Reluctant Wife(21)

After the first shock of grief for her parents, she had grown into her grandfather’s lifestyle amazingly well—she had always been the apple of his eye, he used to tease her. And as she’d grown up they had been friends as well as relations.



It had all ended in a blaze of orange flames and choking smoke, and the belated wail of a fire engine siren with an ambulance siren not far behind.



Two weeks to the day afterwards, a stranger had called on her, and what he had come to say had precipitated a lot of what had happened since. Roz remembered it all so clearly…





‘I can’t, and I don’t see how you can make me,’ Her voice rose shakily. ‘Just go away and leave me alone!’



‘Lady …’



I’ll ring the police if you come one step closer. It don’t even know you from a bar of soap. As for handing over a foal to You, You must be out of your mind!’



The man across the kitchen from her appeared to hesitate and his close-set eyes flickered over her in a way that filled her with revulsion. He was in his late a twenties, she judged, and strongly built, but if that and his horrible way of looking at her weren’t bad enough, what he had come to tell her was.



He chose now to repeat it. ‘Look, love,’ he said, ‘your grandpa owes me a lot of money. He bet with me on credit, see, and ran up quite a little account …’



‘Why did you let him?’ Roz, broke in intensely, and received a mocking look in return.



‘It’s my business, honey. But,’ he shrugged, ‘recently it began to get out of hand.’ He wasn’t settling even with his lack of usual promptness, so I spoke to him about it- leant on him a little,’ he said softly, and paused as Roz shivered. He continued with a small, satisfied smile,



‘That’s when he told me not to worry, he had a fortune coming his way. I said, oh yeah? He said yes and told me about this horse he’d bred.’



‘It’s barely two weeks old!’ Roz cried. ‘He had no way of knowing it would survive the birth-—the dam died. How could he?’



‘Well, he did, love. But as a matter of fact I took that up with him too. I also asked him if he was planning to sell it as a foal. He said once people knew the breeding he’d have no trouble doing that, only he’d rather not. But if the didn’t punt his way out of trouble, he’d sell a share in it, that’s what he said. Only he punted his way deeper into trouble, -that’s what! he did.’ Now,’ Roz backed as he moved closer and towered over her, ‘I, agree there’s a potential fortune in that foal. Potential, mind.. If you know anything at all about horses you”’ll also know there’s one hell of a lot can happen to them between the time they get born to the time they get to the races, if they ever do. But she’s a filly, so…’



‘But . . ‘



‘Let ‘me finish, little lady,’ the man said menacingly. ‘I’m prepared to take that filly foal off your hands and in exchange, wipe out all your grandpa’s debts.——in fact I reckon it’s the least you owe me, because in a sense, he was using her as collateral to bet with me, see what I mean? I also reckon it’s a generous offer on my part, because like I. said, filly or not, anything could go wrong——she might even take, half a lifetime to breed like her ma and I’d have nothing.’



‘And I, . . and in the meantime, I’ll have nothing,’ Roz stammered.



‘You got nothing now, lady,’ he sneered. ‘Apart from a mountain of debts. How do you think you’re going to rear the foal anyway? It all costs money. At least this way you’ll be relieved of some of your debts and you won’t have a flaming horse to feed. So think about it,’ he advised softly, then struck terror into Roz’s heart by adding, ‘only don’t take too long, sweetheart. Because it seems to me you’re a mighty desirable young lady and it might occur to me to up the ante——if you know what I mean.’



The way he looked her over again left Roz in no doubt as to his meaning, and she went white and stumbled back another step as the man loomed over her and put his arms out as if to take her into them.



‘No!’ she whispered frantically.



‘I agree,’ said a voice from behind them.



Roz’s tormentor whipped round, obscuring her vision, and she saw the muscles of his shoulders bunch up beneath his thin shirt and then relax, but with an effort of will. Then he stepped aside and Roz gasped, because the every last person she expected to see was lounging in the doorway and watching them dispassionately—Adam Milroy.