Chapter 6
Six
The sickness started the next morning. She woke up at the crack of dawn, a sudden churning in her stomach. She barely made it to the bathroom in time before she was thoroughly and violently sick. And as soon as the first spasm passed a second one came on, and then a third.
When it finally passed she was weak and shaken, and it took every last remaining ounce of energy to crawl back into bed and lie there, shivering.
She had never felt so horribly, desperately ill in her entire life, and she wondered whether it could have been food poisoning.
With her current run of luck it could have descended on her and left the others, including Lisa Canning, in perfect health.
She was just being paranoid—Mrs. Morse seemed like a careful and excellent cook. No, it must be some virus, brought on by her recent hospitalization. Maybe just an accumulation of stress. It would pass soon enough.
It was almost an hour before she felt able to climb out of bed, and she took a long, slow time to get dressed and washed and make her shaky way downstairs. Mrs. Morse took one look at her and clucked sympathetically.
“You don’t look at all well, Molly, my dear,” she said as she hustled her over to the seat by the blazing fire and wrapped an afghan around her.
“It’s not a fit day out for man nor beast, so it’s just as well.
Patrick said you wanted to go shopping but I think we’d better put it off for the time being.
I’ll make you some mint tea with honey and see how that makes you feel.
” She clucked over her like a mother hen, and Molly slowly began to relax.
It was a rare, comfortable feeling, being cared for and fussed over, especially after Patrick’s accusations of the night before.
“It’s just some sort of stomach virus,” she said nonchalantly. “I’m already feeling better—I’d like to go shopping, really!” She felt like a child begging for a treat. The thought of spending another day cooped up in that house with its atmosphere of brooding guilt was enough to make her desperate.
“We’ll see,” Mrs. Morse said, bustling around. “I’m going to make you some nice, nourishing oatmeal and then we’ll see how you feel. Nothing like oatmeal for an upset stomach!”
Three hours later they were on the road, and whether it was from oatmeal, natural causes or sheer willpower, Molly was feeling fine.
“All right, all right,” Mrs. Morse had finally acquiesced. “Patrick and Ben won’t be in to lunch today—they’re busy down at the lower barn. So we might as well takeoff right now. You’ll have to give me a hand with dinner, mind you, if I’m to spend the afternoon gallivanting around.”
At the sound of Ben’s name she paused, suddenly stricken. “Mrs. Morse?” she said in a hesitant voice.
“What is it, lovey?”
“Do you believe I did what they say I did? Do you think I hit your husband over the head and left him bleeding on the ground?” She held her breath, half afraid of the answer.
Mrs. Morse shook her head. “You’ve been accused of a lot of things this past year.
Some of them you told me about yourself, bragging.
But I can’t believe you would have changed so much you would have hurt my Ben.
Neither does he. He doesn’t know who sneaked up behind him and hit him over the head, but he knows it wasn’t you. ”
“Thank God,” Molly breathed. “But who could it have been? Were there any strangers around here?”
“Just the man you ran away with.”
The words hung in the air between them. “So I am responsible,” she said in a low voice.
“No, dearie. You got in with a bad crowd. You were unhappy, and you didn’t use your best judgment. But that’s in the past. Ben doesn’t hold a grudge, and neither do I.”
Molly looked at her, stricken. “I’ll find out what really happened,” she said. “Sooner or later I’ll remember.”
“Of course you will, dearie. In the meantime, we have some shopping to do. Nothing like a little shopping to cheer a body up.”
Molly rose, some of her earlier enthusiasm vanished. “I forgot. How am I going to get money?”
“What do you need money for, with all those credit cards?” Mrs. Morse demanded. “Besides, I wouldn’t be surprised if you had money in your wallet. You always forget that you have any.”
“I don’t know where my wallet is,” she admitted.
Mrs. Morse had the grace to look abashed. “That’s right—Patrick has it in the office. Since he told me it was all right to take you shopping I’m sure he’d expect me to give it to you. You just wait a moment and I’ll go fetch it.”
Molly had grave doubts that Patrick had any such expectations, but she accepted the calfskin wallet with carefully concealed gratitude.
Mrs. Morse was right about the credit cards and the money.
