Free Farm Fatale by Wendy Holden Page A

returning from the bar with two more pints of beer foaming over his hands and down his arms. Rosie tried to work out whether that was good news. She glanced at the window and decided that, on balance, it was. It was now dark and they needed somewhere to stay, even if this pub's sign bore a picture of a beheaded woman and creaked ominously in the wind. Rosie briefly wondered what the Silent Lady's connection with the pub named in her honor was, then decided she didn't want to know.
        Her faint hopes of encountering heartwarming local characters were dashed when the only other person to beard the portals during the entire course of the evening was a wizened walker from Lancashire eager to share ripping yarns from the fells. As Mark sank gradually into a fire-and-Knickersplitter-soothed stupor, Rosie listened with resigned politeness to near misses on Bastard Gap and being caught short on Dead Cow Ridge.
        It took some time for the landlord to show them their room, not least because the door handle was of a variety requiring not just the one knack but five or six to open it. The gloomy room it eventually disclosed had clearly not been occupied for some time.
        "And where's the nearest, um, loo?" Rosie asked shyly.
        "Darnstairs and artside."
        "Think of it as romantic," advised Mark as the landlord shuffled off.
        Rosie looked out of the black square of window to where a full moon hung in the sky like a huge white balloon. As Mark came up behind her and slid his arms about her, she closed her eyes. It was romantic, she supposed, in a misogynistic-pub-sign, outside-loo sort of way.
        "Don't worry," he murmured into her neck. Shivers ran down her spine at his touch. "We will find our dream cottage somewhere."
        "Yes," Rosie said, taking the hands round her waist and squeezing them, grateful that, even after the disappointments of the afternoon, their dream of a rural idyll remained intact.
        "We have to." There was an urgent note in Mark's voice.
        "I know." It was wonderful, Rosie thought, glowing, how the project had united them.
        "Otherwise the column gets it."
    ***
    Rosie woke up in the early hours desperate for the loo and profoundly regretting having taken so much Knickersplitter on board. It was called that, she realized, her bladder pulsating, for a reason. But their room, she knew, lacked even a sink to pee in, and the loo, of course, was outside. There was nothing for it but to brave the great, dark, cold outdoors.
        She groped her way to the door and down the silent corridor. Here at least she could see; the moon poured through the window like a spotlight, showing the way down stairs whose treads stuck gummily to her soles. Pushing open the back door, she gasped to feel the cold, although it hadn't felt all that warm inside.
        But, oh, the stars. The pain in her pelvis was almost forgotten as she stared, entranced, at the Big Dipper, Orion, Cassiopeia, the smudge of the Pleiades, the dusty sweep of the Milky Way. Then the eerie creak of the pub sign reminded her of her mission—and the wisdom of getting back inside as soon as possible. Groping to the left, she found a crude wooden latch, no more than a stick loosely nailed in the center. She twisted it and pushed the door open to encounter an eye-watering stench, glad it was too dark to view what were obviously medieval toilet facilities. Her fears were confirmed when her feet encountered soft mud. Or worse? Shuddering, Rosie lifted her nightdress and crouched.
        With terrifying suddenness, an indignant, high-pitched screech shattered the quiet into a thousand fragments. Rosie's heart shot into her mouth. Did the landlord have a wife and was she having a midnight pee too? Or—her veins froze—was the headless woman on the rampage? Petrified, Rosie flailed in the darkness, desperate not to fall into whoever— whatever—it was. She screamed with fea r as something huge,