Secret Things and Highland Flings. Tracy Corbett

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СКАЧАТЬ href="#ulink_7d793051-de16-5914-99a5-44255de77aa9">Chapter Five

      Saturday 2nd June

      Lexi jolted when the train braked suddenly. Not that she’d been asleep. She rarely slept these days. Even if she hadn’t been lying in a cramped bunk inside a tiny cabin, she’d still be wide awake staring up at the ceiling. Or in this instance, the empty bunk above.

      She pushed back the covers and eased herself out of the bunk bed, ducking her head so she didn’t bang it on the bed above. Talk about poky. She edged sideways past the ladder to reach the narrow door and escape into the corridor, which wasn’t much wider.

      Maybe she should have put a jumper on; she felt somewhat exposed walking down a public corridor dressed only in a nightshirt. Not that there was anyone about. It was four a.m. Everyone else was fast asleep. Lucky them.

      She used to sleep just fine, but everything had changed that fateful night eighteen months ago when her life had been upended. In hindsight, she should have seen it coming. The signs were all there. The secrecy. The excuses. The elaborate stories that didn’t quite ring true. Not to mention her sister’s concerns about Marcus’s erratic behaviour. Nonetheless, it had still come as a shock.

      Marcus had been restless all evening, refusing to come to bed, claiming he was dealing with ‘important business stuff’. She should have realised he was up to something when he closed his laptop so she couldn’t see what he was typing. Instead, she’d shrugged it off and gone to bed, only to be woken in the early hours when a door slammed below.

      Realising Marcus wasn’t in bed, she’d headed downstairs to find the house empty. And that’s when she’d found his note, propped against the coffee jar. A sense of foreboding had enveloped her. Tears had blurred her vision as she’d read about his affair with Cindy … the business going into receivership … the investigation by HMRC for tax avoidance.

      There’d been no heartfelt apology for dropping her in it, or promises to make everything right, just a load of half-hearted excuses for his behaviour. There’d certainly been no mention of his gambling addiction, or emptying of their bank account. That information had only come to light in the days that followed.

      Sleep had eluded her ever since.

      She shook the memory away and continued down the corridor. A door slammed behind her. She turned sharply, falling against the window as the train rocked from side to side. But there was no one there – not that she could see without her lenses in. Just an empty corridor.

      Her paranoia was increasing. Ever since her encounter with the blue-eyed thief, she’d sensed she was being followed. It was crazy, of course. Her imagination was working overtime. But thanks to Marcus, she could no longer trust her instincts.

      She used the facilities and returned to her cabin, ignoring the sensation of someone peering out from behind a cabin door. She really needed to dial down her stress levels. It was probably another passenger waiting to use the facilities.

      When she was safely back in her cabin, she bolted the door and checked the painting was still tucked under the sink. It was. See? No one was after her.

      Shivering, she climbed into bed and pulled the blanket over her.

      Feeling jittery was only to be expected. She was travelling with a potentially valuable Renaissance painting. Although whether it was genuine or not remained unknown.

      After her encounter with the blue-eyed thief, she’d phoned Eleanor Wentworth’s daughter, who’d confirmed that she did have a brother called Oliver and yes, she’d like the painting returned. Louisa had apologised for any inconvenience caused and claimed she hadn’t realised the painting wasn’t one of her mother’s. However, she’d also sounded extremely confused and unsure as to why there was an issue, so it didn’t take a genius to work out the brother was up to something.

      Tempting as it was to enlighten Louisa, she’d decided a better approach would be to wait until she was in Scotland. She didn’t want to badmouth the brother or ruin her chances of evaluating the rest of the family’s art collection. Plus, there was a reason why the brother didn’t want her looking too closely at the painting. Once she was in Scotland and away from the stresses of her life, she might be able to discover what that was.

      Thinking about the blue-eyed thief made her agitated.

      She rolled over, whacking her elbow on the ladder.

      She still wasn’t entirely sure what had happened the other night. One minute she was in the storeroom cataloguing a new arrival, the next she was witnessing a man stealing the Woman at the Window. Or so she’d thought. Her assumption that Marcus had sent one of his idiot cronies to harass her into returning his money had been incorrect. Unfortunately, she hadn’t realised this before stabbing the man with a Stanley knife. Unintentionally, of course. Mortifying, nonetheless.

      Just thinking about it made her shudder. She could have killed him. Well, maybe not killed, but seriously injured him. He could have reported her for ABH. In fact, why hadn’t he? If he was genuinely there on behalf of the family to collect one of their paintings and the gallery owner had randomly attacked him, why wouldn’t he have reported her to the police?

      At the very least he’d have withdrawn the offer for her to evaluate the rest of the collection. She hadn’t exactly acted professionally. The fact that he hadn’t only added to her suspicions that something dodgy was going on.

      And she’d had her fill of dodgy men. She wasn’t about to get involved with another one. No matter how blue those eyes were …

      She rolled over, more awake than ever.

      In among the panic she’d felt at seeing an unauthorised man in her basement, she’d also felt a frisson of heat, which wasn’t welcome.

      She reasoned that it was her hormones having a laugh at her expense, throwing a tall, cute guy in her direction to mess with her instincts. But instead of making him trustworthy and decent, recompense for having been scammed by a cheating liar in the past, the gods had made him a carbon copy of her ex. A good-looking charmer, after whatever he could get, and doing whatever was necessary to ‘close the deal’.

      Well, she hadn’t fallen for it. She’d confronted him. Challenged his motives. Resisted his attempts to charm her … and then stabbed him.

      Oh, God. She buried her head under the pillow.

      She’d been so mortified by her actions she hadn’t even told Tasha what had happened. By the time her sister had arrived home the blood had been mopped up, the Woman at the Window had been returned to the showroom and she was in bed pretending to be asleep. If she’d told Tasha, then her sister would have wanted to know why she hadn’t called the police. More significantly, why she’d gone on to invite the blue-eyed thief into their flat and fed him cake. As she didn’t know the answer herself, it’d seemed better to keep quiet.

      Her alarm buzzed. It was six thirty a.m. and she hadn’t slept a wink. She sighed and blinked as the faint Scottish sunlight seeped through the small cabin window, obscured by a thick pleated curtain. She climbed out of bed and spent the next thirty minutes attempting to wash and dress in the cramped space.

      A guard knocked on the door. He handed her a breakfast parcel and recommended she head to the lounge car to enjoy the views.

      After thanking him, she locked the cabin door behind her and made her way down the corridor. Her eyes were gritty СКАЧАТЬ