by Penny Jordan
Horatio, coming in and finding her crouched there motionless, apart from the tears that ran silently down her face, whined and went up to her.
The warmth of his solid body was comforting, but it wasn’t the comfort she wanted, she acknowledged miserably. What she wanted was Neil and that knowledge almost destroyed her. How had it happened? Why had she let it happen?
All those years ago with Julian she had felt desire, had known and gloried in the intensity of her feminine needs, had joyfully and heedlessly looked forward to her marriage and the pleasures she and Julian would share, because despite her urgings he had refused to make love to her until they were married, and she had secretly been flattered and pleased that he had put his concern for her above his own desire.
How naïve and trusting she had been; but once she had realised the truth, once she had discovered what men really meant when they spoke of love and passion, once she had realised how vulnerable and defenceless her own body could render her, she had made a vow that she would never, never allow herself to be caught in the same trap again. Better never to experience desire, when she knew the pain it could lead to.
Not all men were the same, she had been forced to admit; she had friends who were happy and fulfilled, women who loved and were loved in return, so the fault must lie somewhere within herself. It must be because she was unlovable that she drew users and abusers to her…she attracted men who only wanted her for their own gain.
For five, almost six years she had lived by the rules she had laid down for herself. For that length of time she had been safe and content, and then Neil Saxton had forced his way into her life, confusing her with his actions, deliberately and cold-bloodedly setting out to deceive and destroy her…just like Julian.
Time passed, but she had no real awareness of its passage. Darkness fell and Horatio, hungry and alarmed by the unmoving stillness of his mistress, whined pathetically.
The thunder returned, rolling noisily around the hills.
‘Imagine it as a giant football being kicked from hilltop to hilltop,’ her father had told her as a child. Rue shuddered. She felt icy-cold, stripped of her pride and self-respect, alone in a way she had never felt before. She wanted to close her eyes and go to sleep and stay that way, but Horatio was whining, and the fire had gone out. She had things to do. She was a woman now and not a child. Somehow she must find a way of repairing the damage Neil had done.
Locking the stable door after the horse had bolted, she mocked herself acidly as she got tiredly to her feet, wincing at the onset of pins and needles in her cramped flesh.
She knew of only one way to keep her pain at bay, and that was to work, but right now her body needed sleep, even if her mind did not.
She recognised in some dim, distant way that she probably ought to have something to eat, but there seemed little point. She had no appetite and even less energy. She fed Horatio and let him out. He came back with muddy paws and a wet coat. She rubbed him dry and switched out the lights, making her way reluctantly to bed.
Neil had helped her, yes, but he had exacted a terrible price for that help, a price she was never going to be able to stop paying.
Her heart shuddered and slammed into her ribs as she recognised the truth. She had fallen in love with him. How, she had no idea. Logically it should have been impossible, but when had emotions ever been subject to logic? What frightened her most of all was the knowledge that, had it not been for that saving moment of sanity earlier in the evening, she would willingly, gladly have given herself to him, and would have rejoiced in doing so.
And he would have used her love for him to get what he wanted from her. Just like Julian.
Her love for Julian had been no more than a teenager’s infatuation intensified by the death of her father and her need for someone to lean on. The first night of their marriage had been enough to destroy that infatuation: the cruelty of Julian’s possession of her—a possession, he had let her know in no uncertain terms, that came only because it trapped her legally into continuing their marriage—plus the realisation that he had never loved her, never desired her, that he had wanted her money and not her—all that had killed her feelings for him completely.
Traitorously, an unwanted thought wormed its way into her mind. Perhaps if she had encouraged Neil to make love to her, she might have discovered that her feelings for him would disappear… Angry with herself, she dismissed the thought, recognising it for what it was. Her body ached for him, wanted him so urgently, so painfully that it threatened to overrule the strictures of her mind. And she could not allow that to happen.
