Although I was still undecided about vampires, I was fully aware of how dangerous humans could be. I’d been shot and nearly killed in Scotland by a maniac who’d dragged the twins from their beds and tried to hurl them into the sea. It wasn’t the sort of thing I’d soon forget.
I touched the star-shaped scar below my left collarbone and made a silent vow. If another sicko was stalking Will and Rob, I’d do everything in my power to track him down and put him away for good. If he turned out to be a vampire, I’d drive a stake through his heart with my own hands.
I would allow no one, living or dead, to harm my sons.
Five
A fter considering the situation from many angles, I decided that it would be irresponsible of me to tell my husband about my plan to track down Rendor. Bill would do
nothing but worry if I informed him of my intention to comb the woods for a potentially dangerous pervert, and worrying would do nothing but distract him from the important work awaiting him in London. Heaven alone knew what would happen to the firm if Bill confused Miss Muffin’s trust fund with Mr. MuddyBuddy’s. The consequences were too terrible to contemplate, so I resolved to keep mum about my mission, for Bill’s sake as well as the fi rm’s.
It was with a clear conscience, therefore, that I saw my husband off the following morning without mentioning my plan. After he’d gone, I made a quick run into the village for some needed supplies, returning to the cottage in plenty of time to prepare a hearty breakfast for the twins while Annelise helped them dress for their nine o’clock riding lesson. All three were surprised when I joined them in our canary-yellow Range Rover for the short drive to the stables.
As Annelise backed the Rover out of our graveled drive and onto the narrow county lane that ran past the cottage, she cast an appraising look over my hiking boots, rain jacket, and day pack.
“Going for a ramble?” she ventured.
“I thought I’d stretch my legs,” I informed her airily. Since Annelise was as big a worrywart as Bill, I’d decided to conceal my true intentions from her as well. “I’m tired of being confined to barracks by the lousy weather.”
Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter
39
“Why drive to Anscombe Manor to stretch your legs?” Annelise glanced doubtfully at the cloud-covered sky. “It’s just as wet there as it is here.”
“I thought I’d watch the boys ride before I head out,” I explained.
“It’s been a long time since I attended one of their lessons.”
“That’s because you don’t like horses,” Rob observed sagely from the backseat.
“You’re afraid of horses,” Will chimed in.
“You won’t even feed Toby carrots, and he doesn’t hardly have any teeth,” Rob went on, relentlessly.
“Yes, all right, boys,” I said, giving them a quelling look over my shoulder. “I may not be as comfortable around horses as you are, but I still want to see you ride.”
“From the fence,” Rob said, giggling.
“From behind the fence,” Will added wickedly.
I faced forward and maintained a dignified silence. It was pointless to ask for sympathy from my horse-crazy sons or from anyone else in the riding world. Horse people expected everyone to be as fearless as they were. They couldn’t understand how a person could love horses from a safe distance, as I did. When I refused to risk life and limb by climbing aboard a huge, muscular creature that could kick, rear, buck, bite, step on, and run away with me, they simply shook their heads and wondered how on earth I’d given birth to Will and Rob.
It took us only ten minutes to reach the entrance to the long, curving drive that led to Emma and Derek Harris’s house, though to call Anscombe Manor a house was to grossly understate its quirky grandeur. It was a partly fourteenth-century manor house, the fourteenth-century bit being the foundation upon which a succession of owners had, over some five hundred years, built a succession of manor houses.
Anscombe Manor had entered the twenty-first century with, among other things, fifteen interior staircases—one of which stopped
40 Nancy Atherton
unexpectedly at a bricked-in doorway beyond which there was nothing but fresh air and an abrupt drop onto Emma’s cucumber frames— a timber-roofed great hall, a pair of mismatched towers, a cobbled courtyard, odd stretches of crenellated wall, and a collection of outbuildings that included a beautiful nineteenth-century stable constructed of mellow Cotswold stone.
Emma and Derek had made their own mark on the estate, first by refurbishing the manor house from top to bottom, then by adding three open-air riding rings, a modest indoor riding arena, a modern stable block for boarding horses, an assortment of storage sheds, and, last but not least, a cement-lined manure pit. I was particularly fond of the manure pit. On hot summer days, its odor seemed authentically medieval.