When Danger Follows

by Maggi Andersen

  “Coke’s a mare.”

  “Then I’ll definitely have to think up a better name for her.”

  Harry led the horse out into the open air and the heat and glare hit Caitlin again. She wiped her brow with the back of her hand.

  “If I were you I’d cut those jeans off at the knees,” he said. “And get some shorts.”

  “Shorts? Jake told me they weren’t suitable out here.”

  “Did he?” Harry laughed. “I guess he had his own reasons. And I have mine.” He tied the horse up and disappeared back inside. “I’ll just saddle up Thunderbolt and be with you in a minute.”

  Caitlin patted the horse’s neck. She was so pretty. “I’m going to call you Columbine,” she said softly.

  “I’ll give you a leg up,” Harry said, right behind her.

  “Wait … don’t you think you should give me some instructions first? Like, where’s the brake?”

  Harry laughed. “You’ll learn as we go. Put your foot in the stirrup, here … and up you go.” He almost threw Caitlin up into the saddle. She perched there uneasily as he adjusted the stirrups. “Hold the reins so. Right.”

  He proceeded to tell her how to lead the horse and hopefully make it stop. Caitlin seemed to be very high above the hard ground and held on tightly as the horse fidgeted. She figured it was a Catch 22. Columbine could tell she was inexperienced. It made the horse jumpy and that in turn made Caitlin even more nervous.

  “Off we go.”

  Harry looked like he could sleep and eat in the saddle and he probably did. He led his big chestnut out of the mounting yard and along the track. Columbine followed. Caitlin didn’t seem to need to contribute anything, apart from staying on, but this became quite a feat in itself as they began to descend a steep slope.

  “You’re going to be a natural,” Harry said in an encouraging voice. He reined in alongside her. “You look good in the saddle.”

  Columbine’s hooves kept sliding on the steep, dusty ground and Caitlin did what Harry advised, stiffening her legs and leaning back to prevent herself from falling over the horse’s neck. Once on level ground again she breathed a huge sigh of relief.

  “You handled that well. Now we’ll try a trot.” The words made her heart begin its frantic beating again. Columbine obligingly broke into a trot following Thunderbolt along the path. Caitlin’s bottom rhythmically hit the saddle, bump, bump, which quickly began to feel like it was made out of rock instead of leather.

  * * * *

  That night, Jake came to eat at the dinner table with Caitlin and the children. “I believe you went down to the compound this afternoon,” he said, glancing at her as he carved the roast beef.

  She felt unaccountably guilty—after all the time was her own. She moved uncomfortably on her chair, wishing she could put a cushion under her bottom. “Yes, I wanted to ask Harry if he could to take me into town next Saturday, as you suggested.”

  “I’m sure he will,” Jake placed a slice of meat on her plate.

  She nodded. “I’m looking forward to it.”

  Jake suddenly grinned and she caught her breath. It was a very beguiling smile. “Don’t expect too much, Caitlin. It really is a one-horse town—nothing like Dublin.”

  “Have you been to Ireland, Mr. Monterey?”

  “It’s Jake. We’re not into formality in these parts and no, not yet.”

  “It’s a completely different world.”

  “You must find it strange here.”

  “I’m getting used to it. Don’t worry. I don’t expect to find Dublin down the road.”

  “Only those that love and live in Burrawong would call it a town. It’s just a cluster of houses and a couple of shops. The pub’s the hub of excitement around here and does a fair meal. Nothing fancy.”

  “I need to buy bathers and a few things.”

  “A swimming costume? There’s a store there sells women’s clothes, but I don’t know about costumes.”

  Elizabeth interjected at this point. “Daddy, Caitlin has promised to take us swimming in the dam.”

  The smile left Jake’s eyes. To Caitlin, it felt like a cloud had passed over the sun. “Angela might be able to find one you can use,” he said, putting down his knife and fork. “Nothing glamorous though.”

  “Thank you. Is that okay?” Caitlin asked uneasily. “To take them swimming, I mean.”

