Winter's Edge (14 page)

Of cOUrse, what if he was dead wrong? What if she was telling the truth, about her amnesia, about everything?

She might really be in danger.

No. That was too much to contemplate. She was a tramp, a scheming little liar, and if he started believing in her again he deserved everything he got. He’d made that mistake once before. He wouldn’t make it again.

SOME PROJECT, Molly decided, was necessary if she was to survive the next twenty-four hours. There was no way she could manage to get a home pregnancy test kit without a lot of explanations, explanations she wasn’t willing to make. If she was going to confine herself to her room, then she needed to do something about making it livable again.

She began clearing the dresser drawers of their meager contents. The mountain of purchases she had made a few days before had been swallowed up in the massive piece of furniture, and she was finished in next to no time. She piled the clothing on the shelves in the similarly bare closet, then began clearing off the tops of dressers, tables and night stands. Half of the junk she threw out, the rest went into the closet with the clothing. She stripped the bed and carried the dirty linen down to the kitchen and Mrs. Morse.

“what in the world is all that?” Mrs. Morse cried, brandishing a spatula.

“Laundry,” she said briefly.

“Could you get Ben and someone else to help me move furniture today?

I’ve decided something has to be done about my room. “

“And what furniture were you planning to put in its place?” she demanded.

“I can’t take another day off right now to go shopping.”

“I want all my furniture from the attic,” she answered her, helping herself to another cup of coffee.

“I don’t care what happens to the junk in my room— we can throw it out for all I care. I just want the room to look as it used to.”

Her stern face softened.

“Well, I’ve got no quarrel with that. It just about broke my heart when you did that to your pretty little room. All those fancy drapes and everything—they don’t belong in a house like this.

I’m just glad Patrick put his foot down when you wanted to tear up the old oak flooring. “

“So am I,” she said in a subdued voice.

“Go on ahead, then, dearie. I’ll get you some breakfast. Coffee and muffins aren’t enough to keep a body going. And next time you get up early, remember to turn off the oven when you’ve finished using it.”

“Did I forget?” She blushed faintly, as if caught doing something naughty. I’ll try to remember next time. ” ” See that you do. Now sit down and I’ll be with you in a minute. “

Ben arrived a few minutes later, accompanied by Toby.

“Just the people we want’ to see!” Mrs. Morse greeted them as they entered.

“Molly needs some furniture moved—do you think two big strong men like you could take care of it?”

“I’d be glad to.” Ben smiled, and Molly thought to herself that he surely didn’t hold her responsible for hitting him on the head the night of the fire.

“How about it, Toby?”

“Certainly.” He smiled at her engagingly, his clear eyes warm and intense.

“I was just looking for someone togo riding with me, but Patrick seems to have taken off. If Molly will take his place when we’re done then I’m your man.”

She looked out at the dark and drizzly sky.

“It’s hardly the weather for it, is it?” She couldn’t imagine why she’d feel the slightest hesitation, but she did.

“Oh, the weather will clear up, my word as a gentleman,” he said solemnly.

She was being ridiculously paranoid, and she knew it.

“Of course I’ll go riding with you,” she said suddenly, ashamed of her doubts.

“I’ve just been waiting for someone to ask.”

And if she waited for her husband, she thought, she’d wait until hell froze over. She rose and brought her dishes over to the sink, suddenly aware of Mrs. Morse’s subtle air of disapproval.

“Follow me and I’ll show you the furniture.”

Within twenty minutes the room was stripped of every piece of furniture, and only the rug and drapes remained. Shz sent Ben and Toby off with their firm promises to return a couple of hours later for the second installment, and, armed with some tools she had purloined from Patrick tool shed, she set to work ripping up the carpet.

It had been glued down around the corners, and the residue was a nasty, sticky mess, requiring repeated scrapings, rubbings, and washings. But by lunchtime she had the soft, downy stuff dumped in the middle of the floor with the satin curtains and valances piled on top, and her room was beginning to look more like it should.

