“The kids won’t be home for another hour,” he said.
“Probably not.”
He opened the gate. “Want to ask me in for a nightcap?”
“I—I think not. It’s been nice—”
“It doesn’t have to end yet.”
We stood there in front of the open gate, purple clematis spilling over the low stone wall, filling the air with its heady scent. Moonbeams made a soft haze of silver, and I could see his face, all shadowed planes and angles, the eyes dark. Unable to help myself, I touched his cheek with my fingertips and let them linger there for a moment, and then I walked to the front door. Ron followed me. I turned. He was standing very close. He rested his hands on my shoulders.
“I said it doesn’t have to end yet.”
His voice was soft and persuasive, and he was so near, his fingers gently massaging my shoulders. I had a moment of terrifying weakness, and I knew it was the mood, the moonlight, working on me. I barely knew this man, and yet … that didn’t seem to matter. I looked into his eyes and saw the question there. There was a tremor in my voice when I answered.
“I—I think I’d better go in.”
“No nightcap?”
I shook my head.
Ron smiled, that beautifully shaped mouth curving slowly, and then he pulled me into his arms, quite casually. His lips found mine and he drew me closer against him. As he swung me around, my hands gripped his broad back while his mouth continued to move, gently, firmly. My eyes closed, I gave in to delicious sensations like tight buds blossoming inside. No man had ever kissed me like this before, and when he finally released me I felt weak and powerless. It took me a moment to regain my senses.
“Angry?” he asked.
“I should be.”
“I’m not going to apologize, Jane.”
“You—you work fast, don’t you?”
“I only have two weeks. No time to waste.”
“You don’t even know me.”
“I know you,” he said. “I know I want you.”
“It’s the moonlight—”
“No, Jane. It’s something else.”
“Indeed?”
“You know. You felt it, too.”
“I—I’m going inside now.”
He stepped back. He smiled again. He was a gentleman. He knew how far to go, when to withdraw. The mood lightened. Tension vanished.
“Okay,” he said, “but this doesn’t mean I’m giving up.”
“No?”
“I intend to keep plugging.”
“Do,” I said lightly. “Good night, Ron.”
“’Night,” he said, as he sauntered down the steps and down the walk, moving confidently, a spring to his walk, hands jammed in his pockets again. I watched him move through the gate, closing it behind him, and then I opened the door and stepped inside. The hall was flooded with moonlight. I turned on a lamp. I still felt weak, and the pulses at my temples were throbbing. Ron Hunter had stirred emotions I hadn’t known myself capable of feeling, and he was a very determined man. The danger was there, delectable danger, quite real. It would be so easy to fall in love with him, so easy to succumb to that overwhelming charm. I was going to have to be very, very careful in the days to come.
5
I was dreaming, and the dream was vague, confused, with shadowy figures barely perceived through a hazy mist, drifting, as dream figures do, going nowhere in slow motion. The emotions were vague, too, and then there was a jarring note, a noise, and fear sprang up, grew, overwhelming me. I struggled, crying out, aware that I was dreaming, aware that no sound came, and then I sat up, fully awake. My heart was pounding rapidly. My throat was dry. The sheets were a tangled mass around me, and the canopy billowed stiffly in the breeze coming through the opened window. The room was cold. Shivering, I wrapped my arms around myself, staring at the moonlit room as my heart continued to pound.
Gradually the fear vanished and I sighed deeply, shaking my head. I had been having a nightmare, and judging from the state of the bedclothes it must have been a dilly. I hadn’t had a nightmare in years, not since I was a child, but it wasn’t really surprising, not after that cinematic bloodfest I had walked out on last night. No vampire hovered menacingly in the corner. The room was silver gray, misty, familiar furniture making confortable shapes in the semidarkness. The wardrobe gleamed white. The mirror was a silvery blue blur among the shadows. I could barely make out the hands of the ormolu clock. Four thirty. Almost dawn.
