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There was no fear in her voice, no anger either, and she made no move to get free. She sounded like a sleepy child on a long car journey.
‘We’re going home,’ I said, conscious that a slight husk had crept into my own voice. ‘Go back to sleep.’
‘Home,’ she murmured. ‘That’s nice.’
Then she closed her eyes, relaxing again into sleep, as if I was someone she trusted to hold her while she slept.
She shouldn’t trust you.
I leaned back in the seat and lifted my gaze from her face, staring straight ahead, out through the front windscreen of the helicopter and into the darkness.
No. She shouldn’t.
No one should.
CHAPTER FIVE
Jenny
ITWASTHEsun streaming through the window and shining directly on my face that woke me.
I scowled and tried to burrow into the pillow, because I didn’t want to wake up, but that sun was relentless. Plus, my stomach was starting to growl.
The night before had been a strange fever dream, full of the comforting roar of a jet engine, before it changed to the rhythmic sound of helicopter rotors. I had a confused memory of being carried in Constantine’s strong arms across the Tarmac, and then feeling warm and safe as I lay against his broad chest, my stomach dropping away as we lifted off into the air. I’d no idea where he’d come from, since he hadn’t been on the jet with me from Madrid, but for some reason I hadn’t questioned it.
He’d murmured something about taking me home, and I hadn’t ask why, if we were flying direct to London, we’d needed to be transferred to a helicopter. I’d been too tired to do more than accept it. When the helicopter had landed, I’d had an impression of wide-open spaces and a cold night wind, and then some stairs, and a long corridor that definitely wasn’t in my little bedsit. But I’d assumed it was all part of the dream and had snuggled back down to sleep as soon as I was placed in a comfortable bed with a warm quilt drawn up over me.
I felt as if I’d slept very deeply after that, and it was strange that my alarm hadn’t gone off. But I often woke up before it did, so maybe it wasn’t so strange. As long as I hadn’t missed work I’d be fine.
I yawned and opened my eyes, squinting through the beam of sunlight.
Then I blinked and sat straight up, my heart beating very fast.
I was not in my bedroom.
The room was huge—far bigger than my bedsit—with large windows currently hidden by long, heavy, pale linen curtains. The sun was coming through a gap, lighting the cream-coloured walls. Pale carpet covered the floor, and an antique dresser stood against one wall. There was a small table near one of the windows, a glass vase full of pale camellias sitting on top of it.
The bed I was lying in was huge and wooden, with a carved oak headboard, and it was piled with white pillows, a thick white duvet, and an expensive-looking, very beautiful patchwork quilt over the top.
A shock went through me.
It was clear that what had happened the night before hadnotbeen a dream.
Constantinehadbeen there, and hehadheld me in his arms. We’d been in a helicopter, and he’d told me we were going home and to go back to sleep. But this wasnothome.
I swallowed, my mouth dry, my heart fluttering around in my chest.
Constantine had clearly been liberal with the truth, but no matter what he’d said to me that night in the garden, and no matter how angry I’d been with him, I trusted him. He’d never hurt me, so presumably wherever this was it wasn’t anywhere terrible—there were camellias, for heaven’s sake.
But...why?
I slipped out of bed, moving over to the windows and pulling back one of the curtains.
A view over a deep valley ringed by rocky mountains greeted me. There were forests at the foot of those mountains, and lying at the bottom of that valley was a pretty lake.
I shoved back the other curtain, my heart beating faster.
It appeared I was in an old stone manor house that faced the lake, with more stone buildings off to the left. The house was surrounded by green lawns that rolled into the tall, dark forests nearby and ended at the rocky shore of the lake.
