Guardians Of The Haunted Moor (4 page)

Ezekiel accorded him a sidelong glower which told him more
plainly than words that he knew there’d been no
we
about it. That Gideon had wanted
everything signed, sealed and recorded in the Civil Register, but
had caved without question in the face of Lee’s distress.
How can I ask her, Gid? It’s her baby. This is so
difficult for her.
“I’m not sure that was
wise. Lots of women change their minds.”

Irritation came to Gideon’s rescue. “God’s sake, Zeke. You
always have to be the ghost at the feast, don’t you? What would you
know about
lots of
women
?”

“
That’s rich, coming from you.”

Gideon’s mouth fell open. Ezekiel never took the low road.
Before he could think up a retort, Eleanor appeared behind the
glass doors. She came in quietly, and went to kiss Ma Frayne before
turning to greet Gideon, but the message for her fiancé was written
all over her face.
Did you ask
him?

Gideon
sighed. She was a nice, kind, straightforward woman who took a very
plain view of the world. “Hello, Eleanor,” he said, wiping the
annoyance from his tone. “How are you?”

“
Fine, but never mind me. I just went down the corridor to get
a cup of tea, and here you are. Where’s Lee?”

“
He’s with his sister. Did you put Ezekiel up to
this?”

“
Up to what?”

“
Asking if we’d had Tamsyn formally adopted.”

She was too honest for a sidestep. He’d stung her, though, and
she flushed in anger as well as embarrassment. “I didn’t
put him up
to anything. I
just know that I couldn’t let
my
baby go, not once I’d seen her. No matter what I’d
promised before.”

A shriek
cut across their confrontation. A door at the far end of the
delivery suite flew open, and Lee and Michel Duroy came backing out
into the corridor. Lee was white as a cod, Michel’s hands up in a
gesture of surrender. A plastic water bottle shot through the air,
narrowly missing Michel’s head, and impacted off the far wall.
Another scream split the air, and then a groan like a soul in
perdition. “Fuck off, both of you! Fuck the fuck off out of
here!”

“
Good God,” Ezekiel said. “Is that...”

“
Our sweet, nicely spoken sister-in-law, doctor of archaeology.
Yes.” Like his brother, Gideon had risen to his feet on instinct,
ready for battle, the pair of them archetypal males despite their
differences, and just as useless here. They both turned gratefully
to the old lady, who had set aside her magazine and come to join
them. “Now, boys,” she said soothingly. “Your father called me a
foul-mouthed hellion when I was having you. They encourage the
girls to scream and shout these days, and it does them good. It’s
not as dreadful as it sounds.”

“
God, I hope not.” Gideon swallowed dryly. He wasn’t too
worried about Elowen. He’d done the classic local-hero cop thing of
delivering one woman’s baby in the back seat of her car on the
verge of the A30, and the
Herald
had made much of the new mum’s wish to name her
infant after her saviour, only to change her mind in horror when
she’d heard what he was called. Michel too could look after
himself, even if his six-foot Gallic gorgeousness wasn’t doing him
much good now. He shook off his paralysis and ran to Lee. “Right,
you. Away from the door.”

“
I can’t. Feels like she’s dying.”

“
Well, she’s not.” Gideon detached him from the wall he’d
backed up against, force-marched him a few yards down the corridor.
“She’s just having our girl.”

“
We’re never having another one.”

“
I thought you mentioned wanting six of ’em. Plus the dog you
already have, and a goldfish.”

“
I’ll settle for the bloody dog!”

Gideon
turned him so that the tides of Elowen’s pain could break against
his own broad back. Lee hung on to him for a moment, then pushed
away. “I'm all right. Go to her.”

“
The midwife’s with her. I'm not sure there's anything I can
do.”

“
You always make everybody feel better. Please.”

Cautiously Gideon returned to the doorway. The midwife
glanced up. She knew Gideon from his pre-natal visits to the
hospital with Elowen, and she spared him a brief smile. “Your turn
to get your head cracked open with a bedpan, is it? Normally I only
have one anxious dad to cope with, not three.”

