Shadows (30 page)

Rory grabbed what was left on the table, and glanced over at the barbecue.  “It’s very nearly dead, and this will finish it off.  Go, go.  I’ll bring the rest.”

She ran for the steps.  Rain pelted down, Melissa’s sandal flew off her foot but momentum carried her on.  Rory’s gaze followed the arc of white into the flower bed and he slowed, scooped it up with one hand and ran on.  His red shirt clung to his shoulders by the time he leapt up the last few steps and hurtled round the corner and onto the bolly.

Water flew off in all directions as he shook his head and tramped into the mill, where the windows crashed and rattled.  He hauled his dripping shirt over his head and dried his face on it.  The living room window banged harder than ever.

Rory grasped both halves of the flapping window and forced them closed against the furious wind.  Melissa trotted back into the living room.  “I’ve shut the loo and the shower window.  Here’s a towel.”

He looked at her face, bright and shiny with water.  “When it rains, it rains.  It doesn’t do it very often, but my God, when it does, it does it with a vengeance.  Look at that.”

He nodded to the open door.  Silver rods of water poured down against the backdrop of green bushes and trees and bounced nine inches off the ground.  Small puddles formed across the grass.  The puddles grew and reached out, coupled and yoked together.  Rain cascaded off the roof and formed a watery curtain around the bolly.  A monstrous crack of thunder sounded overhead, and lightning lit up the world beyond the door.

Melissa ran toward Rory, and he clasped her with his arms for a long moment.  She dropped a kiss on his shoulder and went over to the sink.  “What a good thing we’re not drunk.”

Rory snorted, leaned one hand against the door jamb and half turned as the air shook and boomed.  The flicker of lightening illuminated half of his face, throat and chest for an instant.  “I felt that in the wood.”  He glared at the offending wall, and jerked his hand from the door frame.

Melissa washed the crockery, one eye on the view through the doorway as the thunder rattled and crashed around the mill.  With the last pot in the drainer, she emptied the dishwater down the sink and walked slowly toward Rory.  Drying her hands on the towel, she peered out along the bolly.  “On the other hand, there’s not much else to do but get drunk.  I think this is going to go on for quite a while.  Should we open another bottle and just go to bed, or do something intelligent, like play chess?”

Another crash and rumble of thunder made her jump, and lightning flickered through the darkening sky.  “It's scary, but exciting at the same time.”

“Just go to bed?”  He loomed over her.  “You make it sound as if going to bed is the last in a long list of superior alternatives.”

She threw the towel over the back of a chair, glided close and slid her palms over his bare chest.  Looking at him from under her lashes, she offered a rueful smile.  “My first try at casual and spontaneous.  Obviously a stunning failure.”

He gathered her close, reveling in the warmth of her against him.  “When you match the words with a look like that, I know exactly what you’re after.”

Her roguishness increased.  “And you’re not?”

“Did I say that?  Now you are attempting to lead the witness, Miss…what is your surname, by the way?”

He studied her with a quiet pleasure that made heat rise in her skin.

“What?”  She stared up at him, knowing her delight showed in her eyes.  “What?  What are you staring at?”

He let go of her with one hand and ran a finger beneath her wet fringe.  “I like this wet look you’ve acquired.  Your skin’s a delicious honey color, and the rain’s made your hair darker.  It sticks out in spikes and gives you an elfin look.  It’s nice.”

Instinctively she lifted exploratory hands to her hair.  Rory held her with one hand spread wide across her spine, and pulled her in close.

“I like it.”  His gaze roved across the spikes and tangles.  “Makes you look—”  He considered carefully, head on one side.

“What?  What?”  She jumped a little as thunder rolled and echoed around the mill and Rory held her securely.

His gaze dropped to her mouth, a small rosy mouth with a full, sexy bottom lip.  The tip of her tongue peeked out and disappeared again.  “Very, very kissable.  How about if we light the fire, sit on the rug and then open the bottle of wine?”  His hands crept down to her bottom.  He was pretty sure that there would be more to sitting on the rug than just drinking wine.

Melissa giggled.  “Have you got your firelighter’s badge?”

Rory let go of her and squatted before the huge fireplace.  He seized the old newspapers from the basket, twisted sheets into coils and arranged them carefully on the iron grate.  “Yep.  But just in case, I see Jonny’s got some firelighters here.”  He struck a match, newsprint flared and flames illuminated the muscles of his chest with a ruddy glow.

Melissa brought glasses, a bottle and a corkscrew to the hearth.  The newspapers burned out.  Rory tempted a small, weak flame with wood shavings.  Melissa grinned at his second failure.  “It’s going out.  You’re only allowed one match, you know.”

Rory scowled at her, grabbed a firelighter and tucked the small white block in among the twigs and shavings.

Ten minutes of concentrated effort brought the reward of a comforting blaze and cheerful flames licking up the vast chimney.  Melissa threw cushions down onto the rug.  “We should have something like half a tree to put in this hearth.  It’s big enough.  I always wanted to sit before a medieval hearth fire.  Oh, there’s a basket of logs over by the door, isn’t there?  I’d forgotten about that.”

Rory washed his hands at the sink.  “Would you care for a coffee while I’m here?  Or do you just want to open the wine?”

He glanced over his shoulder at her as he asked the question.  Something in the rain swept doorway caught his eye.  He frowned, dried his hands and threw the towel down.

“What is it?  What’s the matter?”

