Don't Hurt Me (5 page)

  
‘No, but your father said I could
borrow some.’

  
It was a bright day outside but the
wind cutting through the trees felt sharp as a razor against their skin. Julia
was soon glad she had thought to grab her jacket on the way out, shivering and
with arms folded across her chest as she walked. The wellington boots she had
borrowed from the back porch were slightly too large for her feet, so she trod
carefully in the teenager’s footsteps as they meandered single file through
wilderness towards faint glimpses of water which Julia guessed must be the
lake.

  
The tangled greenery around them
was beautiful but the mud was treacherous, sucking at her boots as they left
Moor’s Peak behind in the distance. She had nearly fallen over twice before
they finally reached the water’s edge and stood together in a mutual silence,
gazing out across the flat grey expanse towards the far shore of the lake.

  
The weeds clustered more thickly
here, browned from the frosts and dredged along the lake’s edge. Julia looked
down past her mud-covered wellingtons into the water and caught an odd
shivering reflection of herself: that pale heart-shaped face staring back at her
with troubled eyes, chestnut hair flying in the wind.

  
‘I used to love coming down here
when I was younger,’ Victoria muttered, hands in pockets as she stared across
the lake. ‘Dad would come with me sometimes and we’d go rowing.’

  
‘Is there a boat?’

  
‘There used to be. It sank a few
years ago because the boards were rotten.’ She shrugged, her face bleak. ‘We
haven’t got a boathouse and the weather gets pretty bad here in winter.’

  
Julia turned to watch a flock of
birds swooping low over the water, her voice slightly breathless. ‘So your
father used to walk down here too? Perhaps we should have asked him today.’

  
 
‘He wouldn’t have come with us.’

  
The girl’s bitterness made Julia
turn back again, staring at the young girl in surprise. There had been a depth
of feeling in that voice which spoke of genuine resentment.

  
‘If you’re really so angry at him,
Vicky, why risk getting chucked out of school and having to come back here?’

  
‘You don’t understand.’

  
‘Try me.’

  
Victoria looked away, her mouth
crumpling slightly as if she were fighting back tears. ‘I thought ... you know,
that he might take some sort of interest in me if ... ’

  
‘If you kept messing up?’

  
‘No!’ The girl dragged a tissue out
of her pocket and haphazardly wiped her face. Her voice was unsteady. ‘It isn’t
like that. I thought if I kept coming back here, maybe he’d give up and stop
sending me away. Stupid, stupid, stupid.’

  
Puzzled, Julia watched the girl’s
face in silence. She had not thought there was much connection between father
and daughter, but it was clear the girl merely wanted to spend more time at
home with her father. The last thing she needed was to be sent away to these
expensive boarding schools with little or no contact with him for weeks on end.
She wondered if Marshall realised that simple truth. It seemed unlikely from
what he had said last night. He had been sending her away because he thought
Moor’s Peak was too isolated for a child. But if his daughter would rather be
here with him, he ought to be told how she felt.

  
‘So you just want to stay here with
your father?’

  
‘Of course.’

  
‘Have you told him that?’

  
The girl’s expression was stubborn.
‘If he doesn’t realise by now, it’s hardly worth telling him.’

  
‘Sometimes parents don’t understand
their children very well.’

  
‘No kidding!’

  
They both laughed at her tone and
the atmosphere eased a little. Julia bit her lip, slipping the tip of her
wellington boot into the water and watching her reflection break into a
thousand shivering pieces. It was getting cold and the sky seemed more overcast
than before. It looked as though it might rain, she thought, but felt reluctant
to call off her walk. She did not mind getting a little damp. But she ought to
send Victoria back to the house, at least. The girl was not even wearing a coat
and she would get soaked if it rained.

  
‘Would you like me to talk to him?’

  
Victoria hesitated a moment,
looking uncertain. ‘Would you? I mean, would it do any good?’