She woke up exhausted, her mind drugged to a state of torpor by the nightmares she had endured. To add to her mental misery, her body was stiff, her muscles locked and protesting as she started to move.
She went downstairs in her dressing-gown to let Horatio out and then slumped over the kitchen table, holding a mug of instant coffee…too drained to go to the trouble of making the filter variety she preferred.
The sky was grey and sullen; the previous night’s wind had dropped and so had the temperature. Puddles reflected the metallic sheen of the sky. No watering would be necessary today, she reflected grimly. She would have to spend the day in the drying shed, dealing with yesterday’s crop, and there would be no Neil to help her.
The air in the kitchen suddenly seemed to choke her and she had to open one of the windows.
Reluctantly she dragged herself upstairs to get showered and dressed. From her window she could see as far as the farmland which Mrs Dacre claimed had been sold. She frowned as she looked at it. What on earth had possessed the builder to buy it? He would have no access to it. She frowned as she remembered how unpleasant and threatening he had been to her. He was the kind of man who was so contemptuous of women, and so very arrogant in his assumption that he could take whatever he wished from life, that even if she had been tempted to sell she suspected she would have refused simply for the pleasure of refusing him.
She grimaced a little to herself as she remembered how he had warned her that he hadn’t given up. And now he had bought some other land. She was a little surprised that he hadn’t bought the Court instead, and then she remembered that the building was listed and that he was hardly likely to have been granted planning permission.
She was just turning away from the window when she heard the sound of a shotgun being fired. The shots came from Neil’s land and she frowned, wondering what he was shooting. Odd parties of youths sometimes spent their weekends shooting over the farmlands after the harvest had been gathered in, their prey rabbits, and during that time of year, early in the morning when the mist still lay on the fields, her Sunday peace would be destroyed by the sound of shots. But it was unusual to hear anyone using a gun at this time of the year.
Tiredly she went downstairs, determined to cast Neil Saxton firmly from her mind…and from her heart. Something told her that that was not going to be easy.
Work and more work, that was what she needed, and she certainly had no lack of it, she admitted wryly, as she made herself some fresh coffee and slid bread into the toaster. While she waited for it to toast she went to the back door and opened it, calling Horatio. His morning amble was normally a fairly perfunctory affair. He liked his breakfast too much to linger outside for very long.
She waited to hear the familiar sound of his metal disc clinking against his collar as he came crashing through the undergrowth. A clumsy dog, her Horatio, but a lovable, protective friend.
When she heard nothing she called again. Her toast popped out of the toaster, but she ignored it, a sudden inexplicable sensation of fear crawling down her spine. That shot…Horatio loved to chase rabbits, even though he never caught any. Could Neil…? But no. He would have seen the dog…would have realised… Clumsily she reached for her wellington boots and pulled them on, not stopping to examine the panic that engulfed her, but running unsteadily towards the gate that led into the field.
For once she paid no attention to her f
lowers, squelching down the muddy path, intent on reaching the stile that led into the home park.
It was her fault if anything had happened to Horatio… She shouldn’t have let him stray on to someone else’s land…but the previous owners had been there so rarely, and Horatio so enjoyed his harmless pursuit of the rabbits that lived in the home park.
She reached the stile and found she was slightly out of breath. She climbed it and from the top surveyed the park, frantically calling Horatio’s name. The sound of her voice disturbed some rooks, making them caw noisily as they rose from their untidy nests with flapping wings. Rue ignored them, hurrying in the direction of the stream, which was Horatio’s favourite hunting ground. He had some Labrador in his mongrel ancestry, and enjoyed pretending that he was a water-dog.
The stream skirted through the copse that lay between the home park and the farmland. Rue had seen her first kingfisher there, and, on one never-to-be-forgotten occasion, an otter playing sleekly with the water. The stream had always been a place of magic to her, and emotion left over from her childhood when she had quite happily played on its banks, but today… She remembered that the shots she had heard had come from this direction.
