LITMIR.BIZ

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her. It wasn’t late, barely nine o’clock, but it was cold, cold enough to warrant the big sheepskin jacket she had pulled on over her jeans and sweater.

      Her decision to take a ride alone had been met with consternation, but they’d let her go. It wasn’t as if they were concerned for her safety. Madeline had been riding over this part of the countryside since she was old enough to climb on to the back of a horse. It was just that they were hurt by her need to get away from them so soon after her arrival home.

      But she could not have taken any more tonight.

      Within an hour of arriving she’d begun to feel like an invalid home on convalescence because of the way they all seemed to tiptoe around her, around subjects they’d obviously decided between them were strictly taboo, watching her with guarded if loving eyes. By the time another hour had gone by, she had been straining at the leash to escape. Dinner had been an ordeal, her tension and their uncertainty of her acting against each other to make conversation strained and stilted.

      She’d blamed her restlessness on jet-lag when she saw their expressions. And they’d smiled, bright, false, tension-packed smiles. ‘Of course!’ her father had exclaimed—too heartily. ‘A ride is just what you need to make you feel at home again!’ Louise had agreed, while Nina just looked at her with huge eyes.

      Madeline’s soft mouth tightened. So, she’d hurt them all, but she couldn’t do a single thing about it just yet. Four years was a long time. They all had adjustments to make—her family more than herself, because she was what she was, and nothing like the girl who had left here four years ago.

      They were all exactly the same, though, she told herself heavily. They hadn’t changed at all.

      Minty’s hoofs pounded on the frozen ground, and Madeline crouched down low on her back, giving herself up to the sheer exhilaration of the ride as they galloped across the dark countryside. The further she got away from the house, the more relaxed she began to feel, as if the distance weakened the family strings that had been busily trying to wrap themselves around her aching heart.

      She didn’t know why she felt this way, only that she did. From the moment she’d stepped out of the car, she’d felt stifled, haunted almost, by memories none of them could even begin to contemplate.

      A sharp bend in the river was marked by a thick clump of trees standing big and dark against a navy blue sky. She skirted the wood until she found the old path which led down to the river itself, allowing Minty to pick her own way to what was one of their old haunts: a small clearing among the trees, where the springy turf grew to the edge of the steep riverbank.

      She loved this place, she thought with a sigh, sliding down from Minty’s back to stand, simply absorbing the peace and tranquillity of her surroundings. Especially at night, when the river ran dark and silent, and the trees stood like sentinels, big and brooding. Her father had used to call her a creature of the night. ‘An owl,’ he used to say, ‘while Nina is a lark.’

      The full moon was blanching the colour out of everything, surrounding her in tones of black and grey, except for the river, where it formed slinky silver patterns on the silent mass as it moved with a ghostly kind of grace.

      Letting the bridle fall so that Minty could put down her head to graze, Madeline shoved her hands into the pockets of her old sheepskin coat and sucked in a deep breath of sharp, crisp, clean air then let it out again slowly, feeling little by little the tension leave her body. It wasn’t fair—she knew she was being unfair. They were good, kind, loving people who only wanted the best for her and for her to be happy.

      But how could she tell them that she’d forgotten what happiness was? Real happiness at any rate, the kind she had once embraced without really bothering to think about it.

      Sighing, she moved towards the edge of the bank where she could hear the water softly lapping the pebbly ground several feet below her.

      On the other side of the river, hidden behind another thick clump of trees, the old Courtney place stood dark and intimidating. She could just make out its crooked chimneystacks as the moon slid lazily over them. It was an old Elizabethan thing, let to go over the years until it had gained the reputation of being haunted. Its owner, Major Courtney, had done nothing to refute the claims. He was a recluse, an eccentric straight out of the Victorian era who had guarded his privacy so fiercely that in her mad youth Madeline had loved to torment him by creeping into his overgrown garden just so he would come running out with his shotgun at the ready.

      Shocking creature! she scolded herself now, but with a smile which was pure ‘old’ Madeline.

      The silence was acting like a balm, soothing away a bleakness she had been struggling with from the moment she had stepped into the house this afternoon. She knew exactly why it was there. Her problem was how to come to terms with it.

      She had not expected Dominic’s presence to be so forcefully stamped into everything she rested her eyes upon.

      ‘Damn him,’ she whispered softly to the night, and huddled deeper into her coat.

      ‘Another step, and you’ll fall down the bank,’ a quiet voice warned from somewhere behind her.

      The moon slid behind a lonely cloud. Blackness engulfed her suddenly, and Madeline let out a strangled cry, her heart leaping to her mouth as she jumped, almost doing exactly what that voice warned against and plunging down the riverbank in sheer fright.

      Heart hammering, the breath stripped clean from her body, she spun around, eyes wide and frightened as they searched the inky blackness for a glimpse of a body to go with the voice.

      Another horse stood calmly beside Minty. And Madeline realised that she had been so engrossed in her own thoughts that she hadn’t heard the other rider come up. But she could see no one, and a fine chilling thread of alarm began slinking along her spine while she stood there breathless and still, the sudden deathly silence filling her ears, drying her mouth while her eyes flicked anxiously around the dark clearing.

      By legend, this was highwayman country. And she could conjure up at least three gruesome tales of ghostly sightings in these parts. She’d always laughed them off before—while secretly wishing she could witness something supernatural. Now, she was rueing that foolish wish.

      The horses shifted, bridles jingling as they nudged against each other. Madeline blinked, her eyes stinging with the effort it took to pierce the pitch-blackness.

      ‘Who’s there?’ she demanded shakily.

      ‘Who do you think?’ drawled a mocking voice.

      It was then, as she caught the lazy mockery, the dark velvet resonance of the voice, that the fear went flying as a new and far more disturbing emotion took over, making her hands clench in her pockets as she saw a movement over to the right of the horses.

      A tall figure of a man detached itself from the shadow of a tree, looking more wicked than any highwayman could to Madeline’s agitated mind. She had known him to come upon her like this many times, using shock tactics to heighten her awareness of him. He was that kind of man. A man who thrived on others’ uncertainty.

      ‘So, the prodigal has returned at last.’

      ‘Hello, Dom,’ she said, forcing herself to sound cool and unaffected by his sudden presence, even as her nerve-ends scrambled desperately for something she refused to acknowledge. ‘What brings you out here tonight of all nights?’

      The moon came out from behind its cloud, and his smile flashed white in his shadowed face. ‘The same thing as you, I should imagine,’ he answered, close enough for her to see the clean taut lines of his handsome face. ‘Hello, Maddie,’ he belatedly responded.

      He seemed to loom like the trees, tall and dark, black jeans and a heavy black sweater exaggerating the muscled power of his body. Everything about Dominic Stanton was in general larger than life, she mused acidly. Including his vows of undying love.

      Abruptly she turned away from him, a hard pang of pain twisting in her ribs. They had used to meet here often once. It had been their place—among several others

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