  
‘I’m not sure. Maybe.’

  
Victoria smiled shyly then, meeting
her eyes. ‘Thanks, Julia. I don’t think it will make any difference, but thanks
anyway.’

  
‘No problem.’

  
‘You’re not bad for one of dad’s
girlfriends, you know.’

  
‘One of ... ?’ Julia shook her head
firmly, feeling herself beginning to blush. Where on earth had the child got
that from? ‘You’ve got that wrong. I am definitely not one of his girlfriends.
I’m here to illustrate his book. That’s all.’

  
 
‘Okay,’ the girl shrugged.

  
Julia wished the heat in her cheeks
would subside. ‘You make it sound as if he has dozens of girlfriends.’

  
 
‘He has. Well, quite a few that I’ve
seen. He seems to like redheads best. One of them comes round here all the
time,’ Victoria muttered darkly. ‘And he has parties sometimes too.’

  
‘Parties?’

  
The girl nodded. ‘All night
parties.’

  
‘Goodness.’

  
‘I think that’s why he wants to
send me away to school. So I don’t get in his way and stop him having parties.’

  
‘I’m sure that’s not true, Vicky.
He probably just thought you’d get bored, stuck in this out-of-the-way place
for years.’

  
Julia risked putting a comforting
arm around the young girl’s shoulders, half expecting Victoria to push her
away. But they stood there like that for several minutes in silence, both lost
in their own thoughts. The wind began to blow more coldly and suddenly she
could feel the first spots of rain in her upturned face.

  
‘I really think you ought to go
back to the house now,’ Julia murmured, hunching her shoulders and tightening
her jacket against the wind. ‘It’s going to rain and you don’t even have a
coat.’

  
‘I never want to go back there!’

  
‘But it’s nearly lunch-time.’

  
Victoria sighed. ‘That’s true. I am
quite hungry.’

  
‘Well, I’m going to walk a little
further on my own. I need to think about these illustrations and I do that best
when I’m alone. You go back to the house and have something to eat.’

  
Once the girl had disappeared
beyond the curve in the path, Julia continued to walk beside the lake for a
while, then turned away from the path and bent her head to climb up through a
tangled thicket of dark-leaved rhododendrons, seeing light beyond them which
might indicate a clearing. Sure enough the slope soon levelled out and she
found herself at the boundary of his estate, staring over a fence at the moor
stretching away into the misty distance.

  
Glancing at her watch, Julia
decided not to turn back to the house yet and followed the fence until she
found a stile onto the moor. But once she was clear of the estate it did not
take long for the ground to become marshy and unpredictable, her boots slipping
and sticking at every step. She huddled into her jacket as it began to rain in
earnest. It seemed much colder here than beside the lake and there was a mist
rolling swiftly in across the high ground.

  
She was chagrined to realise that
if she went any further, it might be hard to find her way back. The mist had
come down like a shroud over the moor and everything seemed white and
unfamiliar. It was surprising how quickly the weather had turned from mild rain
to this cold impenetrable mist.
  

  
Heading back towards her right,
hoping to stumble across the stile, she found herself trapped in an area of
marshland. It had looked like solid ground from a distance, though the reeds
should have warned her there was water underfoot. Trying to edge her way out,
Julia soon found herself completely stuck. The more she struggled, the deeper
her boot slid beneath the boggy surface, until she realised that she would need
to leave it behind if she was to escape. But even then she doubted if she could
make it out, the ground was so deceptive.

  
The rain was stinging her face now
and she had begun to shiver with cold. For the first time she felt a genuine
fear that she might be in trouble. She had passed no one during her walk and
the moor seemed utterly deserted. What if she was stranded here for hours, getting
colder and colder all the time?

  
Pulling her foot from one sunken
boot, Julia felt around with her toe to find a dryish spot. But there was none.

  
‘Damn it,’ she muttered.

