The Shadowy Horses

by Susanna Kearsley

  “A haggis,” I told him, refusing to bite, “is a sausage in a sheep’s stomach.”

  “Aye, well,” he said, straight-faced, “you’ll ken differently when you’ve stepped on one. Vicious wee things.”

  I sighed, and stepped around the hole of the imaginary haggis, and in the shelter of the second ridge he sat, and pulled me down beside him.

  We were more lying than sitting, I suppose, our backs fitted to the angle of the grass-covered slope. I tipped my head back and watched the stars glittering into infinity.

  David stayed silent, hands linked behind his head. And then he said simply: “Verity.”

  “Yes?”

  “What are you going to do about Lazenby’s job offer?”

  I rolled my head sideways to look at him. “What?”

  “Ye ken what I mean. Alexandria.”

  “How do you know about that?”

  “Adrian told me.”

  Reminding myself to smack Adrian next time I saw him, I pointed out to David that I hadn’t actually been offered any job, as yet. “Lazenby hasn’t been in touch, he hasn’t asked me—”

  “When he does,” said David calmly, interrupting. “What will you tell him?”

  For a moment, in silence, I studied his profile.

  Then I said: “If he’d asked me two months ago, I think I would have said yes.”

  “And now?”

  “Now I’m not sure.” I shrugged, and pulled a clump of grass with idle fingers.

  “And why is that?”

  I tossed the grass away and sighed. “Look, I’m never very brilliant at this sort of thing…”

  He smiled faintly at my choice of words. “Happens a lot, does it?”

  “No.” The word came out of its own accord, and once out, it couldn’t be taken back again, so I swallowed hard and repeated it. “No, it doesn’t. In fact, it’s never… well,” I stumbled, as he slowly turned his head to look at me, “that is to say, I’ve never felt…” But that sentence faltered as well, so I gave up trying.

  He held my gaze a long while, silently, his eyes turned silver by the moonlight. And then he stood, and held a hand out. “Time we were getting back,” he said.

  “David…”

  “I’ve said I’m no saint. I can’t stay here like this and not touch you,” he told me, his tone carefully even. “And fond as I am of the Fort, I would rather our first time took place in a bed, if it’s all the same to you.”

  I thought of his camp bed, and of my twin-bedded room at Rosehill, and of the other people who were constantly around us, and I shook my head in argument. “But David…”

  “Some things,” he said, “are worth waiting for.”

  The Fort path led out past the caravan park, and a snatch of music blaring from a radio gave way, as we walked, to the muted sound of a couple quarreling. David kept possession of my hand, whistling softly under his breath as though he were well pleased. As we passed the last row of caravans he slowed his step, and the whistling ceased. “There you are,” he said quietly. “What did I tell you?”

  Two figures were standing locked in an embrace alongside the furthest caravan. The man I couldn’t see too well, but he was clearly kissing Fabia. One couldn’t mistake her, even at this distance.

  David nudged me along. “See? My mother is always right.”

  “Hard luck on poor Adrian.”

  “Aye.” David smiled. “Still, I reckon he’ll find some comfort in that redheaded lass he was trying to pull at the ceilidh.”

  “I missed that, actually. How was he doing?”

  “Not bad. Did you really not notice?” He raised a dark eyebrow. “He was being dead obvious about it.”

  In all honesty, the entire Royal Family could have been dancing a reel beside us and I wouldn’t have noticed, but I didn’t tell him that.

  He didn’t take the road toward the harbor, but led me uphill instead, along a curve of darkened houses, and out again onto the road that would take us back to Rosehill.

  I didn’t pay too much attention to our walk home. One minute we were crossing the busy road at the edge of Eyemouth and the next we were turning up the long drive, in companionable silence. The windows of Rose Cottage were dark, and up at the house the only light still burning was the one over the front door. Peter, if he’d come home before us, had gone to bed.

  David didn’t kiss me good night at the door. He followed me into the entrance hall, and up the curve of smooth stone stairs, and when I turned in the middle of my bedroom he was still there behind me, putting the cat out.

