‘Go carefully through here,’ he warned.
Cramped and narrow, built of old brick with an arched roof, the tunnel sloped downwards for a while before levelling out.
The air was unpleasantly dank, the walls black in parts and slimy to the touch, the hard-packed earth floor decidedly damp and slippery.
Tina was just thinking that she wouldn’t be sorry when they reached the end, when the torch flickered and went out, leaving them in total darkness.
She gave an involuntary gasp and stood quite still. After a second or two she heard a movement and, needing reassurance, reached out to touch him.
But her searching hand found nothing and, in the silence, the terrifying thought popped into her head that he had walked away and abandoned her in this Stygian blackness.
CHAPTER SIX
B ITING back the surge of panic, Tina told herself not to be ridiculous and said, ‘Richard?’ To her everlasting credit, her voice was steady.
‘I’m here.’ A hand reached out of the pitch-blackness and took hers. ‘All right?’
‘Yes.’
‘I was just checking the torch. I’m afraid the bulb’s gone.’
‘What do we do now?’
‘As we’re about halfway, we may as well go on.’
‘Very well,’ she agreed.
His fingers tightened on hers. ‘All you have to do is move slowly and carefully and keep your head down. For a while it’s relatively straight and level, then it starts to gradually climb again.’
For what seemed an age, they moved forward at a snail’s pace and eventually the ground began to slope upwards. Hampered by her high heels, it became more difficult to keep her footing and her ankle started to throb painfully.
She was accordingly grateful when Richard announced, ‘Not far now.’
After a few more yards he released her hand. ‘Wait here a moment.’
Once again she experienced that scary feeling of being abandoned in the smothering darkness and was forced to bite her lip.
Then she heard the brush of feet on stone, the scrape of metal on metal and the protesting creak of old hinges. A moment later moonlight came flooding coldly in to illuminate a flight of crumbling steps.
Richard returned to take her hand and they climbed them together, emerging through a small iron-banded door into a roofless half-ruined tower full of bright moonlight and deep shadow.
‘So this is where they used to meet,’ she said wonderingly.
‘Yes. But of course in those days it was merely deserted, not ruined. However, despite the state it’s in, it’s steeped in history and well worth seeing.’
Closing the door behind them, he turned to look at her and, taking a spotless handkerchief from his pocket, cleaned a smear of black from her cheek. Then, wiping the hand he had used to follow the tunnel wall, he continued, ‘However, given the ordeal you’ve just gone through, you must be sorry you ever agreed to come.’
‘No, not at all. It was quite an experience.’
From the picture he’d built up in his mind after reading Grimshaw’s reports, he wouldn’t have thought her capable of exercising such self-control and the fact that she’d taken things so calmly had both surprised and intrigued him.
Raising her hand to his lips, he said quietly, ‘I thought you might go to pieces, but obviously I’d underestimated your courage.’
As he had underestimated her beauty.
Still holding her hand, he looked into her face, made both fascinating and mysterious by the moonlight, his eyes lingering on her mouth.
Flustered by his praise and afraid that if he kissed her she would weaken, she half turned away. ‘At least I wasn’t alone, as Mag must have been. And presumably she had only a taper or a candle.’
‘Which was, I daresay, somewhat more reliable than our torch,’ he commented dryly.
Tina had started to smile when, taking her completely by surprise, he turned her into his arms and lifted her face to his. For an instant he looked down at her with queer darkened eyes, then his mouth covered hers.
Her lips parted helplessly beneath the masterful pressure of his and he deepened the kiss, reawakening all the clamouring demons of that morning and sending pleasure coursing through her like red-hot lava.
Lost in a world of sensual delight, she was limp and quivering, almost mindless with desire, when a warning bell began to ring and she stiffened.
His blood heated with anticipation of the night ahead, Richard found it far from easy to play a waiting game, but, feeling that tacit resistance, he ended the kiss and lifted his head.
Drawing a deep, ragged breath, she told herself that she was thankful he’d called a halt. She had virtually no defences against him and if he hadn’t drawn away when he did, if he’d laid her down there and then on the moonlit grass, she would have been his for the taking.
And he would have thought her easy.
For a moment or two she struggled to pull herself together. When she had, to some extent, succeeded, she found her voice and said a little breathlessly, ‘The tower’s bigger than I first thought. How many rooms did it have?’
He told her and began to point out where the different floors had once been, where the fireplaces had been situated and where the old stone stairs had spiralled upwards.
When she had seen all there was to see, he turned away and reached to take her hand. Afraid of his touch, afraid of weakening, she pulled it free.
Without comment, he led the way through a gap in the crumbling walls, where long grass and weeds were thrusting up between the fallen stones.
Favouring her bad ankle and trying her best not to hobble, she followed him as best she could.
He made no further attempt to hold her hand; indeed he appeared to be deep in thought as they headed back towards the castle.
They were skirting the beechwood—the glorious blaze of colour bleached to a pale bluey-purple by the moonlight—when, wanting to break the silence, she reminded him, ‘You didn’t finish telling me what happened to Mag.’
He roused himself and said, ‘I’m afraid it’s a sad tale. One night, it seems, she waited for Sir Gerwain in vain and the next day she learnt—’
Tina was looking up at him, concentrating on what he was telling her, when her injured ankle turned painfully.
At her little gasp, he stopped speaking abruptly and threw an arm around her to steady her as she wobbled on one leg.
His voice grim, he said, ‘I should have had more sense than to take you walking in those heels.’
‘I should have had more sense than wear them,’ she admitted ruefully.
He took off his jacket and, spreading it on the grass, lowered her on to it. Then, squatting down, he examined her ankle, which was already showing signs of swelling.
‘Well, that settles it,’ he announced firmly. ‘You can’t possibly go back to town in this state. The best place for you is bed.’
‘Oh, but I—’
Rising to his feet, he said, ‘There’s no way you can walk on that. A cold compress, a good night’s sleep and we’ll see how it is in the morning…’
He’d had two objectives and his first had been achieved more or less by chance. Now, with a bit of luck, he could make use of that same chance to achieve his second.