‘Will you be needing the car again today, sir?’
Orlando hadn’t seen the man emerge from the doorway of one of the outbuildings, but he recognised his voice easily enough. George had worked for Lord Ashbroke since Orlando and Felix were children.
‘No.’ Not today. Not ever.
Soon, Orlando supposed, he would have to tell George. Ask him to take on the duties of a chauffeur.
‘Shall I put her away for you?’
‘Thanks.’ Orlando took the keys from the ignition and let his fingers close around them tightly for a moment. Then he tossed them in George’s direction and walked across the yard into the house.
‘There. You look lovely, darling.’ Elizabeth Campion’s hands fluttered around Rachel’s face like tiny birds, smoothing a wayward curl here, teasing a fold of frothy lace there. The church bells seemed horribly loud, pealing out their tumbling scales with a threatening leer, but at least it made conversation unnecessary.
Beneath the shroud of her veil Rachel stood impassive.
She was glad of the veil. It separated her from the rest of the world in a way that seemed particularly appropriate, filtering out the unwelcome ministrations of her mother, screening her own increasingly desperate thoughts and emotions from view. In the mirror her reflection was smooth and expressionless, with its pure, blanked-out face.
‘Right, then. I’d better go over to church,’ Elizabeth said brightly, as she checked her watch and gave Rachel’s dress a last little tweak. Chosen by Carlos, it was cut in the Empire style of a regency heroine—which, Carlos had said, would charm the Americans when she sat at the piano later. Elizabeth handed her a bouquet of waxy white flowers. ‘Here, don’t forget these. Now, wait until the verger comes across to get you. And then it’s your big moment! For God’s sake see if you can manage a smile, darling, please…’
The shrouded figure in the mirror nodded almost imperceptibly. Elizabeth bustled around, adjusting her large peacock-blue hat, spritzing on another cloud of perfume, picking up a pair of black gloves and thrusting her hands into them like a surgeon preparing to cut, before finally reaching the door.
She stopped, and Rachel felt herself go very still, waiting for a sign or a word that would mean all this could be stopped. Elizabeth’s face was thoughtful.
‘Such a shame your father didn’t have the decency to stay around for this. It’s the one day of his life when he could have made himself useful. Oh, well, darling. The verger’s a very nice man. He’ll be about ten minutes, I should think.’
Then she was gone.
A gust of air from the door rippled Rachel’s veil.
Beneath it, Rachel felt as if she was choking. Fury and despair swelled inside her, and without thinking what she was doing she found herself tearing off the veil as a series of shuddering sobs ripped through her.
She had to get away.
Glancing wildly around her, she picked up the keys to the car Carlos had bought her as an engagement present. She had always felt the gesture had been akin to putting a caged bird beside an open window, but suddenly it was as if the door to her cage had been left open and she had one fleeting chance to fly.
She ran down the stairs, her wedding shoes clattering on the polished wood, her breath coming in shaky gasps. Fumbling with the catch on the front door, she peered out for a second, before throwing it open and rushing across the gravel to the car.
Her hands were shaking so much she could hardly turn the key in the ignition, and then, when she did manage to start the engine, she shot forward with a sickeningly loud shower of gravel. She didn’t dare look up at the house as she accelerated out of the drive and onto the road, wincing as she made the tyres squeal on the tarmac in her panic to get away. Whimpering quietly, she cast an anxious glance in the mirror, half expecting to see Carlos run out onto the drive of The Old Rectory, or her mother appear at the roadside, a bright flash of peacock-blue in the February gloom.
The main entrance to the church where all the guests had gathered was around the other side, but still the road seemed horribly exposed, and almost without thinking she found herself taking the narrow turning alongside the church, down which she’d watched Orlando Winterton drive that morning.
It was a single-track road, overhung with high hedges and spiked, naked branches of hawthorn that made it almost like driving through a tunnel. She leaned forward over the steering wheel, gripping it so hard that sharp arrows of pain vibrated along the taut tendons of her hands and down her wrists.
Behind her, the peal of bells echoed eerily through the leaden air, and the sound made her press her foot harder on the accelerator, trying to put as much distance between her and the church as quickly as possible. Ahead of her the lane twisted around blind bends, making it impossible to get any idea of where she was going.
She hadn’t even thought of that. Where was she going?
In fact, where was she? Panic pumped through her in icy bursts. Looking around her wildly, she wondered whether anyone had realised she was gone yet. Would the verger have found her missing by now? Maybe it wasn’t too late to go back. No one would have to know. All she had to do was find somewhere to turn round in this godforsaken lane. She could slip in as quietly as she’d left, replace the veil, and let the rest of her life continue as planned.
Carlos and her mother were right. She couldn’t possibly cut it on her own. She couldn’t even run away without getting lost.
It had started to rain, a thin mist of drops that beaded the windscreen and blurred the world beyond to a watery grey. Frantically trying to remember how to work the windscreen wipers, Rachel eventually located the right lever, only to discover that the blur was caused not by rain but by tears.
The road was bumpy and potholed, and there was nowhere to turn. She pressed her foot harder to the accelerator, trying to make the noise of the engine drown out the sound of the church bells in the distance. They were fainter now, drifting eerily over the dank, drab fields with a ghostly melancholy that was horribly funereal. The hairs rose on the back of her neck. Suddenly everything seemed sinister—loaded with menace. Her heart thudded madly as she glanced again and again in the rearview mirror, expecting to see the headlamps of Carlos’s huge black car getting closer, dazzling, hypnotising, until they engulfed her.
Someone must have seen her go. Someone must have heard. He would have guessed that she had gone with that terrifying instinct he had for sensing her fear and exploiting it until she was helpless to do anything but submit to him…
She could almost feel his hot breath on her neck, and, letting out a whimper of terror, had to look quickly over her shoulder to reassure herself she was imagining it.
Twisting her head back again, she saw that the road in front had narrowed suddenly into a low-sided bridge. She swerved, but did so too sharply, cringing at the sickening sound of metal against stone as the nearside wing glanced off the wall. Numb with horror, she kept going, accelerating off the bridge with a screech of tyres and swinging out onto a straight stretch of road. She should stop, check the damage to the car, but darkness crouched menacingly in the hedges and fields beyond, harbouring all manner of nameless horrors—all of which paled into insignificance at the thought of Carlos gaining on her. She imagined him pulling up alongside her as she stood in the deserted, darkling lane, getting out of the car and coming towards her with that look in his eyes that she would never be able to forget…
A sob tore through her, and she felt herself buckle, as if she’d been punched in the stomach, as the memories bubbled up through