To the Rescue
Autor
Jean Barrett
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14
HarlequinChapter One
Heathside, Yorkshire
Who is he? How did he find me?
Needing answers, Jennifer hugged the shadows at the top of the stairs, her heart registering anxiety with rapid beats as she listened to the conversation in the lobby below.
“You’re sure you can’t give me her room number?”
His voice was deep and mellow. That much Jennifer could tell, but nothing else about him. Although she had a limited view of the front desk and the young woman who stood on duty behind it, the man who had come in off the street wasn’t in her line of sight. She would need to lean forward in order to glimpse him, but she feared even a slight movement would betray her presence.
The clerk, her thin face peppered with freckles beneath a cap of red hair, shook her head in regret. “Be worth my job if I was to go and tell you that, sir.”
The woman had been far less careful when he’d approached the desk a moment ago with a confident “I’m here to see Jennifer Rowan. She is registered with you, right?”
He shouldn’t have known that. Jennifer had told no one she planned to spend the night at this inn. But his bold assumption that she was here had won an admission from the clerk that, yes, Jennifer was a guest at the King’s Head. The clerk hadn’t bothered to ask him his name.
“Sure wouldn’t want you to go and jeopardize your job—” he paused, moving in close to the desk in order to read the clerk’s name tag “—Wendy.”
Jennifer could see him now. Or at least enough of him to understand why the desk clerk wore a willing smile as he leaned toward her. From what Jennifer could tell at this angle, he was good-looking in a rugged sort of way. That deep voice was also persuasive, with a tone that was appealingly personal.
“But how about calling her room and letting her know someone is here to see her. You could do that much, couldn’t you, Wendy?”
“I wouldn’t say no to that, sir. Not that I’d have to, being as how Ms. Rowan isn’t in her room. Went out a bit ago to buy herself a London paper. Real disappointed, she was, when I told her we only take the local paper here. Well, why would we need anything else when we have the telly?”
But Jennifer hadn’t been willing to wait for a TV newscast, which wouldn’t have provided her with enough details anyway. Only a London paper would have a full account of Guy’s murder. She needed to know if there was any new development in the case, whether she was at imminent risk of being arrested.
As far as the desk clerk knew, Jennifer wasn’t in the inn. Wendy had watched her go out the front door in search of a shop that carried the London papers. What the young woman didn’t realize was that, once out on the street, Jennifer had feared she would be soaked within seconds. A hard rain had begun to fall. Wendy hadn’t been at her post when Jennifer immediately returned to the inn to fetch her umbrella. If the tea mug now at the clerk’s elbow was any indication, she must have been in the kitchen.
Umbrella in hand, Jennifer had been heading toward the street again when the stranger below had asked for her by name. Alarmed, she had shrunk back into the shadows where the hallway emerged at the top of the stairs. But she couldn’t go on standing here. The dimness, presumably the result of a burned-out lightbulb in the fixture overhead, wasn’t enough to conceal her if either of them happened to look up.
Frozen in place, Jennifer prayed he was satisfied by the clerk’s explanation of her absence. That, whoever he was, he would leave the inn and go out on the street to look for her in the shops. But it didn’t happen that way.
“You wouldn’t have any objection if I waited here in the lobby for Ms. Rowan, would you, Wendy?” he asked the clerk.
“That’s all right then, sir.”
Trapped! What was she to do? He had already removed his coat, was running a strong hand through his wet hair. It was when he looked over his shoulder, probably to locate a comfortable chair in which to take up his vigil, that Jennifer seized the opportunity to make her escape from the stairway.
Backing slowly, silently away from the landing, hoping none of the old floorboards would announce her retreat with a sudden groan, she waited until the lobby was entirely swallowed from view before she turned and fled to her room.
Once inside, and with the door secured behind her, she went and sat on the edge of the four-poster. Only then did she realize she was trembling. It was imperative that she think rationally about her situation, come to some decision, and in order to do that, she had to calm herself.
The setting itself was certainly tranquil enough. An ancient inn, the stone-built King’s Head featured wide hearths, leaded windows and low ceilings crossed by heavy oak beams. She gazed for a moment at one of those windows where the rain bubbled on the glass against a heavy, gray sky.
Though she managed to control her panic, her frustration was another matter. She had failed to learn the answers to the questions that continued to race through her mind.