Two!
Gideon kept the jealous thought
to himself. Michel had just come here on a visit, and if he was now
pacing the corridor with every appearance of a worried
father-to-be, that was only natural. Such concerns were trivial
anyway, compared to Elowen’s struggle. “How is she doing?” He
hadn’t meant to speak as though she wasn't there, but she had
turned her face away from him and was clutching the sheet round her
chin. “Does she have much longer to go?”

“
We thought things were happening a few minutes ago, didn’t we,
chick? But our contractions have subsided. Could be a few hours
yet.”

A few hours... Poor little bugger.
Gideon’s head spun a bit at the prospect and he asked, only
halfway meaning to voice the question aloud, “What time is
solstice?”

“
Solstice?” The midwife gave Elowen a reassuring pat and
straightened the blanket. “You’re not into all that astrological
stuff, are you? My son’s just as bad. Three minutes after eleven
this year, he says it is. I don’t know what he expects is going to
happen.”

Elowen shifted in the bed. Her face contorted. Gideon had
promised to help her—had taken turns with Lee to breathe with her
in half a dozen ante-natal groups—and he took a step forward, but
she waved him frantically back. “I don’t want you, Gid,” she
rasped. “Or Lee, or Michel, or bloody Ezekiel, or any other bloody
man, for that matter! How have I ended up here, flat on my back...
surrounded by bloody
men
?” She began to sob in sheer
weariness and fright. “I want my mum.”

Gideon’s
heart shifted in his chest with pity. Her mother had died twenty
years ago. “I know. Will mine do?”

Her face
crumpled. “Yes. I want Ma Frayne.”

Gideon
didn’t have to call her. She’d risen at the prompting of some
instinct beyond family ties or reason, and was making her way down
the corridor without stopping to think about her stick, her walking
frame or the need for an arm to lean on. She pushed past Gideon
into the room, her hands outstretched. “Oh, poor girl. My poor
sweetheart. I’m here now.”

Chapter One

July 2015

The
clifftop garden was awash with colour and light, merry as a
fairground in the sunshine. Gideon made his way with difficulty up
the slope, balancing two cardboard cups of cider. He subsided
gratefully into a deckchair beside Sarah Kemp, who was watching her
daughter and the other kids tear around the lawn with Isolde, a
sheepdog who nominally lived with Gideon and Lee but spent her time
guarding the kitchens and offspring of half the other villagers of
Dark. Gideon handed Sarah one of the cups. “There you go, your
ladyship. Everything all right?”

“
Heavenly.” She waved in the direction of the romping children.
“Would you look at that? That dog of yours is herding the brats
away from the cliff edge.”

“
Whoever would’ve thought she’d have the brains, eh?” Gideon
stretched and hid a yawn behind his hand. Even the smell of the
cider was making the garden flutter and dance. “You should see her
at home. Bites me on the bum if I’m late taking Tamsie for her
bath.”

Sarah
chuckled. “Nanny dog.” She leaned forward and pitched a Bodmin
mother’s moor-crossing yell at her two younger offspring. “Shaun
and Jenny Kemp! You climb that bloody apple tree, I’ll come and
string you up from it! God,” she continued to Gideon, smiling,
“they love it here. It was nice of Jago to ask us.”

“
He knows how much help you were when we first brought Tamsyn
home.”

“
Well, when you’ve had three of ’em, you either know what to do
in most emergencies or you’ve stopped caring. He’s a nice bloke,
your Lee’s Jago, isn’t he?”

“
Yeah, he is.” When Gideon had first met him, he’d been
certifiably insane. Now he was married to Mrs Ivey, his
housekeeper, and had moved back into the beautiful old family
farmhouse here at Drift, every inch the hospitable lord of the
manor, his madness reduced to colourful eccentricity. “Think he
might’ve bitten off a bit more than he can chew here. All he wanted
to do was throw a quiet farewell party for his niece...”

“
And half Cornwall smelled free food and came clambering over
the walls. Where is Elowen, anyway? I haven’t seen her since I got
here.”