  “Pleeese Daddy,” interjected Elizabeth, with William joining in.

  “Sure, it’s okay,” he patted William’s head as he rose from the table. Placing his uneaten meal on a tray he headed for his office.

  At the door he turned, as if he’d forgotten all about her, and said, “I’ll have Angela dig those costumes out for you.”

  She watched the screen door slam wondering what had just happened.

  After dinner, she ran a bath and eased her aching body into it, feeling as if she’d gone a round or two in the ring with a boxing kangaroo. The bore water was quite hard, and made her hair feel stiff. She had to use loads of conditioner. As she lay in the cooling water, she thought about Jake’s reaction at dinner. His guard had slipped, if only briefly. Would the real Jake emerge more and more with time? She found it an odd situation, being isolated from the world and part of a family, yet at the same time, merely an employee. Even at his most surly he was far too attractive, and when he smiled! She sensed she would need to keep some distance from him for pure self-preservation. There would be no problem with that for he seemed intent on the same thing.

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  * * *

  Chapter Four

  Wandering around the maze of rooms at Tall Trees, Caitlin discovered a surprisingly wide-ranging library. Caroline Monterey had been its creator, she suspected, for her name was written on the fly-leaf of many of the books. She couldn’t help wondering what Caroline had been like. The many homely touches about the house and the paintings pointed to her love of craft and now Caitlin had discovered the kind of books she liked to read.

  She raked through the shelves and pounced on a favorite, Jane Austin’s Persuasion, taking it to her room. She thought she’d soon be immersed in nineteenth-century English society, but found she kept reading the same lines over and over again, as her mind drifted. She had hoped leaving Ireland would put the past year out of her mind.

  So far it hadn’t.

  Caitlin found herself leaning back in her rocker like Whistler’s Mother, dwelling on the past, and with it came the familiar, grinding sense of fear.

  She never knew her father. He died when she was a baby and her mother brought her up alone. She was a great single parent, and Caitlin never felt she was missing out on anything the other school children had. But when she was seventeen, her mother began to have problems with her sight and co-ordination and learned she had developed Multiple Sclerosis. It took all Caitlin’s spare time and energy to care for her. Her mother wasn’t one of the luckier ones who went into remission or managed to live a fairly comfortable life. She went downhill very quickly and died when Caitlin was nineteen, leaving her the money she’d saved for her to go to teacher’s college. Caitlin had been determined not to let her mother down and, ignoring the dating experiences of friends and fellow students, she worked hard to realize the dream her mother had for her, which at that time, she felt sure was her dream too. She remembered graduating with both a feeling of achievement and a great sense of loss.

  With the proceeds from the sale of their small cottage, she bought a flat and took up a teaching position in Dublin. Her future seemed mapped out for her, but she felt increasingly restless and lonely. Looking back, she saw she was vulnerable when she went to a local pub for Christmas drinks with a teacher friend and met Maxwell Haughton.

  Maxwell was English, but his roots were in Ireland. Tall, slim and fair-haired, he dressed more formally than the other young men she’d met, always with a designer jacket and a silk tie, although the only work he did was from home, writing articles and book reviews for the Dublin Times. He was we
ll educated, having gone to Eaton and Cambridge, and had an English sense of humor, which had a crueler edge to it than the Irish.

  Max was different from anyone she’d ever known. Much of his character was attributable, she suspected, to his ancestry, which lent him an aristocratic profligacy that she’d found romantic. He was careless about money, probably because he’d never been without it. She was surprised to find his family seldom came to Ireland to stay in their ancient mansion on the coast, south of Dublin. She was quickly learning that these people lived by a different set of rules.

  Looking back, had she been older and wiser, she might have heard the warning bells ring when he revealed an unpredictable moodiness in his character. But she had no model on which to base their relationship—no father or brothers to advise and protect her, and she fell headlong in love with him.

