Shadows (21 page)

Her arms drew him with her.  Breathing hard, he sought the buttons of her blouse, and slipped the garment free, groaning as she backed still further from him.  Lacy underwear, white against her new tan, and the ache grew inside him.  He reached out for her.

There was a curious buzzing sensation in the air, or perhaps it was in his head.

“Oh, my goodness.”  She gazed up into his face.  “This is powerful indeed.  Before I lose my head completely, have you—will you—”

Waking up with Rory’s arm around her the next morning was both strange and wonderful.  Nestling close, inhaling the essence of warm male with every breath, reluctant to move in case he was still asleep, she savored the moment.

In the instant before she opened her eyes, a little niggle of fear trickled through her.  Of what, precisely, she didn't know.  Rejection, perhaps.  To find that he didn't reciprocate her love.  To know that once more she’d made a poor decision, and that like Adrian, Rory would shrug her off as unimportant.

The sound of an engine drew her attention.  The noise came closer, had to be coming up the drive.  Then the engine ceased, a door banged and a cheerful voice called, “Bonjour.”

Melissa groaned.  Not Christophe, not now, when all her attention centered on Rory.

“Stay there.” Rory eased away from her.  “I’ll go and talk to him.”

So he had been awake.  What had he been thinking?  Why had he said nothing?  Was he wondering what on earth he’d done?  Why he had her in his arms?  “Did you invite him back?”

“He invited himself.”  Without looking at her, he pulled on shorts and tee shirt.  Her heart sank.  He was glad of the disturbance, glad to be moving away from her.  He couldn't even look at her.

Emerging from the tee shirt, he bent low and kissed the tip of her nose.  “Don’t go away.”

Her heart shot up into her throat and very nearly choked her.  As Rory left the room, Melissa threw herself back on the pillow, grinning in delight.  He cared.  He wasn't indifferent to her.  She rolled over, seized the pillow and hugged it.

Not ready to face Christophe’s exuberance, she took her time in the shower and dressing afterwards.  When she emerged, there was no sign of either of them in the kitchen, or on the bolly.  She picked up Rory’s car keys and drove off to the bakery.

Buying bread and picking up a newspaper across the road from the bakery gave her a chance to grow accustomed to the idea that she and Rory were lovers, that she may have found a good match.  There had been so much heady excitement last night.  She didn’t regret it.  Not at all.  Smiling cheerily at everyone, including the sleepy old dog sprawled in the dust outside the bakery, she won smiles in return.  The world glowed in summer sunshine, and when she threw her purchases in the boot and set the car prowling back to the mill, she was still smiling.

Christophe’s little red car hadn't moved when she drove sedately up the drive.  When she called, no one answered.  Puzzled, she swung her legs out of the car, gathered the bread and newspapers into one bundle and looked around.  Where were they?  The heat hung heavy over the windless valley, and there was no sign of either Rory or Christophe.

“They’ve probably murdered each other by now.”  Confident in her new-found love, Melissa smiled.  A lizard, poised half way up the white wall of the bolly, flicked his head at the sound of her voice.  Melissa waltzed into the kitchen, and dropped the newspapers in passing on the coffee table.  They must have gone for a walk, but they’d surely turn up for lunch.

She returned to the bolly, and the silence folded around her like a cloak.

There was a skin prickling quality to it she did not like.  A sense of expectancy in the air, of waiting for something to happen.  When the edge of a black robe flickered on the periphery of her vision, she wheeled toward it, heart thumping in her chest.

The bolly was empty.  Her imagination was playing tricks on her.  She bit her knuckles and swept her gaze across the whole frontage of the mill.

She’d never been alone at the mill before.

Perspiration bloomed along her hairline.  Her sense of another presence increased, grew so strong that hair rose on her neck.  She shivered, turned a half- circle and saw nothing untoward.  Fists clenched, she glared about her.  Any moment now, something vague in black was going to materialize at her side.

Yet there was nothing to see, nothing to hear.

The sense of dread persisted.  Something stood off to one side and watched her.  She folded her arms, each hand gripping tightly to her upper arm.

Rory could be in the mill room.  He wouldn’t have heard her return.

She ran down the steps at the side of the mill.  Both doors were wide open, but the mill room was empty.  Melissa wandered back to the doorway and stared out over the fields.  They could have left a note.  So much for Rory’s pontificating about kindness to hosts when Christophe went missing yesterday.

A soft echo of murmured speech made her pause and look back.  The sound came again.  A man’s laugh, perhaps, or a short spoken phrase.  One hand on the door jamb, she cocked her head and listened.  A splash, and a peculiar rumbling, echoing sound from deep inside the room.

Common sense got the better of her curiosity, and she bolted toward the blazing sunshine, whirled and faced the open doorway.  Surely sunlight was the best protection against ghosts?

She flinched as more sounds drifted out of the mill room and wished her stomach would stop turning cartwheels.  The sound reminded her of Rory’s voice, and very much as if he were swearing.  Most unghostlike, in fact.  Warily she stayed where she was, listening hard.  It struck her that all the ghostly episodes had one thing in common.  They had been like a silent movie, totally without sound.

Maybe it was Rory, after all.  She went to the door and called his name.

“Melissa.  Is that you?”  Rory’s voice, faint and full of relief, came eerily back to her.  “Come to the back of the mill.”

Melissa ran around the corner of the house, and stared down over the three-foot high nettles into the mill stream.  Rory stood, grinning at her from underneath the ancient stone archway that allowed water beneath the house.  The old stream no doubt once roared through the gap, but it was now a slow trickle, and the banks were overgrown with weeds.  Christophe’s brown chest loomed out of the darkness behind Rory.  He looked as if he had borrowed a pair of Rory’s shorts and they hung low on his slender hips.

