She took a few steps back, and shaded her eyes as she looked up again, so that she could see him better.
He was perched on the sloping roof above the kitchen, and he was scowling darkly.
'You!' he said, as he recognised her.
'Me,' agreed Rose, her mouth gradually relaxing into a satisfied grin as she realised that she was certainly in no danger from Nathan Hayward at the moment. She sauntered over to the wooden bench she had sat on yesterday, and comfortably seated herself. 'You look as if you need some help,' she commented.
His scowl deepened. 'Instead of stating the obvious, why not put that ladder back against the wall, so I can get down?' he said tersely.
'I didn't hear you say "please".' Rose was beginning to get a lot of satisfaction from this situation.
'That's because I didn't say it!' Then he seemed to become aware that he was the one who was at a distinct disadvantage at the moment. 'I would be grateful if you would replace that ladder,' he said in a taut voice, obviously finding it a great effort to be even faintly civil.
'It was very careless of you to let it fall in the first place,' Rose observed.
'Anyway, what are you doing up there?'
'Replacing a couple of slates. When I went to get down, my foot slipped, and I kicked the ladder away.'
Rose clucked her tongue. 'How unfortunate. And now you're stuck up there,'
she added, her violet eyes beginning to gleam a little. 'You're really very lucky I turned up. You could have been up there for hours.'
'I heard someone knocking at the front door, and so I shouted out,' he growled. 'I hoped whoever it was would hear me. Of course, I didn't know it was you.'
'You probably didn't expect to see me again.'
'I certainly didn't!'
Rose relaxed back on the bench. She was beginning to enjoy this very much.
'Do you know why I came back here?' she asked him.
'No, I don't. And frankly, I'm not interested. I simply want to get down from here.'
Rose ignored his rudeness. 'I came back because it occurred to me that you owed me an apology. In fact, you owe me a lot more than that, considering what you did to me. But I think I'd probably settle for a really full and comprehensive apology.'
Nathan Hayward glared down at her. Even from this distance, she could see the steely colour of his eyes, and knew that he was hating every moment of this. Good! she thought with some glee. She had never thought she would have an opportunity like this to get her own back, and she intended to make the most of it.
'Is that what I've got to do before you'll help me to get down?' he demanded.
'Give you a grovelling apology?'
Rose's gaze became very cool again. 'Do you know what last night was like for me?' she demanded. 'Shut in that cellar for all those hours by someone I didn't know, not having the slightest idea when—or even if— I was ever going to get out? Or what you were going to do to me when you did let me out?'
'Don't over-dramatise the whole thing,' he said irritably.
'Over-dramatise?' she echoed incredulously. 'I don't think I've over-dramatised anything! What you did was quite literally criminal. You could go to gaol for it!'
'All right, it was a pretty stupid thing to do. I admit that,' he conceded grudgingly. 'And I apologise for it.'
From the tone of his voice, Rose knew perfectly well that he didn't mean a word of it. He didn't regret it at all. He was simply saying what he thought she wanted to hear, because he wanted to get down off that roof. And he couldn't do that without her help.
Well, right now Nathan Hayward was about the last person on earth whom she felt like helping!
Rose got to her feet and glared up at him. 'I think it's about time that someone taught you that you can't do whatever you like, and get away with it. Last night, I needed you to unlock that door and let me out, but you were so drunk that you didn't even remember that you'd locked me in there! Now, you need me to put that ladder back up against the wall, so you can get down. Well, shall I tell you what I intend to do, Mr Hayward? I'm going to go away and forget about you for a while. It might be an hour, a couple of hours— or I might put you right out of my mind until the morning. Do you fancy a night up on the roof?' she enquired sweetly. 'You might be lucky, and it'll be a warm, dry night. Or I might be lucky, and the weather will turn cold and wet. However it turns out, I hope you'll be thoroughly uncomfortable until I decide that 1 feel like coming back again.'
He swore at her with soft venom, and Rose looked up at him with deep antipathy.
