Page 11 of Watch For Me By Candlelight

‘My ice-skates?’ Kate had to ask.

‘They’ll mend. I’ll take care of them for you.’

She tried to reach down to inspect the skates properly, but the movement was too awkward for the position she was sitting in. She tried again and gasped as the pain shot through her leg. Will was there in an instant, picking the skates up and handing them to her.

‘Thank you,’ Kate said, a little stiffly. She was used to being independent — not having things brought to her or having things delivered to her. She didn’t think herself and this leg were going to get on very well if it was going to impede her like this. Damn skating accident.

Kate turned the poor old skates over in her hands. As she had imagined, one was absolutely wrecked and the boot of the other one was hanging off the blade, horribly scuffed. They looked so much newer, though, than the ones in her museum. How bizarre.

‘I’ll get you home just as soon as you’ve finished your brandy,’ Will said, breaking into her thoughts. ‘I don’t like the look of that leg at all. I’d bring the doctor here but I think you’re better off at home. I’ll go for him once I’ve taken you back.’

‘Home?’ Kate repeated. Where on earth was home? She looked up, too sharply, and Will wavered in and out of focus. The little clock on the mantelpiece began to chime again and by the time it had finished striking, she was standing in the middle of the museum cottage and the ducks were quacking outside as if nothing untoward had happened.

Her leg was fine, her head wasn’t sore and Chris’ shirt was still in place — and it wasn’t made of soft, grey material.

She was, however, clutching the ice-skates — perfectly presented and not a broken blade to be seen.

What had just happened? Kate stared at the ice-skates, glinting now in a shaft of moonlight, and held them up. She felt frozen to the core, as cold as that icy river must have been, and terrified. But it couldn’t have been real. No way.

She’d clearly had a wine-induced dream and she’d probably just dozed off in the cottage. Yes, that had to be it. Anything else was . . . impossible. But it still didn’t explain the fact that she was sure those skates hadn’t been in the room when she’d locked up. Unless Jenna had put them there for some reason and she’d missed them?

It was only as Kate turned to leave that the cogs went ‘clunk’ in her brain and she hesitated. CAT. The name inked inside the skates.

Catriona Aphrodite Tredegar. Cat.

It might have been her name — or it might have been her initials, but it was both.

Dear God, how could she possibly know that?

* * *

Theo woke up the next morning feeling quite un-rested. He normally slept like a log, but that tap tap tap-ping was bothering him.

As he went about cooking breakfast on the little camping stove and boiling up a pan of water for coffee, he contemplated the noise and came to the conclusion it had been a woodpecker. It had to be. It hadn’t rained at all and there wasn’t a forge on site so it was just one of those things. It was so weird what your mind could come up with during night time.

Theo looked at the guide books and leaflets he’d brought with him for his trip and decided Sutton Hoo was definitely the destination of the day. He had toyed with the idea of Hartsford Hall and then nipping back into the Folk Museum — but then an image of Kate’s boyfriend flitted into his mind and he thought again. Some things were sacred, even if he had to be chivalrous to keep them so; because even though he told himself it was the exhibits that he wanted to see again, his heart told him that those exhibits wouldn’t be half so appealing if the curator wasn’t a five foot six red-head with bright blue eyes and a great smile.

Theo pushed the bacon around in the pan thoughtfully, watching it crackle and spit as it turned crispy and brown. No, he’d stay away. Be the gentleman and all that. It wasn’t fair on anyone to get mixed up in his life at the moment, anyway. And Sutton Hoo — well, it was an incredible place. Ghostly Viking ships appearing at the bottom of a lady’s garden and phantoms telling her where to excavate? And then she found a ship burial and all sorts of amazing things in the very soil of her garden. Awesome.

He flipped the rashers decisively and slid a couple of slices of bread into the pan to fry alongside them. Sutton Hoo it was. The Hall and the Folk Museum wouldn’t run away.

It was a good excuse to come back to Suffolk later in the year anyway.

A little voice in the back of his mind said: Good plan. Do you think she’ll have ditched the boyfriend by then?

But the chivalrous part of him refused to listen to it.

* * *

Chris was twiddling with his phone again, and Kate was staring at the ice-skates, which she had placed on the reception desk in front of her.

She’d inspected them quite thoroughly and could almost tell herself that one blade looked slightly less worn than the other, and the boot attached to the worn blade was quite clearly doubly-secured.

But that was just stupid.

‘Chris?’

‘Hmm?’