She carried the cases out to the little garage and packed them into her car, then went back for the cardboard boxes. She must leave the cottage in perfect condition for the real owner, so she spent an hour tidying and cleaning and felt quite weary by the time she finally locked up the house.
By then darkness had fallen, and out here in the countryside the darkness was blacker than it was in towns and cities, where the streets sent up a glow of sulphurous yellow into the night sky. Once Linzi had switched off the lights in the cottage the garden became dangerous territory, a black jungle full of whispering grasses and creeping sounds.
She had to feel her way back to the garage. With a sigh of relief she switched on the lights inside the garage, opened her car door and got behind the wheel. She switched on the ignition.
Nothing happened.
She looked blankly at the dashboard panel, then turned her key again. Nothing. Not a sign of life.
She looked at the petrol Gauge. Nearly full of petrol. She went through the various easy checks she had learnt to make. She was no mechanic, but sometimes it could be something simple that was easy to detect. In this case it was obviously something serious because there was not a flicker of life from engine.
The battery must be dead, she decided and got the bonnet open to look underneath it rather hopelessly. She didn't have a spare battery and no set of jump leads start the battery off again, and she couldn't even ring up a garage to come and start the car for her.
But she looked into the engine anyway, in the hope of inspiration. That was when she discovered that the plugs were missing. She stared at the trailing leads, her mouth open in a gasp of rage.
She knew at once, of course, what had happened. Ritchie had removed them. It was a fiendishly clever but simple way of immobilising the car because she didn't have a spare set of plugs, either, but it would only have taken Ritchie a minute to take the four plugs out. No doubt they were in his jeans pocket right now as he flew off to London.
He might have thrown them away, into the garden. But in this darkness she hadn't a hope in hell of finding them.
She was stuck here. She slammed the bonnet down and unloaded her cases, grimly took everything back into the cottage and locked doors, bolted windows, making sure there was no possible way Ritchie could get back into the house before morning.
At first light she would be up and she would start walking to the nearest village. She would go tonight, if she wasn't afraid of walking there in the dark, along lonely country roads. Her nerves were already shot to pieces. This had been a very difficult day and it wasn't over yet. Linzi didn't feel she could face any more trauma. So she made herself a little scrambled egg, had some fruit and a glass of milk and went to bed, but first she locked her bedroom door.
Ritchie wasn't getting anywhere near her again.
Amazingly, Linzi did get to sleep, although she had been afraid she wouldn't. Exhaustion caught up with her within minutes of getting into bed. When her alarm went at five o'clock she practically hit the roof in shock and stumbled out of bed still only half conscious, yawning, flushed, drowsy-eyed.
For a second she was totally disoriented. She stood beside her bed blinking at the clock.
Five o'clock. What on earth.....?
Then she remembered. She had set it for five so that she would be up at dawn to walk to the next village and ring for a taxi. She intended to go to the nearest garage, buy some spark plugs and come back here for her car before Ritchie got here.
If... If he was coming! He might have no such intention. But if not, why had he immobilised my car, stranding me here?
She hurried into the bathroom to shower in lukewarm water. It would wake her up fully. At the moment she felt as if she was sleepwalking. She would skip breakfast, just have coffee, she decided as she dressed five minutes later, in thin cotton jeans and d deep blue cotton sweater. She slid her feet into white trainers and brushed her silky damp hair, then went downstairs.
She made instant coffee and drank it standing in the kitchen, staring out into the garden, her face sombre, blue eyes set and haunted. She wouldn't let herself remember what had happened yesterday between her and Ritchie, yet the memories were there all the time behind a dam, the weight of them threatening to overwhelm her if once they broke free.
Shivering, she finished her coffee and washed up the cup, dried it, put it away, moving like a robot around the kitchen. Pain had become a dull, permanent ache behind her eyes, if she kept busy she could ignore it.
The light was flooding into the sky by the time she set out. There was a stillness in the air, a waiting for the day to begin, the first few sleepy calls of birds, a whisper of bending grass and moving branches in the wood. Linzi didn't share the pleasureable anticipation of the natural world at the opening of another day. She looked bleakly up at the glimmering sky as she locked the front door of the cottage behind her, wishing she didn't feel so grey and weary. She was certainly in no mood to enjoy a long, invigorating walk! What she really felt like doing was going back to bed for another six hours.
She set off along the rough unmade track between fields which led eventually to the main road to Warwick. There were deep ruts in the surface here and there. She kept missing her step, stumbling. She had to look down, watch where she put her feet.
She had gone a few hundred yards when a horse rode out of the woodland on the right. Linzi might have spotted it sooner if she hadn't had her gaze fixed on the path. As it was the first shew knew of it was the creak of saddle leather, the rustle of grasses as the animal headed towards her.
Startled, she looked around, saw the big black horse, looked up at the rider and drew a shaky breath.
Ritchie!
Linzi's heart began to thud into her ribs. For a moment she was too taken aback at seeing him to do more than stare, frozen in her tracks.
It had only taken one glance to recognise his hard face in the shadow of a black velvet riding hat. She had no idea he ever rode, but he clearly knew what he was doing, he rode with effortless, casual grace, his long back straight, his body moving as if he were one with the horse. He wasn't dressed specifically for horse-riding, he was just wearing a yellow polo-neck sweater, jeans and brown boots, but they were perfectly suitable.
She took all that in with searing intensity, at the same time managing to see the glitter of Ritchie's grey eyes, the angry set of jaw and mouth, as he galloped towards her.
In a panic she began to run along the track, although how she hoped to get away from him she couldn't really have said. Instinct simply made her bolt for it, and when she heard Ritchie's horse behind her, hoofs beating in the dusty road, so that she felt the vibrations in her own by a hedge, into the field beyond.
Her heart was beating up in her throat by then, her lungs laboured, dragging in air roughly, and adrenaline made her run faster than she would ever have thought she could.
YOU ARE READING
Guilty Love (Completed)
Romance"Everything I did was for you!" "For me? You killed my husband for me? Do you really think I wanted him dead? I loved him!" It was an obsessive passion. It had gone too far, and Linzi's husband had died as a result of it. Ritchie Calhoun was sexy an...