He had asked for her by name. How was that possible when he was a stranger? Unless—
Had Guy’s charwoman surfaced from her coma, told the police what she had witnessed? If so, then her information would be enough to make a strong case against Jennifer as Guy’s killer. Was this man a detective who had somehow managed to track her here?
But if that was true, if he was official, then why hadn’t he presented his ID to the desk clerk? Told her he was here on police business?
There was something else. Like Jennifer, he had an American accent. Puzzling, but she supposed he could be working with the London police. It wasn’t unknown for American officers to be connected with English police departments.
In the end, there was only one certainty. Whoever this mystery man was, he was looking for her. That made him a potential danger to her. Because if he knew she was on the run, and why—
She had to leave. Had to get far away from him. Now.
Never mind her plan to spend the night here in the inn and then go on to Warley Castle in the morning. Forget the late hour, the threat of the weather and a lonely road across unfamiliar terrain.
Jennifer was desperate enough to risk all of these in order to reach her destination without further delay. If she stood any chance at all of vindicating herself, then it was urgent that she get the answers she was hoping for before it was too late.
She threw the few things she had unpacked earlier back into her suitcase. Since she had already paid for a night’s lodging in the inn, there was no problem about running out on any bill she owed. But there was the concern of the man down in the lobby who guarded the front door.
She couldn’t use that route to slip away from him. A service staircase then? Surely there had to be one in a place this size. It was time to find out.
Suitcase and umbrella in hand, her purse hanging by its long strap from her shoulder, Jennifer crossed the room, unlocked the door and eased it back. She checked the hallway in both directions. It was silent, empty. There were few guests in the inn at this time of year. She met no one as she hurried along the passage.
An unnumbered door drew her to the end of the corridor at the back of the inn. When she tried it, she found herself looking down into the poorly lit well of the service staircase she was seeking.
Descending swiftly through the gloom, she arrived in another passage at the bottom. There were several doors along its narrow length. The nearest one had to be the kitchen because she could hear behind it what had to be the sounds of dinner underway.
Praying no one would emerge from that area to challenge her, Jennifer headed toward the door at the end of the passage. The window in it, framing the gray daylight beyond, told her it was a back entrance.
It had to be a fire exit, readily opened from the inside, because she had no trouble with the door when she reached it and let herself out of the inn. Not until she exhaled in relief did she realize how much she had needed to release her tension.
She found herself in a service yard at the rear of the building. Rain was pelting down on the cobbles. The air was cold, evidence that the temperature had dropped since her arrival in Heathside.
Raising her umbrella, Jennifer crossed the yard and made her way to the car park where she had left the little English Ford she had rented back in London.
She was shivering by the time she stowed her suitcase in the vehicle and settled herself behind the wheel. Nerves more than the cold, she thought.
Once she was underway, with the heater issuing a welcome warmth, she was able to ease her worst fear. Not that she could relax when she had to deal with every American driver’s problem of keeping to the left while negotiating narrow streets that hadn’t been designed to accommodate modern traffic. This, in addition to finding a route through the old town in a steady rainfall, kept her occupied.
Jennifer didn’t pay any attention to the dark-colored SUV that slid out of an alley as she passed, swinging into the street behind her. It was just one more vehicle in the congestion.
MERCIFULLY, the traffic thinned once she left the center of town. She didn’t need to consult the map. She had already committed to memory the route she needed. There was a fork in the road after she crossed a bridge. She chose the posted left branch, climbing a long hill out of the river valley in which Heathside was nestled.
Jennifer caught her breath when she crested the rise. The immediate contrast between the town that had dropped out of sight behind her and the largely unoccupied expanse of moorland that stretched away in front of her was both sudden and startling.
She found herself clutching the wheel as the little Ford was shaken by the blasts of wind that, uninterrupted by any forest or settlement, blew with ferocity over the high, open moors.
It was early March, the days still short. But even with the afternoon light beginning to ebb, hastened by the mass of racing clouds overhead, Jennifer was able to appreciate the panorama of the treeless swells that rolled off to the horizon in every direction.
The Yorkshire moors were desolate affairs in any season, but in winter like this, with the turf and heather brown and barren, they were especially bleak. But there was also a raw beauty in this wild landscape. Jennifer could see it in the broken stone walls that framed the slopes, in the becks that tumbled through the folds between the hills, and in the tough grass where the occasional, rough-coated sheep browsed.
The road was a minor one, with few travelers. That didn’t worry her. Not until the rain turned into sleet, making the already wet pavement treacherous beneath her wheels.
