly. ‘Kevin was kind enough to let me use his parents’ room to get changed in before dinner, so that I didn’t need to go home.’
‘Honestly, sweetie, it doesn’t matter,’ Rita assured her mock-sweetly. ‘We’re all adults, after all…I mean, it’s not as though you’re still sweet seventeen…’
‘Rita, that’s enough,’ Kevin expostulated, suddenly coming to Kate’s rescue. ‘What you’re suggesting is offensive to Kate, and to me. There’s no need for either of us to indulge in a hole-and-corner affair, and to suggest that we are is an insult to both of us.’
Rita looked put out, but still pulled a face and murmured, ‘Oh, darling, such a fuss about nothing!’
Kate was standing with her back to Jake, and the hair on the back of her neck prickled atavistically as she heard him murmur so quietly that only she could hear, ‘But you’re not, are you, Kate…free, that is? Are you lovers, Kate?’ she heard him ask.
She whirled round, not caring if anyone saw her, or what interpretation they might put on her behaviour. ‘It’s none of your damned business,’ she ground out through compressed lips.
‘Oh, but it is,’ Jake assured her smoothly. ‘You’re still my wife, remember? But you give yourself away, my little Cat,’ he added smoothly, ‘scratching instead of purring. Whatever our good doctor does give you, it isn’t satisfaction.’
‘Jake darling, are you ready?’ Jake was holding her hand and he raised it to his lips as an old-world gesture of courtliness that deceived everyone but Kate, pressing his lips lightly against her vulnerable palm, leaving her so intensely aware of their roughly warm imprint on her skin that she had to fight not to admit the memories that brief touch brought surging to life.
CHAPTER THREE
‘HEAVENS, I’d better rush, Matt will be here in half an hour. What are your plans for the weekend, Kate?’ As she spoke Meg put down the cloth she had been using to dry their breakfast dishes and rushed distractedly towards the door.
Sunday mornings were always a panic because invariably they slept later, and Kate obligingly moved to one side to let Meg through the door. ‘Kevin and I are going fell-walking. He’s been promising to take me for weeks. We did quite a bit of walking during the spring and summer, but the terrain changes so much during the autumn with all the bracken that Kevin thought it might be a good idea if we went out again. Besides, there probably won’t be many more weekends fine enough now that we’re into November.’
‘That’s true,’ Meg agreed, ‘and once the snow comes to the high ground you’d be mad to try.’
Kate acknowledged the wisdom of her comment. Matt, like Kevin, was a member of their local rescue team, and both of them had heard enough from the men to be fully aware of the dangers awaiting the inexperienced foolish enough to venture out on to the Dales during the winter months.
‘How did the dinner go, by the way?’ Meg asked conversationally. ‘I didn’t get the opportunity to ask last night and on Wednesday I must have been asleep when you came in.’
Meg had been spending a couple of days up at Matt’s farm which they were busy decorating in preparation for their marriage in the summer, and Kate grimaced slightly. ‘Oh, it wasn’t so bad, although Rita made a big thing of suggesting that Kevin and I were lovers.’
‘Oh no! But then that’s typical of her,’ Meg exclaimed. ‘But tell me about her new man. Is he as gorgeous as she said?’
‘He’s certainly very handsome,’ Kate agreed with a touch of acerbity, ‘but handsome is as handsome does. If you want my real opinion, they’re very well matched. Both of them are takers, if you know what I mean.’
‘Umm. It seems the two of you didn’t hit it off. Now that’s funny,’ Meg mused with a grin. ‘Mary was in here yesterday choosing a sweater—Alan’s promised to buy her one for Christmas, apparently. She said that our new Director of Operations couldn’t keep his eyes off you.’
‘Oh, you know Mary,’ Kate said weakly. ‘She dislikes Rita so much she tends to let her imagination run away with her.’
‘But he did follow you out into the kitchen when Rita upset you,’ Meg pressed.
Inwardly fuming, cursing Mary’s too sharp eyes and too ready tongue, Kate said lightly, ‘I suppose he thought it only good manners, although I wasn’t actually on my own. I was with Lisa. You’ve got fifteen minutes before Matt arrives,’ she reminded her friend. ‘If you stay here cross-questioning me much longer, you’ll never be ready.’
When Meg had gone Kate went to her own room and dressed slowly in her fell-walking gear. It could be cold out on the fells, especially when the temperature dropped sharply as it had a habit of doing and she dressed warmly in thermal top and tights, both in a pretty pink and white candy stripe which hugged her body revealingly—a far cry from the old-fashioned ‘combinations’ from which the thermal underwear had been derived. On top she wore a thin checked shirt and a sweater plus a pair of heavy jeans. Her quilted parka with its fur-trimmed hood lay on the bed, and as she bent down to lace up the sturdy boots Kevin had insisted on her buying she heard the phone ring.
