To her joy, he groaned, but his eyes remained closed. She didn’t know what else to do, except to get tough. With the palm of her hand, she began to slap him across his beard-roughened cheeks.
Success! He stirred at last, cursing angrily and batting at her hand. “You try that again,” he growled, “and I’ll—”
“I will slap you again if you don’t listen to me. You have to come with me. I’m going to put you in my car and take you to a place where there will be someone to help you.”
No reaction.
“Do you understand? You’ve had an accident. You need to get out of your car and into mine. It’s only a few steps away. Can you manage that much if I help you?”
He mumbled something she didn’t comprehend. He was obviously dazed, perhaps in a bad state of shock, but her urgency must have reached him on some level because he began to drag himself out of the car.
He was weaving when he finally came erect beside the SUV. “Hurts,” he complained, pressing a hand against his chest.
Another concern, she thought. He must have injured more than just his head. There was no time to question it.
“We have to move. You can rest once you’re inside my car.”
“Yeah,” he said gruffly. She wondered if he had any idea at all who was speaking to him.
The next few minutes were difficult ones. Not only as solid as stone, he was tall, easily six feet or more in height. Supporting that weight, with her arm flung around his waist and his own arm draped over her shoulder, was a challenge she undertook but never wanted to repeat. Somehow, stumbling and staggering, they fought their way out of the ditch with the snow driving into their faces at a furious pace.
Jennifer was winded by the time they reached the Ford. She was able to deposit him in the passenger seat where he immediately collapsed, lapsing back into unconsciousness.
Although she wanted nothing more than to get them away from this place as quickly as possible, she spared another moment to trudge back to the SUV. The engine must have stalled when he smashed into the boulder, but the key was still turned on in the ignition and the headlights burning. She switched off the lights, pocketed the key, then trained her flashlight into the back. There was a suitcase on the seat.
Taking the piece of luggage with her, she went back to the road where she shoved it into the trunk of her car next to her own suitcase. Once behind the wheel of the Ford again, she leaned over him to fasten his seat belt in place. He might be in no state to care, but she did.
“No more risks,” she informed him.
She got no response.
THE SNOW AND THE WIND had been bad enough down in the glen. But once they were out on the high moors again, the conditions were fierce. The howling gale alone made the car, which trembled under its force, difficult to handle. The snow made it all the worse.
There were moments when Jennifer could barely see the road. And when she could see it, she was alarmed by the drifts that were building along the shoulders, spreading ridges onto the pavement itself.
She didn’t dare let herself imagine what would happen if the road became impassable before she reached her objective, if the car was no longer able to plow through those growing white swells. All she could trust herself to do was to stubbornly pursue the route, even though it carried her straight into the teeth of the raging storm.
From time to time, Jennifer glanced at her silent passenger sprawled in the seat beside her. He hadn’t stirred since they’d left the scene of the accident. His eyes remained closed, his body inert.
How bad was he? she wondered. And what good did it do to worry about him when she had done all she could by rescuing him from the crippled SUV? At least he was out of the cold now.
Since they were still wearing their coats, both of them were snug with the heater humming away, releasing a blessed warmth. But if they should become trapped out here, run out of gas and the heater quit on them—
What are you doing? Stop thinking about that. Just drive.
There was no other choice. But as the ribbon of road endlessly dipped and turned and rose again, Jennifer wondered if she had misjudged the distance. Or was it the blizzard that seemed to lengthen the miles?
They were in the very heart of the moors now, in its most isolated depths. It would be easy to miss the turning to Warley Castle now that it was dark and snowing so hard. She might already have passed it.
And then suddenly, unexpectedly, as she rounded a bend on the brow of a hill, the castle was there in front of her.
As if by a deliberate magic, the wind dropped at the same time the shroud of snow momentarily lifted. The clouds overhead briefly parted. Halting the car, Jennifer found herself looking across a valley at a steep-sided, craggy peak. The last faint light of day streamed down on the summit where, looking as though it had been carved out of the rock itself, the castle perched, like a great sailing ship in a turbulent sea.
No introduction to that medieval pile could have been more dramatic.
Sitting there, gazing at the structure, it seemed inconceivable to Jennifer that such a formidable fortress could contain anything so benevolent as a monastery. But that’s exactly what the castle housed, and had for centuries.
Guy had told her how Warley had come to be occupied by the brothers, but she didn’t want to remember the story now. The very thought of Guy awakened the shock of his death, and with it a rush of fear and anguish.
As though triggered by those dark emotions, the wind rose again while overhead the clouds closed the gap. With the pale light vanished, the castle became a mass of black stone, grim and forbidding.
The curtain of snow also descended again by the time Jennifer reached the turning on the floor of the valley. The little Ford valiantly climbed a twisting lane through banks of snow that threatened to soon block the way. With the engine straining, it seemed to take forever to crawl to the top of the rise where the castle loomed in front of them.
Made it, she thought thankfully as the car finally chugged through the portal of a massive gatehouse that once would have been barred by a lowered portcullis.
Swinging into the bailey, Jennifer brought the car to a stop and got out. The place was dim, with only a single lantern burning on one of the walls. But its light was sufficient enough to guide her to a heavy oak door. There was a chain suspended beside the door. She tugged on it, and from somewhere inside a bell clanged hollowly.
As she waited for a response, she looked over her shoulder where she had left her passenger in the car. There had been neither sound nor movement from him since they had left the glen.
Her mind was on him, wondering if he would recover, when the door scraped open. Head swiveling, she was startled by the sight of a robed figure standing in the shadows of the archway, his face hidden in the depths of a cowl.
An ancient castle, flickering light, a mysterious figure. It was the stuff of Gothic legends. But even before he spoke to her in a gentle voice, Jennifer knew she was being foolishly imaginative. There was nothing diabolical here. And of course he wore a robe with a cowl. This was a monastery, after all.
“What is it?” he inquired kindly. “Have you lost your way in the storm?”
“Please, I need your help. I have an injured man in my car, and I think he may be in a bad way.”
Chapter Two
Heat radiated from the glowing core of the peat fire. Huddled on a stool close to the wide hearth, Jennifer tried to keep warm without scorching herself.
There was apparently no central heating in the castle. Either funds didn’t permit it, or the good brothers were obeying a spartan existence dictated by their order.
The room they had given her was a testament to that.