Don't Hurt Me (3 page)

  
‘Fine,’ she nodded curtly and
closed the door in his face.

  
‘The bathroom is two doors down, by
the way.’ Marshall called through the door and she heard him move away along
the landing, whistling between his teeth. ‘It doesn’t lock.’

Julia had
only been asleep for a few hours when she was woken by a sudden loud thud from
the floor above. She stirred groggily against the pillows, disorientated to
find herself in an unfamiliar room and then belatedly remembering where she was.
She turned to peer at the bedside clock through the four poster’s heavy
curtains. It was not as late as she had thought, only just after midnight.

  
She lay still for a moment, hearing
nothing but the howling of the wind outside, and wondered whether it had been
her imagination. Then the sound of thudding came again, this time accompanied
by angrily raised voices, directly over her head. That was no imaginary noise.

  
Julia swung out of bed and put her
feet into her slippers. It was a freezing November night and the heat from her
radiators was not enough to take off the chill. She fumbled for her
dressing-gown, doing up the belt as she left the room, and wandered along the
landing. The lights had been left on, presumably in case she needed to visit
the bathroom, so she found her way to the stairs without any difficulty. The
flight up to the attic floor was in darkness, though she could see a glimmer of
light beyond a door of frosted glass at the top.

  
She was just about to go hunting
for Marshall’s room when the door to the attic was flung open and a slender
young girl in her mid-teens came flying down the stairs. She was dressed in a
black tunic top and leggings, with pale delicate features and a tell-tale
smudge of mascara beneath each eye. The girl had clearly been crying.

  
Seconds later, Marshall came
thundering down the stairs in close pursuit, his face dark with anger.

CHAPTER
TWO

Although
embarrassed to have stumbled on this intimate scene, Julia knew there was no
point making more of a fool of herself by fleeing back to her room. Marshall
had seen her anyway, his angry eyes brushing over her as though she were an
irrelevance. From the dark-haired bare legs and exposed chest, it was obvious
he was wearing nothing beneath his dressing gown. Presumably he had been
sleeping without pyjamas and had merely grabbed at his dressing-gown to cover
himself.

  
Julia felt her mouth go dry and
realised she was in danger of being mesmerised by that lithe body. With an
effort of will, she wrenched her eyes away and forced herself to look at the
teenager instead.

  
The girl had stopped dead on seeing
Julia at the bottom of the stairs. ‘Who the hell are you?’ she demanded, wiping
her face with the back of her hand.

  
‘I’m Julia,’ she said calmly.

  
Those wide tearful eyes swept up
and down her figure, examining every detail. Her voice became deliberately
spiteful.

  
‘Not much to look at, are you? I
suppose you must be good in bed, then. Or he wouldn’t waste any of his precious
time on you.’

  
Marshall came level with the young
girl. ‘Don’t be so bloody insolent,’ he grated. ‘This is Miss Summers. She’s an
artist who’s come here to illustrate
The
Wounded Tiger
and you will treat her with proper courtesy.’

  
‘Sure, whatever.’

  
‘Sorry, I was hoping to sort this
mess out without involving you,’ he said tersely to Julia. ‘But now you’re
awake, I might as well introduce you to your ghost.’

  
‘Is this the face at the attic
window?’

  
‘Precisely,’ he said bitingly. ‘I’m
sorry to destroy any romantic illusions you might have harboured of a haunted
house, but your ghostly child was none other than my daughter Victoria.’

  
At that, he glared furiously at the
girl, who glared back just as furiously and folded her arms across her chest.

  
‘Victoria ran away from boarding
school three days ago,’ Marshall added curtly, raking back his dishevelled hair
with one hand. ‘And like the little idiot she is, she’s been camping out in my
attic while half the police force in the country have been looking for her.’

  
‘Oh dear.’

  
His mouth twisted. ‘Hard to
believe, isn’t it? Victoria is only fourteen years old, yet this is the third
school she’s run away from. She was suspended last term for smoking and this
time she was caught in one of the boys’ bedrooms after lights out.’

  
‘We were just talking,’ his
daughter threw in defensively.

  
‘What about?’

  
‘Politics.’

  
Marshall laughed harshly, raising
his eyebrows at Julia. ‘You see? I get nothing but these ridiculous lies from
her.’

