The Shadowy Horses

"Move them where? Up to Rosehill?"

"Well, yes, I believe so," I told him. "Why?"

"No reason." He shrugged and walked on, nonchalant. "It's just that neither of them was around, when I woke up, and I wondered where they'd got to."

The problem with Adrian, I thought wryly, watching as he kicked another tangle of nets out of his path, was that he hated competition. He reminded me of an old Wild West gunslinger, puffing out his chest and drawling, in menacing tones, "This town ain't big enough for the two of us." Certainly Rosehill was not quite big enough for Adrian and Brian, philanderers both, and when only one blond was available ... well, I decided with another faint sigh, it was going to be a very long summer.

Adrian turned at the sound of my sigh. "What is the matter with you, Verity? You sound like the bloody Mock Turtle."

Fortunately, we were just then rounding the narrow bottom of the U-shaped harbor, past boatyard and ice plant, where the throbbing of engines drowned out any attempt at speech, and by the time we'd reached the covered fish market Adrian had quite forgotten his question.

"What time," he asked David, "did you say the auction starts at?"

"Four o'clock."

"Ah." Adrian cast a doubtful eye along the open length of the building, at the empty shadows and the idle waiting lorries. "In twenty minutes."

David checked the clock face on the tower of the Auld Kirk, and nodded agreement. "Aye, that's right."

"There is," said Adrian, "a noticeable lack of fish."

"Ye've no faith, that's your problem." David gave the Auld Kirk's clock a second glance, then looked across the road at what appeared to be a tea room. "Does anyone fancy a coffee, or—"

"God, I could murder a pint," Adrian cut him off, setting his sights on the beckoning white walls of the Ship Hotel, further up the harbor road.

The red Jaguar gleamed conspicuously in the car park, and David stroked one hand along the bonnet. "Got it back, I see," he said, to Adrian. "And in one piece, too. That's magic."

"Why, is Quinnell a rotten driver, or something?"

David shrugged. "I've never seen him drive."

Come to think of it, neither had I, until last night. Suddenly curious, I stole a sidelong look at David's face. He was still studying the sports car and whistling a careless little ditty through his teeth. "Why doesn't Peter drive?" I asked him.

"Well," said David simply, "he'd need a license to do that, wouldn't he?"

"What?" Adrian, blanching, spun around in horror to stare at his precious car.

I caught the satisfaction in David's smile, before he, too, turned away, narrowing his gaze on the sea that surged and plunged beyond the harbor wall.

"Here they come, now," he announced, and crossed the road to the quay, for a better look.

Adrian's face fell. "What about my pint?"

"Go and have it, if you like," I told him. "I'd like to watch the boats come in."

He wavered for a moment, but his less than trusting nature won out in the end. He was standing on the quayside, square between myself and David, when the first returning fishing boat came nosing through the narrow channel. It hit the harbor like a bullet, that first boat, kicking up an arc of spray and bringing behind it a great wheeling halo of gulls that screamed and dived and screamed again in search of scraps from the deck.

The boat was a small one, just two men on board, both wearing slick yellow overalls. Even with the tide full in, the boat still bobbed a fair distance beneath the quayside, and the man standing on deck had to tip his head a long way up to see us. He looked frozen through, his face lashed red by the wind and salt waves, but he grinned when he noticed David. "Heyah, Deid-Banes," he called out, tossing up the mooring rope, "gie us a hand, will ye?"

David obligingly tied the line off, then stood back as the fisherman came scrambling up one of the metal ladders set into the harbor wall. He was not a young man, but his arms and shoulders bulged with sturdy muscle, and his smiling eyes were keen and very clear. They looked me up and down, passed briefly over Adrian, and shifted back to David's face.

"How's yer mither the day?"

David dropped into broad Scots as he gave yet another update on his mother's medical condition, so I missed a good deal of what he said, but his explanation seemed to satisfy the older man, who nodded twice and switched his attention to Adrian and me.

David introduced us. "My cousin Danny," he explained, as the fisherman's ice-cold hand closed firmly around mine.

"The better man o' the family." The shrewd eyes slid accusingly to David. "Is this how ye impress a lass, these days? By hanging around the quayside?"

David smiled. "She's never seen the auction."

"Aye, well, it's high excitement, that is," the older man agreed. He turned to me with a wink. "Ye’ll no be getting roses and sweeties wi' this miserable lad, ken."

Before I could so much as smile in answer, Adrian draped an arm across my shoulders to drag me backwards and three paces right. It was, on the surface, a purely protective movement, pulling me out of the path of a rattling forklift that, after sprinting up the harbor road, had wheeled now to a halt just inches from David's feet. But when the danger had passed and the forklift driver cut his engine, Adrian didn't let go. His arm still held me firm against his side.