It was then that Jennifer remembered the weather report she had heard on the car radio earlier today. A major storm was expected to blow in off the North Sea. With all that had happened back at the inn, she had forgotten about that forecast. But now, in all this remoteness, and with darkness approaching and the long road in front of her…
Turning on the radio, she tried to find a weather update. All she got was pop music.
She was so busy with the dial, while at the same time being careful how she drove, that she paid little attention to the vehicle behind her. There was no reason why another traveler shouldn’t be out here. In fact, his headlights slicing through the gloom were a comfort. An assurance that, no matter how isolated the sodden terrain, she wasn’t alone in this vastness.
Driven by the powerful wind, the sleet continued to sting the car, the wipers swishing across the glass working hard to keep the windshield clear. Just how bad was it going to get?
Jennifer worried about that as the winding road carried her across the endless tracts of vacant moorland. As the ice began to form on the road, she slowed her speed to avoid spinning into a ditch.
She couldn’t say at what point she became concerned with the vehicle behind her. She had expected the driver to turn off on one of the side lanes at some point or that, growing impatient with her crawl, he would pass her. He did neither. And, though he kept a safe distance behind her, what had seemed a comfort began to feel like an unnerving pursuit.
Reckless or not, she tried several times to lose him by increasing her speed, but he wasn’t to be shaken. That’s when it struck her. He was deliberately following her.
Had he been there all along? As far back as Heathside?
The light was too poor to identify his make. She had an impression of something large and dark-colored, maybe an SUV. Had an SUV tailed her out of town? There was something sinister about the possibility.
“What do you want?” she muttered. “Who are you?”
But Jennifer could guess exactly who he was. The man back at the inn! If he’d grown tired of waiting for her in the lobby, or suspicious of her failure to return to the inn, and had gone out on the street to look for her and spotted her emerging from the car park…
It had to be him, which meant her flight from the inn had been for nothing. Unless…
The sleet had stopped falling. The stretch of road ahead of her looked free of any slick spots. Though it was probably useless of her to make the effort, Jennifer squeezed the pedal to the floor.
The little car leaped forward, charging down into a glen and up the slope beyond. The road curled around a bend where a terrace had been sliced out of the hillside to carry the route.
She glanced into her rearview mirror. His headlights were no longer behind her. Had it been that easy?
Slowing the car, Jennifer peered through her side window, checking the deep hollow below her. There was no sign of the SUV. He couldn’t have just vanished.
Stopping the car, she backed up past a wall of gorse for a better view. That’s when she saw the SUV. It had left the road and landed in a ditch with its nose angled down against an enormous boulder.
An accident. He’d had an accident!
The temptation to throw the gear into forward and race away into the gloom was very strong. But Jennifer couldn’t bring herself to abandon him. What if he were injured, helpless?
Through the thickening twilight, she could just make out the door on the driver’s side of the SUV. She sat there on the elevation with her engine idling, waiting for that door to open, hoping he would climb out. That he would be all right. But nothing stirred.
Damn.
She had no choice about it. She had to go down there and do whatever she could to help him.
With careful maneuvering, she turned the car and drove back down the incline into the sheltered glen. When she reached the scene, she took the precaution of easing the Ford around again until it faced the direction of her destination. If this was all just a ruse to lure her into a trap, she wanted to be able to make a fast departure.
But when Jennifer left her car and almost lost her footing on a patch of ice, she was inclined to believe that the accident itself had been no trick. Her own vehicle had traveled over it without her even being aware of its existence, but the SUV must have spun off the road when its wheels struck the ice. A lone sheep, whose form she could dimly distinguish at the side of the road, might have been responsible for that if the driver had slammed his foot on the brake in an effort to avoid a collision with the animal.
Equipping herself with a flashlight from the glove compartment, Jennifer made her way down into the ditch. She felt a wetness on her cheek as she approached. That’s when she realized that flakes of snow were swirling through the air. This wasn’t good.
Nor was the sight of the man slumped over the wheel when she managed to scrape the door open and lean into the SUV. There was no movement or sound from him. He was either unconscious or—
Don’t think it.
Because, whether he was her enemy or not, she didn’t want him to be dead. Although she knew next to nothing about checking for vital signs, she reached for his limp arm and felt for a pulse on the back of his wrist.
After a few seconds of nervous searching, she managed to locate a slow, steady beat beneath flesh that was reassuringly warm. Her relief that he was alive was only momentary. There was still the possibility that he was seriously injured.