'I don't like men who use bad language. In fact, I don't like you, Mr Hayward! And perhaps you'd better not do anything to make me dislike you even more than I do already, or I might not come back at all.'
With that parting shot, she stalked out of the courtyard, not even glancing round for one last look at him. It had been a spur-of-the-moment decision to leave him up there, prompted by his unpleasant attitude and by her own still vivid memories of last night. It would be a very long time before she forgot those long, miserable and often panicky hours she had spent in that cellar. She had no idea how long she planned to leave him up there. Of course, she would come back eventually. She hadn't actually meant it when she had threatened not to come back at all. He wouldn't know that, though. At least, she hoped he wouldn't. She wanted him to sweat for a while—quite a long while. Rose wasn't usually vindictive by nature. In fact, she had never reacted to anyone quite as violently as she had to Nathan Hay ward. But then, no one had ever treated her the way he had!
She got into her car, determined to drive off and forget about him for a while, just as she had threatened. She even started up the engine and got a couple of hundred yards down the lane. Then she stopped the car again. A deep sigh escaped her. It was no good. She couldn't do this. At the time, he had made her so mad that she had really believed she could go through with it. Her bursts of temper never lasted for very long, though. This one was already dying away, leaving a feeling of guilt to take its place. Why on earth should you feel guilty? she asked herself in exasperation. Leaving him sitting on a roof for a while on a hot, sunny afternoon wasn't all that dreadful, was it? It certainly wasn't as bad as spending the night in a cold, dirty cellar!
She sat and stared rigidly out of the window for another few minutes, stubbornly fighting her sudden attack of-conscience. It was no good. In the end, her conscience won—in fact, she had known all along that it would. With another sigh, she restarted the engine, turned the car round, and headed back towards Lyncombe Manor.
Her feet dragged as she made her way back round the house to that sheltered courtyard. She hated giving in so quickly, but at the same time she knew she couldn't deliberately leave him up there any longer.
When she finally reached the courtyard, she looked up at the roof with great reluctance. She could just imagine how unbearably smug he would look when he realised that she had come back already.
He wasn't there, though. At least, not where she had left him. There wasn't any figure silhouetted against the sunlight, impatiently waiting for her to return. Her gaze slid over the stretches of roof on either side, but he wasn't there, either. Where on earth was he? The ladder was still lying on the ground, so no one else had come along and put it up for him. Anyway, she would have seen anyone approaching the manor.
Then she suddenly gave an enormous gulp and her heart actually seemed to stop for a moment. Lying in a deep patch of shade at the foot of the kitchen wall was a sprawled figure. And it wasn't moving.
'The stupid, stupid man,' Rose muttered shakily under her breath as she ran over. He hadn't been prepared to wait until she came back. Instead, he had tried to get down without the ladder, and had fallen.
She dropped to her knees beside him, and nervously felt for a pulse in his wrist. She nearly panicked completely when she couldn't find it. She tried again, and let out a ragged sigh of relief when she finally felt a light thumping against her fingertips. At least he was alive. She didn't know how b
adly hurt he was, though, or if anything was broken. Rose's knowledge of first aid was very elementary. Anyway, she knew this was a job for the experts.
She left Nathan Hayward lying sprawled on the cobbled floor of the courtyard, and rushed into the house. She dashed through the kitchen and along the passageway, not even glancing at that hated cellar door as she passed it, and finally found herself in a narrow, stone-flagged entrance hall. There was an old-fashioned coat-stand and a small, heavy table, but no telephone.
Rose groaned. What if there wasn't any phone at Lyncombe Manor? She pushed open a heavy door on the far side of the hall and found herself in a large room with an oak-beamed ceiling, a huge fireplace, and a lot of ornate wood panelling. She didn't take any notice of her surroundings, though. Her gaze had already fixed on the phone that stood on the table. Her shaking fingers dialled the emergency number. When it was answered a few seconds later, she croaked out her request for an ambulance. When she had given brief details of where she was and why she wanted it, she put down the phone again and raced back to the courtyard.
