His Vampyrrhic Bride (12 page)

However, beneath those looming storm clouds, Danby-Mask had been transfigured. It had become a troubling place of dark secrets and spiteful prejudice. He couldn’t help but think about Nicola Bekk. Her mother must have warned Nicola from an early age that the village was a dangerous place. For hundreds of years the Bekk family had been despised for being foreign invaders.

The whole situation worried him deeply. He shook his head as he recapped the Bekk family legend.
Over a thousand years ago the Bekk family leave Denmark. They arrive here in northern England, perhaps as part of the invading Viking army. Then the Bekks create their settlement in the valley. Danby-Mask hates the invaders; its people launch a surprise attack and slaughter most of the family. Somehow, the surviving members of the Bekk clan hang on. (In the family legend, they’re protected by some monster dreamed up by a Viking god.) OK, there are lots of stories like that in Yorkshire. There are myths about dragons that live in wells, about witches stealing babies, and ghost dogs with fiery eyes. But what makes this story different is that Mrs Bekk told her daughter that it was all true, and that Nicola faces terrible danger from the village.

Tom switched on the wipers as the storm launched its watery attack on the car. Raindrops hit the roof with the same kind of harsh rattle as stones being thrown at metalwork. Falling rain blurred the houses. Those ancient structures began to resemble phantom dwellings: as if they’d manifested here from a sinister realm.

He couldn’t help but picture Nicola attending the village school when she was a child. By then she’d have heard her mother’s stories of local people murdering her ancestors. Nicola would undoubtedly hurry by the church, while shooting scared glances up at the huge stone tower. After being brainwashed by her mother into believing that Danby-Mask was an evil place, Nicola Bekk must have seen St George’s as nothing less than a demon’s lair.

Nicola would have been too young to differentiate her mother’s fantasies from reality. Attending school would have been an ordeal.
No, scratch out ‘ordeal’ and substitute ‘torture’
.
She’d think the other kids were planning to murder her. No wonder she ran screaming out of the Christmas Nativity play.

At that moment, his anger at Mrs Bekk’s treatment of her child blazed furiously. His heart pounded. He wanted to protect Nicola. She’d been through an incredibly cruel upbringing. No child should have to endure that. How she’d remained so sweet-natured was nothing less than a miracle. Mrs Bekk had tried to twist her mind. The twenty-three-year-old Nicola should be dosed to the eyeballs with drugs.

Instead, she’d risen above the madness. She’d survived.

And I want to help her stay that way
, he told himself.
Maybe when you’re twenty-three you feel it’s your duty to be the knight in shining armour: to protect the vulnerable maiden from danger. But, damn it all, I’m not going to let her life be wrecked by that lunatic mother of hers. I’m going to put things right.

Tom accelerated away from the village, his heart pounding. Wipers swept water aside, yet he still couldn’t see clearly. The road, trees and fields had been transformed into a ghost world. Lightning added its own strange magic by splashing the fields with electric blue.

‘Shit!’ He’d rounded a bend to find a figure standing in the middle of the road.

He braked. No good: the wheels glided across the slick road.

‘Nicola!’ He stared through the windscreen as the car hurtled on a collision course towards her.
What on earth’s she doing in the road?
He wrenched the wheel. The car’s tail swung outwards. Its back wheels struck the turf at the side of the road, gouging mud in an explosion of black.

At least the car had stopped. He sat there panting. His mouth turned dry as dust.

‘Oh my God! Nicola!’ He expected to see her broken body lying in the road.
Where is she?
He could see nothing through that wall of grey rain.

Then there came a thump. Someone had opened the door.

Nicola stood there. Rain streamed down her face.

‘Thank God.’ His heart thundered. ‘I thought I’d killed you.’

She stared at him. Was that suspicion in her eye? Did she suspect him of betraying her in some way?’

‘Nicola, what’s wrong?’

Her next words were very precise. She must have been thinking about this question. Perhaps even rehearsing the saying of it. ‘Tom. When you look at me, what do you see?’

‘What do I see? I don’t understand.’

‘What do I mean to you?’

Her face wore an expression of dreadful anxiety. It was as if she stood before a sheeted figure lying in a morgue, and someone was just about to drag that sheet away.

‘Nicola! I could have killed you. Why were you in the road?’