If she could see his face—
He was a solid man. She had to shove the flashlight into a deep pocket of her coat in order to free her hand. She needed both of her hands gripping his hard shoulder to haul him off the wheel and back against the seat. Recovering the flashlight, she switched it on, focusing its glow on his face.
It was a strong face, the same one she had seen at the inn, but there was noticeable swelling on the forehead. Probably the result of his head striking the wheel.
The vehicle looked like an older model, maybe before air bags were in general use, which would explain why none had deployed. But his seat belt—
No, she realized after a quick glance, the belt wasn’t buckled. Either he had foolishly neglected to wear it or had managed to unfasten it before he passed out.
Whatever the explanation, all that was important now was securing help for him, because he could have sustained injuries other than the bump on his forehead.
Backing out of the car, Jennifer swung her purse off her shoulder and fumbled inside it for her cell phone. When she tried it, the lighted display indicated no signal. Either the remoteness of the region or the weather must be responsible. It was snowing in earnest now.
Striving not to panic, Jennifer clambered out of the ditch and went to stand in the middle of the road. She looked in both directions, as though desperation alone could produce the gleam of headlights from an approaching car. But there was no other vehicle on the road. She was on her own.
The daylight was rapidly dying. And so might the man in the SUV if she didn’t do something about him. But what? Drive back to Heathside and bring help? No, it was too far away now. It would be better to go on to Warley Castle for help.
But there was a problem connected with that. The snow was already accumulating on the road. By the time she reached the castle, it might be too deep to permit any effort to rescue him.
Besides, Jennifer knew she couldn’t bring herself to leave him here. He needed immediate attention and shelter from a temperature that had become dangerously frigid. Her destination could provide both.
No choice about it then. She would have to take him with her. But how on earth was she to achieve that when he was unconscious? She couldn’t carry him to her car. He was much too heavy for that.
What was her chance of rousing him just long enough to coax him to shift himself under his own power into her car? Maybe not good, but it was all she had.
Sliding back into the Ford at the side of the road, she spent a few precious minutes positioning it on the shoulder as close to the ditch as she dared and with its passenger door directly opposite the back end of the SUV. He’d have only steps to go. Providing, that is, he could exert enough energy to climb out of the ditch.
Making sure the passenger door was wide open and ready to receive him, Jennifer eased herself down the slope that had now grown slick with snow. She eagerly hoped he would be awake when she arrived back at the driver’s side of the SUV. He wasn’t.
Bending down to scoop up a handful of snow, she leaned into the vehicle and rubbed the stuff over his face, thinking its icy wetness might revive him. There was no reaction.
All right, if an application of snow wasn’t going to work, then it was time to try something less gentle. Seizing his arm, she shook him vigorously, shouting into his face. “Come on, hear me, whoever you are, and open your eyes!”
To her joy, he groaned, but his eyes remained closed. She didn’t know what else to do, except to get tough. With the palm of her hand, she began to slap him across his beard-roughened cheeks.
Success! He stirred at last, cursing angrily and batting at her hand. “You try that again,” he growled, “and I’ll—”
“I will slap you again if you don’t listen to me. You have to come with me. I’m going to put you in my car and take you to a place where there will be someone to help you.”
No reaction.
“Do you understand? You’ve had an accident. You need to get out of your car and into mine. It’s only a few steps away. Can you manage that much if I help you?”
He mumbled something she didn’t comprehend. He was obviously dazed, perhaps in a bad state of shock, but her urgency must have reached him on some level because he began to drag himself out of the car.
He was weaving when he finally came erect beside the SUV. “Hurts,” he complained, pressing a hand against his chest.
Another concern, she thought. He must have injured more than just his head. There was no time to question it.
“We have to move. You can rest once you’re inside my car.”
“Yeah,” he said gruffly. She wondered if he had any idea at all who was speaking to him.
The next few minutes were difficult ones. Not only as solid as stone, he was tall, easily six feet or more in height. Supporting that weight, with her arm flung around his waist and his own arm draped over her shoulder, was a challenge she undertook but never wanted to repeat. Somehow, stumbling and staggering, they fought their way out of the ditch with the snow driving into their faces at a furious pace.
Jennifer was winded by the time they reached the Ford. She was able to deposit him in the passenger seat where he immediately collapsed, lapsing back into unconsciousness.
