Cut Throat (52 page)

He gave himself a mental shaking. Self-pity would get him nowhere. After all, England was just one country. If he was determined he could go to another part of Europe where he wasn't known and start over. Or even Asia. Horse sports were booming in places like Japan.

No, the future could take care of itself, he decided. What caused such deep, aching misery was the prospect of leaving Oakley Manor under a cloud. Of leaving behind any chance of regaining the respect of the people he had come to know and like.

Franklin would speak up for him, he had no doubt, but if after all that had happened the extortionist was still at large, what had he achieved? If only he could remember what he'd been going to tell Franklin that night . . . But then, if he had a dollar for all the ‘if onlys' in his life, he'd be a rich man indeed.

Sighing, Ross levered himself off the sofa and limped towards the kettle to make himself a cup of instant caffeine. Halfway there, a knock at the door halted him in his tracks. Warily, he made his way over.

‘Who is it?' he asked through the panel.

‘Lindsay.'

Mystified, Ross opened the door. Lindsay it was, clad in a soft, jade-green jersey dress that clung invitingly to her slim curves.

Ross transferred his gaze reluctantly to her face. Her blue-grey eyes met his for a moment and then fell to a point somewhere in the region of his shirtfront. She looked vulnerable and very unsure of herself.

‘What's wrong?' he asked, concerned. He looked past her, out of the door. She appeared to have come alone. ‘Has something happened?'

‘I – er –' Lindsay hesitated, biting her bottom lip.

Ross reached forward to touch her arm. ‘What's wrong, Princess?' he repeated, softly.

‘I'm surprised you'd still want to talk to me,' she said with a rush. ‘After some of the things I said to you.'

‘I guess I can force myself,' he said nobly, mouth twitching with amusement. ‘But, as I remember it, there was a fair bit of mud-slinging on both sides!'

‘Well, I came to apologise,' Lindsay said, with the air of one determined to discharge their duty whatever the case. ‘I shouldn't have said what I did but it just makes me mad when I see people I care for being treated like that!'

‘Well, thank you,' Ross said, caught between frowning and laughing. ‘But what brought this on? What made it so urgent that it couldn't wait till morning?'

Lindsay looked up at him, her eyes huge and suspiciously bright.

‘I
had
to come. I've been so miserable. I mean, you must have been feeling pretty awful anyway. You didn't need me making it worse. I mean, about Bishop and Ginger, and Tuesday night – I never really thought you did that but you wouldn't defend yourself and it hurts Uncle John so. I wanted you to tell me that you hadn't. You see, it's just that it
matters
! Can I come in?'

Having tried with limited success to follow this emotional cloudburst, Ross was somewhat taken aback by this final plea. His heart started to thump heavily. It was nearly eleven. It might not be such a good idea . . .

‘Sure,' he said. ‘But . . . um . . . what about James? Does he know you're here?'

‘James told me to come,' Lindsay said in a small voice. ‘He said he knew when he was beaten, and . . .' She studied her feet, face reddening.

‘And?' Ross prompted. He had to be sure he was getting the right message.

‘He said any fool could see that you loved me.' Her voice rose on the last words, turning them into a question.

‘Oh, Princess!' Ross groaned, gathering her into his arms. She clung to him, half-sobbing, the top of her fair head barely reaching his shoulder. ‘What do you want with a crippled saddle tramp like me? James has everything: looks, wealth, charm. He's a great guy.'

Lindsay pulled away for a moment. ‘Well,
you
marry him then,' she suggested. ‘Oh, don't be so bloody noble! I'm very fond of James but I've never loved him, I know that now.'

Ross put his arms round her and drew her into the room.

‘What
will
your mother say?' he enquired, teasing.

‘Sod Mother!' Lindsay said indistinctly, her head against his chest.

With a delighted chuckle, Ross kissed the top of her head. ‘I'd carry you across the threshold, Princess, but my ribs are still a bit sore.'

‘Not
too
sore, I hope?' she enquired.

