A cold treachery - Charles Todd [130]
Before he could stop her, she'd caught his arm in a grip as strong as that of any man he knew. She pulled him after her away from the door, determined and menacing.
“Step through that door, and you'll step into an ax,” she told him.
He felt colder than he had on the hillside in the night. “Then it's true,” he replied, feeling depression sweep through him. It was the answer he'd least wanted to hear. Josh Robinson was a killer.
“I don't know what's true and what's not,” she said angrily. “But that lad is in no condition for a rough policeman to badger him. He'll do you an injury, and I'll be held to blame!”
“If he's dangerous, why have you harbored him all this time? Miss Ingerson—his father is waiting for him in Urskdale village. His aunt is there. They will do all that's possible for him.”
“You don't understand! He's not speaking, he lives in terror of being found, and he's come to trust me. Leave him alone!”
“You know I can't do that. You have no right to him!”
“He was half dead when the dog found him! He'd have been dead in another hour. By rights he's mine. And I won't let you touch him.”
He remembered what he had once thought concerning Janet Ashton. That in many cultures when a man saved the life of another man, he was owed that life.
“Miss Ingerson—”
“No. Go away and leave us in peace. I won't let you have him!”
She dropped her hand from his arm and turned towards the door, her mind on the ax, praying the boy hadn't moved it. She wasn't afraid of this man, and she could put an end to it. Even the hard, cold soil could be scratched away enough to leave his body where it would never be seen again. She was not going to be deterred, and if the boy had been her own flesh and blood she wouldn't have fought any more fiercely for him.
But Rutledge had turned as swiftly as she had, his hand on her shoulder. “Let me talk to him. Otherwise, Paul Elcott will be blamed for what happened. Let me at least ask him—”
She stopped so short that he bumped into her. “What's Paul Elcott to me? Where's he when the sheep need to be brought in or feed dragged up to the high pens? Where's he when the pasture grass isn't green in April for the lambing, and I have to take the cart and hunt for fodder to keep them alive? He'll outlive me, this boy, and see to what I can't. He's got no one else to care about him and neither do I!”
“He has to go to school—he has to live with his father—he can't be enslaved to fetch and carry for you or anyone else! You can't keep him like a lost dog you found in the snow!”
“I haven't enslaved him! I've given him a bed and food and Sybil to hold on to when the nights are dark and he cries out. I've given him work to take his mind off what he's seen. All you want him for is to hang him or lock him away in an asylum where he's got nothing. Tell me that's better!”
Rutledge dropped his hand. “It isn't. I grant you. But there are five dead, and we can't walk away from them!”
“The dead feel no pain. They don't hurt when they drag their leg into bed at night, and they can't give him human comfort. We need each other, he and I, and there's an end to it.”
“Let me talk to him. Let me see if I can find out what happened that night. Let me do the right thing.”
“Bugger the right thing,” she retorted. But she was close to tears, and she used the rough sleeve of her coat to wipe brusquely across her eyes. “I wish you were dead! I wish you'd never come here. That's why I gave you that cap, so you'd go look south of here along the coast, and leave us to go on as we are!”
“It was never in the cards,” he said wearily. “You know it and so do I.”
They stood there, staring at each other, faces tense, eyes blazing.
After a time she said, “If I don't let you see him, you'll bring more policemen here and scare the boy into fits.”
And then she turned towards the house. “He's not going to take you away,” she