Read Online Evil for Evil by Aline Templeton - Free Book Online Page A

almost worse. You’d develop techniques for blanking out danger, but keeping up morale while being sticky and stinking was something else.
    Christie had talked compulsively about her army experience, but an innocent question about her background had been stonewalled. ‘I don’t want to talk about it. It wasn’t great’ was all she said and Andy had changed the subject immediately.
    She’d said something earlier, though, about the army having ‘saved’ her, a phrase which in his experience often indicated a brush with the law. So when she asked what he did, he said he worked in public service. It was an evasion he sometimes used – not exactly untrue and sounding so boring that follow-up questions were rare. There’d be time enough to confess if the relationship developed. He was hoping it would.
    The only thing was, she’d been evasive herself about meeting again. Christie would be working, and when he suggested dropping by the farmhouse she’d recoiled. It wasn’t her house, she was just a guest, she didn’t know when it would be suitable – excuses, excuses. She might perhaps be in the pub at night, if Matt didn’t need her.
    There was something about the way she said ‘Matt’ … Andy knew little about the man, except that he’d inherited from his grandmother. And that he was married.
    He’d had a starring role in Christie’s conversation – generous,sensitive, courageous. One of the youngest ever majors in the British Army. It was hero worship, certainly, but her disparaging tone when she mentioned Lovatt’s wife made Andy wonder if there was more to it than that.
    He wasn’t about to back off, though. Dogged by nature, he was dogged by training now too and he was scanning the sloping fields above the shore as he walked in the hope of seeing her. It seemed strange to see deer browsing where there had always been cattle – the little black-and-white-belted Galloways, alarmingly fierce with kids who took liberties when there were calves around.
    And there was Christie now, coming down one of the higher fields towards a gate. She was holding a basket of potatoes, shaking it temptingly, while behind her, and towering over her, stalked a huge stag, his head crowned with majestic antlers. There was terrifying power in that massive frame.
    Andy caught his breath. Neither Christie nor the animal had seen him, and he was afraid to move. Even if it seemed to have little interest in anything apart from the potatoes, there was no saying how it would react to the arrival of a stranger. From a distance he admired the magnificent beast: the summer coat glinting red in the sunlight, the creamy underbelly and scut, the bristle of mane down the back of that powerful neck.
    They were nearer the farmhouse now and Christie was leading the stag into one of three paddocks enclosed by planking, laying a trail of potatoes and watching patiently as his greed betrayed him, until she could slip through the high gate and secure it. Andy saw the stag look up and then as if in defiance give a rasping roar.
    He hailed Christie just as she turned and saw him. ‘Well done! That looked a bit scary.’
    She waited for him to reach her. ‘Only looked,’ she said. ‘Rudolf’sa pussycat really. Hand-reared, and he’d sell his soul for a potato. But the rut’s starting and then the stags get seriously unpredictable. I wouldn’t be doing this once he gets wound up by being beside his rivals.’
    Andy was interested. ‘I’ve heard that roaring a few times since we came down yesterday.’
    ‘They’ll be doing that night and day soon, challenging each other and announcing to the hinds that they’re ready to mate. We’ve three stags. They’ve to be separated or they’ll fight. There’s a fallow buck on the island too, but he hasn’t any rivals so we can just leave him to it.’
    Deer husbandry had its limits as a topic of conversation. ‘What about you today?’ Andy asked. ‘Any chance of meeting me at the pub for