Nathan Hayward hadn't moved. He was lying on his side, so she could see his face, which looked worryingly pale. She didn't dare move him, in case he had any broken bones, and there wasn't really anything she could do to make him more comfortable. Instead, she just hovered anxiously, hoping it wouldn't take the ambulance too long to get here.
It seemed absolutely ages before she heard the sound of the siren in the distance, although afterwards she realised that it hadn't actually been very long at all. She rushed round to meet the ambulance, and then guided the two men with a stretcher round to the courtyard.
'Fell off the roof, did he?' asked one of the men, as he knelt down and began to run expert fingers over Nathan Hayward's body, searching for any obvious signs of injury.
'He was mending some broken slates,' Rose said in a shaky voice.
'That's a job that's best left to the experts,' observed the ambulanceman. Then he stood up, and nodded to his partner.
'Is he all right?' Rose asked falteringly. 'I mean--are there any really serious injuries?'
'Not as far as I can tell,' replied the ambulanceman, to her intense relief. 'But there could be internal injuries, of course, or fractures that will only show up on X-rays. We'll know more once we get him to hospital. Do you want to come in the ambulance with him, or follow behind in your car?'
'Oh—do I really have to come?' she said with dismay. She was already far more involved in Nathan Hayward's life than she had ever meant to be. She wasn't at all sure that she wanted it to go any further.
They were loading Nathan carefully on to the stretcher now, and one of the ambulancemen looked up at her a little disapprovingly.
'You are his wife, aren't you?' he said.
'Certainly not,' Rose replied at once.
'A relative, then.'
'No. Just—well, a sort of acquaintance. Not even that, really. In fact, I hardly know him.'
'Well, he's going to need someone,' said the ambulanceman in a more practical tone of voice. 'He might need things fetched to the hospital, and there could be people who have to be contacted if his injuries turn out to be worse than they look. And you seem to be the only person around.'
Rose gave a faint grimace. What she really wanted was to drive away from Lyncombe Manor, leaving Nathan Hayward and his problems far behind. She was already deeply regretting coming back here in the first place. On the other hand, she couldn't help feeling rather guilty about the entire situation. After all, she had left him stranded up on that roof. If she had replaced the ladder, as he had asked her to do, none of this would ever have happened.
Of course, if Nathan Hayward hadn't locked her in that cellar, she would never have been tempted to leave him up on that roof in the first place. So, all of this was actually his fault, not hers. If she wanted to drive off and just forget about all this, she would be perfectly justified.
Except that she couldn't do it. Rose knew that it was perfectly ridiculous to feel worried about someone who had treated her so abominably, but he looked so helpless, lying there on that stretcher. Only someone who was really hard-hearted would be able to walk away and leave him.
'All right, I'll follow you to the hospital in my own car,' she said in a resigned voice.
Nathan was loaded into the ambulance, which then drove off with its lights flashing. Rose followed along close behind, and still couldn't quite believe that all of this was really happening. She had gone to Lyncombe Manor to demand an apology from Nathan Hayward, and had ended up in the middle of a major emergency.
At the hospital, she was directed to a waiting-room, where she spent a nerve-racking couple of hours waiting for news. It was very late in the afternoon now, and she was tired, hungry and edgy. A tasteless cup of coffee from a vending machine didn't make her feel any better, and her nerves jumped twitchingly when she saw a man in a white coat finally heading in her direction.
'Did you come in with Mr Hayward?' he asked her.
'Yes, I did,' Rose said a little breathlessly. 'How is he? Has he come round yet?'
'He came round only minutes after he arrived. He's an extremely lucky man. As far as we can tell, his injuries are all minor. Heavy bruising, mainly—he's going to feel very stiff and sore for a few days. We would like to keep him in overnight, for observation, but he refuses to stay.'
From the doctor's tone of voice, Rose guessed that Nathan wasn't proving to be a very co-operative patient.
'Then you're letting him go home?' she said.