Although she wanted nothing more than to get them away from this place as quickly as possible, she spared another moment to trudge back to the SUV. The engine must have stalled when he smashed into the boulder, but the key was still turned on in the ignition and the headlights burning. She switched off the lights, pocketed the key, then trained her flashlight into the back. There was a suitcase on the seat.
Taking the piece of luggage with her, she went back to the road where she shoved it into the trunk of her car next to her own suitcase. Once behind the wheel of the Ford again, she leaned over him to fasten his seat belt in place. He might be in no state to care, but she did.
“No more risks,” she informed him.
She got no response.
THE SNOW AND THE WIND had been bad enough down in the glen. But once they were out on the high moors again, the conditions were fierce. The howling gale alone made the car, which trembled under its force, difficult to handle. The snow made it all the worse.
There were moments when Jennifer could barely see the road. And when she could see it, she was alarmed by the drifts that were building along the shoulders, spreading ridges onto the pavement itself.
She didn’t dare let herself imagine what would happen if the road became impassable before she reached her objective, if the car was no longer able to plow through those growing white swells. All she could trust herself to do was to stubbornly pursue the route, even though it carried her straight into the teeth of the raging storm.
From time to time, Jennifer glanced at her silent passenger sprawled in the seat beside her. He hadn’t stirred since they’d left the scene of the accident. His eyes remained closed, his body inert.
How bad was he? she wondered. And what good did it do to worry about him when she had done all she could by rescuing him from the crippled SUV? At least he was out of the cold now.
Since they were still wearing their coats, both of them were snug with the heater humming away, releasing a blessed warmth. But if they should become trapped out here, run out of gas and the heater quit on them—
What are you doing? Stop thinking about that. Just drive.
There was no other choice. But as the ribbon of road endlessly dipped and turned and rose again, Jennifer wondered if she had misjudged the distance. Or was it the blizzard that seemed to lengthen the miles?
They were in the very heart of the moors now, in its most isolated depths. It would be easy to miss the turning to Warley Castle now that it was dark and snowing so hard. She might already have passed it.
And then suddenly, unexpectedly, as she rounded a bend on the brow of a hill, the castle was there in front of her.
As if by a deliberate magic, the wind dropped at the same time the shroud of snow momentarily lifted. The clouds overhead briefly parted. Halting the car, Jennifer found herself looking across a valley at a steep-sided, craggy peak. The last faint light of day streamed down on the summit where, looking as though it had been carved out of the rock itself, the castle perched, like a great sailing ship in a turbulent sea.
No introduction to that medieval pile could have been more dramatic.
Sitting there, gazing at the structure, it seemed inconceivable to Jennifer that such a formidable fortress could contain anything so benevolent as a monastery. But that’s exactly what the castle housed, and had for centuries.
Guy had told her how Warley had come to be occupied by the brothers, but she didn’t want to remember the story now. The very thought of Guy awakened the shock of his death, and with it a rush of fear and anguish.
As though triggered by those dark emotions, the wind rose again while overhead the clouds closed the gap. With the pale light vanished, the castle became a mass of black stone, grim and forbidding.
The curtain of snow also descended again by the time Jennifer reached the turning on the floor of the valley. The little Ford valiantly climbed a twisting lane through banks of snow that threatened to soon block the way. With the engine straining, it seemed to take forever to crawl to the top of the rise where the castle loomed in front of them.
Made it, she thought thankfully as the car finally chugged through the portal of a massive gatehouse that once would have been barred by a lowered portcullis.
Swinging into the bailey, Jennifer brought the car to a stop and got out. The place was dim, with only a single lantern burning on one of the walls. But its light was sufficient enough to guide her to a heavy oak door. There was a chain suspended beside the door. She tugged on it, and from somewhere inside a bell clanged hollowly.
As she waited for a response, she looked over her shoulder where she had left her passenger in the car. There had been neither sound nor movement from him since they had left the glen.
Her mind was on him, wondering if he would recover, when the door scraped open. Head swiveling, she was startled by the sight of a robed figure standing in the shadows of the archway, his face hidden in the depths of a cowl.
An ancient castle, flickering light, a mysterious figure. It was the stuff of Gothic legends. But even before he spoke to her in a gentle voice, Jennifer knew she was being foolishly imaginative. There was nothing diabolical here. And of course he wore a robe with a cowl. This was a monastery, after all.
“What is it?” he inquired kindly. “Have you lost your way in the storm?”
“Please, I need your help. I have an injured man in my car, and I think he may be in a bad way.”
