High Tide At Midnight. Sara Craven

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      Thanks for the warning, Morwenna thought bleakly. She glanced at her watch. The bus would be arriving any minute now. It still wasn’t too late to change her mind. Could this really be the man her mother had spoken of with such nostalgic affection, or had the passage of time simply changed him out of all recognition?

      ‘I’m Biddy Bradshaw, by the way,’ the girl went on. ‘I’ve been doing the rounds of some of the gift shops, trying to get some firm orders for the Easter trade.’ She gave a tight little smile. ‘If we had our own shop, it would make things much easier. The shops are fairly co-operative round here, but they want commission on what they sell for us, naturally, and there isn’t that much profit just at the moment to share around.’

      Morwenna nodded, conscious of a slight feeling of awkwardness as she introduced herself.

      Biddy’s eyes were alight with interest. ‘Morwenna? But that’s a Cornish name. I didn’t realise you were from this part of the world.’

      ‘I’m not. But my mother spent most of her childhood here, and I suppose it seemed a natural choice for her.’

      Biddy shrugged slightly. ‘I suppose so—if you have a taste for tragic legends. Oh, here’s the bus at last.’

      She clambered up the steps of the single-decker while Morwenna followed. ‘You want the stop after mine,’ she directed as Morwenna paid for her ticket. ‘Turn left at the Cross and follow the road until it brings you out at the house. You can’t miss it,’ she added. ‘It doesn’t lead anywhere else.’

      Morwenna would have liked to have questioned Biddy further about Trevennon, but the bus was fairly crowded and she was aware of all the potential listening ears, so she confined her questions to general ones about the area itself. Biddy was cheerful company, and Morwenna felt oddly desolate when she announced eventually that they were coming to her stop.

      ‘You want the next one, don’t forget,’ she said as she got to her feet. ‘Good luck.’ She paused. ‘If you—do decide to stay for a while, look us up at the pottery.’

      ‘I’d like that,’ Morwenna smiled up at her. As the bus lurched away again she took a deep breath to steady herself and began to retrieve her belongings. In less than five minutes she found herself standing in the darkness, the wind whipping at her hair and tangling across her face. She shivered, huddling her sheepskin jacket round her for warmth and wishing that she was just about anywhere but the chill of this unknown country road.

      She began to walk towards the faint glimmer of the signpost at the crossroads, glad of the shelter of the hedge. It was raining still and the drops stung her face. When she licked her lips she could taste salt on them, and in the distance above the howl of the wind, she could hear the sea roaring.

      ‘Good night for wrecks,’ she murmured aloud, and grimaced at the thought. At the crossroads she turned left as Biddy had indicated and found herself in a narrow lane, bordered on either side by high hedges. It was really dark now, the faint moonlight almost totally obliterated by the mass of rushing clouds chased by the gale.

      She had walked perhaps two hundred yards, practically feeling her way along the hedge, when she stopped and said flatly and aloud, ‘This is silly.’

      She set down her case and the rucksack and began to unfasten the buckles. Among the oddments she had thrown in at the last moment, she thought, was a torch, although she wasn’t sure if it worked or if there were even any batteries in it. Naturally the missing article had slipped right to the bottom of the rucksack and she was obliged to repack it almost completely before she could fasten it again. Grimly she stood up at last and tentatively switched on the torch. The faintness of the glimmer of light that fell on the road in front of her indicated there was not much life left in the batteries, but it was better than nothing, and it was a heavy, comforting object to have in her hand anyway on this evening when the whole world seemed full of movement and menace and unidentifiable sounds. She shone the torch ahead of her, and her heart almost leaped into her mouth when it picked out something large and white in the hedge, something which bent and swayed in the wind. A large notice board, she realised, with hysterical relief, and what an utter fool she was making of herself. She had spent the greater part of her life living in the country, so why was she behaving like a townie, leaping at every shadow, letting her imagination play tricks. It was nonsense to think that this dark, unfamiliar landscape was rejecting her. She was letting Biddy’s warnings really get to her.

      Or was she? she wondered drily a moment later as she allowed her torch to play over the lettering on the board. ‘Private Road to Trevennon Only’, it stated unequivocally. No sign of the welcome mat there, she thought philosophically, and walked on.

      She had been walking for about ten minutes and wishing that the notice board had given some idea of the distance involved when it happened. The shriek of the wind had been rising steadily, and now in a sudden boiling crescendo of sound there was a loud crack just ahead of her, and with a slithering rumble a tree fell right across the road in her path.

      She stood very still for a moment, then put her case down, and began to shake. She wasn’t hurt. For God’s sake, it hadn’t even touched her, but it had been close, and at this rate her nerves were going to be shot to pieces and she was going to arrive on Dominic Trevennon’s doorstep a gibbering lunatic.

      What was more, although the tree on closer examination did not turn out to be particularly large, nevertheless it had blocked the road. She could climb over it, but that was not the problem. Private road it might be, but presumably people at the house had vehicles and visitors with other vehicles, and the tree had fallen awkwardly between two bends in the lane. A driver would be on top of it almost before he realised.

      She caught hold of one of the sturdier branches and tugged, but to no avail. It might not be large, but it was heavier than it looked. She supposed her most sensible course of action would be to hurry on to the house wherever it was, and warn someone, trusting to luck that no one drove along the lane in the meantime.

      Ironically, the wind now seemed to be lessening, as if aware it had done its worst and could now be satisfied. And behind her, in the distance, she could just hear the sound of a car engine, coming fast. Morwenna swung round, her eyes searching the darkness. She was not all that far from the main road, she told herself. There was no reason to think that the traveller would not go straight on. But even as she watched, she saw the glare of a pair of powerful headlights and knew that against all the odds the car had turned off towards Trevennon. And the driver knew the road. He was covering the narrow twisting road without a check, and any moment now he would be here, unaware of the waiting danger.

      Morwenna almost hurled her case and rucksack into the shelter of the hedge and ran, stumbling, back to the bend. She stood in the middle of the lane, swinging her torch from side to side in a desperate attempt to attract attention, but wouldn’t the pitiful light it afforded be swallowed up in the darkness?

      The car lights seemed to slice across the evening sky, and then with a snarl of the engine the car was upon her. She gave the torch one last wave, then dived towards the hedge, but not quite soon enough. Something grazed her—perhaps a wing—and she fell, not hard but sufficiently to wind her. The car stopped with a squeal of brakes, a door slammed and Morwenna found herself being hauled to her feet with considerably more force than she felt was necessary.

      He was tall, and his hands were hard and bruising. That was the first, the most immediate impression, and more than enough, Morwenna thought feelingly, as she was dumped unceremoniously back on to her feet. He seemed to be very dark, or was that just the suggestion of the darkness around him, and he was, she realised radiating an anger that was almost tangible.

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