She shifted, a relaxing of tension, a change of balance. ‘Let me go.’
He had to duck his head to hear, she spoke so softly. He let go.
She sat up slowly, her back to him, then got to her feet, ignoring his offered hand, brushing mud from her trousers with slow, jerky movements. She turned partway towards him, looking at him out of the corner of her eye, as if facing him fully was beyond her.
‘What do we do?’ she asked.
‘Get ahead,’ he said, ‘while I work out how to neutralise them.’
Catherine looked at him, then, and he wished she hadn’t. ‘OK.’
‘On, up,’ he said, waving at the slope ahead of them, towards an old dry stone wall that crossed the path, and she started running again.
He’d been crazy to think there was any way he could get away with this. Crazy to think it would all go away if he didn’t face it. Well, now he was facing it, and facing this: he was going to see to it that Catherine survived, and then…and then…
Well. For him, there was no ‘and then’.
Catherine scrambled through a gap in the wall, breathing hard, her legs burning. Jonathan caught her arm and gestured ahead, further up slope, where she could see a ragged tumble of stones where a cairn and stone shelter lay beside the path.
‘Catherine. Take cover there and wait.’
‘Why?’
‘So I can get round behind and –’
‘No. Why did they want me dead?’
He pulled her down, speaking quickly, ‘That contract last month, the network security one? They said you downloaded something you weren’t –’
‘I didn’t!’
His grip tightened on her arm. ‘It doesn’t matter. It only matters that they thought you did.’
She stared. He wasn’t looking at her, was peering round the rough stones in the wall. The yellow lichen looked as if someone had dropped splodges of turmeric on the green-grey stone.
‘That was all?’ she whispered.
‘Yes. It was enough. For them. Now move.’
She didn’t look at him, but headed where he’d pointed. She glanced back, looking down across the climb they’d made. Their pursuers staggered over the rough ground, but Jonathan was bent double behind the wall, heading back.
As she watched, the men caught sight of her and shouted, just as Jonathan slipped over the wall, dropping into the ghyll almost behind them.
And the roiling grey cloud crested the tops of the crags and swept across the fell before a strengthening wind, hiding everything.
Third Date
‘Wow,’she laughed, hanging on to her hood. ‘What a view. I’m so glad you brought me to Beachy Head.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Jonathan said, aggrieved, shouting over the howling gale.
She just laughed again, leaning into the wind to stagger over to the smooth, round compass rose set into the ground.
‘Careful,’ he said, catching hold of her shoulder. ‘Don’t wander off. You can’t see the edge in this fog.’
She grinned back at him, holding her hair off her face. ‘Ah,’ she said, pointing, ‘over there is Eastbourne. And there’s the lighthouse.’ She could barely see the end of her own finger.
‘Ha. Ha.’
She let out a peal of laughter at his tone.
‘This is not what I imagined when I planned this,’ he said.
‘Oh, and what had you imagined?’ she teased, but when she turned he wasn’t smiling. There was some dark, strong emotion twisting his face. ‘Jonathan?’
‘I imagined you here, happy, never knowing…and then…’
A gust of wind made her stagger. When she looked again, his face was clear, his eyes smiling.
‘Then what?’
‘Then maybe this,’ he said, pulling her close. ‘Catherine,’ he said, against her lips. ‘Catherine.’ It began to rain, but it was a long time before they returned to the car.
Later, he’d asked her if he could see her again, and where.
‘It’s my turn to choose,’ she said, flushed, breathless. ‘Text me on Friday morning. Are you free all day?’
He glanced away and back, his face still, his eyes watchful. An expression she thought might be anger twisted his face, but it was gone so quickly she couldn’t be sure. He took a deep breath and some of the tension seemed to flow out of him.
‘Sure,’ he said. ‘I’ll text you,’ and smiled, just a little.
She lived on that smile for a week.
Catherine hunkered down on the lea side of a cairn, crying and shivering while the mist plastered her hair to her skull.
Jonathan was…was a killer. And he’d been sent to kill her.
