'People don't change,

they just have momentary steps

outside of their true character.'

Chad Kultgen

DEAD MAN'S SWEETHEART

12

Caine Warwick stretched sinuously, like a wolf waking and preparing to hunt. Then he hitched himself up into sitting position and retrieved his cigar case from the pocket of his shirt. As he lit up, Catherine weighed up the possibility of pleading that her room should not be suffused with an aroma of cigar smoke in the morning and decided, sensibly, she had no real justification for doing so. In any case, he would take absolutely no notice of her objections. He did, however, get up and stroll across to fling open the window. He snagged a nearby chair with one foot and dragged it closer, so that he could sit staring out into the moonlight.

"Tell me," he murmured presently, in tones of lazy curiosity, "how did a woman of your … sophisticated … tastes come to be marrying a God-fearing, boring small rancher?"

"It was an arranged marriage, of course" she told him. "After it became obvious Matthew would never sell that scrubby little patch of dirt, my uncle wanted to get control of the relay station some other way. It was essential to everything he planned and, in any case, even if he had been inclined to try somewhere else, there was no other station within a suitable distance of Laramie. He knew Matthew was obsessed with me, so marriage seemed the obvious route to make him do what we wanted. But it wasn't. It took me a little while to find out exactly how stubborn and independent he was."

"A man of principle, you mean?" The lazy tone had been replaced by something Catherine would like to have called jealousy, but which was, in truth, more like disgust, though she could not tell whom it was direct at.

"Principles? I find the unprincipled much more interesting and, of course, much more successful. So it is very convenient that his … demise" - she laughed as she said the word – "left us in charge of a minor who can't interfere, as well as freeing me from a life of domestic boredom in the back of beyond! Imagine me, in a place without refinement or culture, a place where family connections and status have to play second fiddle to the strains of living hand to mouth. Matthew must have been mad to imagine that there was any way I would endure it! "

"You had better be careful what you say. He may come back and haunt you."

"I thought he had!"

"Indeed?"

"The night that I ran into you. In the dark, I didn't know who it was. You felt exactly like him."

"Exactly?"

"Well, he's a little taller, but his body is just as hard – hard as a rock. Not like a man who lives in the city."

"Hard ...as ... rock?" There was an indefinable note in Warwick's voice, which Catherine missed completely. He added, with some irony, "I've done my share of labour and worked with my hands – but only when I've had no other option!"

Catherine was more intent on her own feelings than his and continued, "But there's no chance of his getting out."

"There generally isn't, from your grave."

"Oh Caine! He's not –" She stopped abruptly, for she had already said nearly too much. She revised her confession, despite the almost overwhelming impulse to confide in him. "He's not in a position to affect my life."

"But you have to pretend to be his grief-stricken fiancé?"

"In public. Not in private."

"And I obviously count as private."

"Caine, you know you do!" In truth, though, she had never felt less sure of any man and knew that she was still somehow on the outside of an invisible barrier which cut him off from everything like a sheet of ice, thin but unbreakable as steel. A cold wind breathed over them both. But her shudder was a shudder of fear in the presence of something she could neither touch nor own. It was like trying to grasp an elusive, quicksilver shadow that slipped silently from her predatory hands.

She moved across the room and stood behind him, her arms circling him sensuously and her hair falling about them both like a cloak. Without speaking a word, she demanded understanding of her priorities, acceptance of the choices she had made. The cigar was soon extinguished. The twin but opposed flames of extreme selfishness and unshakeable loyalty burned on. Conflict as well as harmony can ignite passion.

# # # # #

The house was still with the quietness of the small hours, when sleepers dream deeply and no-one stirs. Caine Warwick moved, as always, silently, without haste, like a shadow or a ghost and with as little feeling. As the moonlight bleached the colours from the world and left it cold, so he was icy, intent, ruthless and fine-honed like the knife-blades he carried. He shut the bedroom door behind him without a sound and glided noiselessly to the window at the east end of the corridor.

He carefully put down out of the way the boots he was carrying, slipped between the curtains and raised the sash. There was a balcony outside, running all along the face of the central block and extending round at right-angles to the east wing. He blessed the hubris of whoever had built the house and valued symmetry over the status of the lower orders housed in this wing. The balcony took him as far as the east end of the building.

