Page 44 of Emerald Mistress

She was driving back out of the village again when she saw Una. Harriet waved and looked frantically for a place to stop on the busy street, but by the time she found somewhere the leggy brunette had vanished from view. Her brow furrowed and she frowned, for she had been sure that the teenager had seen her and would wait. Had she been mistaken? Or was there something more behind Una’s recent silence? Harriet thought about the badly spelt note she had shown to Rafael and paled. It was very possible that Una was annoyed about that, and regarded Harriet’s interference as a betrayal of her trust.

When she got back to the cottage she was astonished to find Boyce and Fergal watching football together and generally behaving as though they had known each other all their lives. Nursing bottles of beer, they yelled and punched the air in unison as a goal was scored.

‘So…you two have met?’ Harriet stated the obvious as casually as she could.

‘Yeah…Hey, look at that footwork,’ Boyce groaned, his entire attention welded to the television screen.

She marvelled at the idea that she had worried that her brother might notice that she had been crying. Boyce would not have noticed had she turned cartwheels—unless, of course, she had interrupted his view of the match.

‘Will the two of you be coming down tonight to the ceilidh?’ she heard Fergal ask on his way out an hour later. ‘It should be a good night of music.’

‘I wouldn’t miss it, mate.’

‘What happened to your fear of being recognised?’ Harriet asked Boyce.

Her brother gave her a look of satisfaction. ‘I told Fergal my name. I even admitted that I was a musician. But he didn’t show any reaction. He has no idea who I am. If someone in his age group doesn’t recognise me, who will? And why didn’t you mention that the village bar is well known for traditional music? I’m really into that sort of stuff.’

‘Dooleys? Is it well known? I had no idea.’

‘Fergal seems a good bloke. You could do worse,’ Boyce declared, giving the young trainer his official stamp of bloke approval.

‘We’re just friends.’

*

Harriet discovered that the doors at the rear of the tiny bar she had visited opened into a very big low-ceilinged room with a smouldering turf fire, flagstones on the floor and seating arranged in convivial clumps. Initially tense at being in a public place, Boyce soon relaxed. A ceilidh band composed of a fiddler, an accordion player and a guy with a tin whistle entertained them. It was true toe-tapping stuff.

A couple of hours into the evening, when her smile was like set concrete on her weary face, Fergal brought the fiddler over to meet her brother. Technical talk of music batted back and forth across the table. In his schooldays Boyce had been an accomplished flautist, with plans for a classical career, and he was almost as proficient with a violin. Tunes were hummed, rhythms beaten out on the wood, old ballads discussed. Boyce was in his element.

Harriet did not sleep well, and when she awakened just after five the next morning she decided to take Snowball for a ride. She walked round the stable block to get into her car and stopped dead. Some sort of graffiti now marred the end wall of the stables. Disbelief made her throat tighten and her tummy clench hard.

LEAVE HIM ALONE, it said. The words had been picked out in white gloss paint. Someone had done it in a hurry, for the paint had dripped down from each letter. She was certain it had not been there when she’d gone out with Boyce the night before, but it had been dark when they got back and she had no memory of looking at the wall then.

She swallowed hard. Leave him alone? This was her home. It could only be a message meant for her eyes. Who was she supposed to leave alone? Rafael? And who would feel there was a need to warn her off him? Who was most insecure and likely to be possessive of Rafael’s attention right now? Una, who was struggling to get through a bad patch? Yet she could not credit that Una would be at the foot of such an unpleasant act. An act designed to shock and scare. There was no denying that it was frightening to think that someone with malicious intent had visited her home and expressed their angry hostility in that painted warning. But, no matter how hard she sought to dismiss the idea that Una had been responsible, she remained painfully aware of the teenager’s hot temper and impulsive nature.

Reaching a decision, Harriet hurried round to the old shed, where various paint tins lurked. She levered open a can of white paint, poured some clumsily into a roller tray and got to work on the wall. Within a few minutes Harriet was liberally spattered with paint drops, but the scrawled words were obscured and no longer readable. She would lash on another coat later and she wouldn’t mention the matter to anyone. It could only have been Una, and that saddened her. She had not realised until that moment just how fond she had become of the younger woman. Was Una under the impression that Rafael and Harriet were involved in some secret affair? Well, she would soon find out her mistake and learn that while Harriet might not be a rival for Rafael’s attention, there was a world of very beautiful women out there, just waiting for him to snap his imperious fingers.

*

‘I’ve been thinking.’ Boyce leant back in his seat after lunch the following day. ‘I’m going to talk to Mum and suggest that it’s time she told you who your father is.’

Harriet would not have been surprised if that announcement had made her eyes shoot out on actual stalks of horror. ‘No way, Boyce. Eva will never forgive me if you tackle her. She’ll assume that I put pressure on you and—’

‘I won’t let Mum make that mistake. Maybe she’s afraid of what Alice and I might think. I want her to understand that that certainly isn’t an issue for me. She needs encouragement and support to speak up after all these years, but you don’t need to apologise for wanting the information. It’s your right, and when she realises that you have back-up it should help.’

Harriet worried at her lower lip with her teeth, her eyes troubled. Boyce was the apple of his mother’s eye, and the older woman was a different person with him. How could he understand that she was afraid of damaging her relationship with Eva beyond repair?

Boyce patted her hand. ‘Trust me,’ he urged with confidence. ‘I know Mum—and I know what I’m talking about.’

That evening, Harriet worked late at the yard. It was one of the groom’s days off and there was a lot for her to do. Boyce had offered to help but she had turned him down, for he had never been keen on manual labour. When she had finished feeding the horses she went into the office to make a start on the monthly bills. Peanut was unusually restive, snuffling at the door and scratching at the stone floor. Samson barked a couple of times and trotted about. Had she not been so busy their fussing would have driven her mad. It was only when she heard a door slam in the yard that she went out to investigate.

She was surprised to see Rafael, striding into the feed store on the other side of the cobbled yard, in apparent search of her. ‘Rafael?’ she called.

Tall and commanding, he swung round in a fluid athletic arc, his lean, bronzed face grim, brilliant golden eyes zeroing in on her. ‘The gate on the lower field was left open. Your horses are out!’

Harriet lost colour, but sprang straight into action. ‘I’ll call Fergal…we’ll need his help!’