No matter how much she called his name and strained her ears, there was no familiar sound of the heavy, clumsy body panting through the undergrowth.
Almost frantic with fear, she reached the stream and saw at once the paw-marks in the soft mud at the edge of a particularly high piece of banking. She ran up to it and looked down towards the stream.
Horatio was lying on a tiny island of grass and mud, the stream abnormally swollen from the previous night’s rain. He whimpered when he saw her and tried to lift his head, yelping suddenly in pain. As he moved, Rue saw the trickle of blood matting his fur on his hind quarters.
She went cold with shock and disbelief. Part of her had been prepared for this, and yet part of her—by far the larger part, she recognised sickly now—had not been able to believe that Neil would do such a thing. That he could hurt her…yes, she could understand that…but to hurt Horatio, who virtually worshipped him…to cold-bloodedly shoot her dog…
She raised her hand to her face to push angrily at whatever it was that was obscuring her vision and discovered she was crying. She scrambled down the bank and waded out to Horatio. The dog whined again and thumped his tail.
His flesh was torn where the bullet had hit him, and he was bleeding from the tear. He whined again and tried to stand up, collapsing with a whimper of pain when his leg refused to support him.
It wasn’t broken, Rue decided, and as though her presence gave him a surge of strength he managed to stand up and balance himself against her. He couldn’t walk home, she acknowledged, hugging him fiercely in her relief that his injuries seemed relatively minor.
He was not a brave dog, and he was shivering now, so glad to have been rescued. She would have to carry him back to the house.
He was a heavy dog, and she was only small. She looked at the steep bank and acknowledged that she couldn’t climb up it with him. She would have to walk downstream until she could find an easier way out.
It wasn’t easy. Her boots slipped on the moss-covered stones underneath the water, and more than once it swirled in over the top of her wellingtons, soaking her socks and feet. More than once she feared she was going to lose her balance, and more than once she had to stop to rest her arms, but at last the bank shelved down and she was able to stagger out of the stream and on to the footpath.
All she had to do now was to cross the park, and then climb the stile, and then…but one task at a time, one goal at a time.
The stile proved the hardest part, and she wished bitterly that all she had to negotiate was a gate.
The relief of being back on her own land turned her legs weak, but she couldn’t stop now. She had to get Horatio back to the house. She had to ring the vet and get him out to see what damage had been done and most of all she had to report Neil Saxton to the police, she thought bitterly.
By the time she had reached the gate from the fields into her own garden, she was so exhausted that it was only instinct and sheer stubborn determination that kept her going. Her arms ached so much, she felt as though the muscles were on fire, as though they were being relentlessly torn from their sockets. Her back threatened to break in two and her legs were trembling so badly that she dared not stop to rest in case they gave way beneath her.
In her arms Horatio whined and whuffled. The blood from his wound had flowed over her arm where the water from the stream had washed it liberally all over her. Once she had lifted her hand to push her hair out of her eyes, and a streak of blood smeared her face.
Totally exhausted, almost blinded by the tears of fear and tension she dared not shed, she realised suddenly that she had almost made it to the back door. The cottage wavered in front of her, somehow dipping and lifting in the most odd way, and then her knees buckled beneath her, and as she cried out in protest a pair of strong arms reached out and lifted her burden from her, while above her head Hannah’s familiar voice exclaimed in horrified accents, ‘Rue…my dear! What on earth’s happened?’
Hannah? Rue focused on her friend with difficulty and then on the man at her side. The man holding Horatio, soothing him…watching her with such an air of anguished concern that she could not stop herself from saying harshly, ‘If you really want to know, why don’t you ask him?’
She saw the look Hannah and Neil exchanged and demanded bitterly, ‘Go on, ask him. Ask him why he tried to make love to me last night and why he tried to kill poor Horatio…’
‘Rue…’ She heard the warning note in Neil’s voice, but she ignored it.
‘I’ve got to get Horatio to the vet…’
‘I’ll take him.’