He shook his head. ‘Nowhere near that bad.'

Lindsay left at first light the next morning, before anyone was up and about.

‘I want to tell Mother myself,' she said when Ross urged her to stay. ‘I think I owe her that much. She doesn't know the engagement is off yet. I was dining at James' parents' last night and I expect she thinks I stayed there. Besides, I couldn't face going down to the yard when Bill and the others are there.'

Ross raised an eyebrow. ‘Ashamed of me?'

‘Don't be silly,' she said. Then, with a carefully straight face, ‘I don't think I'd want to be seen with you in public, that's all.'

‘You little minx!' Ross breathed, lunging to get between her and the door.

Lindsay dodged easily, giggling.

‘See you later,' she called as she skipped down the stairs and out into the windblown morning.

From the window, Ross watched her cross the yard, a slim figure incongruous in a jade evening dress, and smiled as she turned and waved before rounding the corner. Her subterfuge was almost certainly wasted as the Scotts would hear the engine of her MG as she left and draw their own conclusions.

In due time, having showered and dressed, Ross made his way down to the yard. It was something of a shock to encounter the depressed faces of his workmates as they fed and mucked out the horses.

Ross' whole world had taken on a different complexion overnight and the atmosphere in the yard was totally at odds with the warm glow he felt within. True, his problems hadn't miraculously disappeared, but neither did they seem so desperately overwhelming. Wherever he found himself in the future, he wouldn't be alone.

In the cottage, he ignored the usual copy of the
Sportsman
. If Douglas had written anything about him at all, it wouldn't be complimentary and he didn't want anything to spoil the way he felt this morning.

After breakfast, which was eaten for the most part in a deafening silence, Ross announced his intention of going to pick up his new boots. He wondered aloud if Danny would like to accompany him.

‘Danny's got things to do here,' Bill said shortly.

‘Young Peter is coming over for the day, Ross,' Maggie explained, taking pity on him. ‘Danny offered to keep him company and they're going out this afternoon.'

‘Masters is taking us to Beaulieu, to the motor museum,' Danny put in. ‘They've got some wicked cars there! I haven't been for ages.'

Bill scowled at his son. ‘Don't have time to cart you all over the bloody countryside,' he muttered. ‘Got far too much to do here.'

So Ross set off alone in the borrowed Land-Rover, eyeing the windblown trees a little apprehensively. Last night's gale had not died down. If anything, it had strengthened and the roads were strewn with leaves and broken branches. In the yard that morning, empty buckets, haynets and discarded rugs had taken on a life of their own, flopping and rolling across the ground in a way that startled the horses and would have been quite amusing had anyone felt like laughing.

Cutting across the hills to the northwest of Salisbury via the back roads, Ross' thoughts dwelt with pleasure on the previous night.

When a car came at him in the middle of the road on a blind corner, he swerved violently to avoid it, cursing the other driver as the nearside wheels of the Land-Rover bumped heavily into a pothole. It would follow his recent run of luck, he reflected ironically, if after Lindsay's declaration of devotion he had to spend the next few weeks in hospital recovering from a road accident.

He shifted down a gear or two and pulled back on to the road. The steering wheel juddered a little under his hands. Darcy was right, the wheels
did
need balancing.

His thoughts drifting again, he reached the brow of the hill and saw with pleasure the Wiltshire countryside spread out like a patchwork quilt below him. The road followed the ridge for a few hundred yards, curving round the head of a steep-sided valley, and here the rising wind buffeted the Land-Rover so heavily that Ross had to steer into it to stay on course.

Avoiding another traveller on the not over-wide road, he again had to bump on to the side and as he pulled back on to the tarmac had the uneasy feeling that the vehicle wasn't responding as it should.

It seemed now to be pulling hard
into
the wind. As the incongruity of this dawned on him, the road banked a little as it rounded the valley head and the Land-Rover, without any warning, lurched violently to the right.

Resisting his instinctive attempts to correct its course, it swerved wildly across the opposite carriageway, hit the grass verge and launched into the air.