  
‘But it’s true!’ the girl insisted
angrily, pushing past her father and turning on her heel to stare back at him.
Julia was surprised to see how tall she was for fourteen. Glancing from father
to daughter, she could easily see the family resemblance: both possessed the
same dark hair and complexion, and those odd tawny eyes which seemed to
penetrate whatever they glanced upon. ‘Paul wants to be a politician. He’s on
the school debating team. He’s really clever.’

  
‘I don’t think it was particularly
clever of either of you, risking both your futures for the sake of some late
night conversation,’ Marshall remarked icily.

  
‘Both?’ the girl repeated,
stammering.

  
‘Didn’t anyone tell you? Whilst
you’ve been hiding up there in the attic, your little friend has been suspended
as well. So you didn’t do him any favours by breaking the rules.’

  
‘But that’s not fair. Paul didn’t
do anything!’

  
Her father shrugged.

  
‘It was my idea,’ the girl
insisted, stamping her foot. ‘I was the one who sneaked up to his room. Paul
wasn’t even expecting to see me. They can’t throw him out for something he
didn’t do.’

  
‘They can if you’re not there to
defend him,’ Marshall lost no time in pointing out, then gestured his daughter
to walk ahead of him along the landing while she was still digesting that
information. ‘We can ring the school together in the morning and try to sort it
all out. But at the moment, it’s well after midnight and you should be in bed.
Though in your own room this time, not the attic. And no more vanishing acts.
That won’t help your friend Paul, will it?’

  
‘I suppose not,’ Victoria said
grudgingly.

  
Once the bedroom door had clicked
shut behind his recalcitrant daughter, Marshall turned wearily back towards
Julia and slid his hands deep into the pockets of his dressing gown. The tawny
eyes flickered ironically over her face for a moment.

  
‘God, I’m sorry about that. She’s
bloody hard work at times. What a hideous night it’s been. First the
electricity and now a runaway daughter to contend with.’ He sighed and gave her
a lopsided smile. ‘Since we’re both up though, how about a hot drink before
going back to bed? I could rustle us up some cocoa. Unless you’d prefer a
whisky?’

  
She laughed and shook her head. The
male who had kissed her so dangerously in the dark seemed to have disappeared,
replaced by this charming father of a difficult teen. ‘A cup of cocoa would be
perfect, thank you.’

  
The kitchen appeared to have been
tidied before Marshall went to bed, the table shining under the spotlights and
the antique Welsh dresser cleared of that appetising bread and cheese from
earlier. So he was a good housekeeper too, whatever his other faults. Julia sat
and watched as he moved silently about the kitchen, a quick and efficient
worker who knew his territory well, two generous mugs soon set out and a
saucepan of milk heating gently on the range.

  
Although curious to know him
better, she had to admit that she was having trouble figuring him out. Marshall
was not so much an enigma as a contradiction, she thought, only revealing
himself in brief and misleading glimpses that seemed designed to keep her
guessing. She wondered whether that was because he had spent the last few years
in the public eye and was used to having to defend his privacy. Certainly, that
tough exterior he had shown her on first arriving was at odds with the
exhausted humour she could see in his face now.

  
Julia accepted a mug of cocoa from
his hand, smiling her thanks. The unexpected encounter with his daughter seemed
to have relaxed them both. Yet much to her annoyance, she felt a faint tinge of
colour enter her cheeks as he settled opposite her, unable to prevent her eyes
slipping over the dark-haired chest as he tightened the belt on his
dressing-gown and drew the lapels closer. To her relief, however, Marshall did
not seem to have noticed her embarrassing reaction.

  
‘I must apologise again for
disturbing you tonight. You must think this is a madhouse,’ he said wryly.

  
‘Not at all,’ she laughed, relaxing
a little as she sipped at her hot cocoa and enjoyed the delicious aroma. ‘My
older sister has a daughter about Victoria’s age. She says her bedroom always
looks like something out of Dante’s
Inferno
and her behaviour isn’t much better. But I don’t think it’s deliberate, if
that’s any consolation. They can’t help it.’

  
‘All those racing hormones?’

  
‘Something like that.’ Julia smiled
drily, remembering her own teenage years. ‘Though I must have missed out on
hormones. I don’t remember doing anything naughty at that age apart from
sneaking the odd kiss behind the bike sheds. Not much of a rebel, I suppose.’