He had already calculated from the clues he had found so far that the most likely place to keep a prisoner hidden was in one of the far rooms on the second floor. Catherine's peculiar use of the present tense in her revelations and her haste to change what she had been about to say had been the last piece of evidence he needed. He had hoped she would confide the entire plot to him, but he was content with what he had heard, for it served to confirm his own observations about what had been going on in this house since that implausible and so convenient accident.

He reached the end of the balcony and looked up. The fretted supporting pillars would be easy enough to climb and he would have to hope that the roof over the balcony would stand his weight. Some minutes passed before he found himself pressed against the upper wall of the house, his bare feet gripping as best he could the sloping roof beneath him. He edged his way along cautiously until he was beneath the end window. Now he had another seven or so feet to climb, but it might just as well have been a hundred. There were no carvings at this level, the fascia-boarding angled downwards and there was nothing to give him any support.

Resignedly, he pulled out a knife and drove it into the woodwork as high as he could raise his foot. A second went at the extent of his arm. He began to climb, using the knife-handles as footholds, taking care not to step on to any part of the blade and doing his best not to look down. The climb took longer than he wished, for he had to drive into another corner of his mind, to subdue and lock up where they could not shake his resolve, his fears of the long drop behind him. Only his formidable will kept him inching up the fragile ladder towards his goal.

Presently he was at the level of the window, one knee on the sill. He extracted his last knife and inserted it into the sash. There was a click and the catch gave. He eased the window open, praying that there were no guards in the room itself. Hearing and sensing nothing, he slid cautiously over the window-sill and stood in the darkness of the room beyond. Dark – but not empty.

He knew at once there was an occupant. And the room had a smell with which he was all too familiar: the vile and unmistakable smell of a prison. He waited for long minutes to pass while he became accustomed to the darkness of the room and acquired a sense of its furnishings, so that he could move without fear of disturbing the least object.

When he had a complete sense of the unlit room, he glided over to the bed. There was a man, apparently sleeping. Not daring to risk a light, he stretched out a tentative finger and touched the cheek nearest to him, the left. His fingertips brushed over the scar just beneath the cheekbone and his heart nearly stopped as his whole being contracted into a spasm of agony.

Mastering an urge to explode into fury and break everything around him including the prison door, he allowed his fingers to continue their gentle exploration. Across the parted lips and clenched jaw he could feel a gag, linen or something else soft but deadly effective. They could not even let him breathe easily in his sleep! A quick exploration of the bed revealed that its occupant was bound hand and foot to the frame. Despite his longing to do so, he knew he dared not sever these bonds or even loosen the gag. He continued his tactile exploration and as his touch brushed over the sleeping man's face, his fingertips were recording bruises, open gashes still oozing blood, lips swollen and parched. He let his hand run on down the unconscious body, across the chest and stomach, finding unmistakable damage to the ribs and, everywhere, evidence of brutal handling intended to break a man's resistance. But this man had not broken, otherwise he would not still be here.

He knelt down, his face so close to the prisoner's, his whisper just a breath across the sleeping man's ear. "Hold on. I won't leave you here. Just hold on. I'm going to get you out of this."

He did not need to identify himself or make any other promise. If his words penetrated the sleeper's uneasy dreams, there was no sign. He wrapped his arms round the prisoner, in a way he would never have ventured if he had been in his right mind and the other fully conscious. He was striving to pass on his own vitality and warmth, his strength and his loyalty, in silent communication with the man he had not even known for certain, until a few short hours ago, that he was coming to rescue. How long he remained there, kneeling with his arms round the prisoner, hearing the faint, irregular pulses of the sleeper's heart, he never knew.

At last the first faint stirrings of dawn disturbed his vigil. He rose silently to his feet and retraced the steps he had taken to find and infiltrate this prison. By the time light had reached the empty corridors and sleep-filled bedrooms of the house, he had regained the first floor landing and retrieved his boots. He paused momentarily outside the door from which he had emerged on this exploration and his hands clenched so hard his nails drew blood.

Then he went on to his own room and fell, like someone exhausted after a titanic struggle, onto the bed which was nominally his. His eyes closed at last, but only after he had forged and cooled his fury into a weapon of retribution that he would employ tomorrow.