he replied grimly.
Crys knew she had gone very pale—could feel the blood draining from her cheeks even as her fascinated gaze returned to the tarpaulin. ‘I—do you think it was—quick?’
The man frowned his irritation. ‘How should I know? Although, I doubt it. Poison is usually slow and insidious.’
‘Poison?’ Crys echoed faintly, eyes now huge in the paleness of her face, the band of freckles across the bridge of her nose standing out in stark relief.
He nodded abruptly. ‘There are no wounds, no sign of any injury, in fact; poison is as good a guess as any for the cause of death.’
Death, death, and more death. Everywhere she looked—everywhere she went!—there was death!
It was Crys’s last agonising thought before blackness engulfed her and she crumpled down onto the damp earth…
CHAPTER TWO
CRYS came back to consciousness feeling something rough against the side of her face and a rocking sensation which, since her head was already light and disorientated, threatened to bring on a bout of motion sickness.
She opened her eyes to find herself elevated off the ground, obviously being carried, her gaze widening with horror as she found herself looking up into the fiercely grim face of the man she now remembered owned an equally savage-looking dog. A dog that padded along at its master’s side.
Crys opened her mouth—
‘Don’t you dare scream!’ the man muttered between clenched teeth.
Crys closed her mouth as abruptly as she had opened it, totally startled by the fact that, even though he wasn’t looking at her but grimly ahead, the man had realised she was once again fully conscious.
‘If you scream I’m simply going to drop you where I stand,’ the man added almost pleasantly.
As long as he—and his dog!—kept on walking, maybe that wouldn’t be such a bad thing! It might at least give Crys a chance to run back to her car and get away from here.
‘I’ve had one hell of a day already,’ the man continued harshly. ‘Finding that dog this morning was far from a pleasant way to start the day—quiet, Merlin!’ he bit out sharply as the dog began to growl at the unacceptable term. Merlin was instantly silenced.
Which only confirmed for Crys that of the two, and despite the animal’s obvious size—and fierceness!—the man was the one to fear the most.
‘I found the dead—canine this morning,’ the man corrected, in deference to Merlin’s sensitive feelings. ‘I was trying to at least give it a decent burial by digging a grave in ground that hasn’t thawed since November.’ He flexed tired shoulder muscles. ‘And then, finally to make my day, my privacy is invaded by a female with an overactive imagination who seems to consider that my only companion resembles a hound from hell—and that I’m right down there with him!’ He viciously kicked a door open before striding forcefully into the house and into its kitchen. ‘With hindsight, I should have just left you where you fell!’ He dumped Crys down unceremoniously onto a chair before straightening and striding impatiently from the room.
Thankfully, the dog followed him!
Crys blinked dazedly, glad of the respite—no matter how brief!—from the man’s overbearing personality. And his dog.
As her head finally began to clear it took her all of two seconds to realise that here was her chance to escape. Perhaps her only chance. She doubted—
She couldn’t believe this kitchen!
The man had dumped her so ungraciously in a kitchen Crys could never have imagined in her wildest dreams. Never have imagined in this outwardly derelict castle, that was…
It was a beautiful room, with gorgeous mellow oak cupboards and a dark green Aga throwing out the heat that made the room deliciously warm after the cold January weather outside. A large oak work-table stood in the middle of the kitchen, and every implement a cook might need to work with hung from a rack overhead, with saucepans that gleamed with copper brightness. There was a stone-flagged floor beneath Crys’s feet, in warm browns and creams, and the chair she sat on was one of the kitchen dining set of mellow oak.
After the lack of care and the decay on the outside, this kitchen was—incredible.
‘Not what you were expecting, is it?’
Because of her utter surprise at these unexpected surroundings she had just lost her opportunity for escape, Crys realised.
She turned frowningly to look at her reluctant host. He stood silhouetted in the doorway, watching her from beneath hooded lids.
She took in his changed appearance—the overlong dark hair brushed into some semblance of order, the heavy black sweater removed in favour of a jumper of soft dark green cashmere. If the interior of the house was a surprise, then this man’s changed appearance was equally so. But, to Crys’s eyes, that didn’t make him any more approachable.
Her expression showed her puzzlement. ‘Why do you deliberately give the impression on the outside that the house is unlived-in?’ She was pretty sure it was deliberate…
He raised dark brows, moving forward to place a copper kettle on top of the Aga before turning back to face her. ‘Why do you think?’ he drawled scathingly.
He looked younger now he wasn’t looming out of the fog, and, without the bulky jumper, taller and leaner too. The face beneath the growth of beard appeared unlined. Crys put his age somewhere in his thirties. In fact, now that she could see him more clearly, there was something vaguely familiar about him…
Although no amount of feelings of familiarity could dispel the hard mockery in that dark green gaze!
Crys grimaced. ‘To keep at bay females with overactive imaginations…?’
Very white teeth showed briefly in the semblance of a grin. ‘In one,’ he confirmed with satisfaction, turning to remove the boiling kettle from the Aga. ‘Tea or coffee?’
After her terrifying thoughts of a few minutes ago—evoked by such an overactive imagination?—this man’s polite offer of a hot drink seemed slightly ludicrous. Or maybe she was the one who was ludicrous…?
‘Coffee. Thanks,’ she accepted distractedly as he took a tin and cups out of one of the cupboards, his back towards her. She reached up to remove her hat and unwind the scarf at her throat, now she was warmed by the heat of the room. ‘Er—where’s Merlin?’ she added somewhat nervously; the hound hadn’t returned with his master.
‘Off chasing rabbits, I expect,’ his owner dismissed unconcernedly. ‘I let him out of the front door a few minutes—’ he broke off abruptly.
Crys was so distracted by the comfort of her surroundings, the welcome warmth after hours of driving through cold damp fog, that for a few seconds she didn’t even realise he had stopped talking. She sat back in her chair, her eyes closed, as she began to thaw out. But she slowly became aware of a charged silence, the very air about her seeming to crackle with electricity.
She turned back to her host, colour warming her