I tried to recall the dream, but it wouldn’t materialize. There had been some kind of noise, I remembered, something terribly disturbing. Oh well, it was foolish to dwell on it. I was awake now, completely, and despite the hour I knew I wouldn’t be able to get back to sleep. Infuriating, particularly as I would need all the strength I could muster for the day ahead. I might as well read until it was time for the children to get up. Knowing I wouldn’t be able to sleep until they came in, I had gone down to the library last night and selected a book from the thousands that crammed the shelves, a thick, satisfying novel by Ernest Raymond I remembered reading years ago, all about a genteel, sunlit Victorian world long since vanished. The book was on my night table now, and I was just reaching out to turn on the bedside lamp when the dog howled.
It was a horrifying noise, long, low, completely chilling. It came from the fields behind the house, shattering the heavy night silence with a vengeance. The Hound of the Baskervilles couldn’t have sounded any more frightening, I thought, completely unnerved. The howl hung in the air for perhaps a minute and then died away. My hands were trembling. It must have been a stray dog, but, nevertheless, at this hour of the night the noise conjured up all sorts of alarming images. I found myself waiting for the howl to be repeated. It wasn’t, but there was another sound, quite distinct, coming from the backyard. It was soft and crunching like … like footsteps, cautious, stealthy footsteps coming toward the house.
Leaves rustling, I told myself, or … or some small animal, but no matter how I tried to reassure myself, the noise was still alarming. I sat very still, listening, and it seemed as if my blood had turned to ice. The low crunching continued, slow, steady, with frequent pauses in between, as though whoever it was stopped to look around in the darkness. Hands shaking violently, nerves taut, I reached for my robe at the foot of the bed and pulled it on. I climbed out of bed, tightened the sash at my waist and then moved across the room on bare feet. It required a considerable amount of bravery. I kept thinking about Becky’s “crime wave,” about the body that had been discovered in those fields beyond the trees.
At the window I lifted the curtain back and peered down at the lawn. The trees were silvered, throwing long black shadows over the ash-colored grass, and the shrubs were masses of rustling black, the flower beds drained of all color by the night. The potting shed was a weathered gray, the roof a dark sheen, the windows like silver squares reflecting the moonlight. A nest of shadows surrounded it. I peered but saw nothing, and now the crunching sound was gone. Had I imagined it? No, of course not. It had been quite real, and there was probably some perfectly logical explanation for it. The nightmare and the howling had simply unnerved me, temporarily robbing me of common sense.
Sighing, I started to turn away. It was then that I saw something move, a vague white blur in the pitch-black darkness against the side of the potting shed. I stared, my heart seeming to stand still, and there was another movement, another blur, and then the white was swallowed up by the darkness, disappearing. A trick of light and shadow, nothing more, a flicker of moonlight, surely. Tree limbs groaned softly. Leaves rustled. A solitary bird warbled, just once. There was the faintest blur of pink staining the horizon, the first tentative sign of dawn.
I stepped away from the window, irritated with myself. I wasn’t one of those nervous, hypertense females who lived on the verge of hysteria, who fancied prowlers at the least little creak of a floorboard and imagined rapists lurking in every shadow, but I was certainly acting like one tonight. A nightm
are and a howling dog were no reason to creep about in the darkened room like a terrified maiden. I managed to smile at myself, standing there beside the wardrobe, watching the flickering patterns of moonlight on the carpet.
The smile vanished abruptly.
Someone was creeping down the hall. The footsteps were unmistakable, slow, surreptitious. The floorboards made soft straining noises as weight pressed down on them, slight creaks as it was removed. I stared at the door with horrified fascination, unable to move, my whole body paralyzed. The door gleamed grayish white, the doorknob a dark black ball. As I watched, it moved, it turned, and the door opened slowly, inch by inch. I wanted desperately to let out a bloodcurdling scream, but my throat was tight, constricted, the scream remaining inside.
