Free Winter's Edge by Anne Stuart

in a furious undertone.
    “I didn’t run off in the middle of the night, I didn’t set fire to the east barn and kill three horses, I didn’t crack old Ben on the head and leave him bleeding in the middle of the yard. I wasn’t found unconscious with a murdered man beside me.”
    Molly felt sick and shaken.
    “And you’re saying I did these things?”
    she asked in a hoarse whisper.
    His voice came towards her, cold and distant with what she now knew was a justifiable rage.
    “No one else could have. Either you or the man you ran away with. Half our breeding stock went in that fire. Have you ever seen a barn fire, Molly? Do you know what it’s like, listening to the screams of the horses, smelling the charted flesh, knowing there’s nothing you can do to save them?”
    She shook her head and tried to pull away, but he was inexorable.
    “The house nearly went too. Did you know that? Not that you’d care.
    You’re just a spoiled, vicious child who lashes out and destroys without thinking when she doesn’t get her own way! “
    “And what was my own way?” she demanded, fighting to hold on to her self-control.
    He shook his head in disgust.
    “You never told me,” he said, quiet now.
    “Stay out of my path, Molly. If you come down for dinner again you’d better by God he polite or I swear I’ll break your pretty little neck.”
    She stood alone on the landing, unmoving, for long minutes after he’d left her to return to his guests. She glanced down at her hand as it rested on the railing, and she realized she was clutching it tightly.
    He said she’d hit Ben Morse over the head and left him bleeding.
    Surely Mrs. Morse couldn’t believe her capable of such a thing and still be as friendly to her? Not everyone believed her to be such a monster, including one of the people she’d supposedly hurt the most.
    Damn Patrick and his accusations, accusations she couldn’t refute.
    She stared after him, shaking with fury and defiance, when a stray thought entered her mind. A pretty little neck, he’d said. One he wanted to break.
     
    Had he been the one? Had he driven her from this place, then followed her, murdered the man she was with and then bashed her over the head, hoping to have killed her?
    And if he had, what was to stop him from trying it again?
    Why did he want her there? Why couldn’t he just let her leave, start a new life with the faint shreds of her memory? What in God’s name did he want from her? And what did she want from him?

Chapter Six
    The sickness started the next morning. She woke up at the crack of dawn, a sudden churning in her stomach.
    She barely made it to the bathroom in time before she was thoroughly and violently sick. And as soon as the first spasm passed a second one came on, and then a third.
    When it finally passed she was weak and shaken, and it took every last remaining ounce of energy to crawl back into bed and lie there, shivering. She had never felt so horribly, desperately ill in her entire life, and she wondered whether it could have been food poisoning. With her current run of luck it could have deacended on her and left the others, including Lisa Canning, in perfect health.
    She was just being paranoid—M-rs. Morse seemed lite a careful and excellent cook. No, it must be some ~‘us, brought on by her recent hospitalization. Maybe just an accumulation of stress. It would pass soon
    It was almost an hour before she felt able to climb out of bed, and she took a long, slow time to get
     
    dressed and washed and make her shaky way downstairs. Mrs. Morse took one look at her and clucked sympathetically.
    “You don’t look at all well, Molly, my dear,” she said as she hustled her over to the seat by the blazing fire and wrapped an afghan around her.
    “It’s not a fit day out for man nor beast, so it’s just as well. Patrick said you wanted to go shopping but I think we’d better put it off for the time being. I’ll make you some mint tea with honey and see