She dragged the stuff out into the hall and down the two little steps to the attic door. Dumping it in one corner, she stood back to take a closer look at her old furniture.

And then she noticed what she hadn’t seen before. One of the drawers in the mahogany chest was

partly open, and inside was a dried bouquet, the yellow roses faded and dead. And somewhere inside a warning bell rang. She stared at it for a full five minutes, trying desperately to force her memory to work, closing her eyes and summoning up the past. But it remained out of reach, mocking, teasing.

By two o’clock that afternoon the bedroom was once again as beautiful as it must have been before she married Patrick Winters. The oak flooring shone with the glow only old and lovingly tended wood has, the small kilim rugs setting it off perfectly. The furniture belonged in the room, as that other stuff never had, each old and sturdy piece complementing the others. She climbed up on the huge old bed, a mate to the one in Patrick’s room, and stared around her with a sense of accomplishment and satisfaction. If she could put this part of her life back together with just a little hard work, surely the rest of her problems could be dealt with as successfully. Perhaps there was hope after all. As Toby had predicted, the day had cleared off nicely, and the early spring sun was poki~ag through the clouds with increasing frequency. Toby had provided her with one of his own horses, a sweet tempered lady named Bess with seemingly not a bad habit in her gentle body. The moment Molly was on her back she felt at home, and she realized that at one time she must have been a decent rider.

Toby confirmed this.

“It’s good to see you riding again. There was a time, a few years back, when you were scarcely out of the saddle from one day to the next.”

“Really?” She wasn’t as surprised as she sounded.

“You and Patrick used to go to all the horse shows around, winning half the prizes at the very least.”

There was a touch of envy in Toby’s voice, and she thought she could understand why. He sat his horse a bit like a sack of potatoes, his body stiff and unyielding. He was in perfect control of his spirited roan, but there was an unnaturalness about it, an awkwardness that struck the eye immediately. Clearly Toby had never won any prizes in the show ring.

Despite Molly’s proficiency, it took a while to realize that she wasn’t completely at ease on Bess’s back.

There seemed a tension about the horse that she hadn’t noticed at first, just a small trace of nerves that communicated itself in the subtlest way. They followed the old road that encircled the farm at a leisurely pace, and Molly tried unsuccessfully to attune herself to the horse’s odd mood.

“Let’s go into the woods,” Toby suggested as they neared the farm again.

“There’s a spot near the old well that should have some daffodils this time of year.”

“We’ve been out rather a long time,” Molly said uneasily, her hindquarters beginning to feel a little sore from the unaccustomed exercise.

“Perhaps we should save it for another day.”

His face fell absurdly, and she felt a touch of guilt.

“But daffodils were always your favorite flower, Molly,” he said plaintively.

“Please. It would mean a lot to me if I could give you your first daffodil of the year.”

She didn’t want to encourage his odd crush. He always seemed to be watching her, covertly, his pale eyes

strangely intense, and there was a peculiar undercurrent to his behavior that she hadn’t been able to define.

The thought filled her with such a gnawing discomfort that she failed to notice where they were heading as the trees closed around them. Suddenly, with no warning whatsoever, Bess gave a shrill, frightened shriek, rearing up wildly, and Molly felt herself sliding. She clawed for the reins, but it was hopeless, and she began to fall, through the air, as the ground rushed up toward her. The baby, she thought in sudden desperation, determined to protect something she wasn’t Sure she believed in.

But it was too late. She was falling, falling, and there was nothing but the winter-hard earth to catch her.

She lay on the hard ground, the breath knocked out of her, stunned.

She closed her eyes, struggling to breathe, waiting for the pain, the cramping to hit her. Her breath came back in a whoosh, and she held very still, listening to her body, listening to the sound of hooves as Bess took off into the forest. Just a few expected aches and twinges. If she was pregnant, it didn’t seem as if she’d done anything to hurt it.

Toby slid from his horse and knelt beside her.

“Are you all right?”

Molly shook herself, sitting up slowly.

“Fine,” she responded after a moment, feeling only slightly dazed.

