Read Moreton's Kingdom for Free Online

Edgar.
    ‘I’ll have to make a phone call,’ she decided. ‘I wonder if you’d keep an eye on Sandy till I get back?’
    ‘Why, of course! He’ll be safe enough here, helping me to feed the hens,’ the woman said.
    ‘I won’t be long,’ Katherine explained to Sandy. ‘I’ll buy some sweets.’
    ‘He’ll be safe enough.’ The words echoed in her ears as she set off down the lane towards the phone box.
    It was to be her final effort to contact Coralie in London, and she really didn’t hold out much hope of success, but rather than phoning from the hotel she had decided to wait for a while and use the public kiosk she had noticed on a corner of the village street opposite the post office. Acknowledging it as a last resort, she knew that she would have to make up her mind about the future as soon as she had made it.
    Keeping the receiver to her ear for several minutes while the number rang out, she wondered why she should be trying so persistently to reunite Coralie with her child, and then she knew that only Sandy mattered. She would go to the end of the world to save him distress.
    Automatically she replaced the receiver, picking up the returned coins from the receptacle under the slots with a heavy heart. What to do now?
    Out of the corner of her eye she saw a parked car on the far side of the road, a grey car with an odd familiarity about it. Her breath caught in her throat as she opened the kiosk door, but the parked vehicle was empty. In no way could she be absolutely sure that it was the car which had turned off the motorway immediately behind her to follow them all the way to Keswick and beyond.
    As she crossed the road in search of the sweets she had promised Sandy, her heart appeared to be beating suffocatingly close to her throat, and then she saw him. Charles Moreton was coming out of the post office, replacing his wallet in the inside pocket of his jacket with a look of concentration on his face which deepened as he recognised her.
    ‘Imagine seeing you!’ Katherine exclaimed, keeping her voice quite steady, although she imagined that he could easily hear her wildly-beating heart. ‘Are you on holiday?’
    ‘I’m on my way to Scotland,’ he said, giving her a quick calculating glance which seemed to strip her of all pretence.
    ‘So am I—more or less.’
    How else was she to answer him, since he appeared to know much more about her than she suspected?
    ‘I passed you yesterday,’ he said, standing squarely between her and retreat. ‘You had a child in the car with you.’
    Katherine had an almost compulsive desire to prevaricate, to stand between them and Coralie largely for Sandy’s sake, but finally she said:
    ‘I’m taking him to Scotland.’ She had made up her mind to do just that, she realised.
    ‘You’ve come slightly out of your way,’ Charles Moreton observed dryly.
    ‘I—we were going to a cottage just along the road,’ she confessed, ‘but his aunt isn’t there. She left for Austria a week ago, so—’
    ‘You’ve decided to take him with you to Scotland.’ His eyes were as cold as steel, his gaze as incisive as he looked down at her.
    ‘It wasn’t really my intention,’ she defended herself, ‘but I can hardly abandon a three-year-old child in a strange village, can I?’
    ‘Surely,’ he suggested, ‘you made some kind of provision for this kind of emergency.’
    ‘Not really.’ Katherine was remembering how little time Coralie had given her to arrange anything. ‘Coralie—my friend was quite sure her sister would be here.’
    He looked about him.
    ‘It’s remote enough,’ he acknowledged with a hardness she had come to recognise in him. ‘Where have you parked your car?’
    Katherine felt suddenly cold. Everything Coralie had told her about this determined man was probably true.
    ‘At the cottage,’ she said dismissively. ‘And I really must go. I thought I would pick up some sweets for the journey.’ She turned towards the confectioner’s shop