A Curse Dark as Gold (22 page)

He cocked his head at me, changing-color eyes gone blue in the dusky light. "Why not? The man in the shop told me garnets are good luck. Besides, I'm still trying to make up for the engagement ring." Randall took my hand and kissed it again, and then my lips. "But look -- it's not just a brooch."

He turned the pendant over in his fingers, revealing an elegant timepiece, each numeral marked out in gold, with tiny filigree hands pointing to the hour.

"See, it's a perfect Charlotte gift. It
looks
lovely and delicate, but inside, it's completely practical."
Something fluttered in me at that, a little thrill through all my bones. "I don't need you to buy me jewelry." My voice was scarce a whisper.

"And I promise never to do it again." He drew me close to him, brushed his lips against the hair at my temple. "Truly, Charlotte, it's only money."
Only money.
I laid my head against his shoulder and held my hand to the watch until the metal was as warm as blood.

One chill grey morning at the end of our first week in Delight, I was taking a turn about the Gallery at the Spring Rooms. The long, colonnaded porch overlooked the baths and fountains, its tall arched windows pulled tight against the winter. A few hopeful snowflakes struggled through the clouds and died on the warm glass. Wives did not mix with their husbands in the Gallery, so I was squeezed together with a twittering family from Harrowgate, as we sipped our silver-bound cups of spring water and tried to pretend it was not quite so vile. Truly, what made anyone think we should like to drink the same hot water we'd all been
sitting
in?

The steam from the springs kept the Gallery toasty, even in snowfall, and my neighbor at the window fanned herself as if it were the height of summer. Thinking I should die of boredom before the afternoon was out, I took a peek at the pendant-watch to check the hour.

"My, my," the woman said, swiftly exchanging her fan for a lorgnette. The glass pressed to her face, she greatly resembled a bird of prey -- perhaps an owl. "A little wedding gift?"

"You're Mrs. Woodstone, aren't you?" said one of her daughters, a pretty girl younger even than Rosie. Before I could respond, her mother swept her scrutinizing gaze over me and my unfashionable flannel dress.

"Woodstones. Hmph. A good old Harrowgate family," she said, as if I was to be reassured in my selection by her approval. "They don't mix much in society, of course -- but that just means they're not getting themselves involved in scandals. But I don't know
you"
she added pointedly,

"No, ma'am, I'm from Shearing."

"Hmmm," she said, settling back into her silk plumage. But she added charitably, "Well, everyone must come from somewhere, I suppose." She looked suddenly thoughtful and tapped her daughter with the fan. "That reminds, me, Jane, you'll never guess who I saw leaving the Empress Dining Room this morning. Virginia Byrd!"

Jane gasped daintily. "But I thought she was out of the country. I haven't seen her since Kitty Darling's house party that spring."

"Nursing a broken heart, I heard," her mother agreed, with less sympathy than one might have hoped. "Whatever became of that beau of hers, anyway? Such a dreadful scandal! You won't remember this, of course, Mrs. Woodstone, but they were
the
couple, about two seasons ago. Everyone was sure he was going to offer for her, and then all of a sudden --" She lifted her hands in a helpless gesture.

"But wasn't it too mysterious," piped her daughter, "how he just disappeared? Broke the hearts of half the girls in town." She sank back into her chair with a sigh that was half-swoon.

"You
know
it had to have been that brother of hers," argued the other girl. "The man Virginia loved would never have played her false! And the way Richard just whisked her off afterward --"

"Well,
I
heard he ran afoul of some of his friends and took a holiday --" The mother dropped her lorgnette dramatically. "-- in Wardensgate!"

I sat up abruptly. "Wardensgate! Debtors' prison?"

The owl nodded solemnly.

"Well, I can believe it," her daughter said. "The way he went through wig powder alone -- half the perukiers in Harrowgate must have had a claim on him!"

Oh, had she really said that? I gazed into my glass of foul water with dismay, beginning to wish I hadn't drunk any. But, oh, they went on.

"Well," the sister stressed, "if he ever shows his face in Society again, I'd like to give him a piece of my mind for how he treated poor Miss Byrd!"

"You may have to queue up," the mother said. "Arthur may be wondering what's happened to that fifteen hundred Mr. Wheeler owes him! My dear Mrs. Woodstone, whatever is the matter? Here, Cora, give her a clap on the back. That spring water is enough to make anyone choke!"

I was grateful when the time came for Randall to fetch me away from there.

"Darling, you look a little flushed. What say we get some fresh air?"

I couldn't have agreed more. It had suddenly become far too close in the Spring Rooms. I took his arm and we walked out into the night. "What have you been doing all this time?" I asked him.

He stifled a yawn. "Looking at the snow, out the downstairs window, with a man called Treacher."
"I see. And Was he very interesting?"

