Ruthless in All

by Jessica Steele

  Drat the man, she thought, niggled that he seemed to be constantly in her mind. It had been him and his logic about her being stuck with him, be it in Chalmers Hollow or Brynmoel, that had seen her giving in. That he was paying her handsomely was, from the way she saw it, only a side issue.

  She dried the last saucepan and put it away, musing that the thousand pounds had never been meant to include compensation for all the fidgeting that went on inside her that he might end up with anorexia nervosa if she didn't do something about it.

  Hanging up the tea towel, she decided to go to bed. She wasn't wanted in the sitting room, nor her 'prattle'. But to spend what was left of the evening stuck in the kitchen was not, to her mind, what holidays were all about.

  Feeling wide awake, she saw Blane Hunter look up when she slipped into the sitting room intending to select some reading matter to take upstairs with her.

  A sensation that his eyes were still on her as she went to the bookshelves had her taking up the first book to hand. And she was dratting him again that in turning; confirmation there as she caught his look full on that he had been watching her; that her latent mother-hen instincts were on the rampage again. For concern she did not want to feel rose up in her to see from his eyes, gone tired again, that in front of a blazing unguarded fire he looked ready to drop off at any moment.

  'If it's your intention to sit up all night as you did last night,' she said shortly, irritation with herself, with him suddenly, making her voice sharp, 'then might I suggest you put a guard in front of that fire?'

  Deliberately, his eyes held hers for long seconds. But she was ready for him if he came back with some cutting reminder that he could do without her nursemaid tendencies, and was taken aback when, his tone the mildest he had so far used, he did not rise at what she would have sworn he considered her fussing, but his eyes still on her, it was quietly that he said:

  'I have a healthy respect for the particular element of fire.'

  'Good,' she answered stoutly, and tried to come to terms with the oddest sensation on hearing him speak in any way pleasantly to her.

  Memory hit then of how in his nightmare he had cried out the word 'Fire', how, without any prompting from her, he well knew how quickly a fire could rage out of control.

  Feeling a weakness invading, the book she had selected in her hands, Arden went towards the door. But only to be stayed when, still in that same mild tone, she heard that Blane Hunter might want her prattle after all!

  'You're going to bed?' he asked.

  Knowing that her imagination was working overtime that she should think for a moment that he wanted her company, quite unaccountably, her heart skipped a beat.

  'I…' she said, and was stumped to know what to say. That was until, seeing her hesitation, Blane Hunter frowned. And Arden knew then, from his changing expression, that he was regretting having spoken to delay her, and any weakness in her disappeared. 'I've had a—tedious day,' she told him sarcastically, and was so pleased with her parting shot with its implication that he was the cause of her day being tedious that she was actually smiling as she went up the stairs.

  But once huddled up in bed, the cottage being without central heating, she found the book she had taken was not her style at all, and she began to grow bored.

  An hour after she had left Blane Hunter downstairs she was blaming the fact that she had slept until nearly noon that day on the fact that sleep seemed light years away.

  Another hour passed when, having made another stab at trying to get into her book, she went on to think that if it wasn't for that man downstairs, she would go and make herself a hot drink of something.

  But she felt a strange reluctance to go downstairs again. Though she was able to decide that it was on account of not wanting to bump into him, when she might earn the sharp edge of his tongue if he thought she was coming to check that he had put the fireguard up.

  Not that she was afraid of him, or his threats of a second murder, she scoffed. But by the time another half an hour had gone by, her thoughts of needing a hot drink had become a positive craving.

  It was at that point that she heard sounds below and then footsteps on the stairs, that told her that Blane Hunter was not, as she had thought, going to spend the night in that chair. Blane Hunter was going to bed!

  Arden watched the hands of her watch turn tortuously round for another half an hour. Then, desperate for her drink, whether the raging insomniac along the landing had found sleep or not, though from the look of him he should have gone spark out the moment his head hit his pillow, she was just going to have that hot drink.