It hadn’t been the worst fall, she knew that instinctively, but it had still been oddly unsettling. She struggled to her feet and brushed off the twigs and dirt from her jeans.

“And there’s Patrick,” she said, seeing his tall, lean frame at the far edge of the clearing, unable to keep the relief out of her voice. He was accompanied by Ben, and she waved to show she was all right before turning back to her companion.

Toby was standing there with a large rock in his hand, a troubled expression on his gentle face.

“You could have hit your head on this and been killed,” he said, dropping the rock back to the wet ground.

She stared at him for a moment, unnerved, still shaken by the fall.

“I wouldn’t worry, Toby,” she said finally in a determinedly light voice.

“I seem to have an awfully hard head.”

His eyes met hers with a look of sorrow.

“I have to tell you this before Patrick gets here, whether you like it or not.”

“What is it?” she asked with a trace of annoyance. Patrick was advancing swiftly, his long legs making short work of the distance between them. There was a look of thunderous rage on his face.

“Molly, someone or something spooked that horse.”

“What?” she exclaimed, giving him her entire attention now.

“I said that Bess was frightened deliberately. Someone tried to hurt you.” He looked frightened, really frightened.

“How could they?” she demanded.

“You saddled her, didn’t you?”

He nodded.

“But I left her in the stables alone when I came to fetch you. Anyone could have tampered with her during that time. A small burr under he~ blanket that would work its way into her skin after a while, a needle. Anyone who’s familiar with horses could have done it.”

She didn’t want to ask the question, but there was no avoiding it.

“Who was in the stable when you left?”

“Patrick,” he said in a hushed voice. Panic swept over her, blind and unreasoning. She trusted Patrick—reasonable or not, she was certain he wasn’t trying to kill her. But why would Toby lie?

“I don’t believe it,” she said in a horrified voice.

“He wouldn’t do anything to hurt me. You must be mistaken.”

“It’s no mistake, Molly,” he said.

“I’ve warned you before. You can’t trust anyone, not even your own husband. Let me do the talking when Patrick gets here, all right?

He’s going to be mad enough that we were even out together without this happening. “

“Why should he be mad we went riding?” she asked, startled.

“Surely there’s no harm in that?”

“You really don’t remember him at all, do you?”

He shook his head in amazement.

“Patrick’s always had a dog in the manger attitude about you. He didn’t want you for himself, but he was always damned if he would let you go off alone with anyone. And that started years before you were married.” She looked over at Patrick’s advancing figure and found a curious lightness inside her, banishing her fear.

“How very encouraging,” she murmured, half to herself.

“What the hell is going on here?” Patrick demanded when he reached them.

“Are you trying to get yourself killed?”

Are you trying to kill me? she almost retorted, but some long-submerged sense of tact kept her silent as Toby tried to explain the situation.

“I thought you knew more about horses, Toby.” Patrick’s contempt was withering.

“After all, you’ve been around them all your life. Molly hasn’t ridden in over a year.

You should have put her on one of our horses, not that nerve-racked Bess. And why the hell wasn’t she wearing a hard hat? “

“Bess isn’t nerve-racked,” Toby protested, stung.

“She’s a fine animal, and Molly always used to beg me to let her ride her.”

“That was years ago, when’ she was in better shape,” he said coldly.

“And back then I told you no.”

“Oh, for God’s sake, she’s not a child,” Toby said in a tense voice, and Molly noticed a faint tremor in his hands. There was something else going on here, something besides the anger over a minor riding acci~ dent. Something between them, and it involved her.

“No, but you acting like one, doing a foolish and dangerous thing like that.” Patrick’s very calm made his stinging words all the more biting, and Toby’s face took on a mottled hue.

“Well, I’ll leave you to escort your wife home.” His accent on the word was bitter.

“I’ll talk to you later, Molly.”

“Not for a while, I’m afraid,” Patrick told him firmly.

“She’s going to keep to the house for a few days—I don’t like all these accidents that have been happening recently.”

“I don’t either,” Toby said angrily, and rode off.

Patrick looked down at her from his six feet three inches of male irritation.