HIGH TIDE AT MIDNIGHT by Sara Craven, Mineko Yamada Read Free Book Online

that she would -he satisfied with a
    roof over her head for the night, but she suppressed it. After all, it was none
    of his business.
    She sent him a smiling glance over her shoulder as she prepared to negotiate
    the tree. It was one of her best, slightly teasing, deliberately provocative,
    aimed at leaving him with something to think about.
    'We'll just have to see how things work out,' she said lightly. 'Maybe the king
    of Cornwall will take a fancy to me.'
    But if she had counted on, having the last word, she was to be disappointed.
    'I'm sure he'll take something to you.' His voice was bland. 'Preferably a
    riding crop. Au revoir, my pretty wayfarer.'
    She held her head high, and wouldn't allow herself to limp until she was
    round the next bend and out of the range of those too-revealing headlights.
    The force of the wind seemed to have spent itself, and now the air was full of
    the sound of the sea, a sullen booming roar as the breakers hurled themselves
    against the granite cliffs. Nor was it rain on her face any longer, but spray.
    As she trudged on wearily, Morwenna found herself wondering how easy it
    would be to miss the house entirely and walk straight over the cliff into the
    sea. She grinned wanly at the thought, and then stiffened, peering almost
    incredulously into the gloom. Somewhere just to the left she could see a
    light, a steady, purposeful light like a lamp set in the windows of an
    uncurtained room. And at that moment the moon emerged from behind the
    flying clouds, and Morwenna saw the dark mass of the house, its chimneys
    and roofs clearly outlined against the sky.
    Under the circumstances, it was madness to feel such a sense of relief, of
    homecoming' even, but the familiarity of the building's shape, imprinted on
    her mind by her mother's painting^caught at her heart, and she felt childish
    tears prick at the back of her eyelids.
    Somewhere close at hand a dog began to bark, deep and full-throated, and
    then another took it up, and in the house another light went on, as if the
    occupants were responding to the animals' warning. Of course, she thought,
    they would be expecting a visitor—the man she had met on the road.
    Summoning all her courage, she walked up to the front door. The notice she
    had seen had been perfectly correct, she thought wryly. The road indeed led
    to nowhere but Trevennon—straight to its door in fact. And what kind of
    arrogance had decided to build a house in this very spot anyway—out on a
    headland, exposed four-square to the elements? 'A barn', Biddy had called it,
    she thought, and wished that her first view of it had been in daylight.
    There was an old-fashioned bell pull at the side of the front door, and
    Morwenna tugged at it half-heartedly, not really expecting any results. But
    to her surprise, a bell did start jangling somewhere inside the house, and the
    dogs began barking again tumultuously. They seemed to be penned up
    somewhere in the outbuildings which rambled away from the side of the
    house, and as Morwenna waited, she heard the barking rise almost to a
    frenzy and the sound of heavy bodies banging against some kind of wooden
    barricade. It was altogether too close for comfort and Morwenna hoped
    devoutly that it would hold.
    'Whisky!' she called out, trying to sound firm. 'Max! Quiet, good dogs.'
    The good dogs were clearly puzzled by- this personal appeal from an
    unfamiliar voice, but they stopped barking. There was a lot of subdued
    whining, and convulsive sniffing, and paws scrabbling on a hard surface, but
    that, Morwenna felt, was a far more acceptable alternative.
    And someone was actually coming to answer the door. Morwenna felt her
    stomach flutter with nervousness, and clenched her hands into fists deep in
    the pockets of her coat as the heavy door swung open with an appropriate
    creak of hinges.
    She was confronted by a small stocky man, almost enveloped in a large and
    disreputable butcher's apron. His face was wrinkled like a walnut into