Read The Cruel Count (Bantam Series No. 28) for Free Online Page A

dismount and realised that he would in politeness come to her assistance.
    Because she had no wish for him to touch her, she lifted her leg over the pommel and slipped quickly to the ground.
    The Count drew the horses off the path and seeing some grass under the trees they went towards it eagerly. Then he said:
    “Walk a little way with me, I have something to show you.”
    She obeyed him, realising as she did so that the trees were thinning a little until abruptly they came to an end.
    In the brilliant sunshine which almost hurt Vesta’s eyes after the shade of the trees, she saw that immediately ahead of them was a great expanse of bare rocks devoid of any vegetation.
    Stark and barren they rose high on one side of them, and on the other side fell sharply down into the distant valley.
    For a moment Vesta was so surprised that she could only stare, thinking that an avalanche or some natural catastrophe must have caused such devastation.
    Then she realised that it was the glacier formation of past centuries, perhaps aggravated by the snows of the winter, but nevertheless there was nothing new or modern about it.
    Staring at the sunlit stones she saw at the same level on which she stood with the Count, a small narrow path just wide enough for a horse to traverse!
    It was a precarious path, stony and rough, and on one side of it a sheer cliff plunged hundreds of feet downwards to end in a profusion of rocks far down in the valley.
    “Is that ... where we ... go?”
    Even to herself her voice sounded weak and fearful.
    “If you wish to continue on your journey to Djilas,” the Count replied.
    There was something in his tone which told her that he had brought her here deliberately to frighten her. He was not to know, she thought wildly, that she was terrified of heights, that she had always been petrified by them.
    When she was quite small, her sisters had taken her up onto the roof of Salfont Castle, and being much older than she was they had climbed round the turrets and over the battlements and forgotten her.
    An hour later they had found her rigid with fright, unable to move forward or backwards staring with wide eyes at the sheer drop just in front of her.
    Nothing they could say could persuade her to move. She just sat there white-faced and trembling until finally they had fetched her brother, who had carried her in his arms to safety.
    It had been a family joke after that, that Vesta would “never rise very high in the world!” But however much they teased her, Vesta’s fears were very real.
    Sometimes she dreamt that she was standing on a roof and sometimes in her dreams she fell and awoke with a scream.
    She was aware that the Count was watching her face.
    “It is now, if you wish to return, that it would be wise to do so. Once we have passed over the bare rocks and reached the woods on the other side it would be almost too late to go back.”
    His voice became persuasive.
    “If we return now you can sleep in Jeno. Tomorrow I am quite certain we will find a ship which if it cannot take you to England will carry you to Athens where undoubtedly you could join up with the schooner which brought you here.”
    Vesta did not answer for a moment. She was looking at the narrow path over the rocks.
    How could she face it? How could she possibly ride along it with a deep cliff almost inviting her to fall? The horses were presumably sure-footed, but even so they could make a mistake!
    “It would be so much easier to go back,” the Count continued. “I told you it was a difficult journey. But at the moment it is the only route safe from the Revolutionaries.”
    He put out his arm and pointed to the valley below.
    “Look, there is the roadway we should have taken, or rather the one you would have travelled on in comfort and with much state to Baron Milovan’s Castle.”
    Forcing herself with an effort to look down, Vesta followed the direction of his finger and saw far, far away between the mountains rising on either