  Max made no such declarations. He simply claimed her as his own and their lives began to conform to a pattern. He mixed with an avant-garde crowd of Dubliners who gathered at a pub near Trinity College every Friday evening. They, with their slick, malicious repartee, politely included Caitlin as part of their set, but she was seldom more than an observer. She failed her first important test when asked which of the three colleges she’d attended. She was from the north, they from the south, polar opposites it seemed, destined never to gain any real level of understanding, although she did try hard, at first.

  Six months after she and Max began dating, he took her down to his family home, Mowat Manor for the weekend. They drove to Wexford in his Austin Healey with the top down. After traveling for an hour, the wind, laden with icy condensation off the sea, caused her nose to run and she had to fumble for a hanky.

  She never felt calm when driving with Max. He always drove too fast for comfort. They raced through the old seaside town of Howth, with its small, square houses clustered around a bay. Their grey, slate roofs and fresh, whitewashed walls looked like the sea wind had washed them clean. A fishing boat had just returned with its catch and the gulls had settled in a discordant group along the rock seawall, rising shrilly as they drove by.

  They began to climb, the road winding around the edge of the cliff-face, passing a charming, ancient church she would have loved to explore, but she knew Max was intent on reaching Mowat and wouldn’t stop, so she didn’t ask.

  As they progressed, the road narrowed. Only a few meters from the car, the ground dropped steeply away. Far below, slippery, lichen-covered rocks took the brunt of the restless Irish Sea.

  “Your nose is red,” Max said, turning to look at her.

  “Please watch the road.”

  “Are you afraid?”

  “A little,” she answered then bit her lip.

  His eyebrows rose. “You have a right to be afraid.”

  “Don’t be so melodramatic, Max.”

  He laughed. “I can drive this road blindfolded.”

  “Please don’t try with me in the car.”

  The wind blew off her orange scarf and ripped it from her stiffening fingers. It sailed over the edge of the cliff, the only spot of color to be seen in the grey landscape.

  “I’ll buy you a new one. French silk.” Max said, managing to spoil his generous offer by denigrating the one she had lost. Her hair began to whip about, stinging her cold face. She tried to hold it back as the car sped around another, alarming bend. Overhead, gulls soared, filling the air with their mournful cries, like a sad dirge.

  Max followed the curve of a high, stone wall around another hairpin bend. Relieved, Caitlin saw a set of imposing, wrought iron gates come into view, standing open. Barely reducing speed, Max drove into a driveway. He skidded to avoid potholes. Gnarled, twisted trees eerily stretched out their skeletal branches, as if in appeal. Another bend surrounded by overgrown gardens and a Georgian manor house came into view. Mowat.

  Max stamped on the brake and skidded with a spray of gravel, pulling up right in front of the imposing front entrance. He jumped out without opening the door, and came to open hers before getting their bags from the boot.

  She climbed out slowly, taking stock. Mowat’s windows blankly mirrored the grey sky. Creeper covered its entire front façade. The woodwork needed paint, in fact, the whole place cried out for attention. What a lovely house it must once have been and could still be.

  “Well, what do you think?” Caitlin detected the note of pride in Max’s voice before he retreated behind his mask of indifference.

  From the top step she turned and took in the slate-colored sea dotted with white caps. Out on the horizon a sea fog was closing in.

  “It’s sensational.”

  “You really think so?”

  He sounded so boyish she hid a smile. “I do. Why don’t you come down here more often?”

  “The lack of mod cons, mostly. Come inside.”

  He unlocked the door and led her into a large hall with a grand staircase. Aged Persian rugs covered the oak floors.

  “Samuel and Brigitte live in a cottage at the back. I’ll let them know we’ve arrived.”

  Caitlin followed him through a series of chilly, under-furnished rooms until they came to a smaller and much more livable one. Two floral, upholstered chairs sat in front of a fireplace where a fire had been laid. Max took out his cigarette lighter and crouched down. Very soon flames burst forth and Caitlin moved closer, eager for warmth.

  “This is the morning room. I’ll arrange for Brigitte to bring us tea.”

  She sank into the down-filled cushions covered with faded, pink damask roses.