  “David,” I asked him, low, “what are you doing?”

  He glanced over his shoulder, as though it were plainly self-evident. “I’m locking the door.”

  I heard the key catch. And then he was coming toward me and I found myself suddenly at a loss for words, nervous in a way I hadn’t been in years. I was trembling—actually trembling—when he touched my hair, his fingers working to undo the plait, arranging the long strands over my shoulders. “Do you mind?” he asked me, gently.

  I found a smile then, to show him. “What happened to ‘some things are worth waiting for’?”

  “Christ, woman. I’ve waited half an hour as it is.”

  I caught the flash of his grin in the near darkness. And then he took my face in his hands and kissed me, and it was a very long while before I noticed anything else.

  Chapter 34

  The horses woke me in the dark hour before dawn. Snorting and stamping, they thundered past beneath my window and were swallowed by the lonely field and the wind that wept through the chestnut tree like a wandering lament.

  I shivered into wakefulness, and forced my leaden eyelids open, momentarily confused by the heavy weight of something warm across my waist; the quiet even breathing close beside me on the pillow. And then I remembered.

  “David.”

  He shifted at the whispered word, his face against my hair. “Mmm?”

  “Did you hear that?”

  But it was obvious he hadn’t. Still half asleep, he tightened his arm round my waist to gather me closer against him, his powerful body shielding me from harm. “Whatever it is,” he murmured, soothingly, “it’ll have to come through me, first. Go to sleep.”

  And closing my eyes, I turned my face against his shoulder and felt all my fears flow from me while his strong and steady heartbeat drowned the shrieking of the wind.

  It might have been a minute or a lifetime later when I heard Jeannie’s voice calling my name. She sounded close, I thought drowsily. A good thing David locked the door, or else…

  “Come on, Verity—waken up, now.” Jeannie’s hand jostled my arm and my eyes flew open with a guilty start to focus on her face. She shook her head, her expression neither shocked nor judgmental, and crossed to draw the curtains. “Jings! You do sleep like the dead.”

  The warm weight across my stomach shifted and stretched, and looking down I saw that it was Murphy, rolling over on his side to test his claws against the blankets. He had not quite recovered from the indignity of being chucked out of my room last night, and his level stare was icily aloof. Beside me, the mattress was empty and cold.

  “It’s nine o’clock,” said Jeannie, briskly. “Peter said to knock you up at nine.”

  Closing my eyes again, I let my head drop back against the pillows. “On a Sunday?”

  “He didn’t want you missing all the excitement.”

  “Kind of him,” I mumbled. Then, as her words began to penetrate: “What excitement?”

  “D’ye never watch the news?” she asked me. “They were talking about it all yesterday, ye ken—that big storm out over the Channel.”

  “Oh right, Brian said something…” I frowned, trying to remember what he’d said, exactly. “It was just sittin
g there, wasn’t it? Not moving.”

  “Aye, well, it’s moved. Can you not hear the change in the wind? It’ll be here by noon, I should think.”

  “The storm’s coming here?” I opened my eyes as the realization struck, and levered myself onto my elbows. “God, the excavations… we’ll have to cover—”

  “It’s already been done,” she informed me. “Davy and Peter and Dad did all that, afore breakfast. And they’re moving the students up into the stables, in case those wee tents don’t stand up to the storm.”

  “Is there room in the stables?”

  “Oh, aye. In the common room, like. Peter,” she confided, “would have put them all downstairs in his own sitting room, I think, only Davy told him that was daft. It’s only for the one night, and they’ll have more fun up there, without us old folks hanging round.”

  “I’ve no doubt.” Turning my head, I looked at the dappled sunlight dancing through my window, and the sliver of blue sky that glinted beside the great chestnut tree. “Will it be a bad storm, do you think?”

  Jeannie nodded. “Brian brought the boat back in at half-past two this morning, and there’s not much makes my Brian cautious. Oh,” she said, as an afterthought, turning at the door, “you do mind that it’s Davy’s birthday, don’t you?”

