Bridegroom On Loan. Emma Richmond

with a gentleman who—might be vulnerable.’

      ‘Sorry,’ she apologised for the third time. ‘But I work for him…’

      ‘And you’re naturally protective,’ he finished for her. ‘All I’m saying is, be careful.’

      ‘I will.’

      Turning away, she was aware of him watching her, and felt despair wash through her. If she was going to leap to his defence every time someone said something even slightly suspect, it wouldn’t be long before the whole area would know she was in love with him. No, not in love, she denied forcefully to herself. She didn’t know him. You couldn’t be in love with someone you didn’t know. Could you? But she did know he hadn’t killed his fiancée. Do you, Carenza? How very clairvoyant of you. Kicking irritably at a tree branch, she pulled the wide hood back in place and held it with both hands.

      Coming out on to a small slip-road, she turned along it. Branches littered the surface, together with sundry other rubbish. A car hub-cap, a black plastic sack, a child’s woollen glove, and a sieve, all blown there by a capricious wind, she supposed. A few yards further on was his restaurant. And this she liked. No fancy name or sign, just a long stone building that had been left as it was meant to be. A plaque by the main door said simply, ‘The Barn.’

      There was no menu board, nothing at all to say what it was. A no-frills establishment with excellent food? A small red car was parked to one side, with, thankfully, no damage.

      Hands still holding her hood in place, she walked along the side and peered in one of the leaded windows. No fancy tablecloths, no fancy lamps, just good quality wooden tables and chairs. It was too dim inside to see very much else and so she walked round to the other side, and saw Beck. Hands shoved into his pockets, he was staring rather grimly at the wall to one side of the small terrace that presumably, in the summer, allowed diners to eat outside.

      Moving quietly to join him, she too stared at the wall. ‘Mur’ had been sprayed in black paint. A discarded aerosol can lay below it.

      He glanced at her, then returned his attention to the wall.

      ‘Not very nice,’ she commented quietly. ‘There’s only one word I can think of off hand that begins with “mur”.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘And either they were interrupted or the storm frightened them off.’

      ‘Yes.’

      ‘You don’t seem very surprised, or shocked.’

      ‘No, it happens with rather boring frequency.’

      Turning to look at her, he said almost sombrely, ‘You look like a very wet pixie.’

      ‘Troll,’ she corrected. ‘I’m too big for a pixie.’ Turning abruptly away, she said over her shoulder, ‘I’ll go and get my notebook.’

      She was aware of him following her as she walked in the general direction of the conference centre. There was a separate road she used when she came, and so she’d never been in this part of the grounds before.

      ‘This way,’ he indicated quietly, and she turned and followed him along a small track that eventually came out on the road. A hundred yards further on was the conference centre. It had once been a dower house on what had been a large estate, and she was now helping to convert it to hold conferences.

      He unlocked the front door before she could get out her own keys, and led the way inside.

      On her own ground, so to speak, she looked quickly round with a critical eye, then nodded in satisfaction. The plasterers had finished the walls, as they’d promised.

      Throwing open the door on the left, she walked inside to retrieve her notebook.

      ‘Is there anything you need to check?’

      ‘Upstairs bathroom, and one of the bedrooms in the new extension. I like your restaurant,’ she murmured as she headed for the staircase. ‘Were you open last night?’

      ‘No, lunch only on Sundays.’

      ‘Someone left their car behind.’

      He nodded. ‘One of the waitresses. It wouldn’t start and so I ran her home. That’s why I was out. What did the law want?’

      ‘Oh, just some stupid policeman being officious,’ she muttered as she began climbing. ‘The kitchen equipment is being delivered next week.’

      ‘Yes. What did he do? Warn you off?’

      ‘No.’

      ‘Liar.’

      With a disturbed smile, she sighed. ‘Not really; he just said it might not be wise for me to stay here. That you might be—vulnerable.’

      ‘Ah.’

      Are you? she wanted to ask him. But didn’t. She did halt to look back at him, and this time he didn’t look away, just held her gaze for long, long moments. She wanted to smile at him, but smiling could be dangerous. Wrenching her eyes away, she trod carefully across the littered landing. He was watching her, she knew he was, but she dared not look back again.

      ‘What will happen if they don’t ever find her?’

      ‘I don’t know. I don’t allow myself to think too far ahead.’

      No, well, you wouldn’t, would you?

      ‘I only hope that your reputation doesn’t suffer because of me.’

      ‘Is that why you stay away from me when I’m here?’ she asked as she pushed open the bedroom door. ‘Because of my reputation?’ And knew it wasn’t true. ‘I know you didn’t kill her,’ she stated confidently as she walked across the bedroom and into the bathroom.

      ‘No, you don’t,’ he reproved as he followed her. ‘How many times have you read in the papers that neighbours of murderers had thought them the nicest, quietest of people?’

      ‘That’s different.’

      ‘No, it isn’t.’

      ‘But you didn’t kill her!’ she persisted.

      ‘No,’ he agreed. ‘I didn’t. But on the off chance that I did people here will keep their distance, just in case, by association, they get mixed up in this mess.’

      ‘They don’t keep their distance from your restaurant,’ she pointed out as she stared with a critical eye at the fittings. ‘You said it did very well.’

      ‘It does, but that’s voyeuristic, dicing with danger—I don’t know, but if those same customers saw me in the street they would cross over, ignore me.’

      ‘Well, I don’t intend to ignore you! And if you ever need a character witness…’ Turning, she waited for him to move so that she could return to the landing. Tension rippled between them. Tension and something else. But he still didn’t move.

      ‘And what could you say?’ he asked pointedly. ‘That you’ve worked for me for a few weeks? But that we very rarely meet? And what did you learn about him? the lawyer would ask. Oh, not much—that he seemed very fond of his dog, liked walking in the rain…’

      ‘Do you?’

      ‘Carrie! What do you really know about me?’

      ‘That you have the ability to make me ache,’ she whispered. ‘Fantasise. And that although we don’t very often meet I watch for you. Hope, like an adolescent, to catch a glimpse of you walking in the grounds. That I’m violently attracted to you and that if I stay standing close to you for much longer I’m going to do something really stupid. Like kiss you.’

      He moved quickly to one side, and she escaped. Hurrying, despairing, not looking where she was going, she trod on a piece of wood that had been left lying on the floor, lurched, and he caught her, held her safe.

      ‘Thanks,’ she