Fugitive Wife by Sara Craven Read Free Book Online Page B

to eat into her bones these days, apart from the fact that Kirkby Scar was often cut off by snow for days on end.

    On the other hand, could she have let the cottage, perhaps?

    If so, when the tenant arrived, Briony would simply have to apologise and withdraw. She could spend a couple of days in York, she
    thought. Now that the tourist season was over, she would enjoy a leisurely tour of the Minster and the museums. It wasn’t what she had planned, but was that necessarily a bad thing when most of the things she planned went so utterly and disastrously wrong?

    She took a nightdress from her case and threw it across the bed, then walked to the window to draw the curtains.

    The second surprise was more in the nature of a shock. The darkness outside was ful of the wild swirl of snowflakes, and the ground
    beneath as wel as the kitchen roof and the neighbouring trees were already crusted in white. A swift sigh of exasperation escaped Briony s lips, She remembered now the forbidding leaden sky which had greeted her arrival, and realised she should have guessed its significance.
    She could stil leave, of course. She could repack her case and find the car and drive to a slightly more accessible hotel. She glanced at her watch again, imagining the reaction if she turned up at this time of night without a booking. She might even end up spending the night in the car. No, she would stay where she was for tonight at least and risk being able to get out in the morning. It was surely too early in the winter for a realy heavy fal, she argued to herself without a great deal of conviction. The real trouble was the isolation of the cottage from the vilage, and the difficulty of stocking up with fresh food if the weather was realy turning nasty. She couldn’t subsist for ever on a diet of black coffee.

    They said everything came in threes, and the evening’s surprises proved to be no exception. When she returned downstairs, the room was occupied. A large black cat with enormous green eyes was sitting in the middle of the hearthrug washing itself as if it had every right to be there. It turned its head gracefuly as Briony came in and gave her a long speculative look before returning to its toilet.

    Briony paused and watched it, her mouth curving upwards in amusement. Aunt Hes didn’t own a cat, but she was probably notorious to
    the neighbouring feline population as a soft touch who could always be relied on for a saucer of milk, and this handsome beast had
    obviously realised the cottage was occupied again and drawn its own conclusions.

    The only thing was-how had he got in? Briony went out into the hal again, but the front door was securely shut. She had opened no
    windows, so the cat must have got in via the kitchen. But how? Puzzled, she walked out into the kitchen and looked around. The back
    door was shut and the place was deserted, but someone had been in, presumably while she was upstairs, because a large cardboard box
    ful of groceries now reposed in the centre of the kitchen table. A piece of folded notepaper was stuck in one side of the box and Briony unfolded it.

    ‘Saw the car and thought I would bring these things up before the weather got worse.’ she read. ‘Hope al is satisfactory. Yours truly, N.
    Barnes.’

    She looked into the box, her spirits lifting. Bread, butter, cartons of long-life milk, bacon and a couple of boxes of eggs. She wouldn’t starve even if the blizzard outside raged for a week. But how had Mrs Barnes known? Perhaps she had simply seen the car parked at the foot of the track and decided to bring up some supplies. It could al be as simple as that, and Briony would take it for granted that was what had happened until she knew differently. Perhaps Mrs Bames was naturaly psychic, she thought grinning slightly to herself, as she unpacked the provisions and put them away. There was even a frozen chicken and a smal joint of beef at the bottom of the box, so
    whoever was expected was apparently