  As if I needed reminding, I thought, stretching my weary limbs beneath the sheets. Hopeful that Jeannie wouldn’t see the tiny flush that touched my cheeks, I nodded, feigning nonchalance. “He’s thirty-seven, isn’t he?”

  “Aye. Not that you’d ken that from looking at him.” She smiled indulgently. “He’s been bouncing about like a lad Robbie’s age, all the morning.”

  Where he had found the energy to bounce, I didn’t know.

  I felt rather deliciously lazy, myself. Simply rising and dressing and brushing my teeth took me all of twenty minutes, and my fingers were so clumsy with my plait that in the end I gave up the effort. The wind caught the loose strands as I stepped outside, and blew them stinging across my eyes.

  I nearly walked straight into Adrian’s red Jaguar, parked at a crazy angle just a few steps from the house, the keys still dangling in the ignition. Adrian had been quite cautious with his keys since the night we’d sat up in the field, and this was hardly his usual parking technique, but when I caught up with him in the Principia a few minutes later, I saw the reason for his carelessness. He put me in mind of a stylish corpse—deathly white and draped artistically across his desk, his arms outstretched.

  “Late night?” I asked him.

  “You have no idea.”

  “What are you doing here, then?”

  Raising his head, he propped it up with a hand and half opened one eye. “Herring Queen.”

  “I’m sorry?”

  “Bloody Herring Queen,” he spelled it out more clearly. “Herds of people milling about, underneath my window. It’s impossible to sleep.”

  No one else was around at the moment, so I filled my coffee cup and took my chair. “Where is everybody?”

  Adrian shrugged. “I haven’t the faintest idea, but I’m sure they’ll be back. They’ve been in and out all bloody morning… every time I start to nod off.”

  “Very thoughtless of them,” I agreed.

  Hearing the smile in my voice, Adrian opened his eye wider, to stare at me suspiciously. “You’re looking rather ragged yourself, my love.”

  “Am I?”

  “Mmm. Almost as ragged as our Mr. Fortune. He’s—”

  “Adrian,” I interrupted, not listening, “how long have you been sitting here?”

  He consulted his watch. “About an hour and a half. Why?”

  Frowning down into the drawer of my desk, I pushed aside a ballpoint to get a better look at the tiny gold medallion gleaming in my pen tray. The Fortuna pendant. “You didn’t see who put this in here, I suppose?”

  He squinted as I held it up. “Let’s see… it might have been that Roman chap. Big man… a bit transparent…”

  “Don’t.”

  My tone surprised him. “Darling, I’m only joking.”

  “Well, don’t. Not about that.”

  “Then no, I didn’t see anyone putting that thing in your desk,” he said. “But that doesn’t mean anything. Even I have difficulty seeing with my eyes shut, and a pack of burglars could have stripped the finds room bare without my noticing.”

  It must have been one of my students, I told myself. They both had keys to the finds room. Or it might have been Peter, or David. But still…

  “Here’s the watchdog,” Adrian announced. “Ask him.”

  Kip came dancing through the arching door with energy to spare, half running down the aisle between the desks to check that I was really there, then bounding back to watch Wally and Peter maneuver a bundle of sleeping bags into the room.

  “Dear, oh, dear,” Peter said, when he caught sight of me. “You ought to be in bed, Verity.”

  When I reminded him that Jeannie had woken me on his own orders, Peter, as endearingly contradictory as ever, dismissed that as irrelevant.

  “Yes, I know,” he said patiently, “but I hadn’t seen you then, had I? And you ought to have known that once I’d seen you I would send you back to bed.”

  “Well, I’m up now. So there.” Smiling to soften the comment, I held up the golden pendant. “You didn’t put this in my desk drawer, by any chance?”

  “No, I’d imagine David did that.”

  “David?”

  Peter nodded. “He found it on his desk, as I recall, but as none of us had our keys to the finds room handy he must have thought your desk was the safest option. Rather careless of the students,” he remarked. “I really ought to have a word with them about security.”

