Molly felt sick and shaken. “And you’re saying I did these things?” she asked in a hoarse whisper.
His voice came towards her, cold and distant with what she now knew was a justifiable rage. “No one else could have. Either you or the man you ran away with. Half our breeding stock went in that fire. Have you ever seen a barn fire, Molly? Do you know what it’s like, listening to the screams of the horses, smelling the charred flesh, knowing there’s nothing you can do to save them?”
She shook her head and tried to pull away, but he was inexorable.
“The house nearly went too. Did you know that? Not that you’d care. You’re just a spoiled, vicious child who lashes out and destroys without thinking when she doesn’t get her own way!”
“And what was my own way?” she demanded, fighting to hold on to her self-control.
He shook his head in disgust. “You never told me,” he said, quiet now. “Stay out of my path, Molly. If you come down for dinner again you’d better by God be polite or I swear I’ll break your pretty little neck.”
She stood alone on the landing, unmoving, for long minutes after he’d left her to return to his guests. She glanced down at her hand as it rested on the railing, and she realized she was clutching it tightly.
He said she’d hit Ben Morse over the head and left him bleeding. Surely Mrs. Morse couldn’t believe her capable of such a thing and still be as friendly to her? Not everyone believed her to be such a monster, including one of the people she’d supposedly hurt the most.
Damn Patrick and his accusations, accusations she couldn’t refute. She stared after him, shaking with fury and defiance, when a stray thought entered her mind. A pretty little neck, he’d said. One he wanted to break.
Had he been the one? Had he driven her from this place, then followed her, murdered the man she was with and then bashed her over the head, hoping to have killed her?
And if he had, what was to stop him from trying it again?
Why did he want her there? Why couldn’t he just let her leave, start a new life with the faint shreds of her memory? What in God’s name did he want from her?
And what did she want from him?
Six
The sickness started the next morning. She woke up at the crack of dawn, a sudden churning in her stomach. She barely made it to the bathroom in time before she was thoroughly and violently sick. And as soon as the first spasm passed a second one came on, and then a third.
When it finally passed she was weak and shaken, and it took every last remaining ounce of energy to crawl back into bed and lie there, shivering. She had never felt so horribly, desperately ill in her entire life, and she wondered whether it could have been food poisoning. With her current run of luck it could have descended on her and left the others, including Lisa Canning, in perfect health.
She was just being paranoid—Mrs. Morse seemed like a careful and excellent cook. No, it must be some virus, brought on by her recent hospitalization. Maybe just an accumulation of stress. It would pass soon enough.
It was almost an hour before she felt able to climb out of bed, and she took a long, slow time to get dressed and washed and make her shaky way downstairs. Mrs. Morse took one look at her and clucked sympathetically.
“You don’t look at all well, Molly, my dear,” she said as she hustled her over to the seat by the blazing fire and wrapped an afghan around her. “It’s not a fit day out for man nor beast, so it’s just as well. Patrick said you wanted to go shopping but I think we’d better put it off for the time being. I’ll make you some mint tea with honey and see how that makes you feel.” She clucked over her like a mother hen, and Molly slowly began to relax. It was a rare, comfortable feeling, being cared for and fussed over, especially after Patrick’s accusations of the night before.
“It’s just some sort of stomach virus,” she said nonchalantly. “I’m already feeling better—I’d like to go shopping, really!” She felt like a child begging for a treat. The thought of spending another day cooped up in that house with its atmosphere of brooding guilt was enough to make her desperate.
“We’ll see,” Mrs. Morse said, bustling around. “I’m going to make you some nice, nourishing oatmeal and then we’ll see how you feel. Nothing like oatmeal for an upset stomach!”
Three hours later they were on the road, and whether it was from oatmeal, natural causes or sheer willpower, Molly was feeling fine.
“All right, all right,” Mrs. Morse had finally acquiesced. “Patrick and Ben won’t be in to lunch today—they’re busy down at the lower barn. So we might as well takeoff right now. You’ll have to give me a hand with dinner, mind you, if I’m to spend the afternoon gallivanting around.”
At the sound of Ben’s name she paused, suddenly stricken. “Mrs. Morse?” she said in a hesitant voice.
“What is it, lovey?”
“Do you believe I did what they say I did? Do you think I hit your husband over the head and left him bleeding on the ground?” She held her breath, half afraid of the answer.
Mrs. Morse shook her head. “You’ve been accused of a lot of things this past year. Some of them you told me about yourself, bragging. But I can’t believe you would have changed so much you would have hurt my Ben. Neither does he. He doesn’t know who sneaked up behind him and hit him over the head, but he knows it wasn’t you.”
“Thank God,” Molly breathed. “But who could it have been? Were there any strangers around here?”
“Just the man you ran away with.”
The words hung in the air between them. “So I am responsible,” she said in a low voice.
