Duelling Fire Read online

  ‘I—care—what the Hadleys think,’ declared Harriet, between her teeth. ‘Isn’t that sufficient reason for you?’

  Sara could feel a distinct throbbing in her temples now. She was getting the headache she had invented for Rupert’s benefit. It seemed as if whatever way she turned, she came up with the same suspicion. Harriet did have hopes that Rupert might find her niece attractive, more attractive than the girl his father had approved for him. Venetia could be right. And even Jude, with his talk of lambs and sacrifices, might have been trying to warn her.

  Jude! Her fingers tightened on the wheel. He had no cause to criticise Harriet, or indeed anything she did. His own behaviour left a lot to be desired, and without his intervention in her life, Harriet might never have become involved with the Hadleys. It was all his fault really, Sara thought resentfully. He was completely without scruple.

  When she got out of the car to open the gate that led on to the public road, the cold air struck her like a knife. Shivering, she tugged the gate open, and then climbed back into the car to drive it through. It was bigger than the Porsche, much longer for one thing, and it jutted dangerously into the road when she attempted to leave it while she closed the gate. It could be a hazard in the dark, and sighing, she drove out on to the road, leaving the engine running, while she ran back to close the gate. As she did so, the headlights of another vehicle swept the narrow lane. It was coming fast, accelerating down the bank, and Sara had only time to fling herself out of its path before it struck the stationary Rolls. There was a horrible grinding of metal on metal, sparks flew as the car’s headlights exploded on impact, and then the ominous sound of a car horn, as if a body had been thrown across a steering wheel.

  The horn had an eerie sound, its persistent tone ringing in Sara’s ears as she scrambled out of the ditch that had saved her from certain extinction. It was like a death knell, and her heart pounded unsteadily as she got to her feet and lurched towards the two cars. The Rolls-Royce’s headlights were still working, giving a ghostly illumination to the scene, the steam rising from the smashed radiator of the other car drifting like a wraith over the bonnet.

  ‘Harriet!’ Her aunt’s name spilled from her lips, softly at first, and then more forcefully, as fear and apprehension brought panic rising to the surface. ‘Harriet! Harriet, are you all right? Oh, God, please don’t let her be seriously injured!’

  The sound of a groan reached her ears as she groped her way past the vehicle that had collided with the Rolls, and briefly she hesitated. She was not consciously trying to put off the moment when she must see for herself whether Harriet had been hurt, but there was a certain relief in the momentary delay.

  The bonnet of the car was a crumpled mess, concertinaed like so much scrap metal, but as her eyes adjusted themselves to the darkness, she saw there was a man behind the wheel who was evidently not unconscious. He was shifting about and it was his groans she could hear, and she saw to her relief that he was alone in the vehicle.

  But Harriet deserved her first consideration, and ignoring the man’s patent pleas for assistance, Sara groped her way on to where her aunt was slumped in the front of the Rolls. It was difficult to see, but with the help of the interior light she was able to discern that Harriet was unconscious, and the blood streaming from the cut on her forehead was evidence enough of the cause.

  Harriet had slumped sideways after the accident, but as Sara opened the door she fell heavily on to the seat, the blood dark and frightening, staining the pale leather. It made Sara aware of the helplessness of her position, with the Rolls incapacitated, and two injured people on her hands.

  She drew back from the car and looked about her desperately, wondering if anyone else had heard the car horn. That had stopped now, leaving an ominous stillness, and she expelled her breath tearfully as she tried to think. Which was the nearest? Linden Court or the village? She looked down at her high heels despairingly. One way or another, she had to get help.

  Of course, in the way of such things, there was no sign of another vehicle approaching, no reassuring gleam of headlights to offer any means of assistance. Harriet could be bleeding to death, and she was standing here cogitating. There was nothing else for it. She would have to run.

  Before leaving, she felt compelled to check on the other driver, hesitating beside the car, her hands on the crumpled metal. The man saw her, turning his head towards her with evident impatience, clenching his hands tightly on the wheel.

  ‘That was a bloody silly place to park a car!’ he muttered, through gritted teeth, and a little of Sara’s coldness left her.