If she wanted to escape from there she wouldn’t have to worry about finances.
She had it all in her hand, along with her driver’s license.
Putting the wallet in the hip pocket of her jeans, she strode out of the room.
Right then she had no intention of leaving.
Not with so many questions left unanswered.
Why didn’t anyone know who George Andrews was?
Why didn’t they know for sure who hit Ben?
Who killed the man in the car with her? And why in God’s name was all this happening?
She was going to find out the truth if it killed her. And she had another motive as well. Lisa Canning wasn’t going to have her way without a fight. Molly had every intention of staying long enough to put a stop to that relationship, finalize the divorce, and then be on her merry little way.
Somehow the idea didn’t warm her in the slightest.
The day in New Hope was a complete success.
They had lunch in an elegant little French restaurant just opened for the season, dining sumptuously on the rich French food despite Mrs. Morse’s warning glance.
And then they went on a buying spree, jeans and khakis, cotton sweaters and denim shirts, leather boots, a tweed jacket, flannel nightgowns and running shoes.
Mrs. Morse looked scandalized at her extravagance in an amused sort of way, and when Molly finally finished she contented herself with the comment that she didn’t do things by half measures.
“Though I must say, Molly, that these clothes are much better suited to you than the ones that Mrs. Canning had you buy. I just hope you don’t go through these as fast.”
“I don’t plan to,” she said from over the tower of packages that surrounded them in the front seat and completely filled the back of the van. “I expect these will last me for a long, long time.”
“Well, that’s nice. And Patrick will just love the sweater you bought for him, I know he will.”
Once more Molly was filled with misgivings.
“Do you really think so?” she asked anxiously, her cheerfulness fading.
The thick blue cotton sweater would match his cold eyes perfectly, and yet Molly doubted he had any desire to accept presents from her.
Maybe she’d just put it away in a drawer until he had a birthday or something.
Assuming she was going to be around for his birthday.
Otherwise she could just give it to him as a divorce present.
For some reason she doubted the thought would amuse him.
She was putting her new clothes away in the ugly dresser when a shadow fell across the doorway. She looked up, into the scowling face of her handsome husband.
“I thought you should have these while you’re here,” he said abruptly, tossing a small box onto the bed. “Despite your insistence that you’d never wear them, they are yours.”
She knew what she’d find in that small, ivory box.
Her wedding and engagement rings lay nestled against gray velvet.
Neither of them struck any chord in her memory, the plain gold band nor the large sapphire in the old-fashioned setting.
She slipped them on her ring finger, noting helplessly the perfect fit.
Circumstances seemed determined to make her accept what her mind still found unacceptable.
She was, it seemed, the selfish and spoiled wife of a brooding and very angry man.
It was useless to waste any more time denying it.
She looked up at him, but there was no reading the expression on his face. “Why did I decide to take them off?” she asked. “Did I leave them behind when I left?”
“You never wore them.”
He’d managed to shock her. “Why not?”
“You can cut the innocent surprise, Molly. You know perfectly well you threw than back at me the morning after we were married.”
“You were that bad in bed?” she asked lightly.
He stared at her, an odd expression in his eyes. “You must have thought so,” was all he said, turning on his heel to leave her.
She watched him go, wishing there was some way she could interpret that odd expression on his face. Another mystery, among too many mysteries.
She changed into a pair of khakis and a navy cotton sweater before making her way down to the kitchen.
She was in the midst of peeling potatoes, temporarily alone in the vast, comfortable room, when Patrick reappeared.
He looked at her, seemed about to beat a hasty retreat, and then obviously thought better of it.
It appeared her husband was no more a coward than she was.
He moved into the room with that undeniable grace and leaned against the counter, a few feet away from her.
“I see you decided to wear your rings,” he said in that husky voice which she found so inexplicably attractive.
Unfortunately she found everything about the man inexplicably attractive, from his lean, austere face to his long, muscular legs.
Everything, that is, except his attitude toward his wife.
She nodded, concentrating fiercely on the potato in her hand. She felt suddenly nervous and tongue-tied with him so close, and she wondered whether that reticence was a normal part of her behavior.