A small, tattered blonde head peered around the door. Two enormous eyes stared at me. A plump, pajama-clad little body stepped into the room. Becky closed the door behind her. I stared at her. I still wanted to scream. I wanted to throw something at her. I wanted to shake her until her teeth rattled.
“You’re up,” she whispered.
“I’m up,” I said irritably. “I’m also ten years older and probably white-haired for life.”
“You heard it, too, then?”
“I—”
“Someone’s out there. People. I heard ’em talking. Their voices woke me up. Then a dog howled. It howled somethin’ awful. Right after that I heard someone sneakin’ around outside.”
“You obviously had a nightmare.”
“It wasn’t a nightmare,” she protested. “I heard ’em, I tell you. You must of heard ’em, too. Why else would you be up?”
She had me there. I didn’t know what to reply. She padded across the floor on her bare feet. She took my hand, peering up at me in the silvery gray semidarkness. Her mouth was set, her eyes dark and determined. There was no sign of fear on that plump little face.
“We’d better go investigate,” she said.
“Don’t be absurd.”
“There’s someone out there, Janie. He may try to break in.”
“You’re imagining things, pet. You had a bad dream, and—”
I broke off. I realized that I was speaking more for my own benefit than for Becky’s. I was genuinely frightened now, but I was damned if I was going to let her realize it. One had to keep up a front before the children. One had to be adult and sensible. Becky stared up at me, slightly exasperated now.
“You’re scared, aren’t-ya?”
“Of course not!”
“We’ll go down and check things out. I’ll go get the gun—”
“You’ll do no such thing!”
“What do you propose we do?” she asked patiently.
“I—the first thing I’m going to do is turn on the lights. It’s ridiculous to stand here in the dark. Then—”
“If you turn on the lights he’ll know we’re up. You want to phone the police?”
“Becky—”
“They’d ask ever so many questions, upset everyone. Liz would have hysterics, I know she would, and they’d be here for hours. Everyone in the neighborhood would know about it. We can handle this ourselves. I’ll fetch the gun. You can take charge of it, if it’ll make you feel better.”
“All the doors and windows are locked—”
“No, they’re not,” she said, very matter-of-fact. “I left the window in the back parlor unlatched. He could climb in easy as pie. We’d better go down and lock it.”
The thought of that unlocked window disturbed me. I knew I couldn’t rest until it was securely fastened. Common sense told me to phone the police and be done with it, but Liz would have hysterics, and the neighbors would plague us with questions. I wasn’t at all sure that Becky hadn’t simply awakened just as I had, her wild imagination supplying dramatic details where none existed. She was panting to go downstairs, eager to play detective, and I supposed I might as well indulge her. I could have awakened Keith, of course, or I could have called Ron, but I didn’t particularly want an audience. Becky was quite enough.
“Very well,” I said. “We’ll go lock the window.”
“Goody!” she said. I wanted to slap her.
Swiftly, silently, she darted out of the room, and I stepped out into the hall. My eyes were accustomed to the darkness now, and although shadows festooned the walls and made dark clusters in the doorways, I could see quite clearly: the dull white wainscotting, the patterned wallpaper above, the gleaming white bannisters of the staircase leading downstairs. Moonlight spilled in through the windows, and the darkness was a hazy gray, gradually lightening. After a moment or so Becky came pattering back down the hall, a totally preposterous figure in those fluffy pajamas, the shiny black revolver in her hand.
“You’d best be careful,” she remarked, handing it to me. “It’s fully loaded. The safety’s off, too. An inexperienced person really shouldn’t be handling a gun.”
“Oh, shut up,” I snapped. “Come on!”
Holding her hand securely, my other hand nervously wrapped around the butt of the revolver, I moved down the hall, Becky skipping along beside me. I felt thoroughly ridiculous, convinced now that the whole thing was farcical. Moving cautiously down the stairs, I was apprehensive lest Keith and Liz wake up, too. Becky had already seen me at my worst, shrewdly detecting my condition, and I didn’t want the others to realize they had a bloody fool for an aunt. Dignity, poise. That’s what this situation required.