She tried not to sniff, tried not to sob, but all she could hear was wind, water, and the crackling rustle of her own waterproofs. Yards away, the edge of the mountain dropped down hundreds of feet. She could see nothing. She wasn’t sure how long she’d been here. She felt stiff, cold. All she wanted was to curl up, fall asleep and never wake up.
She’d fallen in love, deeply in love, with a man who was supposed to kill her. Shame curled in her gut, making her nauseous.
She sank into herself, hating her choices, hating her instincts, letting thought fall away into nothing. Thought receded, but memory wouldn’t leave her: touches, kisses, moments of absolute connection. When she’d looked into the eyes of a man she thought loved her. When she’d looked into the eyes of a killer.
Yes, Jonathan had meant to kill her. And hadn’t been able to.
Concentrating, she took deep breaths, feeling as if she was surfacing from a deep pit, trying to push back hysteria, the awful sense of unreality. The cold, wet air got to her chest, hurting her throat. But it cooled and calmed her, too.
She held her breath a moment, straining to hear any sound of pursuit. Nothing. She could barely see the hand in front of her face. She couldn’t move in case she fell, couldn’t call for help unless she attracted a killer…or her husband.
‘Catherine…’ The voice was disembodied, barely a whisper, divorced from any direction. She opened her voice to answer, then realised she had no idea who was calling.
A chink of stone on stone, a footstep. There, away to the right? ‘Catherine. It’s me.’
Not good enough, she thought.
Another scuffing sound, a click of something on rock, and a huddled shape loomed out of the fog for a moment. The scream choked in her throat. It was only a sheep, shaggy and grey, stopping to look at her with dark eyes before slipping away like a ghost into the gloom, treading carefully along the edge of the crags. The mist shifted and streamed.
‘Catherine. I know you’re there.’
She lay still.
‘Doesn’t this remind you,’ the whispered voice said, a familiar thread of laughter running through it, ‘of our third date?’
Moments of absolute connection.
‘I’m here,’ she called softly, and got to her feet, facing the direction of the voice. She heard Jonathan coming, saw his shape loom out of the mist.
‘One down,’ he said.
Close to, she could see blood on his cheek, and under his fingernails, and he wouldn’t meet her eyes. She faced him anyway, studying the face of husband, lover and killer.
And heard running footsteps behind her.
Jonathan dragged at her with both hands, hauling her out of the other man’s path as he ran them down. She fell, rolling, hearing the sickening thud as the two men collided, scrabbling in the stones. She heard hard breathing, blows, the sounds of fierce struggle as she came to her knees, pushing herself upright on bloodied hands.
‘Catherine…’ Jonathan gasped. ‘Run.’
She wouldn’t. She couldn’t. But as she hesitated she saw Jonathan buck and strain, rolling both men over and over, out towards the grey gulf and over the jagged edge of the crag.
She crammed her fist into her mouth against the scream, shaking so violently she thought she’d fall.
The mist was drawing into patches now, streaming p
ast in moments of blindness and sight. The empty cragside, the jagged ridges that rose between the gullies like buttresses.
White blindness, then the dark shape of a man heaving himself over the edge of one of those buttresses, bulky in tailored jacket and jeans.
Catherine moved almost without thought, running a wavering path diagonally towards the neighbouring ridge, sickeningly aware of the wind rising vertically up the yawning gulf either side of her. She steadied herself, turned back to face the survivor. The figure straightened, and some chance flicker of the mist showed her a stranger’s face, ugly with triumph.
‘I’m here,’ she said. Calm Catherine. Sensible Catherine. She saw the gleam of teeth as he smiled at her.
She smiled back, and he stepped forward, reaching for her.
She saw the exact moment he realised he’d stepped out into air, the twist of his features. He clawed towards her, his fingers brushing her face as he fell, chill and slick. She heard the scream, and the thump, long after. Then nothing, until a raven croaked, far down the valley, like the laughter of a stone golem.