Every time she had heard it since that fatal dinner party her stomach had lurched. Each time she picked up the receiver she dreaded hearing Jake’s voice. Some time they would have to talk, she hated the deceit she was practising on her friends, and besides, it was high time they talked about their divorce. With Jake openly squiring other women about he no longer had any reason to
refuse to accede to it. Oh, her lawyer had told her that he could make her wait the full five years if he wished, but what was the point? Their marriage was over and she, for one, only wanted to cut away from the past completely—and how could she do that when she and Jake, while masquerading as perfect strangers, were in reality still man and wife?
She picked up the receiver with nervous fingers, expelling a faint sigh of relief when she heard Kevin’s voice. ‘Kate, I’m so sorry,’ he apologised, ‘but I’m going to have to cancel today. Laura Braithwaite’s gone into labour. The midwife’s already with her, but I’ll have to stand by. She’s insisting on having this baby at home, but I want to be on hand just in case there are any problems.’
‘Don’t worry about it,’ Kate assured him.
‘While you’re on I ought to tell you that Jake has set up a meeting at the station to look into the safety standards and I’ve been invited to attend.’
‘Marvellous!’ Kate knew she sounded less than sincere, but she didn’t care. It seemed that all her friends were enthusing about Jake, and absurdly she felt like a small child excluded from a particularly exciting birthday party.
Kevin rang off, and she paced the flat moodily. Outside the sun shone pale golden yellow from an ice blue sky, and restlessness stirred in her blood like wine. She didn’t want to spend the day indoors. She wanted to be outside, breathing in the cold, pure Dales air. Why shouldn’t she go for her walk alone? She wouldn’t go far. She hunted along the bookshelves until she found the book of local walks she had bought when she first came to the Dales. There was one that didn’t look too arduous and wasn’t too long, which looped round the Dale and brought her back into the village again. The book had been specifically written for keen walkers, and various small crosses marked the spots where shepherds’ huts had been turned into emergency rest-halts. The walks were picked out in differing colours to indicate their varying degrees of hardship, and the one Kate had picked was one of the easier ones. The time set for the walk was three hours, which meant that she should be back before dusk. Picking up the sandwiches she had made and her thermos, Kate tucked them into the pockets of her parka and zipped it up.
Half an hour later she was congratulating herself on her decision as she forded a small sluggish stream and followed one of the ancient drystone walls up towards the top of the hill. From its summit she surveyed the village spread out below her, carefully checking her map, knowing from Kevin how easily it was to lose the right path along these upland tracks. The air was so cold and pure that it stung her lungs and Kate gulped great breaths of it, feeling the tension ease out of her as she walked steadily along the track, pacing herself carefully as Kevin had taught her. One of the first faults of the amateur was to walk too quickly too soon, thus exhausting himself, he had explained to her on their very first walk, and as she climbed higher and higher through the Dale Kate paused regularly to look down the way she had come and to study her map. Because she was on her own she had decided against any fellwalking, knowing that if she did slip and sprain her ankle she would be completely alone, but she was still glad of the warm protection of her thick clothes as the afternoon wore on and the air grew colder.
At first she told herself that the chill was due to the greater height at which she was walking, but every time she stopped to take her bearings she noticed that the wind seemed colder. At two o’clock she stopped in the shelter of a small dip, and found a smooth stone to sit on while she ate her lunch. An inquisitive sheep ambled across to investigate her, closely followed by other members of its flock. Across on the other side of the Dale Kate watched a farmer and his dog working their sheep.
Sheepdog trials were one of the events of the Dales, and Kate thoroughly enjoyed going to watch these skilled animals cleverly manoeuvering their charges. Kevin had explained to her that the pups were often put in with an old ram, especially if they had a tendency to be boisterous, and that the dogs soon learned to mark down the leader of any flock and to control it through him.
The dog on the opposite hillside was obviously a young one, and Kate marvelled both at the patience of the farmer and the stamina of the dog as calls and whistles were repeated over and over again until the dog thoroughly understood the command. Owning a good working dog was essential to sheep farming, and Kate knew that these dogs were exported all over the world. She had been toying with the idea of getting a pup herself. Kevin had told her that since she wanted the dog as a pet she would have no trouble getting a bitch puppy from one of the farmers. ‘Bitches are harder to work with because they’re more emotional than dogs,’ he had told her with a grin, but Kate had refused to respond to the bait.
