Dance with the Devil

had said and, perhaps, an expression of qualification or disagreement with her sentiments about the Roxburgh-Bolands. It was the first sour note, no matter how small, she had discovered in the heretofore sweet apple of the family name, and she wondered exactly what it meant.
        “Well,” Mike Harrison said, “shall we be on our way now?”
        “Whatever you say,” Katherine said, standing arid buttoning her coat. “We'll have to stop at my car and pick up my bags before going to Owlsden.”
        “Fine,” he said. “There's a storage compartment in the Rover that's big enough to move a household.”
        “Now you take care of her,” the waitress warned him. “Don't you give her one of those insane roller-coaster rides like you give everyone else.”
        Harrison grinned.
        “You hear me?” the woman asked.
        “Sure enough, Bertha. I will treat our Miss Sellers as if she were a carton of eggs.”
        “See that you do, or you better not come back in here while I have a frying pan handy.”
        Harrison laughed, took Katherine's arm and escorted her from the restaurant.
        The wind struck hard against her flushed face. The temperature hovered just above zero and, with the chill factor of the wind figured in, must have been a subjective twenty degrees below.
        “There she sits,” Harrison said.
        He pointed across the street to a large, sturdily-built vehicle that looked like a cross between an armored car and a jeep. It was parked by the grass circle in the center of the square. The snow that had sifted over it in the few minutes he had been in the restaurant, had obscured the windscreen and softened the brute lines somewhat. Still, it was obvious that no amount of snow could stop this workhorse altogether, for it looked almost like power personified, a machine of pure force.
        “What do you think?” he asked, obviously proud of the Rover.
        “I'm no longer worried about reaching Owlsden,” she said. The wind snatched her words from her mouth and carried them away, but not fast enough to keep him from hearing her. He smiled and nodded. “Does it have a heater?” she asked.
        “All the luxuries,” he said, taking her elbow and leading her across the slippery street. He put her in the passenger's side and went around to get behind the wheel.
        The engine started the first time he tried it, a noisy, roaring behemoth of an engine.
        “Not as quiet as a Cadillac, perhaps, but able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.”
        She laughed and settled back, relieved to be in Mike Harrison's hands.
        He drove into the street, circled the park and started out of town in the direction of the narrow road that lead up to Owlsden, his hands tight on the wheel, his driving experienced and sure.
        “Not even a little skid,” she said.
        “Wait until we start up the mountain!”
        “Remember what Bertha said.”
        “Don't worry,” he said. “I'm not going to give you a heart-stopping thrill ride. In this weather, I don't need to.”
        Then, for a moment, there was an awkward silence, since all the banal conversation about the weather and the Land Rover had already been exhausted and neither knew the other well enough to know what to talk about next. He broke the silence after a minute had passed. “I wouldn't think a young, attractive girl like yourself would choose to move into a place like Roxburgh.”
        “That's where the job is,” she said, lightly.
        “There are other jobs, surely, in places with more lights, more glamour and more things to do.”
        “Solitude appeals to me,” she said. “At least I think it does.”
        “You'll have a great opportunity to learn whether or not it does if you live long in Roxburgh!”
        “And the job sounds interesting,” she said. “Everyone seems to like Lydia Boland.”
        Again, she saw a subtle reaction pass through his features: a tightening of the jawline, a squinting about the eyes. She wished she knew him well enough to solicit his obviously different opinion of the Bolands.
        “Everyone does,” he said. “Everyone likes them.” But she was still certain that he did not like them very much at all.
        “Your car?” he asked a moment later as they came within sight of the roadside picnic area where she had parked the Ford.
        “Yes,” she said.
        He pulled the Land Rover up next to it.