Shadows (10 page)

He kicked out at a fallen branch littering the track.

At seventeen, Rory had accepted that the things that had embarrassed him through the last few years at schoolhis height, his looks and later, he’d been told, his voicewere physical assets.  More than one girl had assured him it was his voice that did the trick.  So usually all he had to do was say a few pleasant words, give them his total attention and they gazed at him in adoration.

Now he was saddled with a girl who was far too clever for her own good and obviously did not fall for his charms.  Not that he wanted a stupid girl on his arm, heavens, no, but somehow, deep down, her refusal dinted his pride.

He had never given up on something he really wanted.

And Melissa was special.

Jonny ought to have warned him that Melissa was an Army brat, and that she had a stubborn streak a mile long.  Rory shook his head.  Several of his male friends came from Army families, and they were all of them independent and self-reliant.  Self-reliance seemed part of the breed, and Melissa shaped up to be in that same mold.  Unless she relented soon, he was in for three weeks of unrequited lust.  His fingers curled up into clenched fists.  And this time, three weeks was much too long.  It would drive him demented to be so close to her and continually held at arm’s length.

Already he had learned more about her in three days here than he ever would in London.  Most of the time she was easy company, without a trace of the coyness or sexual teasing that most girls employed.  Nor was she demanding.  She was direct and honest and didn’t interpret the occasional silence as a personal insult.

That was all to the good.  But on the downside, she was not keen on sex, and strange things happened around her.  He plunged his hands deep in his pockets.  More worrying still, he’d told her things about his family he had confessed to no one, not even when he was twelve years old and homesick at boarding school.  That turned him hot with embarrassment.

Perhaps this whole holiday had been a mistake.

He reached the end of the drive, and stepped out onto the tarmac road.  Hay stubble, silver in the moonlight, stretched endlessly before him along the flat valley floor.  An owl swooped silently by, following the edge of the field.  The sound of the stream came to him faintly on a breath of wind that patted his cheek.  When he'd asked Melissa to join him, he’d been so sure of everything.

Now he was unsettled and uneasy, and it wasn’t the sex thing that rattled him, not really.  From the first moment she’d arrived, she seen someone dressed in black, and then claimed someone prowled about the mill.  Then she’d seen some strange man on the bolly at breakfast, and encouraged that silly young waitress to speak of ghosts at the mill.

Was she a hysteric of some kind?  Hyper imaginative, perhaps, or was someone truly hanging about the mill?  Had they disturbed some vagrant who thought he’d found a safe base for a week or two?

He looked back at the mill, snuggled in against the hillside, surrounded by trees, not much of it visible from the road.  A prime target for thieves.  He saw the faint glow on the bolly, and glimpsed a figure walking between himself and the light.  Melissa, no doubt, and probably nervous on her own.