Eventually she sat, curling carefully down onto the close-growing turf over gravel and slate. A tiny pom-pom of a dusky pink flower bobbed madly in the weakening wind. It had shifted, she thought. She could smell wood smoke and the softer, valley flavours. She thought there was a tang of something citrus, and the indefinable scent that was simply his body heat.
Catherine looked down, and saw the hand, bloodied across the knuckles, gripping the stone by her feet.
Fourth Date
He was certifiable.
Utterly and completely insane.
Jonathan stared down at his phone. It was slippery in his grip.
Quick, decisive, untouchable. Those were the words his colleagues used to describe him. Now he’d been holding his phone in his hand for ten minutes straight.
He touched the screen to life: Good morning. What’s in store for our fourth date? J.
The reply came back with humbling speed. Just a ‘good morning’ with an address. He copied the postcode to his GPS app, got in the car and drove.
It wasn’t a bar, hotel or beauty spot.
It was her home.
She stood at the top of the steps leading up into her neat little Victorian terrace, shyly holding the door open. She wasn’t dressed up or made up. Her hair, damply curling, hung around her shoulders, she wore sweats and soft layers in shades of charcoal grey and dusky pink, and her bare toes curled on the chequerboard tiles. She looked utterly beautiful. She looked like everything he’d ever wanted, and knew he didn’t deserve in his lonely, ugly life.
‘Come in,’ she said.
Yes, he was insane. But it was a beguiling kind of insanity. He was falling. Or was he flying?
Catherine looked down at him from a height of four steps that felt like a mountain. She hadn’t opened her home to a lover in…how long?
Still Jonathan stood at the bottom of the steps, unmoving. Finally he spoke. ‘I can’t do this anymore…’
She stared at her feet. The carefully painted bubble-gum pink toenails looked cute and flirty. She felt cold.
‘Yeah. I understand,’ she lied.
‘No…wait…’ He came up the steps in a rush, cupping her face in his palms. ‘What I can’t do…I can’t…’ He searched for words as his gaze searched her face. ‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, his voice suddenly decisive, deep. It sang in the air between them, fizzed in her blood. She was breathless, caught in his eyes. ‘It doesn’t matter what I can’t do,’ he said, slowly. ‘What I can do is this, us. Here, now.’ His face was a dark, shifting shadow in her eyes.
Jonathan looked up. She was alive.
He knew his grip was failing. But there was still so much to do. They’d need to disappear, new identities, they’d…
But who was he kidding? There was no ‘they’.
She looked down, blank-faced, making no move to help him. He half expected her to stamp on his fingers. He saw her lips move, but it was a second or two before he registered words.
‘I want a divorce.’
Jonathan had thought he was cold before. Now he felt as if someone had filled his veins with iced water. He swallowed. ‘I understand,’ he croaked.
‘And then…’ Catherine stood up. She brushed the dirt from her fingers and swept her hair off her face. ‘And then you can take me out on another first date.’
Worlds lived and died in the time it took him to remember to breathe again. Easy, he thought, don’t rush. He took a moment to close his eyes and press his forehead to the stone. ‘I’d like that,’ he said.
Sun broke through the parting clouds. It showed Catherine his face, upturned, shadowed.
I know the worst of this man, she thought. I would like to learn the best.
She lay flat on the stony ground and reached out her hand.
Desperate Measures
Rosemary Laurey
Rosemary Laurey
USA Today bestselling author ROSEMARY LAUREY is a retired special education teacher and grandmother who now lives in Ohio and has a wonderful time writing and letting her imagination run riot.
As Rosemary, she writes paranormal and contemporary romance. Her work has received numerous nominations and awards including the PRISM Best of the Best and the Dorothy Parker Award. She also writes fantasy as Georgia Evans. For news of Rosemary’s latest releases see: www.rosemarylaurey.com
Desperate Measures
Mr Donner’s Long Room, Scarborough, June 1808
Eleanor Petersham was scarcely out of mourning but this afternoon her father had announced she was to remarry. He’d already selected her spouse.