  ‘You were driving too fast,’ she declared, realising anger might keep his spirits up far more than conciliation, and he blustered indignantly in spite of the pain he was probably suffering. He seemed to be pinned in his seat, the mess of metal beneath the steering wheel a hideous trap from which he would have to be extricated.

  ‘Just get me out of here,’ he begged, and a sense of urgency gripped her, sending her stumbling awkwardly across the grass in the general direction of Linden Court.

  She took off her shoes after the first ankle-wrenching minutes, the damp grass infinitely soothing to her bruised feet. It enabled her to run faster, although her pace was uncertain until she could see the lights of the house.

  The man striding through the belt of trees that bordered the parkland had no chance to avoid her breathless plunge. The first thing he was aware of was a slim, lissom form, that caught his body a glancing blow, before responding to the impact and collapsing weakly into the undergrowth.

  For Sara’s part, the identity of the man was of less importance than his actually being there. Someone else, another human being with whom to share her anxieties; she was already scrambling to her feet, when his hands came to assist her.

  ‘In God’s name, what is going on?’

  Jude’s harsh tones were so familiar, so welcome, that for a moment all Sara could do was collapse against him, warm and secure within the reluctant circle of his arms.

  ‘Sara! Sara, for heaven’s sake, what’s happened?’ he demanded after the briefest of pauses, and she forced herself upright, as she endeavoured to explain.

  ‘The car—–’ she got out, panting as she did so. ‘There—there’s been an accident—–’

  ‘An accident! What kind of an accident?’ Jude’s hands shook her a little now. ‘Sara, quickly! What happened? Is anyone hurt?’ His voice lowered, and if Sara had been in any doubt that he had feelings for Harriet they were quickly dispersed by his hoarse intake of breath. ‘Harriet!’ he muttered. ‘Has something happened to Harriet? Is she injured?’

  Sara could only nod, and with an oath, Jude shook her once again. ‘Where? Where is she? Have you sent for an ambulance?’

  In stilted sentences, Sara managed to explain what had occurred, and Jude’s reactions told her all she needed to know. Leaving her to make her own way up to the house, he sprinted away between the trees, and by the time Sara stumbled up on to the terrace, the sound of the ambulance’s siren winding its way up from the cottage hospital was audible.

  Rob took Sara home, after all, arriving some time later in Jude’s dark red Mercedes. Sara was still in a state of shock, being served hot cups of strong sweet tea by a curiously subdued Venetia, who seemed to have shed her hostility along with her tears.

  Not that Sara had much conversation with anyone. Jude had briefly outlined what had happened, before returning to the scene of the accident. Apparently he had heard the car’s horn blowing, and this was why Sara had encountered him where she did. He had guessed something was wrong, but not the full extent of his own involvement. Sara had had to admire his coolness of purpose. In similar circumstances, she thought she might have run to the car first, to assure herself that Harriet was still alive and breathing. But Jude had immediately gone for professional assistance, realising at once that he himself could do nothing.

  Both Rupert and Lord Hadley had accompanied Jude. The party had quickly broken up in th
e wake of such news, and by the time Rob arrived to take Sara home, the drawing room looked bleak and deserted.

  The journey back to Knight’s Ferry was not one Sara wanted to repeat. By now, Harriet and the driver of the second vehicle had been taken away from the scene, but there were lights in the lane, and the police investigative team were involved with the calculations. Sara turned her eyes away from the mangled mess of metal and wondered with a pang when she would have to make a statement.

  ‘Have—have you heard anything?’ she ventured to Rob, who had always treated her with kindliness in the past, but he shook his head.

  ‘Master Jude will let us know, as soon as he has any news,’ he told her grimly, and Sara could only assume he blamed her for what had happened.

  ‘Has—has Jude gone to the hospital with—Harriet?’ she persisted, needing to know, and Rob nodded.

  ‘Jude, and old Hadley,’ he declared, squaring his shoulders. ‘Only right, seeing as how he drove her to it.’

  Sara blinked. ‘He—he didn’t drive her. I did,’ she protested, but Rob only gave her a pitying glance.

  ‘I’m not talking about the accident,’ he exclaimed, giving an impatient sniff. ‘Seems like you all got something to answer for, don’t it? And Miss Ferrars is only trying to even the score.’