The curt male voice seemed to reach her over a distance. She was conscious of a tremendous sense of weakness and despair, and an equally strong need to fight it.
‘So that you can have another go at killing him?’ She was shaking now, tears pouring down her face. ‘Not much of a shot, are you? Put my dog down… Do you honestly think I’d let you take him anywhere?’
He was standing right in front of her, but in some peculiar way she couldn’t focus properly on him, his shape was becoming a dark blur which moved frighteningly.
She heard him saying grimly, ‘Hannah, I think you’d better call a doctor…’ And then the world faded into blackness, suffocating and engulfing her.
When she came round, she was lying upstairs on her own bed. Hannah was standing beside her, watching her worriedly.
‘It’s all right,’ she told her. ‘You fainted. And no wonder, carrying poor Horatio all that way. Neil’s taken him to the vet,’ she added, seeing the concern darkening Rue’s eyes. ‘Oh, Rue, you don’t honestly believe that Neil shot him, do you?’ she asked worriedly, dropping to her knees at the side of the bed.
Rue turned her face away from her friend, reading in Hannah’s eyes her inability to share her belief, but then Hannah didn’t know him as she did…didn’t realise how ruthless and cruel he could be.
‘I’ve sent for the doctor,’ Hannah told her quietly. ‘I think that should be his car now.’
‘I don’t need a doctor,’ Rue told her, struggling to sit up. ‘What I need is the telephone so I can report Neil to the police. When I heard those shots this morning…’ She drew a ragged breath while Hannah gave her a concerned and disquieted look.
‘I’d better go down and let the doctor in.’ At the door she hesitated. ‘Rue…I think you should talk to Neil. He can’t have shot Horatio.’ She broke off as the front door bell clanged.
‘You can believe what you like, Hannah,’ Rue told her aggressively, ‘but you won’t convince me…’
The doorbell clanged again, and with another concerned look at her friend Hannah hurried downstairs.
It was quite some time before she came back with the doctor, and Rue looked at them both suspiciously, wondering what she had told him. Probably that
she was off her head, she thought bitterly. It was plain that Hannah was never going to believe that Neil Saxton was responsible for Horatio’s wound.
It wasn’t Dr Kendrick, whom Rue had known since she was a child, but one of his partners, a brusque Scot with sandy hair and sharp pale blue eyes, and firm fingers that registered her racing pulse and overwrought state while he listened to Hannah’s brief explanation of how she and Neil had discovered Rue staggering back to the house carrying Horatio.
‘Neil…Mr Saxton has taken the dog to the vet. He said he thought it was just a flesh wound, and that Horatio would be all right,’ she added for Rue’s benefit.
A fit of trembling seized Rue and, for no reason she could think of, tears suddenly started to pour down her face.
‘Shock,’ she heard the doctor pronounce, his voice fading as he added quietly, ‘I think she’s going to faint again.’
This time, when she came round, two pairs of eyes were watching her, Hannah’s anxious, and the doctor’s assessing. She had no right to be lying here like this, Rue thought fretfully; she ought to be on the telephone to the police, reporting Neil’s crime.
She heard the doctor say something about ‘exhaustion’ and opened her mouth to deny it, but a horrid weakness seemed to have invaded her, and when he asked Hannah to fetch a glass of water and handed Rue a tablet, she found that somehow or other she was swallowing it. A very short time after that, or so it seemed, she was floating weightlessly into a warm void where her aches and pains vanished completely.
CHAPTER SEVEN
RUE woke up abruptly to find her room in pitch darkness and the door closed. She normally left it open and the lights on in the hall downstairs, a habit she had fallen into when she first started living alone.
She half stumbled and half fell out of bed, her body a mass of aches, especially her arms. Her mouth felt dry—a legacy of the drug the doctor had given her.
As she went towards the light-switch she heard a familiar whimper, and her eyes, accustoming themselves to the dark now, picked out the shape of Horatio’s basket.