  Noiselessly, she left her bed. Without making a sound she donned her all-enveloping winter dressing gown. And on tiptoe she went out on to the landing. Like a thief in the night, Arden then negotiated the stairs, holding her breath until, the kitchen door silently closed behind her, she snicked on the light and set about making herself a cup of tea.

  Bliss, she thought some ten minutes later, sat on one kitchen chair, her slippered feet propped up on another one. She poured herself a second cup of tea.

  But before she could get the cup anywhere near to her mouth, the sound of a soul in torment ripped through the quiet of the night.

  Her cup returned hurriedly to its saucer, she was on her feet, frozen for a second as. she heard the same shouting she had heard before. Blane, she thought—oh my God! He's having another nightmare!

  As suddenly as that realisation was made, Arden was released from her frozen immobility, and she had no remembrance of snicking off the kitchen light or of leaving the door wide. Realisation that she had moved came to her only as she came to an abrupt halt outside Blane Hunter's room.

  'It won't open!' she heard him shout, and her abrupt halt was of a very short duration.

  The light by his bed was still on, she saw when she went in. Just as though it had been left on because he had never thought to fall asleep.

  'It's all right,' she said softly as hurriedly she bent over him, her eyes taking in that, with his bedroom as cold as hers, there were beads of sweat on his brow.

  But he was deeply enmeshed in that same violent nightmare she had witnessed before, and he was not hearing her trying to soothe him out of it. And when making her voice louder while still keeping that comforting note, as again she told him, 'It's all right, you're dreaming,' Blane Hunter was still not hearing her.

  'Out!' he shouted, and seemed to be having some gigantic struggle as the bedcovers became tangled as he heaved them this way and that. 'Get her out!' ripped from him. 'Must…' His face became contorted, twisted, causing her to think as she knelt on the bed to try to shake him awake, of the twisted remains of the car he had crashed.

  'Blane!' she called, crooning to him now as she shook his bare shoulders. But he was too deeply involved to hear, a sort of semi-delirium taking him as he pushed her hands violently away from him. Arden had to wonder then—was she some obstruction in his dream? Was she doing no good by shaking him, but only making it worse for him?

  Instinct came then and had her hand tenderly smoothing back across his forehead, tears spurting to her eyes that, divorced from Delcine as she knew him to be, he must still love her if, even dead, she could wreak such havoc in him.

  His shouting continued for about a minute more as Arden continued to gently smooth his brow, then all at once, like some sudden miracle, Blane Hunter was quiet. Afraid then to stop lest his face became contorted again, lest he began his troubled shouting again, she kept her hand going back across his forehead.

  How long she sat doing that, or quite when it was that the position her arm was in started to make it ache, so that she moved her position until she was half lying beside him, she had no idea.

  But it was not until his breathing became more relaxed, all torment gone from him, that she surfaced from not thinking at all to realise that he must have moved too without her being aware of it; and that if she didn't want to disturb him, she looked like being securely bonded to him for the rest o
f the night.

  The humour of the situation struck her, when looking at his face, composed now as he lay in the arms of a deep and natural sleep, she saw that it was in her arms he lay as well. Oh, wouldn't he just love it if he awoke and found her arm beneath his neck, his head on her shoulder, she thought.

  Not that he was going to wake and find her there. From his breathing, the fact that he must be completely worn out, she guessed he would sleep deeply for hours yet. But soon he would move—she'd read somewhere that one's body frequently moved in sleep—and when he did, gently, so as not to disturb him from that health-giving sleep, she would extract her arm and tiptoe away.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Feeling hot, when her bedroom was freezing cold, Arden stirred sleepily to find it was daylight. Her next discovery was to find the reason why she was feeling so warm—she had slept in her dressing gown!

  I must have been more tired than I thought, she considered, remembering how wide awake she had felt on going downstairs to make herself a cup of tea. Yet she had no recollection at all of having so much as left Blane Hunter, much less getting her arm free and coming to her own bed then climbing in still with her dressing gown on.