He set off back to the mill.

~~~

Melissa woke early.  Warm under her blanket, her senses sharpened on a scratching noise coming from the basket by the fireplace.  Mice probably lived here, for the place was left empty for months at a time.  Her glance roved the beige curtains and old-fashioned wood furniture.  Everything looked as if they might be cast offs, probably courtesy of Jonny’s parents.  Furniture made of good solid wood with tapestry cushions in green and brown foliage patterns.  A big splashy print from IKEA above the fireplace, and candles everywhere.  That must mean power cuts.  Or else someone had romantic dinners here.  Unable to visualize Jonny romantically dining with some young French girl, Melissa snorted aloud.  Immediately, the scratching ceased.  She’d disturbed the mice.

The gentle sun of early morning probed the east end of the mill when Melissa opened the door and breathed in the clean, fresh morning air.  Birdsong rang through the air like an orchestra.  She went inside to make a cup of coffee.  Rory wandered in from the bedroom, wearing a ragged pair of old jeans cut off above the knee.  Long tendrils of cotton, the result of repeated washings, dangled from the ragged edge.

He looked like a handsome beachcomber, and her heart skipped a beat or two.  “I don’t know how you can bear those.”  Melissa tweaked one of the long trailing cottons.  “Don’t those long tails irritate you?”

“Nope.  Coffee?  Toast?”

She nodded, and leaned on the high counter top as he sliced bread and dropped it into the toaster.  The atmosphere between them was not unfriendly, though he’d not spoken much when he returned last night.  She eyed him with curiosity.  In bare feet, unshowered, unshaved, he was still the handsome man who’d taken her breath away at Jonny’s party.  The morning’s stubble gave him a capable, perhaps even aggressive, air.

So his charm wasn’t all expensive clothes and aftershave, then.

This must be how her mother thought of John Hazlerigg.

That thought gave her a jolt.

Rory handed her a piece of toast.  “Here, start on that.  I’ll bring the coffee.  You might want to take the chair cushions out first.”

She bit into the toast and wandered out onto the bolly with cushions under one arm and then stopped as if she had walked into glass.  A man in a long black robe gripped a young woman, anger bright in her face, who squirmed away from him.

Melissa's indrawn gasp drew Rory's attention.  He crossed the floor in three silent strides, and stared over her head to the end of the bolly.

Melissa waved her toast back and forth without knowing she was doing it.  Rory gripped her arm, pulled her back against him.

“Is that him?”  Rory’s whisper grazed Melissa’s ear.

The man dragged the girl close to his chest, and she cried out and thumped him repeatedly with her small fists.  The sound did not carry.  The man said something to her, and she shook her head and tried to break free.

Rory pushed Melissa aside and strode forward, his bare soles soundless against the tiles.  “Hey.  Let go of her.  What are you doing here?”

The man’s head swiveled.  He glared straight at Rory, then looked beyond him.  His dark eyes settled on Melissa and a swift grin lightened his face.  The air around him shimmered, the darkness of his habit became grey and both he and the girl vanished before Rory covered the four or five yards between them.

Melissa cried out in surprise, dropped the cushions and clapped her hand over her mouth.  Rory’s speed carried him past the place where the couple had been.  He flung out a hand and pivoted round the pillar that supported the end of the bolly, then stood in the sun, his dark head gleaming as he stared around.

“Where the hell…?”  Eyes wide, mouth open, he turned to face her.  “Melissa, did you see that?”

Melissa nodded.  This was what she had feared.  There were ghosts at the mill.  “I’ve seen him before, remember?”

Rory seemed stunned.  “It’s the same man?  Always?  It’s broad daylight,” he muttered.  “It’s almost the middle of the morning, and twenty-five degrees, for God’s sake.”  He looked up at the bright blue sky.  “The sun couldn’t be brighter.”

“What’s the weather got to do with it?”

“I thought apparitions only appeared at night.  Indoors.  Rooms are supposed to go cold, too.”

“Apparitions?  You’re talking about ghosts?”  This sounded hopeful.  Things wouldn’t be so bad if he believed her.

“What else can they be?”  He shrugged, palms up.  “Either that or we’re both going mad.”

He had seen them too, and better still, he admitted it.  Suddenly the morning seemed a bright, sunny place.  “They must have lived here."

“Not in this century.  Did you see her dress?  Besides, the bolly wasn’t there.”  He frowned, and stared down at the flagstones.  “Here.  They were on bare earth.”  He walked toward her, his brows knitted.  “What did you see of the background?”

Melissa shut her eyes and thought about it.  “The trees were taller.  The house wasn’t white, but yellow stone.  There was a pond over there behind you.  I had the weirdest feeling that I was standing on water, too.”

The crickets filled the silence with their endless creaking song.  Rory spun round.  “That’s another thing.  It was absolutely silent.  Now listen—birds, and crickets all over the place.”

“He saw us.  He smiled.  As if he’d got what he wanted.”  That was the emotion she'd picked up from the man in the dark robe.  Rory might have sensed something different.

“It’s weird, I’ll give you that.”  Rory paced up and down the bolly.  “I didn’t bargain for a ghost when I rented this place.  I’d better ring Jonny.  But let’s have some coffee first.  I’m not so sure I want to ring up my oldest friend and tell him his house is haunted.  He loves this place.”

Melissa looked at the toast in her hand, took a half-hearted bite.  Strangely, it tasted good.  She crammed the rest of it into her mouth, licked a dribble of melted butter from her fingers and went to fetch coffee and two mugs.  Rory’s toast lay where he had abandoned it.  She put everything on a tray and took it outside.

Rory had retrieved the cushions, and she settled next to him at the white table.  The coffee was hot, and she drank slowly.  He touched her hand briefly.  “Are you okay?”

Melissa noted the concern in his blue eyes and nodded.  “But I’m pleased you saw them.”

“You are so calm about it…you amaze me.”

She grinned over her coffee mug.  “Good training, you see.”  Whoops, she’d better not say things like that.  If he asked what training, she wouldn’t know what to say.  “What are you going to say to Jonny?”

With an odd little grimace, Rory fumbled in his pocket for his phone and pressed a couple of buttons.

Relieved she didn't have to say more about her ghostly training, Melissa listened with one ear to his conversation.  Although she promised herself she'd warn Rory of her childhood encounters with ghosts, his flare of ill temper after supper meant she'd forgotten all about it.  At least she hadn't deliberately evaded the issue.  Now he had seen the ghosts, which made everything so much easier.

She’d been too surprised to be frightened this morning, but now it was all over, she shivered even though she knew the cold breeze on the back of her neck was only in her imagination.  Last night, she had heard someone, probably that girl, laughing.

She’d convinced herself it had been French teenagers, while knowing all along what was really happening.  Talk about denial.  Rory had accepted the evidence he had seen this morning so easily it put her to shame.  He was talking to Jonny about what to do next.  This time, she wasn’t alone.

The long, dark, simple clothes made her think the young man was a monk, but the girl’s exceedingly low neckline spoke of no convent-bred innocent.  She’d been pretty, with long brown hair, smooth skin and huge eyes.  Her shapely breasts had been well displayed and her pale ankles peeped out from beneath the dull reddish brown fabric of her skirt.  She’d been barefoot, and bold in her actions.

The monk’s sharp-boned face and ragged crop of dark curls was so much more dramatic than the handsome young Frenchmen of today.  He made her think of a dark-skinned Italian, or the young Moroccan and North African waiters she'd seen serving in London restaurants.  He had turned at Rory’s shout of anger, and Melissa shivered.  In her experience as a child, ghosts often didn't see the person who observed them, but this man did, and she found the idea unnerving.

The girl did not seem aware of them, yet her feelings pulsed in the air.  She was angry with the young man, and wanted something he was not prepared to give.

Rory rang off and clicked his phone shut.  “Jonny’s never seen an apparition, here or anywhere else, but the previous owners told him it was haunted by a mad young priest who killed a village girl.”

Melissa couldn’t stop her eyes widening.  “Murdered?  Is he sure?”  That wasn’t anything like the feelings she picked up from the ghosts.

Rory frowned.  “The guy looked as if he was having a pretty good go right there in front of our eyes.  What did you think he was doing?  Why do you think I ran over?”

“It was very brave of you.  I have to admit I didn’t get any sense of threat.  She didn’t seem frightened to me, she seemed angry about something.”

Rory shook his head.  “I didn’t stop to think.  If I’d known they were ghosts I’d have dragged you inside and locked the door.”