  Sara decided she must have hit her head when she dived into the ditch. She was totally confused. Rob’s words didn’t make sense, at least not to her, and the throbbing pain of reaction was far worse than any migraine she had suffered. She just wanted to crawl into bed, and pull the covers over her head and forget everything that had happened this evening. But the selfishness of that wish made her despise herself utterly, guilty as she was of the most basic kind of deceit.

  Janet was waiting for them on their return, her dour features drawn into an expression of accusation: ‘Ye’re all right, I see,’ she remarked, as Sara came into the hall, hugging her coat about her. ‘Yon accident didnae send you to the hospital. But my poor mistress is in a bad way, so I hear.’

  ‘You’ve heard! You’ve heard from Jude?’

  Sara ignored the Scotswoman’s scathing tongue in her eager quest for news, but Janet only snorted. ‘Nae. We’ve heard nae more. Just what the laddie told us, afore Rob went to bring you home.’

  ‘Give it a rest, Janet.’ It was Rob who spoke then, his lined face showing a trace of compassion. ‘You know perfectly well that Miss Shelley wasn’t even in the car when it was hit.’

  ‘Very convenient,’ muttered Janet, turning away, but Sara refused to take offence. Janet was worried, they were all worried, and it was natural that she, as the innocent catalyst, should bear the brunt of the blame.

  ‘I should go to bed, if I were you, lassie,’ Rob suggested, gesturing towards the stairs. ‘You look all in. There’s nothing any of us can do tonight. You might as well get some sleep.’

  ‘Oh, no.’ Sara shook her head. She was tired, but she knew better than to think she could sleep before she knew exactly how serious Harriet’s injuries were. She would have offered to go to the hospital with Jude, if she had been given the chance, but it had been obvious he did not want her with him. She doubted if he had wanted the Hadleys either, but they had not given him an opportunity to refuse. ‘I’ll wait,’ she told Rob now. ‘I want to be here when Jude phones. I—I’ll go up and change this dress, though. It seems to be covered in mud.’

  ‘Okay.’ Rob glanced thoughtfully at his wife’s departing back, and then added in an undertone: ‘You won’t take too much notice of anything Janet says just now, will you? She’s upset. She doesn’t mean anything.’

  ‘That’s all right, Rob.’ Sara was too weary to care one way or the other. ‘I just hope we hear soon.’

  ‘Master Jude will ring the minute he knows anything,’ Rob assured her. ‘He cares about her more than any of us, even if he does sometimes have a funny way of showing it.’

  CHAPTER NINE

  IT was the sound of the decanter that awakened her, the chink as the stopper was laid on the tray, and the steady pouring of the liquid into a glass. Sara opened her eyes with a start, blinking in the sudden illumination, and saw to her astonishment that Jude was standing by the cabinet.

  Immediately she was aware of her state of undress. After removing the green dress, which she had rolled up in a ball and stuffed with some revulsion in the bottom of the closet, she had decided there was not much point in putting on more clothes. In consequence, she had pulled on the woolly white towelling bathrobe over her cream cotton pyjamas, and curled up in the armchair in the library, waiting for the phone call that never came.

  Jude was aware of her awakening the minute she opened her eyes. His own eyes were heavy-lidded and bloodshot, and although he was still fully dressed, his appearance was somewhat dishevelled. There were stains on the sleeve of his velvet jacket—blood? she wondered, with a quiver of apprehension—and his thick hair was rumpled above the shadow on his jawline, where nature relentlessly showed no compassion. And as she looked at him, Jude raised the glass he had just filled to his lips, tilting his head back thirstily to reveal the column of his throat. His shirt neck was open, his tie discarded to appear half in and half out of his jacket pocket, and the immaculate appearance he had presented earlier was no more disturbing to Sara’s emotions than his haggard fascination now.

  Discomfited by his appraisal, Sara broke into hasty speech: ‘You were going to phone! Did you phone? I—I mustn’t have heard you. I must have slept—–’

  ‘I didn’t phone,’ said Jude flatly, examining the liquid left in the glass before putting it down, and Sara caught her breath.