  By now, she mused, since full daylight meant that it must have gone eight o'clock, she should be up and doing. Though since she could hear no sounds from down below, she was hopeful that Blane Hunter was still catching up on the many hours of sleep he must have missed. If she started pottering about downstairs, she could well disturb him. Her thoughts went on that her first job must be to take the ashes out so as to have a nice fire going for him when he surfaced. Poor man, after the terrible time he'd had during the night, perhaps today might be his turn to sleep until near midday.

  Coming further awake, Arden moved on to her back. And it was then, her eyes open, that they shot wide and she blinked, horrified. Shock taking her as in a very brief space of time she was finding out the answer to why, when she knew for a fact that her bed was a single bed, from what her eyes were telling her, she had awoken in a bed that from the size of the footboard, was a double one!

  Knowledge she did not want to grasp, did not want to believe, was then hurtling in jet-propelled. And it was with unbelieving eyes that Arden turned her head, as she stretched out a foot and her bare toes came into contact with a bare leg which was not her own! She was then galvanised, albeit without success, into trying to sit up. But only to find that she was securely pinned in a recumbent position.

  Incredulity reached a peak as, with her eyes threatening to pop out of her head, she saw that the reason why she could not move to sit up was that she— was in bed with Blane Hunter!

  To see that he was sound asleep, his body a dead weight as he lay on more than half of the skirts of her dressing gown, set her blinking again. To see him lying so peacefully there had her blinking once more in the hope that she wasn't seeing what she thought she was seeing. But Blane Hunter was still there, and as anger soared up in her and went gushing out of control, there was no thought in her shocked head then of leaving him to sleep on undisturbed.

  Giving him a mighty shove, Arden used the full power of her lungs, as, 'Wake up, you!' she yelled.

  To be so violently awakened, to see that he had slept until daylight, seemed to her agitated mind to be the only surprise about him. She knew then, positively, as with his face not more than nine inches from hers not so much as a bat of an eyelid did he give to see her there, that he must have woken up at some time during the night and had discovered her there beside him.

  Memory galloped in, and she flicked her eyes to where the bedside lamp had been left on. And she needed no other proof, on seeing that the lamp was now switched off, to know that her surmise was right Yet that he had woken to find her in his bed, but had calmly switched off the light and then gone back to sleep, had Arden near to rupturing a blood vessel.

  'You swine!' she shrieked, giving another useless tug at her dressing gown. 'You knew damn well I was here! Why didn't you wake me?'

  Blane Hunter, it appeared, had the ability to come instantly awake from the deepest sleep. But he did nothing to cool her blood mercury, when, having not yet said a word, laconically he drawled:

  'Why should I? To my mind you'd come to join me because you were—lonely.'

  'L-lonely!' she spluttered. 'You were having a nightmare,' she raged furiously, threatening to blow a fuse as she went on to put him right. 'I came in when you were shouting your head off,' she tossed at him. 'Had it not been for my arm getting jammed under your head when I was - was comforting you…' She didn't miss the hard stare he gave her as she presented him with a picture of him in her arms, a picture he did not care very much for, she saw as the heat went from her momentarily on remembering how vulnerable he had been. 'H-had it not been for that, you would never have known anything about it.'

  'So you've been playing the little nursemaid again,' he challenged, leaving her to guess, since he was not disputing that he'd had a nightmare, that he remembered every dark terrible scene relived in that tortured sleep.

  'Well, never again,' she snapped, anger back with her, her eyes clearly reading that if he had looked vulnerable last night, then the opposite could be said of him this morning. She gave another tug at her robe, with as much result as before. 'If you'd had any common decency in your black soul,' she seethed, growing furious as she again saw him waking, seeing her there, and then calmly going back to sleep, 'the first thing you would have done would have been to have woken me!'