“We’ll lock the window,” I said, trying to sound very adult and responsible, “and then you’re to go straight back to bed.”
“What if we see someone?”
“That isn’t very likely, pet.”
“They were arguin’, I heard ’em. They were back behind the trees at the foot of the property, and I couldn’t make out any words, not at first. I couldn’t make out the voices, either. I just knew they were arguin’ about somethin’. Then one voice got louder. It was deep and angry. ‘You’d bloody well better get it back, you bastard.’”
“Becky!” I admonished.
“That’s what I heard. Heard it clear as day.”
Really, I thought, the child watches far too much television. As all the drapes were drawn downstairs, it was much darker, a semi-opaque blue-black, the furniture barely discernible shapes that seemed to huddle uneasily in the gloom. It was still cold. I shivered, pausing to let my eyes grow accustomed to this deeper darkness. Becky let go of my hand. I could barely see her, a plump white form at my side. We stood there for a moment, listening, and I was far more tense than I cared to be. The house made all those creaking, groaning, rustling noises a house makes at night, and all of them sounded ominous.
“We’d better go lock that window,” Becky whispered. She wasn’t nearly as confident as she had been earlier.
“Of course, that’s what we came down for. Be careful not to stumble. I don’t want to awaken the others.”
“I swear I’m telling the truth, Janie. I really did hear people out there. You believe me, don’t-ya?”
“I believe you thought you heard something, pet. Come on, there’s no cause to be alarmed.”
I took her hand again, feeling quite tender and protective. We made our way slowly down the hall toward the back parlor. I almost crashed into the grandfather clock, avoiding it just in the nick of time. Turning the corner, we reached the open doorway leading into the room, and both of us stopped. Becky squeezed my hand, tightly, violently. I could feel her body stiffen. An icy tingling flashed through me. I caught my breath, horrified.
Someone was at the window. Someone was trying to climb inside.
I was stunned, too stunned to move, and Becky’s earlier bravado had completely deserted her. The child was terrified. The sounds were unmistakable. The screen flapped. There was a loud scraping noise as though a foot were being drawn over the wood. Any second now a leg would be hoisted over the sill.
“Shoot!” Becky cried. “Shoot!”
“I—I can’t—”
“Let
me have the gun!”
I don’t know what propelled me. Perhaps it was her fright, making my own seem selfish. I was the adult. I had the gun. She was depending on me. I rushed into the darkened room, intending to fling back the draperies and shove him back out, intending to frighten him with the gun. God knows what I intended, but I did none of these things. I immediately crashed into a small table. It toppled over. A lamp went sailing to the floor, landing with a shattering explosion. I shouted, employing a word I’d never even remotely considered using before.
The chandelier in the hall burst into light. There was a shrill, hysterical scream from above, then the sound of footsteps thundering down the stairs. The lights in the back hall blazed on. Keith hurried towards us, hastily belting his robe over his pajamas, his face sheetwhite. There was a second scream, then more footsteps on the stairs, clattering loudly. I calmly turned on the lights in the parlor. If he had any sense at all, the prowler was halfway to London by this time.
“What is it?” Keith cried. “What’s happened?”
“Nothing, dear. No reason to be alarmed.”
“I heard a dreadful racket—”
“I knocked over a lamp,” I said, feeling like an absolute idiot.
“But it’s the middle of the night.”
“Almost five, actually. The sun should be rising any minute now.”
Liz tore down the hall in an orange nylon shortie nightgown and a pair of madly tapping high-heeled white mules with big orange puffs. Her raven hair swirled wildly about her shoulders.
“My God!” she shrieked.
“Calm down,” Keith said.
“She’s got a gun!”
“So I have,” I remarked, promptly putting it down on a table. “Do control yourself, Liz. Everything’s over now.”
Meet a Dark Stranger Page 6