Witching Hour. Sara Craven

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      ‘I suppose he could have had an accident,’ Robert said slowly.

      ‘We thought of that.’ Morgana laughed. ‘And at this moment he’s breathing his last at the foot of Polzion cliffs. I wish he was,’ she added hotly.

      It was Robert’s turn to laugh. ‘Darling, what a little savage you are! It’s a good job my respected mama can’t hear your fulminations.’

      ‘Meaning her worst fears would be fully justified?’ Morgana asked coolly, then relented. ‘I’m sorry, Rob. Your mother can’t help the way she is, any more than I can. And I won’t say anything shocking in front of her, I promise. I’m just a little uptight over this whole business, that’s all. And the atmosphere in the house is deadly at the moment—Elsa prophesying doom all over the place, and Mummy’s trying to be optimistic and see a silver lining in everything. I was just going for a walk when you rang.’

      ‘In the direction of the Home Farm?’ he enquired hopefully.

      She sighed. ‘Not really. I do need to be on my own for a time. You understand, don’t you?’

      ‘I’ll try to anyway,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You know I’m here if you need me. Perhaps I could pick you up later when you’ve walked your blues off, and we could have a drink somewhere.’

      ‘Now that would be nice,’ she said. ‘See you.’ She was smiling as she put the receiver down. Robert was sweet, she thought, and she’d forgotten to tell him he was the fair man that Elsa had seen in the cards, but it didn’t matter. Gems like that would keep, and she would enjoy telling him later, over their drink.

      As she went out of the house, closing the side door carefully against the gusting wind, Morgana wondered why she hadn’t considered going down to the Home Farm, because until Rob had mentioned it, it hadn’t even crossed her mind to do so.

      Was she being totally fair to him? she wondered. He wanted to help. The phone calls proved that. He was kind and concerned, and he’d been furious when he heard about the entail, calling it a ‘load of outdated nonsense and prejudice’. And although she agreed with every word, it wasn’t what she wanted to hear right now.

      Nor did she really want to hear him ask her to marry him, which she suspected he might do. If and when he proposed, she wanted it to be for the right reasons, and that was quite apart from the fact that deep in her bones she felt they didn’t know each other well enough yet.

      Of course, it might be that they would never know each other well enough. She and her mother might have to leave Polzion and go miles away, and eventually, inevitably, the gap that she and Rob had left in each other’s lives would be filled with other people. Journeys led often to lovers’ partings as well as their meetings, she thought with a little grimace. And ‘lover’ was a strong way of describing Rob, although she enjoyed the moments she spent in his arms. He was a normal man with all the needs which that implied, but he was not overly demanding. He preferred to let their relationship proceed steadily rather than sweep her off her feet into a headlong surrender they might both regret later.

      But if she went to him now, with all her doubts and her troubles, he might interpret her need for comfort and reassurance rather differently, and that would simply create more problems.

      ‘And just now I have as many as I can handle,’ she muttered against the moan of the wind.

      She buried her hands in the pockets of her cape, her fingers closing round the familiar shape of her small pocket torch, and it was that which decided her where to go for her walk. Her original intention had been to follow the lane round, perhaps even as far as the village, but now she knew she wanted the open spaces of the stretch of moorland behind the house. Even in summertime, it seemed bleak, the few trees bent and stunted under the power of the prevailing westerly gales, but Morgana loved it, in particular the great stone which crowned its crest.

      It was an odd-looking stone—a tall thick stem of granite with another slab balanced across its top. In some guide books it was referred to as the Giant’s Table, but locally it was known as the Wishing Stone because it was said that if you put your hand on the upright and made a wish, and then circled the stone three times, the top slab would rock gently if the wish was to be granted. At all other times, of course, it was said to be immovable, but Morgana had always thought that a really desperate wisher could probably give fate a helping hand with a quick nudge at the cross-stone.

      Sometimes she’d wondered if there had once been other stones there, so that the hillside above Polzion had resembled Stonehenge or Avebury, until people had come and taken them for building. Yet it was intriguing that they had left this one, and she had asked herself why often. Maybe it was because they sensed its power, or more prosaically perhaps it was because the cross-stone had proved more difficult to shift than anticipated.

      Anyway, there it stood, like a mysterious signpost to a secret in the youth of mankind, surviving the initials which had been carved on it, the picnics which had been eaten in its shadow, and all the attempts of vandals to dislodge it, squat and oddly reassuring in its timelessness.

      As she picked her way across the thick clumps of grass and bracken, the wind snatched at her hood, pulling it back from her head, and making her dark hair billow round her like a cloud. She breathed deeply. This was what she had wanted—the freshness of damp undergrowth and sea salt brought to her on the moving air. Rob would think she was mad if he could see her now, she thought, stumbling a little on a tussock of grass, but then he hadn’t been born here as she had. In fact she’d often wondered what had prompted his father to buy the Home Farm in the first place. Perhaps under his rather staid appearance he was really a romantic at heart, remembering the pull of the boyhood holidays he mentioned so often. Certainly Morgana doubted whether his wife’s wishes had much to do with his decision. Mrs Donleven’s roots seemed firmly grounded in the Home Counties.

      Morgana was out of breath by the time she reached the wishing stone. The wind had been blowing steadily against her all the way, and by all the natural laws the stone should already have been rocking precariously on its pediment. But it wasn’t, of course. She leaned against the upright, regaining her breath, and looking about her. She could see the lights of Polzion House below her, and away on the right those of the Home Farm. She couldn’t see the village, because it was down in a hollow in the edge of the sea, where the surrounding cliffs provided a safe harbour for the fishing and pleasure boats.

      She thought suddenly, ‘This could be the last time—the very last time that I stand here.’ She put her hand on the stone and it felt warm to the touch, but perhaps that was because she herself suddenly felt so cold.

      It couldn’t happen, she told herself passionately. This was her place, her land, and she refused to give it up to an uncaring stranger.

      She said quietly, but aloud because that was the rule, ‘I wish that he may never come here. I wish that he may renounce his inheritance, and that we may never meet.’ Then she began to walk round the stone, slowly and carefully, the wind whipping her cloak around her legs, her head thrown back slightly, her eyes narrowed against the gloom as she watched for a sign of movement.

      She had never really believed in the Wishing Stone, had always dismissed it as an amusing local superstition, but now she desperately wanted the legend to be true, and to work for her.

      But when her circuit was completed, the great stone remained where it was implacable, immovable. Her wish hadn’t been granted, and she could have thrown herself on to the ground and wept and drummed her heels like a tired child.

      She stared at the stone, and sighed despairingly, ‘Oh, why didn’t СКАЧАТЬ