  
It was at that point that she froze
in that position, lifting her head and staring through the rain in disbelief as
she heard what could only be a man whistling somewhere out there in the mist.

  
‘Hello?’ Julia called frantically.
‘Is there someone there? Please help me, I’m stuck.’

  
The intense relief she felt at the
sound of those approaching footsteps soon turned to despair and embarrassment,
however, as the whistling stopped and the figure in the mist grew clearer. With
one boot still wedged firmly in mud, her other foot wavering above the reeds in
a sodden sock, Julia could have moaned aloud in humiliation. Her rescuer came
forward through the marsh with the accuracy and agility of a swamp rat, his
strange tawny eyes surveying her predicament with undisguised amusement.

  
‘My dear Miss Summers,’ Marshall
drawled, stretching out a hand for her to grab. ‘You do seem to have a talent
for getting yourself into sticky situations.’
  

CHAPTER
THREE

Her face
scarlet, Julia had no choice but to allow him to pull her out of the marsh and
onto slightly drier ground. The rain had miraculously stopped and it felt as
though the sun might even be struggling to shine, somewhere far beyond the
mist. Hopping to a nearby fallen tree trunk, only one boot still on her foot,
Julia sat down and tried to assess the damage to her jeans. They were muddied
along the hem but not as bad as she had feared. But she had lost her other
boot. It appeared to have sunk almost below the line of the watery mud. It
would not be much fun, she thought grimly, trying to get back to the house like
this.

  
‘That’s what happens when you stray
from the path,’ Marshall commented without much sign of sympathy, passing her a
handkerchief to wipe her filthy palms. ‘Next time keep off the moor. It’s not
for the uninitiated, especially in this mist. If you really wanted to explore,
you should have told me. I would have come with you.’

  
‘I needed to think, that’s why I
was out here in the first place. And I can’t think in company.’

  
He nodded curtly. ‘Understood. But
stay off the moor nevertheless. Even for experienced walkers it can be a very
dangerous place.’

  
‘I wasn’t in danger. My foot was
stuck, that’s all.’

  
There was a moment’s silence and
when she looked up, she could see his eyes gleaming oddly at her.

  
‘Did you know your way back to the
house?’

  
‘Of course.’

  
‘Show me,’ he invited her silkily.

  
The man was completely
insufferable. Clenching her jaw in a moment of irritation, Julia turned her
head and waved vaguely to her right. It was true, she was not entirely certain
in which direction the house lay but it would not have been too hard to find
once she had located the boundary fence.

  
‘About half a mile that way?’

  
His smile was terse. ‘There’s
nothing in that direction for more than five miles. You could have been
wandering there for hours. Longer perhaps, if the mist hadn’t cleared.’

  
‘Oh come on. This isn’t the
Antarctic, for God’s sake. Someone would have found me in the end.’

  
‘Probably,’ he conceded, inclining
his dark head. ‘But not before you developed hypothermia.’

  
Her temper flared. ‘Don’t be so
ridiculous.’

  
‘In that jacket?’

  
‘What’s wrong with it? I’m not
cold,’ she lied, shrugging the flimsy material closer against her skin. ‘Just a
bit damp from the rain.’

  
He sighed impatiently, shaking his
head as if he did not believe a word she was saying, then bent to take her by
the elbow. Her face flushed with anger at his interference, she tried to stay
where she was, but those strong fingers curled about her arm as he pulled Julia
to her feet, his grip irresistible. ‘Come along, we can’t waste any more time
arguing. I’ll help you walk back to the house. Victoria’s on her own there and
God knows what she’ll get up to while I’m gone.’

  
‘Your daughter isn’t as badly
behaved as you like to make out,’ Julia flashed back, limping beside him.

  
‘What does that mean?’

  
‘Perhaps if you spent more time
with her -’

  
‘I beg your pardon?’ he interrupted
her, his teeth gritted and the tawny eyes furious. ‘What on earth could a
stranger like you possibly know about my relationship with Victoria? You’ve
only been here five minutes.’