A sudden gust of wind reminded her that she had been sitting down longer than she intended, and she shivered as she stood up, glancing behind her as she stepped out of the protection of the hollow and discovered that the sun had stopped shining. A glance over her shoulder showed her why. While she had been eating her lunch and watching the farmer with his dog a thin mist had started to creep down the hillside. Already the hills above her were blotted out completely, and she felt a tug of nervousness in the pit of her stomach. Too often she had heard tales of the unwary wandering from the path in the heavy mists that shrouded the hills, losing their way completely, sometimes falling to their deaths as they strayed too far. Kate looked at her watch. She had come more than half way, but the remainder of the walk was more rugged, with sheer escarpments falling away to her left. On a clear day the track was perfectly safe and afforded magnificent views of the surrounding scenery, but in a thick mist…
Kate looked anxiously behind her. Was it her imagination, or had the mist increased in the short space of time since she first noticed it? If it became any thicker she would be a fool to continue her walk, because she could easily lose the track and fall. On the other hand, no one knew where she was, and warm though her clothing was, it was no protection against a cold night spent outside on the fells. That left only one alternative. She would have to turn back. But that meant climbing again into the mist which was definitely thickening and creeping towards her.
‘Don’t panic,’ Kate warned herself, sitting down again and pulling out her booklet. If only she had left a message for Meg, or told Kevin what she was doing. The world was full of regretful ‘if onlys’, though, and thinking about what she ought to have done would get her absolutely nowhere.
As she studied her map, her heart sinking as she mentally recorded the distance she had to walk back, and the height to which it would take her, Kate noticed one of the small crosses indicating a shepherd’s hut. Carefully she calculated the distance. It was less than a mile away, but it was uphill. Frowning, she studied the relief map thoroughly. Although the track was uphill, it was on level ground and marked by a stone wall. All she had to do was to find the wall and follow it upwards and it would take her right to the hut. Shivering clammily, Kate refolded her map. She had been right. The mist was thickening and not just that, the temperature was dropping rapidly. Her hair was already damp from the mist and her fingers icy cold. As she stood up the mist whirled and eddied mysteriously around her, making it impossible for her to see more than half a dozen paces in front of her. That decided it. She daren’t risk the downward path with its sheer drop on one side, and it was far too risky to try and make her way back. No, she would have to find the hut, or risk suffering the effects of exposure by staying where she was until morning and hoping that the mist would have lifted. Once again studying the map, Kate made her way slowly and carefully to the wall that led to the hut. When she found it, she expelled her breath on a tautly relieved sigh, double checking her bearings, knowing all too well the dangers of making a mistake at this juncture. If she got the wrong wall now… But she hadn’t done, she was sure of that. A mile. That should take her about half an hour, say forty minutes in view of the mist. She looked at her watch carefully checking the time, and then firmly forbidding herself not to dwell on all the hazards ahead of her, she set off.
Half an
hour later, soaked to the skin from the thighs down where the thick mist had penetrated her jeans, and been soaked up by the porous stuff, Kate was shivering from cold and fear. Her jeans felt like clammy leg irons against her chaffed flesh, only the thickness of her parka preventing her upper body from suffering the same fate. It was impossible to see further than the hand she was holding in front of her face. Everywhere she looked the mist whirled and eddied like a monstrous dervish, mocking her inability to penetrate its thick veil. Only the darkly grey presence of the wall to her right helped her to hold on to sanity. Thank God for Kevin and that wall, because without it she would never have believed she was travelling in the right direction and many, many times would have been tempted to turn and wander round in wider and wider circles, completely losing her sense of direction.
All the time she had been walking she had been gradually climbing, her legs aching with the strain placed on exhausted muscles, her breath coming in shivery gasps as she fought not to give in to the panic tugging insidiously at her mind. She had been walking for over forty minutes now and there was no sign of the hut. What if she had chosen the wrong wall… what if… She was just forcing down the panicky thoughts when the hut loomed in front of her, a small grey box emerging from the mist, and tears of thankfulness poured down her face as she straightened and stared at it. Oh, thank God! She was barely aware of muttering the words as she stumbled and staggered towards the hut, automatically hugging the wall which had been her guide and protection. As she reached it, she realised how much the temperature had dropped as she moved away from the lee of the wall and felt the ice-flecked mist against her skin.
The hut was a simple stone building, barely twelve foot square. Inside it would be equipped with enough kindling to light the fire, and a small stove run off butane gas together with some basic supplies of food. Kate knew this because Kevin had once told her, when he had first enlisted her help in raising money to equip these walking stations, and never again would she quibble about the work involved, she thought fervently as she found the door and pushed it open.