I’m busy tomorrow night. Thanks for asking.”
His eyes flickered and froze. Temper? Disappointment? “Tuesday, then?”
“I’m not sure….” That was a lie. She was as sure as her birthday came in November.
He nodded in acknowledgement. “Until later then, Dixie.”
“Yeah, when I’m old and gray and desperate,” she muttered to his back as he walked down the path. She heard the car door slam and refused to look up from the patch of ground elder she was attacking with her trowel. He’d taken the pleasure out of her afternoon.
“Go, home, Dixie!” a voice inside her head whispered. “Go home!” The voice echoed in her ears as a great wave of homesickness wafted over her. Why not? Home. Away from all this. The idea appealed, then faded.
Like hell she would! She wasn’t running off. She had a toehold in security here, a roof over her head, land—well a little bit anyway—and enough money to cover this woman’s dreams. Sebastian Caughleigh wasn’t messing things up. If he tried anything more, she’d…she’d report him to the law society or whatever the British equivalent was. Pleased at her decision, Dixie shoved harder at the tangle of roots and pulled with her left hand. It came up with a sudden jerk, spraying dirt over her face and arms.
Owls slept more than Dixie did that night. Just before midnight, she sat bolt upright, wakened by something on the edge of a dream. Foreboding rippled through snatches of sleep. She tossed and turned and blamed the Bombay potatoes she’d eaten at the Barley Mow. A little after dawn, she woke for good.
Dixie shuffled on slippers and pulled her robe round her shoulders and felt a steady ache over her skin like poison ivy itch. Whatever it was, she felt awful. She needed air.
She pushed up the sash to its limit and leaned out. Then it hit her: a soundless scream of liquid pain. She tore downstairs almost tripping on her robe. Shaking hands fumbled and rattled the key. Endless seconds later, she threw open the door and ran. Dew drenched her thin slippers; she’d have ignored snow and ice. Torrential rain couldn’t slow her.
She never thought, just followed her instinct, her heart, understanding that scream for help. She’d have run over anyone barring her way, but only birds and a frightened rabbit witnessed her frantic race, across the uncut lawn, through the yew hedges and the orchard, to the looming brick wall and the gate by the potting shed. She’d steadfastly avoided that walled garden, telling herself she’d have landscapers in to clear it one day. Now she rushed through the gate, almost wrenching the hinges open.
She’d been right, sensing evil between these high walls, and it wasn’t just phallic garden ornaments. She imagined a tortured animal, or some dark, satanic rite. The stench of burning flesh hit her first, gagging and choking, dredging hideous memories of her parent’s car accident. The worst horror movie couldn’t depict this. A creature inside her skin screamed. Her voice rising higher than pain in the morning light, great rising curls of anguish reaching from her core and grating her throat like sandpaper and searing her soul like acid.
But she wasn’t screaming. The sound out of her mouth came from the writhing white figure in the grass.
She raced towards the stench of burning flesh and flung herself on the writhing form. He calmed as her body blocked out the sun’s rays. “Christopher,” she wailed without even looking at the contorted face. A strangled sound came from his swollen lips. The heat of his skin burned through her cotton robe but as she lay panting on his burning flesh, she felt his body cool. He had to be moved. How? The sun shone with the warmth of a June sunrise. “Christopher, what should I do?”
Garbled, anguished syllables sputtered from his throat.
“Tell me, tell me,” she wailed, but meaningless gurgles from his chest told her nothing except Christopher was dying.
Unless she did something.
Reaching across his supine body, she tugged at the knots that held his arms spread-eagled on the ground but the twisted knots in the plaited ropes refused to budge. They were anchored to the four stone phalluses. If they pulled out of the ground, she’d free him but they were cemented hard or buried deep. What now? Her frenzied mind raced at Mach speed. The sun burned him. She had to get him into shade, but first she had to free him.
The potting shed!
There had to be a knife there. She scrambled to her feet but as the sun touched his skin, he writhed and twisted from pain. Dixie pulled off her robe and threw it over him. The thin fabric wasn’t enough. She yanked off her nightshirt. It still wasn’t enough, but it was the best she could do.
She ran through the gate, ignoring the scratches and scrapes from bushes and twigs. She skinned her knee, forcing aside the wheelbarrow as she fumbled in the semi-darkness. Her hand closed over a pair of secateurs. If they pruned old wood on rose bushes they’d surely cut rope.
They hacked it. Rope this strong should be sold to mountaineers. Now she had his hands and feet free but it did no good. As she tried to pull him up, his legs crumpled under him and he fell, pulling her down with him. The soles of his feet were blistered and raw. He could never walk, but she had to get him out of the sun. Even these few minutes heated his skin until it burned red like scalded lobster.
The wheelbarrow!
Leaving him in a heap where he fell and stopping only to cover him again, she sped back and pulled the ancient wheelbarrow into the light. It looked old enough to have carried fuel for Armada beacons. Who cared? It had a wheel and she found a folded tarp under the dirt and dust. She shook out the tarp. Full of holes and thin places, it would still shade Christopher from the worst of the sun.
Getting him in the wheelbarrow almost defeated her. A dead weight, she couldn’t lift him, but she finally tilted the wheelbarrow and half-scooped him up like a heap of prunings, then righted the barrow so he half-slumped in, half-dangled out. The tarp covered him. Just. After tucking in the edges so they didn’t snare the wheel, she heaved with all her strength and ran through the orchard as if the furies followed.
She made it to the basement steps and the shady side of the house. As she wrenched open the heavy hatch, she noticed her scratched arms and her bare breasts, to say nothing of the rest of her. Thank heaven for high walls and thick hedges! She had to get Christopher out of sight before she gave the milkman a thrill. She did stop to pull her robe on, but by now it was so tattered it barely seemed worthwhile. Far better to use her time getting Christopher out of the light.
Getting him down the worn steps seemed a bigger challenge than loading him in the wheelbarrow. She could hardly tip him down like a load of coal. She spread the tarp on the ground, dumped him onto it and dragged the tarp down the stairs. She felt his pain as his head bounced and his limbs jerked down the steps. If only he’d moan or scream again, she’d know he was still alive. Alive? She bit her lip to stifle a hysterical giggle.
She’d just saved a vampire’s life, and when she’d got out of bed this morning she hadn’t believed they existed.
Chapter Seven
The stone floor rubbed her knees roughly through her tattered robe. She barely noticed. Her shaking fingers searched for a pulse until she laughed at the futility. If her guess was right, there’d be no pulse, no heartbeat, no breathing. What should she look for? She needed some signal that he wasn’t dead. But he was. Very. Cooling sweat sent shivers across her skin. After racing through the garden, sitting in a chilly basement wasn’t the smartest thing. For either of them.
It took three trips to carry pillows and blankets down to the basement. She tried reasoning through the fragments of vampire lore she remembered from Dracula movies. If Christopher slept through the day, would he recover by tonight? Would he turn into a bat? Darned if she knew. Red Cross First Aid hadn’t covered vampires.
She couldn’t rustle up a coffin, but she did manage a cocoon of blankets. She rolled him over, they way she’d learned, and tucked a thick pad of blankets under him. Resting his head on a pillow, she brushed