  “Ye cannae be too careful,” Wally said. He’d finished stacking the sleeping bags in a temporary pile against the wall, and straightened now to light a cigarette. “I saw a bluidy thievin’ Hielanman go creepin’ past the hoose this very morn.”

  Peter’s eyebrows arched. “Did you, by God? A Highlander? Wearing a kilt, was he?”

  “Aye. Ye’d best count yer coos.”

  Peter, who had no cows to count, took the advice with a solemn nod, his face perfectly straight. If I hadn’t looked at his eyes, I’d have thought him serious. But Wally had no such pretensions. He grinned broadly as he drew on the cigarette, and sent me a wink that made Adrian swivel his head, his gaze narrowing.

  “Now,” said Peter, turning his attention to the common room, “I’m wondering if we shouldn’t bring the camp beds up, as well? Davy,” he addressed the man just struggling through the doorway with another load of sleeping bags, “what do you think?”

  “What do I think about what?”

  “Camp beds.”

  “Christ, no,” David said, with feeling. “They’re students, Peter—they like sleeping on the floor.” He dumped his armful of sleeping bags and turned to me, his smile warming the air between us. “Morning.”

  “Good morning.”

  Peter, looking the picture of innocence, was preparing to say something clever, and Adrian, aware that he was missing something, was glowering across at me, when I was suddenly saved by—of all people—Fabia. Waltzing through the stable door, her blonde hair fetchingly ruffled by the fierce rising wind, she provided a welcome distraction. Adrian’s eyes left my face like a compass needle swinging to magnetic north.

  But she didn’t appear to notice. She’d come looking for David. “Your mother just rang,” she said. “She says she’s having trouble with the car, and can you please go up and get her.”

  “What, now? Right this minute?”

  Fabia nodded. “She didn’t sound too keen on being stuck up there alone, with this storm coming.”

  “Nonsense,” Peter said. “Nancy’s rather fond of storms, as
I recall. She likes the thunder.”

  David smiled. “All the same, I’d best not keep my mother waiting, not when I’ve been summoned.”

  “You can take the Range Rover, if you like,” said Fabia.

  “Aye, all right.” Turning, he held out his hand. “Give us the keys, then, and I’m away.”

  Brian came through the doorway as David went out, and shuddered as a sudden gust of wind shook the building. “Jesus,” he said, ducking his head to light a cigarette, “it’s worse up here than it is at the harbor.”

  Peter arched a solicitous eyebrow. “How’s the boat?”

  “Oh, the boat’s fine,” said Brian. “But Billy’s a wreck. We had the bloody Customs and Excise officer around, this morning. Scared poor Billy half to death. Good job we’d only been out a few hours—the boat was clean. And the last shipment’s safely up here, where nobody would think to…” He suddenly stopped, and his head came up.

  I’d seen that expression before, I thought—that strange, fixed expression. I’d seen it on Robbie.

  Fabia, beneath his stare, swallowed apprehensively. “What?”

  “You stupid cow,” he told her, slowly. “You bloody stupid cow.”

  Adrian stood up, protectively. “Brian…”

  “I’d figured it was Mick who grassed,” said Brian, heedless of the interruption, seeing only Fabia. “But it was you who put the officer onto the Fleetwing.” His tone was certain of the fact, and I remembered what little I’d heard of Fabia’s telephone conversation yesterday, in the front hall. Tomorrow morning, she’d said. Had she been ringing the Customs and Excise then, telling them to inspect Brian’s boat? But why?

  Brian had his own theory. “What, angry with me, were you, for giving your boyfriend the shove?”

  “Her boyfriend…” Adrian frowned.

  “Oh, aye. She and young Mick have been having it off for a month or more, now. You and I,” he told Adrian, “outlived our usefulness.”

  The storm was drawing closer. I could feel the pricking heat of it, the dark oppressive heaviness that dulled the dead air around me. Peter, standing by the wall, shook his head slightly. “Brian, my dear boy, this hardly seems…”