ANNE WEALE - The Youngest Sister

‘But I can’t stay here,’ she protested.

‘Yes, you can. You have no alternative. It’s not easy finding a room in the big hotels. They’re all full of package tourists. There are hostals in most of the towns but, though clean, they’re really intended for travelling salesmen. They can be very noisy in summertime, when street life goes on till the small hours. You’ll sleep far more soundly out here in the country.’

He made it difficult to refuse, and part of her didn’t want to. Yet, mindful of the awful warnings drummed into her during her teens, she also felt faintly uneasy.

He was a well-known writer and, judging by this house and the estate surrounding it, his forebears had been people of standing on the island. But that didn’t alter the fact that he was a stranger, and bad things had happened to girls who placed too much trust in strange men.

She didn’t really suspect him of being a psychopath who during the night might rape her and throw her down a well, his faithful retainers keeping their mouths shut about her unexplained disappearance out of misguided loyalty to his family. That was the kind of scenario only dear old Maggie would envisage!

But what if he just made a pass? Some men felt entitled to sex after taking a girl out to dinner, going to a lot less trouble than Nicolas had for her. If he made a pass, how would she handle it?

CHAPTER THREE

‘PERHAPS I can stay at the hospital,’ Cressy suggested. ‘Most hospitals have rooms where close relations can sleep when people are critically ill. A broken thigh isn’t critical, but it’s pretty serious when it happens to someone of Aunt Kate’s age. And she must have been in shock when they found her if she’d been lying there some time.’

Nicolas glanced at his watch. After draining his glass, he said, ‘Let’s go and find out exactly what the situation is, shall we?’

Cressy had repacked her rucksack, with the discarded shirt in a plastic bag to be washed at the first opportunity. She had left the rucksack at the bottom of the stairs. As she picked it up and slung it over one shoulder she noticed that near the terrace door was a large antique table piled with stacks of old and new books. A title which caught her eye was The Mayan Prophecies: Unlocking the Secrets of a Lost Civilisation. Another was The Prehistory of Sex: Four Million Years of Human Sexual Culture.

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