Guardians Of The Haunted Moor Read Online Free Page B

road.
Before he could think up a retort, Eleanor appeared behind the
glass doors. She came in quietly, and went to kiss Ma Frayne before
turning to greet Gideon, but the message for her fiancé was written
all over her face. Did you ask
him?
    Gideon
sighed. She was a nice, kind, straightforward woman who took a very
plain view of the world. “Hello, Eleanor,” he said, wiping the
annoyance from his tone. “How are you?”
    “ Fine, but never mind me. I just went down the corridor to get
a cup of tea, and here you are. Where’s Lee?”
    “ He’s with his sister. Did you put Ezekiel up to
this?”
    “ Up to what?”
    “ Asking if we’d had Tamsyn formally adopted.”
    She was too honest for a sidestep. He’d stung her, though, and
she flushed in anger as well as embarrassment. “I didn’t put him up to anything. I
just know that I couldn’t let my baby go, not once I’d seen her. No matter what I’d
promised before.”
    A shriek
cut across their confrontation. A door at the far end of the
delivery suite flew open, and Lee and Michel Duroy came backing out
into the corridor. Lee was white as a cod, Michel’s hands up in a
gesture of surrender. A plastic water bottle shot through the air,
narrowly missing Michel’s head, and impacted off the far wall.
Another scream split the air, and then a groan like a soul in
perdition. “Fuck off, both of you! Fuck the fuck off out of
here!”
    “ Good God,” Ezekiel said. “Is that...”
    “ Our sweet, nicely spoken sister-in-law, doctor of archaeology.
Yes.” Like his brother, Gideon had risen to his feet on instinct,
ready for battle, the pair of them archetypal males despite their
differences, and just as useless here. They both turned gratefully
to the old lady, who had set aside her magazine and come to join
them. “Now, boys,” she said soothingly. “Your father called me a
foul-mouthed hellion when I was having you. They encourage the
girls to scream and shout these days, and it does them good. It’s
not as dreadful as it sounds.”
    “ God, I hope not.” Gideon swallowed dryly. He wasn’t too
worried about Elowen. He’d done the classic local-hero cop thing of
delivering one woman’s baby in the back seat of her car on the
verge of the A30, and the Herald had made much of the new mum’s wish to name her
infant after her saviour, only to change her mind in horror when
she’d heard what he was called. Michel too could look after
himself, even if his six-foot Gallic gorgeousness wasn’t doing him
much good now. He shook off his paralysis and ran to Lee. “Right,
you. Away from the door.”
    “ I can’t. Feels like she’s dying.”
    “ Well, she’s not.” Gideon detached him from the wall he’d
backed up against, force-marched him a few yards down the corridor.
“She’s just having our girl.”
    “ We’re never having another one.”
    “ I thought you mentioned wanting six of ’em. Plus the dog you
already have, and a goldfish.”
    “ I’ll settle for the bloody dog!”
    Gideon
turned him so that the tides of Elowen’s pain could break against
his own broad back. Lee hung on to him for a moment, then pushed
away. “I'm all right. Go to her.”
    “ The midwife’s with her. I'm not sure there's anything I can
do.”
    “ You always make everybody feel better. Please.”
    Cautiously Gideon returned to the doorway. The midwife
glanced up. She knew Gideon from his pre-natal visits to the
hospital with Elowen, and she spared him a brief smile. “Your turn
to get your head cracked open with a bedpan, is it? Normally I only
have one anxious dad to cope with, not three.”
    Two! Gideon kept the jealous thought
to himself. Michel had just come here on a visit, and if he was now
pacing the corridor with every appearance of a worried
father-to-be, that was only natural. Such concerns were trivial
anyway, compared to Elowen’s struggle. “How is she doing?” He
hadn’t meant to speak as though she wasn't there, but she had
turned her face