Shades of Twilight (35 page)

She stayed away for the rest of the afternoon, stopping at a shady creek to water the horse and let him graze on the soft, fresh grasses nearby. She sat in the shade and blanked her mind, letting the time drip away as she did at night when she was alone and the sleepless hours stretched before her. Anything could be gotten through, one second at a time, if she refused to let herself feel.

But when the purple and lavender shades of twilight began to darken the world around her, she knew she couldn't delay any longer and reluctantly mounted the horse and turned his head toward Davencourt. An anxious Loyal came out to meet her.

“Are you all right?” he asked. Webb must have been in a black mood when he returned, but Loyal didn't ask what had happened; that was her business, and she'd tell him if she wanted. But he did want to know if she was physically okay, and Roanna managed to nod.

“I'm fine,” she said, and her voice was steady, if a trifle husky sounding. Odd; she hadn't cried, but still the strain was evident in her tone.

“You go on up to the house,” he said, his brow still furrowed with concern. “I'll take care of the horse.”

Well, that was twice in one day. Her protective shell must not be as far along in reconstruction as she'd hoped. She was tired enough, devastated enough, that she simply said, “Thanks,” and dragged herself toward the house.

She thought about sneaking up the outside stairs again, but somehow that seemed like too much effort. She had sneaked up those stairs too often in her life, she thought, instead of facing things. So she walked up the front steps, opened the front door, took the main stairs. She was halfway up them when she heard the thud of boot heels and Webb said from the foyer, “Roanna, we need to talk.”

It took every ounce of strength she had, but she turned to face him. If anything, he looked as strained as she felt. He was standing at the foot of the stairs, his hand on the newel post and one foot on the first step, as if prepared to come
after her if she didn't obey. His eyes were hooded, his mouth a grim line.

“Tomorrow,” she said, her voice soft, and turned away … and he let her go. With every step she expected to hear him coming after her, but she reached the top of the stairs and then her room, unhindered.

She took a shower, dressed, went down for supper. Her instinct was to hide away in her room, just as it had been to take the back stairs, but the time for that was past. No more hiding, she thought. She would face what she had to face, handle what she had to handle, and soon she would be free.

Webb watched her broodingly during supper, but afterward he didn't try to maneuver her into a private conversation. She was tired, more exhausted than she thought she'd ever been before, and though with what had happened weighing on her mind she doubted she would even doze that night, still she wanted to lie down, had to lie down. She said good-night to everyone and returned to her room.

As soon as she stretched out in her comfortable bed, she felt the odd, limp weightiness of drowsiness come over her. Whether it was the ride, the accumulated lack of sleep, the stress, or a combination of all of it, she fell deeply asleep.

She didn't know when Webb silently entered the room through the balcony doors and checked on her, listening to her deep, even breathing to make certain she was asleep, watching her for a while, then leaving as quietly as he had entered. On this night, she wasn't awake to watch the hands on the clock sweep inexorably around.

She didn't remember dreaming; she never did.

In the deepest hour of the night she left her bed. Her eyes were open but strangely unseeing. She walked without haste, without hesitation, to her door and opened it. Her bare feet were sure and silent on the carpet as she drifted down the hall, ghostly in her white nightgown.

She wasn't aware of anything until a sudden bursting pain shot through her head. She heard a strangely distant cry, and then there was only darkness.

W
ebb bolted out of bed, instantly awake and horribly certain that he'd heard Roanna crying out, but the sound hadn't come from her room. He grabbed up his pants and jerked them on, fastening them as he ran out the door. The cry had sounded as if it came from the direction of the stairs. God, what if she'd fallen down them—

The rest of the family had been awakened, too. He heard a babble of voices, saw lights coming on, doors opening. Gloria poked her head out just as he ran past. “What's going on?” she asked fretfully.

He didn't bother to answer, all his attention focused on getting to the stairs. Then he saw her, lying crumpled like a broken doll in the front hall that ran at a right angle to the stairs. He turned on the overhead light, the chandelier almost blinding in its brilliance, and his heart almost stopped. Blood, wet and dark, matted her hair and stained the carpet beneath her head.

