Rejection Runs Deep (The Canleigh Series, book 1: A chilling psychological family drama) by Carole Williams (uplifting novels TXT) 📕

Dropping the poker on the floor beside Philip’s inert, red stained body, she dashed upstairs, threw off the bloodied negligee, and pulled on the jeans and blouse she had been wearing earlier.  She hurtled back downstairs, hauled on her riding boots at the front door, grabbed a whip, and tore towards Demon who, startled and sensing immediately something was badly wrong, reared and whinnied, making it difficult for Delia to mount.  She pulled him sharply to an old tree stump on the drive, stepped up and clambered onto his back, pushing her feet quickly into the stirrups and urging him to gallop full speed towards the lake.

All Delia could think of was Ruth.  That bloody, bloody woman. She was always standing in her way.  She had all the power and everything Delia had ever wanted … and Philip was the final straw … and pretending she was going to allow her to run Canleigh.  Why was she so devious?  Why hadn’t she told her straight out that she wasn’t going to appoint her?  She was a first-class bitch and she was going to pay for it.  This was Armageddon.

Delia dug her heels into Demon, making the powerful animal surge ahead.  They were nearing the lake, and in the distance, Delia could see Ruth laying out the picnic on the grass beside the water.  Tina and the children were feeding the ducks but Delia only had eyes for Ruth.  Forcing Demon to gallop along the tiny lakeside path, his hooves thudding hard on the firm ground, Delia didn’t notice one of the gamekeepers walking through the trees with a shotgun under his arm.

“Mummy!” yelled Lucy as Demon, rolling his eyes and frothing at the mouth, thundered towards the small party.  Ruth looked up at Delia’s distorted face and stood up quickly, her face as white as a sheet when Delia raised the whip above her head and slashed it at Ruth.  The picnic things were scattered for yards as Demon, pulled up sharply by Delia, skidded to a halt.

“You’ve been in my way long enough, you bloody bitch ... you’ll not do me any more harm.  I’m going to kill you,” screamed Delia, striking Demon hard, making him rear.  His legs beat the air and lashed out and as Ruth tried to duck out of the way, her head was caught on the side by a glancing blow from his left hoof and she slid unconscious onto the grass.

Determined Demon was going to trample Ruth to death, Delia ignored the yells and cries from Tina, Lucy, and Stephen, and whipped him once more.  The maddened horse, frothing at the mouth, reared again but time seemed to stand still as the sound of a single shot rang out and the bullet hit him between the eyes.  Instead of smashing down onto Ruth, he toppled backwards, crashing to the ground with Delia in great difficulty trying to scramble clear.  The silence was deafening, as Delia lay winded on the grass beside him.  The shot had killed him instantly.  Tina and the children were all silent with the horror at what they had witnessed.  Ruth lay inert a few yards away, still breathing but deathly white.

Delia struggled to sit up, crawled towards Demon and tried to lift his head.  “No, darling, no.  I’m so, so sorry.  I should never have hit you.  Darling boy.  Please, please not you,” she cried.  “I can’t lose you too.  I can’t,”

“You’ve hurt my mummy,” yelled Stephen accusingly, tearing himself from Tina’s arms and running towards Ruth.  Tina, still standing by the water, was gripping Lucy tightly.  Crying hysterically, Lucy was desperate to get to Delia.

“Let me go,” she cried.  “I want to be with my mummy.”

“Oh God,” uttered Delia, looking across at her daughter’s distressed face.  “What the hell have I done?”

In a daze, Delia turned and left her dead horse, her unconscious stepmother, the badly shocked nanny, the two screaming children and emerging from the shrubbery, the grim-faced gamekeeper with his gun over his arm.  She stumbled slowly along the twisty path she knew so well, stopping for a few moments at the stables and looking up at the Hall.  She wanted to go inside.  Pretend none of what had occurred in the last hour had happened.  She wanted to be a child again, leaving Star in the stables with Perkins, going back to the Hall for a bath and dinner.  She didn’t want to think about Philip, lying dead by the fireplace at the Dower House or Demon, with a small hole in his head.  She didn’t care about Ruth and couldn’t bring herself to think about the damage she had just done to her daughter.

Breathing hard and fitfully, her body feeling like a lead weight, she moved towards the Hall, dragging herself up the front steps and into the entrance hall.  No-one was about and she made her way up the grand staircase and along the corridor to her old room.  It was completely different.  Redecorated, with a new bed and furnishings, it was now just another guest room with no trace of Delia ever having been there.  Never having slept there, studied there, plotted there.  She might never have existed.

She walked along the corridor, opening every door, remembering how it had been when they were all children; her, Vicky and Richard.  Nothing was the same.  Richard’s room had also been turned into a guest room with nothing personal of his remaining.  Vicky’s was much the same with all her childhood bits and pieces taken away.  The three of them might never have been.  They had been erased.

Delia went back downstairs, going from state room after state room, nostalgia for the past and what might have been sweeping over her in enormous waves of hopelessness.  The portrait of her grandmother over the fireplace in the library reduced her to tears.  Delia had let her down so badly.  Granny would be