Unknown by Unknown Read Free Book Online

If Duncan Keld had just used the stove it had to be safe, so she lit one of the burners and boiled up the water and found a tea bag, then made tea in a blue enamel mug adding sugar and powdered milk.
    There wasn’t much to see through the narrow little window through which she had made her entry yesterday. The snow was like a white lace curtain across it, only you couldn’t draw this curtain. She had been glad enough to get in yesterday, that fire had saved her life. He must have been here earlier to light the fire. Someone must have taken him away and brought him back again and when they brought him back said, ‘Goodbye, see you in four weeks’ time.’
    If she had been awake instead of sleeping the sleep of exhaustion and brandy she could have hitched a lift, but now she was stuck until the snow went away, or somebody found her car and started looking for her. They’d come here first. This was the nearest house, the only house for miles.
    ‘Somebody come looking for me,’ she prayed, and remembered standing at other windows whispering a similar prayer, ‘Please come. You told me to wait and be good. Oh, please come back!’
    She was getting lightheaded. She had to keep her head because that was a brutal man in there. If she broke down she’d get no pity from him. She took what was left of the hot tea back to the fire — it was freezing in the kitchen — and drank it to the dregs. Then she picked up the sheepskin coat she had worn from the floor, just inside the front door, where she’d dropped it.
    The snow had melted on it, making a small pool on the flagstones, and she had been a fool not to shake it before she dumped it, she could be wanting it again. She draped it over a chair, and put another log on the fire.
    Duncan Keld had told her to leave the food alone. She didn’t want his food, but the fire was another matter. If he stopped her building up the fire she would go berserk. There were all those logs outside so he would have no excuse, and she sat on the goatskin rug with her back to the easy chair, watching the sparks go up the chimney.
    After a while her head began to nod. She pushed a cushion up against the chair arm, rested her head on it and closed her eyes and dozed. She was tired. The trek out to the car had been strenuous, and the warmth of the fire and the rhythm of a tapping typewriter lulled her. She didn’t know how long she slept, but when she opened her eyes she heard this deep slow sexy voice.
    She knew at once where she was. Her heart sank and she closed her eyes again. He wasn’t talking to her. He was speaking on a tape recorder, describing something mechanical. Something to do with a boat maybe, and she lay still and listened. She decided that when he wasn’t growling or snarling, he had an attractive voice. Some women might describe it as sexy and wonder how it would sound if he said something very personal and intimate, and just for them.
    Pattie shocked herself rigid with that thought and jerked herself upright. There wasn’t even a book about that she could see. Maybe there was in cupboards or drawers, but how would Duncan Keld react if she started wandering around, poking into corners?
    He had turned off the tape recorder now and he was typing again, and she coughed and said, ‘Excuse me.’
    No reply, no sign that he had heard her, so she asked, ‘Are you actually blocking me out or just pretending to?’ Still he didn’t seem to hear, although of course he knew she was speaking to him, and she began to get extremely irritated. He was such a lout, so uncouth. ‘Oh, the concentration of the man!’ she shrilled with phoney enthusiasm. ‘I think it’s wonderful! Oh, I envy you that. I’ve been sitting here and trying to think myself somewhere else, but I can’t. I have this lovely picture in my head of being somewhere I can clean my teeth, like back home, but all the time I know I’m here.’
    He turned in his chair then, gave her a look of flat dislike and said,