'We don't have a lot of choice. We can't force him to stay. He should have someone with him for the next twenty-four hours, though, in case there are any after-effects from the fall.'
'What sort of after-effects?' Rose asked nervously.
The doctor shrugged. 'Shock affects different people in different ways. If there are any severe headaches, nausea, or blackouts, he'll need to be readmitted straight away. Ring us immediately, and we'll send an ambulance.'
'But--' Rose had been about to say that she couldn't possibly stay with him, she didn't even know him, but the doctor was already hurrying off in response to an urgent signal from one of the nurses. 'Oh, this is ridiculous!'
she muttered in exasperation. 'How on earth did I get mixed up in all of this?'
A couple of minutes later, the door to the waiting-room opened and Nathan came in. He was sitting in a wheelchair that was being pushed by a large, cheerful-looking orderly, and he had a black scowl on his face.
'I can walk,' he growled at the orderly.
'As soon as you're outside the hospital, you can run a marathon if you want to,' said the orderly in an unruffled voice. 'But while you're inside the hospital, you're our responsibility, so you'll stay in that wheelchair. Now, where's the young lady who's going to take you home?'
Rose stepped forward. 'That's me,' she said in a very reluctant voice. Nathan glared at her. Then he turned his head and looked up at the orderly. 'I don't want to go with her. Why can't I have an ambulance?'
'Because they've better things to do than to act as a taxi service when you've got your own transport waiting for you,' replied the orderly, his tone pleasant but very firm. He was obviously used to dealing with difficult patients.
Nathan scowled darkly again, but subsided into silence. Rose didn't know if he was a little ashamed of behaving so badly, or just didn't feel well enough to argue any more. He certainly looked very white, and, from the way he occasionally shifted uncomfortably in the wheelchair, she guessed that his bruises were already beginning to make themselves felt.
The orderly wheeled him out, and Rose followed close behind. Once they had left the hospital, Rose led them over to her car. Nathan stiffly levered himself out of the wheelchair and eased himself into the front seat of the car, impatiently shaking off the orderly when he attempted to help him.
'Right,' said the orderly, with a sympathetic glance at Rose, 'he's all yours now.'
'Thanks very much,' muttered
Rose, getting into the car beside Nathan as the orderly pushed away the empty wheelchair.
Nathan stared rigidly out of the front window. He seemed determined to ignore her, and Rose suddenly lost her temper. The last twenty-four hours had been pretty traumatic and it was nearly all entirely his fault. Yet he was being completely boorish and behaving as if she were the one to blame. Well, she had had enough!
'If there's one thing I can't stand, it's people who sulk,' she said, her violet eyes flashing. 'All right, so you fell off the roof and hurt yourself. But that was your fault, not mine. No one asked you to try and get down from that roof without a ladder!'
'Actually, I was just thinking that I've put you to a great deal of trouble,' said Nathan, to her total surprise.
His sudden change of attitude briefly threw her. Her temper was still flaring, though. 'Yes, you have! And I don't know why you're suddenly being so polite. You certainly didn't seem very pleased to see me in that hospital. I waited all afternoon to make sure you were all right, and all you could do was be very rude both to me and that orderly.'
'I know,' agreed Nathan, surprising her all over again. 'Maybe I've been living on my own for too long. I've forgotten how to be polite to people. And on top of that, I hate hospitals. It's childish to be afraid of them, I suppose, but I can't help it, they really get to me.'
'Is that why you wouldn't stay overnight?'
'If I'd been conscious when that ambulance came, I'd have refused to get into it,' he said with a grimace.
'Why do you feel like that?'
He shrugged. 'No particular reason that I know of. A lot of people have the same sort of phobia. There's not much you can do about it—except try to stay healthy!'
'And not fall off any roofs,' she added tartly. She was no longer cross with him, though. She rarely stayed angry for very long. 'That was a pretty stupid thing to do,' she went on, 'trying to get down without a ladder. I wouldn't have left you up there for long, you know.'
Haunted Summer Page 3