The brakes, applied moments too late, had no effect at all on the temporarily airborne vehicle, and the view that had so delighted Ross just moments before now looked likely to be the last he ever saw.

The valley was deep and incredibly steep-sided, its slopes stepped by the feet of countless generations of grazing sheep. The Land-Rover tipped crazily towards it, held up only by three disturbingly rusty strands of barbed wire and a series of ancient, lichen-greyed fence posts. The wire screeched and twanged like a violin in the hands of a toddler and one weary strand gave way under the strain.

It seemed an age that the Land-Rover hung there, tilted suicidally over the precipice, but it could only have been a matter of moments before the fence, having stretched to its limits, swung back with surprising elasticity, tipping the vehicle back on to three of its wheels.

Hardly daring to breathe, Ross lost no time in unfastening his seat belt and opening the door. His heart missed a beat as he saw the yawning emptiness beneath his offside front wheel, and although the Land-Rover appeared to have settled fairly firmly, he decided that in this case discretion was definitely the better part of valour, and slid across the front seat and out of the passenger door.

With his feet back on terra firma, he took three quick steps to distance himself from the vehicle, as though fearing it might yet drag him over the edge, and then turned with morbid fascination to look over the fence.

It didn't take a genius to see just how close to oblivion he had come. He was standing on a rough, grassy verge barely a yard wide upon which rested two of the Land-Rover's four wheels. Immediately to the other side of the fence the turf dropped away, and some two hundred and fifty feet below, at the bottom of a slope that must have been one in three, a flock of startled sheep gazed anxiously up at him.

The wind whipped through his hair and rocked him on his feet. Feeling suddenly light-headed, Ross turned away from the valley and sat down heavily on the tough, brownish grass of the verge.

Now that the danger was past, his body reacted to the surge of adrenalin it had produced with a hefty dose of the shakes. He closed his eyes, rested his head on his knees and took slow, deep breaths to steady himself.

The low drone of an approaching car swelled and stopped as the driver pulled up alongside. A window lowered, unheard above the gale, and a man's voice enquired, ‘You all right, mate?'

Ross looked up.

‘Yeah. Fine now, thanks.'

‘Anything I can do?'

‘I don't suppose you know where I could find a garage with a tow truck, do you?' Ross asked hopefully. Even if he'd still had his mobile phone, he would have had no idea who to ring.

The car driver nodded. He could do better than that. There was a repair garage down in the valley. He knew the mechanic and would call in on his way by. With a final glance at the balanced Land-Rover he offered his opinion that Ross had been incredibly lucky and went cheerfully on his way, no doubt to describe the accident, with relish, to everybody he encountered during the day.

Where are the press with their cameras snapping? Ross thought sardonically. They've missed this one. They're slipping!

In the next ten minutes or so, several more cars and two lorries came by, all either stopping or slowing to view the spectacle of the precariously perched vehicle.

‘It's all under control,' Ross told those that stopped. ‘Yes, I'm fine, thank you. Somebody's on the way.'

During a lull in the traffic, he climbed to his feet and wandered round to the back of the Land-Rover, wondering if it was carrying any rope with which a passing lorry might be persuaded to tow it back on to the road, if the recovery vehicle failed to materialise.

The wind was howling across the ridge with unrelenting vigour and the Land-Rover rocked under its assault. Ross found a rope, although it had seen better days, and a number of other tools including a spade, presumably for digging oneself out of snowdrifts.

‘I'd say you were pretty lucky there,' a voice remarked close behind him with a marked lack of originality.

Ross jumped. He hadn't heard a car approach. ‘There's a tow truck on the way,' he said, turning, hoping as he said it that it was true. ‘It's all under control . . .' His voice tailed off as he saw before him the navy uniform of one of Her Majesty's finest.

‘Oh, Jeez!' he groaned, recognising one of the officers from the week before.

‘Well, well,' the policeman said with dawning recognition. ‘If it isn't our American friend. For a moment there I didn't recognise you, standing up.'