“
She’s taking her turn to walk Tamsyn.” Gideon suppressed
another yawn. He’d been up half the night, wearing a track in the
living-room carpet at Dark, gently jiggling his howling daughter
against his shoulder. “No, wait. There she is with Michel. Lee must
still have the baby, poor sod.” He frowned. Elowen and Michel were
in close conference, her hand clasped tight round his arm. She led
him off towards the orchard, and they disappeared among the shadows
of the trees.

Then a
high-pitched wail carried over the voice of the breeze, and Gideon
forgot everything at the sight of his husband emerging from the
porch, Tamsyn cradled against his hip. Zeke had been wrong, back in
that darkest night of December. Eleanor had been wrong. Michel
Duroy had vanished like the morning mist as Elowen had surged into
the final stage of her labour, and at three minutes past eleven
precisely had opened the gates of the world to her daughter,
clutching Lee with one hand, Mrs Frayne with the other, Gideon down
at the business end to make the catch. She’d delivered Tamsyn right
into his hands, head-first, two separate little eyebrows drawn with
the delicate perfection of butterfly’s antennae. Two day later, Lee
and Gideon had taken their baby home. “Bloody hell,” he said,
setting his cider cup down, deciding that sleeplessness and worry
were more than enough to make him feel three sheets to the wind.
“Still blowing up a storm, isn’t she?”

“
Did you try clapping your hands behind her head?”

“
Yep. Tried putting her in the car and driving her around like
you said used to work with Lorna. Normally all we’ve got to do is
walk her up and down the kitchen a few times and she goes out like
a light.”

“
Well, if you don’t mind my saying so, it serves you bloody
right,” Sarah said comfortably, propping her feet. “No natural baby
was ever as good as that one. First everybody in the village loves
your dog, and then they’re falling all over themselves to get at
your baby. No-one ever volunteered to baby-sit
my
brats, I can tell you that. What’s
your secret?”

Gideon
had given this thought. He’d come to a conclusion, too. Sarah Kemp
was one of the few people with whom he’d have shared it. He and she
had walked through the valley of the shadow of death where kids
were concerned. He noticed that she never took her eyes off Lorna,
even in the sunny garden with Isolde romping by her side. “Most
babies cry because they want something, don’t they? A feed, or a
clean nappy, or a cuddle to take their minds off this tricky
business of being alive. And they can’t communicate whatever it is,
so they cry.”

“
That’s about right.” She leaned forward, watching Lee, who was
now showing Tamsyn the dance of the wisteria blossom around the
front porch, still to no avail. “Oh, I see. And Tamsie doesn’t have
that problem—because of Lee.”

“
Not usually, no.”

“
Aren’t you afraid for her, Gid? If she’s like him, I mean.
He’s a grand lad, and I owe him everything, but... it’s been hard
on him, hasn’t it? Terrible, at times.”

Gideon frowned. So far the bond between Lee and his girl had
only been a blessing, a wonderful means of knowing what the
puce-faced scrap in his arms required before she knew it herself.
He’d been too busy, too besotted, to consider further implications.
To think about why his child might be crying when all her obvious
needs had been met. “Yes, it has,” he said, taking the edge off his
words with a quick smile. “I tell you what, Sarah—I’d better go
relieve the guard. Lee looks knackered. You’re right—we’re
not
used to much of
this.”

“
Well, you’re gonna be on your own with it from now on.” Gideon
tried to look serious at the prospect, but Sarah grinned. “When is
Elowen off, then?”

“
Later today. She and Michel are taking the ferry to Roscoff so
they can start their big project in Carnac.”

“
Don’t you pull that face. You’re thrilled silly, aren’t
you?”

Gideon
turned away to avoid having to answer. The last few months of his
life had been extraordinary in ways he hadn’t anticipated.
Something had happened to delay the start of the Carnac dig. With
time on her hands, Elowen had decided she wanted to breastfeed, and
everything Lee and Gideon had read or learned backed her up on the
benefits of that. So from December till May, four people had been
living in the one-bedroom flat in Dark, Elowen sleeping on a single
bed in the nursery.