Secret Garden. Cathryn Parry
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the public road to see it was making her pulse race. Making this trip was daring for her. But she was ready for a change, however slight and controlled.
She went downstairs, then across the courtyard to the main castle and the breakfast room. Paul stood at the buffet table, arranging breakfast items as he had done every morning for years going back. He smiled to see her, and she relaxed somewhat.
“Good morning, miss. Would you like some coffee?”
“When I return, please, Paul. I’m going for my walk now.” By habit, she reached for the dog leash, but remembered that her mum’s golden retriever, Molly, was gone, too, boarded at the vet’s, recuperating from minor surgery on her leg.
Rhiannon sighed. She would be walking alone today.
“I’ll pick Molly up later in the day,” Paul remarked kindly.
“Thank you.” They’d been together so long that sometimes she thought Paul could read her mind.
He gestured to the window. “The starlings have left the nest.”
“Have they? They’re late this year.”
“Indeed.” Paul smiled mildly and wiped down their coffee machine. He was getting a bit stooped. She hadn’t noticed until now. He must have been about forty when he came to them after she’d returned home from the hospital. Now he would be in his sixties.
We’re all getting older.
And then what? What would Rhiannon do when Paul finally retired? Rhiannon was thirty. A spinster. An agoraphobic spinster, living alone in a modernized castle. Any supplies she needed, she ordered by phone or internet. But for actual contact with people, she relied on Paul. Or her parents. Even Molly.
Paul glanced at her standing there, holding the leash, and stopped tidying up. “Miss, would you like me to accompany you on your walk today?”
“No. That’s quite all right.” She smiled at Paul. She really did appreciate his presence in her life. “Sooner or later we all have to walk alone.”
Paul blinked. “That’s not necessarily true, miss.”
“You don’t think so?”
Paul politely gazed down at his hands. He was the help, after all, their perfect, English-trained butler. He was paid to be agreeable to her. “I wouldn’t presume to know,” he murmured.
“Well, for today at least, I walk alone.” She patted the camera in her pocket. “I’ll be back in a half hour. If I’m not, send out the hounds.”
The corner of Paul’s mouth twitched. They didn’t have any hounds. Just a playful golden retriever, currently injured.
Rhiannon headed outside, walking her customary path past the walled garden and circling the gravel drive. Up the hill was the guard shack, and from there, all along the boundaries, a stone wall, strengthened with concrete. Surveillance cameras were installed at regular intervals, monitored by the guard on duty.
I am safe, she told herself, breathing deeply. She headed for the path across the open moor. Nature, cruelly, was waking. In bloom everywhere.
The cottage—the guard’s cottage—was at the southern border of their large property—farther away from the castle than she’d dared to walk in years. She wasn’t sure how it would affect her. She concentrated on feeling in control: maintaining her regular breathing, visualizing the peace of her garden, humming to herself.
Still, the closer she came to the cottage, the shakier she felt. She paused, tightening her grip on the camera in her pocket. She wished Molly was with her. At the very least, she wished she’d thought of carrying a large stick.
She exhaled slowly. This was the natural fallout from the brutal kidnapping she’d survived as a young girl. Ever since then she had her safe place she felt protected by—her beautiful castle grounds—and she stayed within those boundaries. Walking to the cottage would test her limits.
But she could do it. She visualized the cottage in her mind. Jamie and Jessie lived there, and had since before she’d been born. Jamie was the longtime guardsman for their family. Five days a week, he kept watch from the shack at the top of the drive. He kept a phone with a direct line to Paul in the house. There were cameras all around the property, spaced every few dozen yards. Each year, her father commissioned a security expert to review and renew their protocols and procedures.
It didn’t bother Rhiannon. She was happy in her world, truly. She moved closer to the boundary, more curious than anything. How would her body react to this change in her daily walk?
She heard a roaring noise. The whoosh of a van passing close by on the roadway. Rhiannon froze. A white van had been the vehicle the kidnappers had used to snatch her and her brother. Her breath came in jagged spurts.
She heard a voice; someone was singing. Her pulse racing, she retreated to the edge of a copse. Then there was whistling. A man’s tone. Something else was going on, too, because she heard a whacking noise. She backed away slowly, her breathing heavy. Despite the coolness of the morning, she felt heated. Her heart rate elevated. Her palms perspiring...
This was how a panic attack began. And there was nothing worse to Rhiannon than a panic attack. It was the one thing she had set her life up to avoid. She couldn’t lose control of herself. She couldn’t go back to those days in the hospital.
A cry sputtered out of her, and she turned to flee. But the toe of her rubber boot caught on a root, and she tripped. Her hands splayed on the wet, boggy earth beneath an oak tree.
Get up. Run.
But it was just like when she’d been a girl. Walking along happy, full of plans for the day, so mundane she couldn’t even remember them at this point—much like painting a cottage on a landscape. She’d been caught up in herself, not paying attention to the world and skipping ahead of her older brother.
She’d seen the men—the kidnappers—before Malcolm had. There had been a split second when she could have screamed. Could have warned Malcolm. Could have grabbed his hand and made both of them run away.
But she’d done none of those things. She’d frozen instead.
Because of that, Malcolm had been taken with her, shoved into a white van parked on a busy Edinburgh street, and while she sat still, mute, Malcolm had screamed and fought.
They had beaten him, so badly that he’d lost consciousness. And even then, seeing her brother’s limp, battered body, blood all about his mouth and his nose, made her feel guilty.
She could have prevented it, and she hadn’t. And now it was happening again. No sound would come out of her mouth. Her body was locked in terror. The shaking started. Next came the sweating. At some point, she would pass out.
Wham! Something hard smashed into the ground in front of her, then ricocheted and hit her right hip bone. A muffled squeak came out of her mouth, an “umph!” rather than anything intelligible or powerful.
Is this an attack? Scream. Why can’t you scream? Run!
But instead of yelling or fleeing, Rhiannon groaned and pitched forward. Her elbows slammed into the boggy earth; the camera at her hip hit the ground and she heard something break—the lens perhaps. The camera dug into her freshly bruised hip, sending a dull shooting pain through her. “Oh!” she moaned.
She rolled over and pulled the camera from the flap pocket. It rattled when she moved it. The camera was obviously broken.
“Hello!” a male voice called. “Is anybody there?”
Trembling, Rhiannon pushed to her knees. Run!
“Oh, no, I’m so sorry!” A man came into the clearing, sprinting toward her, waving. He carried a golf club in the other hand. Blinking, she glanced down and saw a golf ball on the ground beside her.
She put her hand to the