‘Tom,’ she hissed. ‘What do I mean to you?’

‘Get in.’ His voice softened. ‘Please, get in.’

She climbed into the passenger seat.

He looked her in the eye. ‘I’ll tell you what you mean to me in a moment. But there’s something important I’ve got to do.’

‘What?’

‘This.’

He kissed her. The stiffness in her lips only lasted a second. Then she was kissing him back with the same furious passion. This was wonderful. More wonderful than anything he’d ever done before.

He, Tom Westonby, was kissing a beautiful woman in a thunderstorm. The car was slewed across the road. The back half of the vehicle rested on a bank of earth.
This is madness
, said a voice in the back of his head.

Damn right
, he thought.
It’s glorious madness. I don’t care if anyone sees me, honks their horn, or shakes their fist.

I’m kissing Nicola. She’s kissing me. And that’s exactly how it should be.

A
fter the kiss, everything started to go wrong. Not at first, though.

At first, everything seemed to be going so well.

Tom Westonby reversed the car until he’d freed it from the dirt bank. Nicola sat beside him.

‘Is that kiss your answer,’ she asked, ‘to what I mean to you?’

‘I like you.’ He smiled back. ‘You’re intelligent, you’ve a great sense of humour.’

‘Looks?’

‘You’ve got some of those, too. Ears, nose, and mouth, just where they should be.’

‘So I’m no Picasso portrait?’

‘You mean with a nose on your forehead and ears for lips?’ He shook his head. ‘Your face is just how I like it.’ He grinned. ‘It’s there right at the front of your head where a face should be.’

‘Is that a compliment?’ She laughed.

He liked the sound of that pleasant laughter. It felt like a nice tickle inside his heart. ‘You are beautiful. Sexy. You know –’ he thumped his chest as he drove ‘the heart-pumping sexy.’

‘Thank you. You can give me compliments like that anytime you want.
I like ’em.
’

Tom drove slowly now the storm had well and truly broken. Nicola chatted away. She seemed in an unusually good mood. He found himself driving even more slowly, because he wanted to stretch out these pleasant moments of them being together.

Even so, the journey was over all too quickly. Tom pulled up outside Mull-Rigg Hall. The moment he switched off the engine, Owen opened the front door.

‘Hurry up,’ yelled the boy. ‘We’re going to get you packed off to France!’

‘France?’ echoed Nicola in surprise.

Owen shouted, ‘Can I have that chocolate in the fridge, if you’re not taking it with you?’ With that, he charged back into the house.

Nicola’s happy expression switched to one of fury. ‘You’re going to France?’

‘I’ve got a job there, working on some industrial units.’

‘You’re going to France and you didn’t think to tell me?’

‘There wasn’t time . . .’

Nicola face registered utter disappointment. ‘A few minutes ago,’ she began, ‘I asked you what I meant to you.’

‘You do mean a lot to me.’

‘Actions speak louder than words, don’t they? You’re going to France without even telling me. So what does that say about how you feel?’

‘Nicola, I planned to tell you.’

‘What, after you’d got me into bed?’

‘Nicola—’

‘Thanks for nothing, you bastard.’

‘Nicola, I love you.’

Tom said the words to a closed car door. She’d slammed it shut as he’d opened his mouth. She’d not heard the
Nicola, I love you.
Already, she was running away through the pouring rain.

He climbed out of the car. ‘Nicola!’ Thunder roared. ‘I love you!’ He slammed his fist down on the car’s roof in frustration. The thunderstorm seemed determined to prevent him from conveying those three words that had acquired a blazing importance.

Everything was conspiring against him. Nicola, jumping to conclusions, then racing away before he could tell her he loved her. And now the thunder, drowning out his voice. As he headed down the driveway after her, his father hurried out of the house. The man held a jacket over his head to ward off the deluge.

‘Tom, wait!’

‘Dad, I won’t be a minute.’

‘Jack Greensmith’s on the phone. He needs to arrange where he’ll meet you when you get to France.’

‘Tell Jack I’ll call him back.’

‘I can’t do that. He’s on his way to Frankfurt. He needs to speak to you now.’

‘Damn it!’

‘Tom, what’s wrong?’

Then Tom made a fateful decision. He decided to face this mega problem head on.