  
‘You don’t have any kids yourself?’
he asked, stirring sugar into his cocoa and watching her thoughtfully from
under his lashes.
 

  
‘Not yet, no. Though I would like
some one day, when my career’s more established.’

  
‘That’s exactly what I said to
Victoria’s mother,’ he said with a harsh laugh. ‘I was under the impression she
was on the pill, then she waltzed into my flat one day and announced she was
pregnant. Not the most auspicious start to a marriage.’

  
‘Are you divorced?’

  
Marshall nodded without looking at
her, his mouth flattening abruptly to a hard line.

  
‘Almost ten years now. Rachel got
bored with playing Mummy quite early on and ran off with someone else. At the
time, I was left in pieces. I was never really in love with her, but we were
husband and wife … Now I don’t give a damn. I’m better off without her.’ He
shrugged. ‘In fact, we’re both better off without her.’

  
Julia drank her cocoa slowly,
gazing around the kitchen. It looked very different under the bright strip
lighting. In the dark, it had seemed an almost sinister place. Now the range
gave out a pleasant heat and the antique Welsh dresser opposite, heavy with
ornate china plates, looked reassuringly normal and welcoming. She was reminded
of her aunt’s spacious house in Wales, a place she had regularly visited as a
child and where she had always felt happy. The clock hanging above their heads
ticked softly away in the silence and a poinsettia with large red leaves added
a splash of colour against the dark wood of the dresser.

  
It was hard for Julia to reconcile the
man sitting opposite her with the home in which he lived, the contrast between
them was so striking. From the outside, Moor’s Peak clearly suited his
personality - isolated and imposing, situated right on the edge of Bodmin Moor
- yet once she had stepped inside its forbidding walls, the atmosphere had
softened and changed to one where she felt curiously at home.

  
‘This is a lovely house.’

  
He leant back in his chair,
watching her. ‘You like it? It’s amusing, people used to tell me I’d have
nothing to live on if I gave up my job and started writing. But look at this
place.’

  
‘What was your job?’ she asked,
curious.

  
‘History teacher.’

  
‘And you didn’t mind giving that
up?’

  
Marshall shook his head in mock
horror. ‘I was surrounded by teenagers all day, for God’s sake. I couldn’t wait
to get out of there.’

  
They both laughed. Then the
circular wooden framed clock on the dresser struck one and Julia stared up at
it in disbelief. She had been enjoying their conversation so much the time had
simply slipped away without her noticing.

  
‘I should go back to bed. I had to
get up before six this morning ...’ She grimaced, realising her mistake.
‘Yesterday morning now. Though it seems more like a century ago. I hate getting
up before it’s light. It’s a miracle I haven’t keeled over yet.’

  
The strange tawny eyes lingered on
her face. ‘You don’t look tired. You’re sure you won’t join me in a hot
whisky?’

  
‘I can’t stand the stuff,’ she
admitted sheepishly. ‘I know this won’t sound very sophisticated to you, but I
think even the expensive malts taste like paint stripper.’

  
‘How about a glass of wine, then?’

  
She hesitated, biting her lip. ‘I
thought we were going to talk about my illustrations first thing in the
morning?’

  
‘We’re going to have to postpone
our discussion until later, I’m afraid.’ He shrugged apologetically. ‘This
business with Victoria is going to keep me tied up for most of the morning. But
don’t feel you have to hang around the house if you’re bored. The grounds here
are fairly extensive and there are some beautiful views of the moor from above
the apple orchard.’

  
There was a grin on his face as he
stood up, his voice ironic. ‘And I keep spare wellies in the back porch if you
don’t want to risk your shoes again. There’s probably a pair in your size.’

  
He fetched a bottle of white wine
from the fridge, expertly pouring them both a large glass and settling down
opposite her. His dressing-gown lapels had shifted as he sat down and she could
see an even greater expanse of dark hair beneath, curling attractively across a
broad muscular chest. Her mouth dry, she raised her eyes hurriedly back to his
face. The last thing she wanted to do was make a fool of herself again. He had
already seen how easily she responded to him and if he caught her eyes on his
body, he might be tempted to make another pass.

  
‘If it’s raining tomorrow, you can
always explore the house instead. There are few rooms which won’t be open to
you.’ He smiled lazily across the table at her. ‘Even mine.’