  
‘It didn’t take long to see what
the problem was.’

  
‘To jump to conclusions, you mean.’

  
She sighed. ‘Look, it’s none of my
business ...’

  
‘Damn right it isn’t.’

  
He indicated the stile just ahead
of them and she picked her way irritably across the rough ground towards it.
Her exposed sock was now the same colour as the marsh she had pulled it from,
the muddy hems of her jeans flapping miserably about her ankles. Suddenly
embarrassed at the thought of how she must appear to him - unattractively dirty
and dishevelled, no doubt - Julia stopped talking and concentrated on following
the path back through his estate. She could see the grey roof line of the house
now, just showing above the trees in the distance. It could not be more than
half a mile away, she thought, filled with relief as she imagined the steaming
hot bath she would soon be sinking into.

  
Yet although the mist had cleared
over the moors, the skies ahead of them were still dark with rain. She was
beginning to wonder if they would make it back to the house before the heavens
opened when Marshall touched her arm and pointed to their right.

  
‘It’s going to pour down any
minute. There’s an old lean-to over there if you want to avoid ... ’

  
In that instant, they both felt
several large drops of rain on their faces and the backs of their hands. His
warning had come just slightly too late. Seconds later the clouds above them
broke and it began to rain down hard, leaving them drenched and breathless as
they stumbled through the downpour towards a ramshackle structure built low
against the trunk of an ancient tree. The side wall seemed to be nothing
sturdier than a row of rough wooden poles stacked one beside the other and
lashed together with thick twine. The roof was simply a collection of grasses
and loose bundles of twigs, haphazardly wedged under the branches of the tree
above.

  
The whole structure seemed
dangerously precarious. Julia pulled back from the ancient green tarpaulin
covering the entrance, shaking her head. ‘You must be kidding,’ she gasped.

  
‘What’s the matter now?’

  
‘It looks like it’s going to
collapse any minute.’

  
‘Get inside and don’t be
ridiculous,’ he ordered her brusquely. ‘It’s been here nearly five years, it’s
perfectly safe.’

  
She scrambled through the thick
flap of tarpaulin over ground which was still uneven but had been softened by
several thicknesses of dried grass flooring. She hugged herself miserably into
the far corner as Marshall came in behind her, prepared for an uncomfortable
wait until the rain stopped. Much to her surprise, however, the lean-to was
quite dry and comfortable inside. The roof must be covered with some sort of
waterproof material, she realised, staring up in confusion at the tangle of
twigs. It was not long before she stopped shivering and began to feel more
human again.

  
‘What is this place?’ she asked curiously,
rubbing her damp hair with her hands in a forlorn attempt to tidy it.

  
‘This is the den. I built it for
Victoria when she was younger. She used to bring her books and toys down here
and play for hours on her own.’ He shrugged. ‘I don’t think she’s used it for
the past few years though. Too grown-up, I suppose.’

  
‘
You
built it?’ she repeated, incredulous.

  
Marshall laughed at her expression.
‘It wasn’t that hard. There’s a tarpaulin to keep the worst of the weather out
and the walls are nothing more sophisticated than rustic poles. It took maybe a
couple of days to get the whole place watertight. Unless it actually blows away
in these Cornish winds, it should stay here for a good few years yet.’

  
‘I’m impressed.’

  
He moved closer, his eyes
narrowing. ‘Really?’

  
Without warning, his body seemed
uncomfortably close to hers in the confined space. Julia had the impression she
was courting danger and sat up briskly, pretending to check the muddy hems of
her jeans for signs that they were beginning to dry.

  
‘Erm ... I wonder how long this
rain will last? I thought the weather was starting to improve but then it
changed so suddenly.’

  
‘Ah, the weather,’ he said, with
heavy emphasis. His smile became cynical and he leant back again, watching her.
‘Nothing like a spot of rain to dampen the ardour. Or should I say inflame it?
I can’t make my mind up which it is.’