  Max was gone quite awhile. Curiosity got the better of her and she rose and walked out onto a terrace, finding herself in a walled garden. It was sheltered here and charming. A black bird washed itself in a birdbath on the smooth, emerald lawn. Roses scented the air.

  “How lovely,” she said aloud.

  “Caitlin?” she turned. Max stood at the doorway frowning. “Don’t wander off by yourself.”

  “I have no intention of doing so. Not when tea is at hand.” She smiled at the woman placing a tray on the coffee table.

  “Brigitte, this is my fiancee, Caitlin Fitzgerald.”

  The woman looked at Caitlin in surprise as she tried to hide her own amazement. She and Max had never discussed marriage. Brigitte unloaded the tray. A flowery teapot and cups, matching milk jug and sugar bowl, a plate of sandwiches and another loaded with thick slabs of iced cake.

  Congratulations to you both,” Brigitte said her brown eyes serious. “It’s very nice to meet you, Caitlin. I’ll leave you both to enjoy your tea.”

  When the door shut, Caitlin turned to Max. “You’ve shocked her. And me. What’s this about our engagement?”

  “I decided we should get married.”

  “You don’t think you should have asked me first?”

  “I probably should have, but seeing you here … you will, won’t you?”

  Caitlin waited for a feeling of joy of being loved and desired, their future ahead of them. But instead she felt troubled. Max was a complex man. His strange moods veering from insecurity to arrogance should have warned her from the first, but instead it drew her to him. She thought she could help him. She had confided in a friend at school who had shook her head and said, “You’re a rescuer, Caitlin. That seldom works.”

  “I need to think about this, Max,” she said gently, aware that she could hurt him. He turned and stared into the fire. Illuminated by its glow, his face closed down. Minutes passed. He seemed hardly aware of her now.

  “Just give me a little time,” she urged.

  They drank their tea in silence. She’d lost her appetite and could eat little. There was a lump in her throat. When she put down her cup, he stood and said, “Come and see upstairs. There’s a fine view.”

  He took her hand and silently led her up the stairs. They passed too many empty rooms to count, and entered a gracious bedroom whose windows looked out over the sea.

  “Oh, a four-poster,” Caitlin said brightly. “And look at the view.”
She moved towards the window, feeling Max’s eyes on her.

  “Come here,” he said.

  She turned to find him lying on the bed.

  She swallowed and came to sit beside him. He pulled her down to him. The damask swag of curtains gave off a musty smell. He kissed her, his hands cupping her breasts. She had anticipated that they would make love for the first time this weekend. Max had always pulled away from her when things went too far, despite her passion and curiosity. But what had happened downstairs now made her unsure and it was she who eased away from him.

  He turned on his side studying her. “I thought you wanted to make love.”

  She didn’t know what to say. What was wrong with her? “I think we should give it more time.”

  “How much time do you need? It’s the natural development of a relationship between man and a woman, isn’t it?”

  She could see Max interpreted her reticence as inexperience “I know. I’m just not ready, Max.”

  He rolled off the bed. “Come downstairs, I’ll show the rest of the house.”

  They wandered from room to room. It seemed such a waste to Caitlin that no one lived here and loved this gracious, old home. They walked through the walled garden. Max opened an ivy covered gate in the wall and they entered a formal garden with clipped box hedges and statuary.

  “I’m glad these gardens are cared for,” she said.

  “Why?”

  “I don’t know. I hate to see things die.”

  He looked at her, his grey eyes thoughtful. “You’re grounded, Caitlin, strong. I’m afraid sometimes…”

  “Afraid? Of what, Max?”

  “We all live blindly on the edge of a precipice. If we overbalance…. “he picked a white rose and presented it to her.

  She saw the drop of blood on his finger. “Oh Max look, you’ve pricked yourself.”

  He shook his head dismissing it. “The thing is, Caitlin,” he went on, “You are one of those rare people. It would take an a lot for you to topple, and I have this feeling, this hope, that you can keep me from falling.”