‘Tom, hurry up! Jack’s at the airport. He’s about to board the plane.’

‘No.’

His father reacted with surprise. ‘Tom, didn’t you hear? Jack wants to arrange a pick-up time from the station in Paris.’

‘No.’

‘You’re not making sense, Tom. What’s all this “No” nonsense?’

‘I’m saying “No” to France.’

‘I beg your pardon?’

Thunder muttered angrily in the clouds.

‘I’m not going to France.’

‘Of course you are, it’s all arranged.’

‘I’m not going. I’m staying here.’ Even as Tom spoke the words he felt such a sinking sensation in his chest. The expression of dismay on his father’s face was incredible.

‘Tom . . .’ His father couldn’t even bring himself to keep holding the jacket over his head. He let it drop down. The rain immediately struck his head, slicking down the hair. ‘I practically begged Jack to give you that job. I did everything I could to persuade him that you were the best man to do the welding.’ His voice dropped to a whisper. ‘Don’t do this to me, son. Don’t tell me I’m going to have to let my friend down. He needs your help to get those buildings ready.’

‘I’m sorry, Dad. I’m not going. I need to stay here.’

Tom would have preferred his father to fly into a rage; instead, he stood there looking so wounded. Sheer hurt bled from his eyes.

‘You needed the money for the dive school. I thought this is what you wanted?’

‘Dad, I’ll find the money some other way.’

‘So you want me to tell Jack that you’re turning his job down?’

‘Dad, our family doesn’t always have to put everyone else first!’ The floodgates had opened. Tom stood there in the pouring rain and those issues that had festered since childhood came gushing out. ‘You did amazing work in Africa, digging those wells, piping fresh water to the villages. You saved thousands of lives.’

Tom’s words, as much as the anger, baffled the man. ‘What’s that got to do with working in France?’

‘Nothing . . . No!
Everything
. Every damn thing!’ Tom wiped the rain from his eyes. ‘Don’t you see? I grew up hearing people tell me you were a saint. You and my mother put everyone else first. But don’t you see? You were putting what strangers wanted before what I needed. Dad, I haven’t said this before, but sometimes it was so hard to be your son. I was just a child; I wanted to be selfish sometimes and have you and my mother just to myself. But it reached the stage where I couldn’t enjoy my birthday presents, because I thought other people were more deserving. I felt so damn guilty asking for anything. Even your time! My blood would boil with sheer guilt if I asked you to play football with me, because I knew you needed to be out there: finding water, digging wells, saving lives.’

‘You resented me doing that work?’

‘Not now. I know you did amazing, miraculous things. You brought freshwater to villages where children were dying because they didn’t have clean supplies. But back then, when I was eight years old, I couldn’t handle it. Inside, my heart was breaking. And I hated myself, because I thought I was being a selfish brat.’

His father spoke softly: ‘Is that why you want to hurt me by not honouring this commitment to work for my friend?’

‘No.’

‘So, why are you staying here?’

Tom took a deep breath. He didn’t plan to say what he did. The statement even took him by surprise. ‘I’m getting married.’

‘
Married?
’

‘I’m marrying—’

‘I know who you’ve been seeing.’ His dad’s voice wasn’t so much calm as strangely flat. ‘You’ve been seeing Nicola Bekk. I’ve heard about her.’

‘And that’s who I’m marrying.’ Now he’d made that astonishing, surprising and spontaneous statement it seemed the most natural thing in the world. As if deep down he’d known all along. ‘Nicola Bekk will be my wife.’

‘No, she won’t, Tom. You might hate me for saying this, but I’m going to do everything in my power to prevent her from becoming your wife.’

Owen appeared at the door. ‘Hey! Mr Greensmith is shouting over the phone that he’s got to get on the plane.’

Tom’s father said nothing more. He turned and walked through the rain to the house. He’d have to tell an old friend that Tom would be breaking his promise to work on the industrial units.
After all the sacrifices I’ve made for you, Tom. And this is how you repay me.
Tom could all too easily read the man’s body language.
You’ve let me down, son. You’ve let me down badly.

Storm winds surged through the trees. From the sky came the angry bark of thunder.

For a moment, Tom Westonby was stunned. His father must be disappointed by his decision not to take up the job offer.
But why the hell has he said that he’ll do everything in his power to stop me marrying Nicola?