Rory walked softly to the door, making shushing motions with his hands.  His gaze riveted on something outside, he beckoned her over.

~~~

Alarmed and curious, she moved quietly into the shelter of his arm, and peeped around the door jamb.  Cold air shivered over her bare arms, rain slashed down and a torrent of water surged and frothed almost to the door.  Like looking through plate glass at an aquarium.  She pressed closer to Rory’s reassuring bulk while she tried to make sense of what she was seeing.

“Our two friends have company tonight.”

Melissa blinked, looked again and realized Pierre and Justine stood on the other side of the millpond, standing together as if protecting each other.  Even in the rain Justine managed to look pert and pretty, though her hair and clothes were soaked.

The trees roared and swayed behind the couple.  A thick brown stream of water poured over the sluice-gate into the already overflowing millpond and sought other ways down the hill.  Runnels, torrents and jets of brown water hurtled down the slope toward the river.  Would the wooden furniture on the lower terrace survive?  She gave herself a mental shake.  The flood had already happened in 1735.  The furniture was quite safe.

Pierre and Justine were not alone in their world.  Facing them stood a sturdy, forceful figure dressed in a dark gray habit with a generous shoulder mantle and hood.  He held a thick wooden staff clenched in his hand.  Even with his back to the mill, it was easy to tell from the violence of his movements that he was shouting.

“I’ll bet he’s the Abbot.”  Melissa clutched Rory’s hand.  “The Man of Iron.”

Pierre, white faced, stood a little in front of Justine, as if protecting her.  He seemed determined, and the girl, clutching his arm with both hands, looked defiant.  Her sodden blouse and skirt clung to every curve of her body.  Her brown hair dripped water, but her brown eyes sparkled with anger in her white face.

Three monks stood under the doubtful shelter of the taller trees.  A mule waited beside them, head down, a piece of sacking thrown over the saddle to keep it dry.  A brown leather satchel, slowly darkening in the rain, hung below it.

Melissa whispered in Rory’s ear.  “Do you think that’s the Abbot?  Have they been caught out?”

“Looks like it.  Poor devil, he’s terrified.”

The Abbot flung an arm in the air as if to strike Pierre, and his hood fell back to reveal a tonsure that had long ago been overtaken by baldness.

The books called him by his title, Monsieur L’Abbe, or the Man of Iron.  Rain bounced off his pale pink scalp as he thrust his face very close to Pierre, and the carved wooden cross atop the stout staff swept perilously close to Pierre’s nose.  The young man jerked back to avoid being struck.  Monsieur L’Abbé spoke again, and the staff swung round and pointed to the brown water creeping toward them across the grass.

Pierre glanced guiltily at the millpond, shot a glance at the girl and darted across the flooding grass to the sluice-gate.  He laid hands on the iron wheel, and with an effort that was visible, began to turn it to let the water pour out of the millpond and disappear under the mill.  Pierre’s lips pulled back against his teeth as he struggled.

He was very close to Rory and Melissa, his dark eyes flicked once in their direction, but his overriding concern was with the furious Abbot and the defiant girl.

Melissa stared, fascinated by Pierre’s anxious expression, and his obvious fear for the girl’s safety.  The rain had long since flattened the shaggy black curls, water beads stood on his lashes, raindrops streamed down his hollowed cheeks and splashed over his lean hands and surprisingly muscular forearms.  His foot slipped in the mud, and he steadied himself, jammed his foot against the stones holding the sluice-gate, took a breath and heaved again on the wheel.

Melissa stared at his foot.

“Rory.”  She jabbed Rory in the ribs.  “Look at his foot.”

Rory glanced down, but said nothing, for Monsieur l’Abbé, satisfied that Pierre was at last doing what he should have done some time ago, strode past the girl toward the group huddled beneath the trees.  He used his wide sleeve to wipe his face dry.  The monks shivered and backed away from him as he barked orders, bade them tie the mule to the tree and then waved the group off through the trees.

They couldn’t go quickly enough, hoods pulled over their heads against the storm.  They took the path she and Rory had walked beside the millstream.  The monks would no doubt find their way to the monastery.

Melissa bit her lip.  Rory’s warm arm lay around her waist, and without that, would she have stood here so calmly with these gray shadows from another world?  They were undoubtedly ghosts.  Even reading ghost stories could make shivers run down her spine, and here she was watching them without turning a hair.

There was no threat here.  Not to her.  Justine might feel threatened.  Pierre certainly did, but there was nothing here that would harm her or Rory.  She looked at the girl, and realized how very young she was.  Perhaps sixteen, no more than seventeen.  Justine stood her ground through all the shouting and blustering, her dark eyes flicking from Pierre to Monsieur l’Abbé and back again.  Unlike Pierre, she seemed to have no sense of Melissa or Rory’s presence, for she never so much as glanced toward the mill.

A faint wariness showed in her face as the Abbot stamped back, and spat a short, furious sentence at her.  Pierre stared over his shoulder with disbelief written across his white face, the wheel still in his hands, but the girl lifted her chin and shook her head.

Small and shapely, her face was quite delicate beneath the long bedraggled hank of hair.  With a gesture to the large golden cross gleaming against the dark gray fabric on the Abbot’s chest, she loosed a torrent of words, smiled and then clasped both palms protectively across her belly.

Pierre froze, let go of the wheel, and an instant later, leaned on the sluice-gate wheel.  He was trembling.

“Oh,” Melissa's hand rose to her face.  “I think she is pregnant.”

The Abbot bellowed at Pierre, who jerked upright and heaved on the wheel again.  The sluice-gate racked higher, and water lipped over the gate and then poured out of the flooded millpond in a thick glassy torrent down the narrow channel that both deepened the water and increased its power.

The Abbot loomed over the slender-boned girl, and Melissa’s nail dug into Rory’s forearm.  Justine’s defiant dark eyes stared into the seamed, cruel face and she spoke a short sentence with stunning composure and even managed a small, tremulous smile.  Monsieur l’Abbé drew back his hand and slapped her.

She reeled to one side, and fell in the mud.