He heard a clatter downstairs, as if someone had stumbled into something.

Webb looked up and saw Brock standing there blinking sleep from his eyes, not quite understanding what was going on. “Brock,” he snapped. “There's someone downstairs.”

His cousin blinked again, then comprehension cleared his gaze. Without a word he ran down the stairs. Greg didn't hesitate as he followed his son.

Webb knelt beside Roanna and gently pressed his fingers to her neck, hardly daring to breathe. Panic swelled in him like a balloon, suffocating him. Then he felt her pulse throbbing under his fingertips, reassuringly strong, and he went weak with relief. He ignored the rising crescendo of voices around him and gently turned her over. Harlan was blustering, Gloria and Lanette were clinging to each other and making moaning sounds. Corliss stood frozen just outside her bedroom door, her eyes wide with terror as she stared down at Roanna's limp form.

Lucinda struggled through the press of bodies and sank heavily to her knees beside him. Her color was pasty, and her trembling hand dug into his arm. “Roanna,” she whispered, her voice catching. “Webb, is she—?”

“No, she's alive.” He wanted to say she'd just been knocked out, but her injury could be more serious than that. She hadn't regained consciousness, and the fear was growing in him again. Impatiently he looked at Gloria and Lanette, driving each other into higher levels of hysteria, and dismissed them as useless. His gaze snapped over to Corliss.

“Corliss! Call 911. Get the paramedics out here, and the sheriff.” She just stared at him, not moving, and he barked,
“Now!”
She swallowed convulsively and darted back into her suite. Webb heard her voice, high and trembling, as she talked to the 911 operator.

“What happened?” Lucinda moaned, stroking Roanna's face with shaking fingers. “Did she fall?”

“I think she surprised a burglar,” Webb said, his voice tight with anger and anxiety, and the fear he was barely holding at bay. He wanted to pick Roanna up in his arms, cradle her against his chest, but common sense told him to let her lie still.

She was still bleeding, her blood soaking into the carpet. A dark red stain was spreading out from where her head lay.

“Corliss!" he yelled. “Bring a blanket and a clean towel!”

She was there in just a moment, stumbling over the blanket she was dragging, and simultaneously struggling to pull on a robe over her rather skimpy silk sleepshirt. Webb took the blanket and carefully tucked it around Roanna, then folded the towel and as gently as possible slipped it under her head, cushioning it from the floor and positioning the pad so that it pressed against the bleeding wound.

“W-will she be all right?” Corliss asked, her teeth chattering from shock.

“I hope so,” he said grimly. There was a savage pain in his chest. What if she
wasn't
all right? What would he do?

Lucinda collapsed backward, her legs folding under her. She buried her face in her hands and began sobbing brokenly.

Gloria stopped wailing, the sound ceasing as if it had been cut with a knife. She dropped to her knees beside her sister and put her arms around her. “She'll be all right, she'll be fine,” she crooned in reassurance, smoothing Lucinda's white hair.

Roanna stirred, moaning a little as she tried to lift her hand to her head. She didn't have the strength or the coordination, and her arm fell limply back to the carpet. Webb's heart leaped wildly. He picked up her hand and cradled it in his. “Roanna?”

At his tone, Lucinda pulled away from Gloria, frantically scrambling closer. Her expression was both terrified and hopeful.

Roanna took two deep breaths, and her eyelids fluttered open. Her gaze was unfocused, confused, but she was regaining consciousness, and that was what mattered.

Webb had to swallow a lump in his throat. “Roanna,” he said again, leaning over her, and with an obvious effort she looked at him, blinking as she tried to clear her vision.

“You're fuzzy,” she mumbled.

He could hardly breathe, his heart was pounding so violently. He placed her fingers against his rough cheek. “Yeah, I need to shave.”

“Not that,” she said, her words slurred. She took another deep breath, as if exhausted. “Four eyes.”

Lucinda gulped back her sobs, choked laughter mingling with the tears as she reached for Roanna's other hand.