But she was no longer a cowed girl of seventeen.
If Jeremiah had fulfilled his promise to leave her an independence, she could have defied her parents and set up her own establishment. Now, she had one hope to avoid her impending nuptials: destroy her reputation.
All she needed was a man willing to ruin her.
She scanned the room with little expectation she would find such a man among the respectable families assembled for the evening’s jollification. Everyone there was known to her and all were sadly upright and respectable.
Except…
There, across the dance floor, in conversation with Peter Abbot, was a man she remembered from years back: a cousin of the Abbot’s, who’d been involved in a scandal with Penelope Fannin’s elder sister. If Eleanor remembered rightly, the lad had been hastily shipped off to foreign parts. South Africa had it been? India? She had no idea, but he might just be the perfect man for her purpose.
A couple of dances with him, a visit to the supper room on his arm, a little gentle dalliance and her parents would be hissing with horror. If she could only be seen leaving with him and disappear for an hour or so, she’d be ruined in the eyes of all Yorkshire society.
Skirting the dance floor, pausing only to empty her glass in a potted fern, she approached them. ‘Peter!’ she said.
‘Eleanor, how capital to see you. Mother said you were just out of mourning.”
‘I saw her just now. She promised to call.’
He nodded at the man at his side. ‘Eleanor, remember by cousin Tom? Thomas Holcombe. Tom, Mrs Eleanor Petersham. Tom’s just back from Jamaica.’
The Indies! They had wanted to get rid of him.
Courtesies exchanged, they traded polite nothings until she called up her courage and handed Peter her empty glass
‘Peter, please get me another glass, I’m parched.’
That earned her an odd look, but ever considerate and courteous, Peter obliged.
They were alone.
‘Madam.’ A wry smile curled one side of Mr Holcombe’s full mouth as his dark eyes met hers.
‘Sir. Are you enjoying Scarborough for long?’ It would be perfect if he were away in a few days.
‘For as long as the inclination takes me. I hear the sea air is bracing and invigorating.’
‘Have you found it so, Mr H
olcombe?’
He paused, as if considering her question, then smiled. ‘I believe I do.’ She must not permit that smile to distract her. ‘Tell me, Mrs Petersham, do you really want another glass of insipid punch?’
Time for the truth. ‘No, I don’t believe so.’
‘I thought not.’ He raised a dark eyebrow. ‘What do you want, madam?’
‘To have you destroy my reputation,’ seemed a trifle forward at this stage in their acquaintance. The blush rose to her face, burning her cheeks. She swallowed, in an effort to ease her tight throat. ‘Perhaps, sir, a dance?’
As if one with her plans, the master of ceremonies requested everyone take their partners for Sir Roger de Coverly.
‘May I have the pleasure?’ Tom Holcombe asked. He grasped her gloved hand and led her across the floor to take a place in the second set. From the corner of her eye, Eleanor saw her mother’s startled face and deliberately turned to Mr Holcombe. As the music began, she could not take her eyes off him.
His arm was on her waist now, turning her, his clasp strong. She stepped back in line as he released her and cast a glance over the shoulder as she turned.
Her mother might glower but all Eleanor had eyes or thought for was Thomas Holcombe.
He watched her skirts billow as she spun and advanced towards him. After his sudden exile from Scarborough years back, he had scant fondness for the place but he’d yielded to Peter’s persuasion to keep him company and it seemed fortune was in his favour.
He had no memory of Mrs Petersham from earlier times but she was clearly no ingenue but rather an eager widow. A casual dalliance with a woman who understood the rules suited him nicely. As she neared, her full breasts rose and fell with her hastened breathing. When she turned away, he had a fine view of a firm and rounded bottom and imagined the softness of her breasts and the warmth of her skin under her dress.
The dance ended. Her smile and her sparkling eyes promised more than a few minutes on the dance floor. Offering his arm, he led her towards a pair of gilt chairs, just as the master of ceremonies announced the Gay Gordons.
Truly, Madly, Deeply Page 41