The Rose Garden

Fergal grinned as I looked at him.

‘What?’ he asked. ‘Would you deny me entertainment?’ Hoisting the heavy wet sack full of eel he followed after Jack and asked me, ‘Bring the axe, if you can manage it.’

Which sounded to my ears more like a challenge than a mere request, and with a smile I went back to the stump to fetch the axe. For a short-handled tool it was heavier than I’d expected. It took me a moment to manage a comfortable grip on the handle, and by the time I turned and started back across the yard both Jack and Fergal were already in the house.

And then I heard the rider, coming down the hill.

I couldn’t see the road from where I stood, but I could tell there was no cart this time, only a single rider, turning now to come around the house at such a leisured pace I knew it must be Daniel, and I stopped there in the stable yard and quelled the nervous flutter in my stomach as I turned my head expectantly to welcome him.

The dark bay horse stepped round the corner with a certain arrogance, well-suited to the black-garbed man who rode him. I was unsure which of us was more surprised to see the other, but my fingers tightened round the handle of the axe instinctively, an action that did not escape his notice.

With a smile that bordered on a sneer he brought the horse between the house and me, and reined it to a halt. ‘Mistress O’Cleary,’ said the constable. ‘Good morrow.’

I nodded and lowered my eyes, a false show of respect, before lifting my chin again so I could meet his gaze squarely and show him I wasn’t afraid. My acting skills weren’t in a league with Katrina’s, I knew, but I must have pulled it off with some success because his eyebrows lifted slightly in response.

His dark gaze slid down to the axe in my hand and returned to my face, and he murmured, ‘Well, well. A show of spirit, is it? Very inadvisable.’ He briefly glanced towards the house, then leaning forward in his saddle told me confidentially, ‘In fact, I should be careful altogether were I in your place, lest it occur to me to use a different bait to draw your lover out. A more … attractive bait, perhaps, than I have used before?’

He slowly looked me up and down. I felt that look as though he’d put his hands upon my body, and I had to steel myself to stand there while he did it, and not move.

The back door banged, and Fergal’s voice called, ‘Eva!’

Still I couldn’t move. My legs seemed weighted to the ground.

‘Eva!’ Fergal’s voice was firmer. ‘Come to me.’

I found a little of my courage then, and with a death-grip on the handle of the axe I forced myself to move out of the shadow of the tall bay horse and step around so I could cross the stable yard to Fergal. I walked carefully, and did not run, aware that Creed was watching.

More than watching – he was following, his horse’s steps deliberate.

Fergal asked him, ‘Have you business here?’

The constable shrugged the question aside. ‘Your sister,’ he told Fergal, ‘wants to have a care when carrying that axe. I might mistake it for a weapon.’

‘Would you, now?’ The words held open insolence.

As I reached Fergal’s side he held out one hand for the axe and I gave it to him gratefully. He turned it in his fist to take a firmer grip and said to Creed, ‘’Tis best, then, that I carry it myself, so you’ll have no mistake.’

The threat was boldly made, even for Fergal, and I held my breath beside him as the two men glared at one another. And then Fergal glanced at me and told me, ‘Eva, get inside.’

Surely, I thought, he wasn’t about to take on the constable? Openly fighting a man of the law wasn’t something a man could just do without paying a price, and though Fergal was fierce I would never have thought him so reckless.

I hesitated, showing my uncertainty, and with impatience in his eyes he turned his head again and said more forcefully, ‘You’re looking pale. You need to go on in the house. Now.’

He was looking pale himself. Or rather, grey.

And then I understood.

I felt the change beginning, saw the landscape start to waver and reform, and in a kind of frozen limbo I watched Creed’s head start to turn, as well, towards me.

And then suddenly the rhythm of hard hoofbeats sounded further up the hill, and Fergal said, ‘Here’s Danny coming now,’ and Creed, distracted, turned the other way to look towards the road.

I did run, then.

I ran the few steps to the back door of the house and swung myself inside the darkened corridor in panic, as the walls around me melted into fading, shifting shadows and dissolved as though they’d scattered on a breath of wind.

Time blinked. And I was walking down the shaded road outside Trelowarth House, still in the lovely flowered dress whose thin and fraying hem now brushed the gravel of the drive where I stopped, my legs now trembling much too violently to carry me.

The small dog Samson bounded with his usual exuberance around the corner of the house, tail wagging, but a few feet off he paused, and laid his ears back slightly.

‘It’s all right,’ I reassured him as I crouched and held my fingers out towards him. They were shaking, and I couldn’t make them stop, just as I couldn’t stop the coldness that had started creeping through my body, settling in my bones. I drew a breath and once again, but this time for myself and not the dog, I whispered, ‘It’s all right.’

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The room beside my own was bright with midday sunshine, but I still felt cold. I’d started to think I might never feel warm again. Each time I started relaxing, the thought of how close I had come to disaster this morning would set off a new round of shivers.