Terrified and breathless she heard Brendan’s voice; he was arguing with the other man. ‘There was no need for that, they’re harmless. You can’t….’
As she dropped she heard the other man’s harsh grunt of laughter at Brendan’s protest, then nothing else mattered as she braced herself for the fall, but somehow, miraculously, she was jolted but undamaged, apart from scratching herself on the heaps of scrub and saplings that Brendan and his crony had thrown down out of sight. This, she realized, was what had saved her from injury. Even more fortuitously, she hadn’t landed on Rory.
As she took a shuddering breath there was a further horror. The light from the moon vanished as the turf ‘lid’ was replaced over the gaping hole about ten feet above and Harriet winced as a scatter of earth and small stones bounced off her face.
Muffled sounds from above suggested that their attackers were replacing the uprooted scrub and then there was silence. Harriet’s bowels wrenched with an agonizing spasm of terror but somehow she managed to control herself, putting her emotions on hold so that she could attend to Rory. Where the hell was Rory? Fearfully, she blundered about on all fours, almost kneeling on him when she located him at last. She groped feverishly for a hand, a pulse, but although she eventually located his wrist, she could feel no pulse, not even a flutter.
Sam Hathaway couldn’t sleep. Although the dinner on offer at the meeting had been substantial, mostly what Harriet always called ‘a manly meal’, a roast with plenty of potatoes and a hearty steamed pudding and custard to follow, he had eaten sparingly. It felt strange, camping in the cottage, strange but not unpleasant and the cat in the next room gave him a comforting sense of not being alone. Harriet would laugh when she heard that after a trip to the bathroom just before 2.30 a.m., he had nipped downstairs: coffee for himself; cat treats for Fat Hector, who snoozed happily in a corner until Sam coaxed him out to be stroked and admired. It felt good, he thought, listening to the tentative purring. Although Avril’s severe allergies had made pets impossible, Sam was inclined to agree with his cousin that a house needed a cat to make it a home.
Harriet. He wondered how she was feeling, praying that her concussion was as slight as the doctor had assured him and shivered at the thought of life without her. Harriet had been his mainstay in the dreadful days after Avril’s death and in the bleak darkness that followed, how could he manage without her? Fear made him reach out for his phone, to check on her.
Pure selfishness! He frowned in the darkness and withdrew his hand. His cousin would be tucked up in bed at the farm, doped to the eyeballs and waited on hand and foot. A panic call at this time of night was the last thing she needed. He settled down and managed at last to grab a couple more hours of restless sleep.
Harriet could safely wait till the morning.
chapter twelve
At last, Harriet found a pulse. Thank God, Rory wasn’t dead after all. She almost broke down then but years of self-control came to her rescue and she forced herself to relax, steadying her breathing, keeping her fingers lightly but firmly on Rory’s wrist. The pulse seemed a little stronger and she swallowed once or twice, gulping with relief.
‘Rory? Can you hear me?’ Over the thumping of her own heart she heard a murmur, a breath taken and a thread of a whisper.
‘S’posed to be a cure, you know.’ The faint laugh in his voice was the most welcome sound in the world. ‘Country air, family reunion , nothing strenuous.’
‘Nonsense.’ Her brisk reply was undermined by a slight wobble in the voice, but she rallied as she ran her hands over him. ‘Always something going on in a country village, you know; you need to man up, put hair on your chest. Now, do you think there’s anything broken? I’m sure you hurt all over, but can you tell if there’s any serious damage? Here, I’ve got my Swiss Army knife, I’ll cut that stupid baler twine so you can poke about. We’ll need all our strength to get out of this predicament.’
‘Mmm, no, no bones broken.’ His voice was beginning to sound stronger. ‘There isn’t a single bit of me that isn’t agony and my knee hurts where I must have banged it as I landed, but it’s not broken.’
There was silence as he explored the extent of his injuries. ‘Got a headache, but I don’t think my skull’s damaged. What about you, Harriet? You’ve already got concussion. Did they hurt you?’
‘Not really.’ She sighed and gave his hand a companionable squeeze to reassure them both. ‘I felt sick with fright when he walloped you with the spade but they didn’t actually hurt me, just dropped me into the hole. I can’t believe we didn’t break our necks but when they cut back all the shrubbery, they must have chucked everything down here to hide the evidence. A lucky break for us.’