A tiny frown pulled at Roanna's brow. “My head hurts,” she announced in confusion, and closed her eyes again. Her speech was clearer. She tried again to touch her head, but Webb and Lucinda were each holding a hand, and neither of them was inclined to let go.

“I imagine it does,” Webb said, forcing himself to speak calmly. “You've got a hell of a bump back there.”

“Did I fall?“ she murmured.

“I guess so,” he replied, not wanting to alarm her until he knew something for certain.

Brock and Greg came panting back up the stairs. Brock was wearing only a pair of jeans, zipped but not snapped, and his sturdy chest gleamed with sweat. He had picked up a poker from somewhere, and Greg had taken the time to get the .22 squirrel rifle from its rack over the fireplace in the den. Webb looked inquiringly at them, and they shook their heads. “He got away,” Greg mouthed silently.

Sirens were wailing in the distance. Greg said, “I'd better put this up before the sheriff gets here. I'll let them in.” He went back downstairs to return the rifle to its rack, lest he alarm a deputy already on edge with adrenaline.

Roanna tried to sit up. Webb put his hand on her shoulder and pressed her back down, alarmed at how little effort it took to do so. “No you don't. You're going to stay right here until a medic says it's all right for you to move.”

“My head hurts,” she said again, a bit truculently.

It had been so long since he'd heard that tone in her voice that he couldn't help grinning, despite the terror that had been clawing at his insides and was only now beginning to truly subside. “I know it does, honey. Sitting up will only make it worse. Just lie still.”

“I want to get up.”

“In a minute. Let the paramedics take a look at you first.”

She gave an impatient sigh. “All right.” But before the
sirens had wound to a stop outside, she was trying again to sit up, and he knew she was disoriented. He'd seen it before in injured people; the instinct was a primitive one, to get up, keep moving, put distance between yourself and whatever had caused the injury.

He could hear Greg explaining as he led a veritable parade of people up the stairs. There were six paramedics and at least that many deputies, with more arriving, from the sound of the sirens as additional vehicles speeded up the road.

Webb and Lucinda were shouldered to the side as the paramedics, four men and two women, gathered around Roanna. Webb backed against the wall. Lucinda clung weakly to him, trembling, and he put a supporting arm around her. She leaned heavily against him, using his strength, and with dismay he felt how fragile her once strong body felt in his grip.

More deputies arrived, and the sheriff. Booley Watts was retired now, but the new sheriff, Carl Beshears, had been Booley's chief deputy for nine years before being elected sheriff, and he had worked on Jessie's case. He was a compactly muscular man with iron gray hair and cold, suspicious eyes. Booley had operated with a sort of goodold-boy Andy Taylor kind of manner; Beshears was more brusque, straight to the point, though he had learned to temper the bulldog, straight-ahead tactics he'd learned in the marines. He began gathering the family together, ushering them to the side. “Folks, let's get out of the medics' way now, and let them take care of Miss Roanna.” His steely gaze lit on Webb. “Now, what happened here?”

Until then, Webb hadn't realized the similarities between what had happened to Roanna tonight and Jessie's death ten years earlier. He had been concentrating on Roanna, terrified for her, taking care of her. The old, cold fury began to build in him as he realized Beshears suspected him of attacking Roanna, perhaps trying to kill her.

He ruthlessly suppressed his anger, though, because now wasn't the time for it. “I heard Roanna scream,” he said in
as even a tone as he could manage. “The sound came from the front of the house, and I was afraid she'd gotten up without turning on any lights and fallen down the stairs. But when I got here, I saw her lying just where she is now.”

“How did you know it was Roanna screaming?”

“I just did,” he said flatly.

“You didn't think it could be anyone else in the house who'd gotten up?”

Lucinda gathered herself, galvanized by the obvious suspicion in Beshears's voice. “Not usually,” she said in a firm tone. “Roanna suffers from insomnia. If anyone is wandering around the house at night, it's likely to be her.”

“But you were awake,” Beshears said to Webb.

“No. I woke up when I heard her scream.”

“We all did,” Gloria put in. “Roanna used to have nightmares, you know, and that's what
I
thought was happening. Webb ran past my door just as I opened it.”