“Can you find a pair of shears or something?”  Rory indicated the overgrown banks.  “We need to cut back all these nettles so we can climb out.”

“What are you doing in there?”  The mud and slime was ankle deep and Melissa cringed at the mere thought of standing in it.

“It’s only water and mud.  Nothing nasty.”

“Ugh.  I don’t know how you can.”

“The shears?”  Rory reminded her gently.

Melissa glanced around.  Huge, vicious nettles reigned supreme on both banks of the stream.  Rory and Christophe would have to scramble out somewhere.  “How did you get in?”

“Through the mill room.”  Rory squelched through the mud toward her.  Melissa’s toes curled within her sandals as mud thickened the water around his feet.

“Through the hole in the floor?”

“Yep.  It’s quite clean.  But it’s very cold, so can you find something quickly?  We’d like to get out and get warm again.  A machete would be good.”

Melissa didn’t want to go back into the mill room.  If they’d removed the Perspex cover then heaven alone knew what had crawled out and now lurked in corners.  Only the other day they’d seen the black snake go down under the terrace.  If the stream dropped into the same place, then the spaces must all be connected and one could expect snakes anywhere under the mill.

Sheer cold funk held her rooted to the spot.  “Did you see any snakes?”

“Nope.”

Inhaling a deep breath to steady her nerves, Melissa crept into the mill room, and hesitated, her gaze darting from corner to corner.  Could snakes hear?  She deliberately clattered her sandals on the tiles, made a satisfyingly loud noise, and nothing scuttled away.  Regardless of how stupid she might look, she jumped heavily up and down several times.  If they couldn’t hear, she was certain they felt vibration.  She hurried through the mill room to the garage and flicked on the lights.  Her innards went into spasm and she let out a small yelp of fright as a harmless green lizard ran across the floor and up the wall.

She ran back to Rory, an armful of implements clutched to her chest.  “Where do you want me to cut?”

“There.”  Both men pointed to a different spot.  Christophe clutched at the waistband of his shorts and heaved them higher.  Melissa tossed the large shears and the sickle toward Rory, put her knuckles on her hips and waited.

Rory glared at Christophe, who looked tired and dejected.  Melissa noticed how he continually turned to gaze back along the tunnel they had just left.  Almost as if he was afraid of something.

As they cut, Melissa raked the offending stems away from the stream and soon grew hot and sweaty in the blazing sun.  Eventually the men climbed out onto the bank beside her.  Runnels of sweat trickled from Rory’s temples, but Christophe, she noticed, shivered.  “Sit in the sun and I’ll bring coffee.  Do you need dry clothes?”

While the coffee perked, Melissa raided the wicker basket for clean bath towels and seized a pair of Rory’s jogging bottoms from the bedroom chair.  As Rory pulled them on, Christophe huddled into the bath towel and watched her open a package and cascade biscuits onto a plate.

She bit into a chocolate-covered Madeleine, shoved the plate toward them and sat down.  “Okay.  Tell me whatever possessed you both to go down there.”

Between gulps of hot coffee, Rory described how they’d looked down into the cavern from the mill room.  “It looked clean, so we got a couple of torches and dropped into it.  We knew we could walk out into the open air so we didn’t bother with ropes.  We never thought about the nettles.

“It’s big.  Natural rock all the way through.  There’s a deep groove or channel where the millstream used to come in.  The water would have dropped eight or nine feet, with enough force to turn both waterwheels.  The remains of one wheel are there, a bit battered and broken, but still there.”

Christophe, uncharacteristically silent, shivered within his towels and clutched his mug in both hands.

“There’s a big sluice-gate where the water would have poured in, but it’s been bricked up and cemented in place.”  Rory paused to drink his coffee and wolf down another biscuit.  “Once the pond outside was full, they’d lift the sluice-gate and the water would roar down, turn the wheels and grind the corn.  Christophe, are you okay?”

Rory was bursting with enthusiasm about the whole adventure.  Christophe, pale and shivery, nodded without conviction.  “I am good.”

“I’ll make some lunch.”  Melissa got to her feet.  “Will you carry the tray for me, Rory?”

“Sure.”  He dropped the towel and loped up the steps behind her.  From the top, Melissa looked back in time to see Christophe pick up Rory’s discarded towel and drape it around his shoulders.

She glanced up at Rory and offered a small, private smile.

Rory dropped a kiss on her shoulder.  Clasping his hand, she walked into the kitchen and began dragging packages out of the fridge.  “What’s happened to Christophe?  He looks quite shaken.”

“No idea.  He was keener than me to start with, and he was fine till we found the waterwheel and then he backed off muttering in French and complaining of the cold.  Mind you, it was cold.  Far colder than the mill room.”

“And that’s cold.”  Melissa arranged bread, salad and cold meat on a big platter.

“Perhaps he’s claustrophobic or something.”  Rory dumped glasses and a corkscrew on the tray.  His hand hovered over a bottle of wine.  “This might perk him up.”

Melissa shook her head.  “He wouldn’t have gone in if he was claustrophobic.  Right, we’re ready.”

Christophe did not perk up right away.  When asked what was wrong, he gave a very Gallic shrug.  “I ’ad very bad feeling.  Something in the cave is bad, very bad.”

Melissa and Rory exchanged glances.

“What kind of bad feeling?”  She asked the question gently, but Christophe shook his head, and said nothing further.

Food, wine and general conversation restored some of his normal ebullience, and one by one he threw off the towels.  When lunch was almost over, he apologized for his cowardice.