  ‘Is anything wrong? Has anything happened? Oh, God—–’ Her voice broke on a sob, and she thrust her bare feet to the floor: ‘Is Harriet worse?’

  ‘No, no.’ Jude spoke almost impatiently, thrusting back his hair with weary fingers before viewing her with mild cynicism. ‘But it’s good to know you could sleep with a clear conscience. You’ll need a clear head this morning when Sergeant Briggs comes to interview you.’

  Sara got to her feet. ‘I’m sorry if you think I’ve been careless. I didn’t intend to go to sleep. But I remember waiting and waiting—–’ She paused, steeling herself against his mockery: ‘What time is it?’

  ‘Nearly six, I guess,’ Jude replied laconically, moving to the windows to draw back the curtains and reveal a grey morning, and Sara gasped.

  ‘Six!’ she echoed. ‘And you didn’t phone! Oh, what must Janet have been thinking—–’

  ‘Don’t worry about the Grahams,’ Jude interrupted her shortly. ‘The Hadleys called here on their way home from the hospital, about two o’clock. You were already asleep, so they didn’t disturb you.’

  ‘Oh!’ Sara’s cheeks burned. ‘What must they have thought?’

  ‘That you were tired, I guess,’ retorted Jude dryly. ‘Aren’t you more interested in how Harriet is than what the Hadleys may have thought?’

  ‘Oh—of course!’ Sara wrapped her arms closely about herself. ‘I’m sorry. I’m so stupid. How—how is Harriet? Has she regained consciousness?’

  ‘A little over an hour ago,’ Jude agreed, inclining his head. ‘I waited until she did, so that I could speak to her. But she was still a little dazed. She couldn’t remember what had happened.’

  ‘But how is she?’ exclaimed Sara anxiously. ‘The—the cut on her head—is that all that’s wrong with her? I mean—I realise there may be concussion—–’

  ‘She has a fractured skull,’ said Jude flatly, and Sara caught her breath. ‘Just a hairline crack,’ he continued matter-of-factly. ‘So far as we know, there are no complications.’

  ‘But the cut—–’

  ‘Head wounds always look worse than they are,’ replied Jude. ‘At least, that’s what they tell me. Cuts bleed a lot, but it was the actual blow that did the damage. She must have cracked her head on the dashboard or the wind-screen. They’re not sure which. Either way, it was the impact that did it.’

&nb
sp; ‘Yes.’ Sara’s palms covered her cheeks as she remembered the whole horrifying incident. ‘I shouldn’t have left the car in the lane. I should have closed the gate somehow—–’

  ‘Don’t be silly!’ Jude cut her off without compassion. ‘It wasn’t your fault. You might just as well say it was mine for not driving you both home.’

  ‘No, but I should have closed the gate before I drove into the lane—–’

  ‘How could you? The Rolls would have been far more of a hazard jutting into the road. Be sensible, Sara, if you had left the car in that position, Harriet would most likely be dead now.’

  Sara looked up at him. ‘You—you think the accident might still have happened?’

  ‘The way that young fool was driving, I’d say it was practically a certainty.’

  ‘But how do you know?’ Sara was hesitant.

  ‘The force of the impact.’ Jude shrugged. ‘Sara, no one’s blaming you, least of all Harriet.’

  Sara swallowed convulsively. ‘And—and she is going to be all right?’

  ‘So they say. It’s a little early to be absolutely sure, I suppose, but Harriet’s a tough old bird. She’ll survive.’

  His words were curiously contradictory, coming from a man who the night before had been almost incoherent with anxiety. But they reminded Sara of her own feelings of the night before, and the indisputable proof of Jude’s involvement with her aunt. They made her take an involuntary step backward, as if physically rejecting the brief sense of kinship they had shared when speaking of the accident.

  ‘The other man,’ Sara said now, her words coming quickly, as if to distract Jude’s attention from that revealing gesture. ‘Is—is he going to be all right? He—he seemed trapped.’

  ‘He was. But fortunately he was wearing boots, those long cowboy boots some young men seem to favour. Still, I guess the leather saved his legs from getting badly lacerated. He had a cut or two, and a couple of broken bones, but he’s not seriously injured.’