  'The first thing I did,' he retorted grittily, 'was to cover you up. You,' he added, a man who never held his punches, 'were barely decent!'

  And while, not a bad hand at painting pictures himself, he watched as wild colour washed her face, her imagination took off. It had never been her intention to stay, to get beneath the bedclothes that now covered her, but she was remembering then how, when her only concern had been to cover him with the tangle he had made of the bedcovers, she had sat there in her dressing gown. Movements she had made when she had fallen asleep could well have had her dressing gown coming apart. Her shortie nightdress could well have ridden up around her thighs… Blane Hunter stopped her vivid imaginings from going on by coming in to mock:

  'It never has been my policy to carry sleeping-maidens—from my bed.' And while her mercury started to rise again, he went on, 'The obvious logic was to tuck you in. That, or take the chance of having to play nursemaid to you when you caught pneumonia. Not quite,' he ended loftily, 'my forte.'

  Goaded beyond measure not only by the coldness of his logic, but by his mockery, his arrogant air, Arden's temper reached a new peak that he was making it sound for all the world as though she was being unreasonable!

  'Stuff your logic!' she exploded rudely, mutiny high about her. Mutiny he couldn't fail to see as she pushed a wing of shining tousled hair back from her face. She then gave another tug to be free, and had not done with exploding yet, as again she erupted, no more well mannered than before, 'And get your carcass off my dressing gown!' she yelled shrilly.

  The fact that he appeared only then to realise what was keeping her, when she was sure he must have seen her efforts to be free, had her angry enough to want to bash his head in. But she wasted no time when he obliged and moved over. Though his sarcastic, 'And I thought it was my personal magnetism that kept you here,' did nothing to cool her fury as she scrambled from the bed and stormed from the room.

  Well, that settles it! she raged. She was leaving. And she didn't care a button that she would be leaving him stranded. Let him walk to the nearest railway station— with luck, it might be fifty miles away.

  Her anger did not diminish when, as she gathered up her clothes, sounds from the plumbing came to tell her that he was hogging the bathroom. I hope he cuts himself shaving, she fumed, and was not the tiniest bit ashamed of that hope.

  He's a survivor anyway, she thought as she'd thought before, when hearing him go down the stairs she took up her clothes, and went along to the bathroom. He'd survi
ve with or without her there to make him eat. Had he not been a survivor, he too would have perished in the crash.

  Oddly, the thought of Blane Hunter dead had the most peculiar effect of nullifying her anger. Unable to find a reason why such thoughts should have that effect on her fury, Arden came to the only possible conclusion —her temper had only ever burned in short bursts anyway. That she had lost her temper with more frequency than ever before just lately was, she considered, all down to him. Never had she ever met anyone like him!

  But on returning to her room, if her anger had largely evaporated, then the same could not be said about her determination to leave Brynmoel.

  Taking her cheque book from her bag, Arden uncapped her pen and wrote out a cheque for a thousand pounds. She'd have that money out from that loose brick in the pantry wall and deposited in the bank this afternoon all ready to meet the cheque when Blane Hunter presented it, she decided.

  That she and her aunt would be back to robbing Peter to pay Paul, even though Louise had no idea of just how much juggling went on to keep their heads above water, was just something she would have to go on coping with. She'd had it with that surly brute downstairs!

  Hoping that the brief discussion she was going to have with Blane Hunter could be conducted in a civilised manner—for discussion there would have to be, since he was at Colonel Meredith's cottage without the Colonel's knowledge—Arden tucked the cheque she had written into the back pocket of her jeans, and left her room.

  The smell of bacon frying twitched her nostrils, and had her halting before she had gone down more than two stairs. Good grief! she thought, amazed. Had she so far got his appetite going again that, hungry, he was cooking his own breakfast!

  That Blane Hunter was indeed cooking his own breakfast, and by the look of all the bacon and eggs on the go, hers too, was not the only surprise awaiting her when she ventured into the kitchen.