  
 
Rain had begun to spatter noisily on the
twigs and tarpaulin above their heads, a sudden gust of wind catching the rough
structure and making it sway uneasily. Unless they wanted to get soaked to the
skin, Julia thought with a feeling of dread, neither of them would be going
anywhere for the foreseeable future. She drew the flimsy edges of her jacket
closer together, only too aware how the white sweater beneath, still damp from
the rain, must be clinging to the contours of her body. But the gesture was too
late. He caught her instinctive movement and laughed, an odd gleam in those
tawny eyes as he stretched out his long legs in the narrow lean-to and tilted
his head back to look at her.
 

  
‘So you’ve been out walking with my
daughter,’ he murmured, smiling at her surprised glance. ‘Victoria came back
and said you had wandered off alone. So as soon as I saw that mist rolling in,
I grabbed my coat and headed after you. These moors can be dangerous in bad
weather. Especially for idiotic town girls.’

  
‘I am not ...’ she began to say
hotly, then realised he was laughing at her and shut her mouth again.

  
‘Very wise.’

  
Her face was flushed as she
hurriedly changed the subject. There was an intimacy to the way he enjoyed
needling her which Julia found disturbing. From the smile on his face though,
she could tell he knew what she was doing and found it amusing.

  
‘Yes, I had quite a long chat with
Victoria. And as I was trying to say before, she’s not the tearaway you seem to
think she is.’

  
‘I suppose you have her down as a
misunderstood teenager,’ he muttered sceptically.

  
‘I really don’t want to argue with
you,’ she said, sensing his irritation. ‘But you asked me to talk to the girl,
so I did. Though perhaps you ought to talk to her yourself. She’s your
daughter, after all.’

  
He leant even further back until
his head was almost brushing her shoulder, his eyes searching her face.

  
‘Okay, fair enough. I’ll try not to
upset you with any more barbed comments. So what did Victoria say? That she
hates me and can’t wait to go back to school? That much I can guess without
needing to hear it from the horse’s mouth.’

  
‘Actually,’ Julia said hesitantly.
‘It was quite the opposite.’

  
He looked at her, puzzled.

  
‘Victoria doesn’t want to go back
to that school,’ she continued calmly, trying not to load the information with
too much emphasis. It was important to do this sensitively. The last thing she
wanted to do was make matters worse for the girl by angering her father. ‘Or to
any other boarding school, in fact. She wants to stay here with you.’

  
‘
With me
?’ Marshall looked thunderstruck, struggling up on his elbow
to look at her properly. ‘Here, at Moor’s Peak? But she loathes the place. You
must have misunderstood her.’

  
‘I’m afraid not.’

  
‘But ...’

  
‘What Victoria really wants is to
get closer to you. Spend more time with you, and not just over the summer
holidays. That’s why she keeps getting herself kicked out of these expensive
boarding schools. I think she’s hoping you’ll let her stay here this time and
send her to one of the local schools instead.’

  
 
He stared at her in silence for another
moment, presumably considering what she had told him, then gave an abrupt nod.
His expression was still guarded, though, as he sat up and automatically
brushed a hand through his damp hair.

  
‘Well, you’ve surprised me. That’s
quite some achievement. But how on earth did you manage to get my daughter to
tell you all that? Others have tried to get through those barricades of hers,
and failed. Doctors and experts on child psychology.’ He laughed harshly. ‘Or
so they would have me believe in order to justify their enormous fees.’

  
‘Kids that age can be difficult.’

  
‘Tell me about it.’ His eyes
narrowed speculatively on her face. ‘You seem to have bonded with my daughter
amazingly quickly. So what do you have that these so-called experts lack?’

  
‘I really don’t know. I’m not even
sure why she trusted me. Unless it’s because I talked to her as an adult, not a
child.’