"I shouldn't think so -- he hadn't any teeth and was deaf as a post. Charlotte --" he turned to me suddenly, a certain desperate urgency in his now-grey eyes. "Are you as bored as I am?"

I met his gaze solemnly. "Worse."

He grabbed my elbows. "Wonderful! Let's get out of here, shall we? Let's go home."

Chapter Sixteen
We
set off deep in the heart of morning, after one last sumptuous Delight breakfast, the shining black trap from Mr. Woodstone fitted out with runners now instead of wheels. The flurries of the previous afternoon had turned into one of the Gold Valley's rare snowfalls, blanketing the roadway in white. Beneath my new travelling cloak I wore my garnet timepiece, pinned close to my breast.

Randall's eyes shone in the glittering sunlight, his collar pulled up firm against that broad jaw, his bronze hair lightly frosted from a brief fall of snow when we first stepped out of the hotel. Smiling at the thought that I
could,
I reached a hand out of my muff and brushed the snow away. He looked at me and caught my hand, giving it a quick, warm squeeze before lifting it to his lips.

"Mrs. Woodstone," he said formally, and though I'd been hearing it all week, off Randall's lips the name sounded bold and lyrical ... and permanent. It sent an odd, quick flutter to my belly, as though we'd hit a dip with the carriage.

"Mr. Miller," I answered impishly.

"Oh, Charlotte," he sighed, and before I knew what happened, he bent low, brought up a handful of snow from the roadway, and dumped it over my head.
"That silenced you, didn't it?" he gloated as I sputtered and gasped. I gave him a little shove that caused the horses to wander a bit in their path, but we rode the rest of the way in companionable silence, bundled together beneath the sheepskin wraps. The warmth from his body next to mine chased away the strange feeling in my stomach, and I tried to forget the odd moments that had marred the perfection of our first days together.

We came into Shearing at last, chilled and red-cheeked, and it was as though we had driven the carriage out of one world and into another entirely. Here, upon the banks of the river, the winter had wrought not snow, but ice -- half an inch at least, coating every rooftop and bending trees to the earth. Branches shuddered in the wind, sending icy shrapnel down upon the roadway. The road was a bed of glass-sharp chops and furrows, treacherous footing for the horses and rough going for the trap.

"My God!" Randall pulled back on the reins to steer round a fallen limb. As we skirted the Stowe, we saw a sight that had me half out of my seat: ice on the river. Ice on the river, above my millwheel. The Stowe was frozen solid. It was all I could do not to tear the reins away from Randall and hie the horses through the village at breakneck speed.

Randall led us straight to Stirwaters. I should have understood what it meant that he did that, then, but at the time it seemed only natural. Of course we should want to stop at the mill first; where else? The moment we pulled into the shale drive, I alit from the carriage without a look back. I broke into a run but slipped hard on the icy ground, barely noticing that Randall was there to lift me up again. With a bit more care, I made my way around the Millhouse to the mill, past the frozen pond, and stopped dead when I came within sight of the wheelhouse.

A crowd had gathered, all frantic gestures and bewilderment -- Rosie, Harte, Uncle Wheeler, a handful of villagers. I saw Robbie Lawson and the Hales with Janet Lamb, stout and billowing in her winter wear. They parted some when I came among them, but no one spoke to me. To a man, they all stared at the massive oak millwheel, the frozen water that held it fast, and the deadly, splintering crack through the beams that held the wheel in place. The great old wheel, locked into the ice below, had wrenched free from its axle and now hung bent and crooked, one side treacherously lower than the other.

Rosie stood deep in low, frantic conversation with Harte, up near the base of the wheelhouse. They fell silent as I reached them, and Harte shook his head.

"The drive shaft snapped," he said. "It's a hard freeze. I wouldn't have believed it, but there you have it." He waved a helpless arm toward the tangle of wood and stone. Dear old Harte -- how exactly like him to take it personally.

Rosie said, "I suppose we're just lucky it hasn't happened before, but Shearing hasn't seen a freeze like this ..."

"Ever," I finished.

"But that's impossible," Randall said. "It's only been snowing for a day or two -- how could the river have frozen solid in that time?"

A shiver overtook me that was more than just the icy morning.
The river changed course, a plague that killed half the sheep, floods
... a broken millwheel. Hard-luck Millers, indeed. I reached up to touch the crack in the wood, and was somehow surprised that the mill did not flinch under my hand as I probed its wound. I certainly felt the pain from that ghastly break -- coarse and raw and searing, so fierce it blinded me.

"Can we recover?"

"From this? Oh, aye," Harte said, but his voice was grimmer than usual. He was studying the wheel, his hand up, fingers spread, taking quick measurement. "In spring, when this thaws and we can drain the pit to make repairs. Until then ..."

"We have no power."

"That's about the size of it, Mistress."

It was the worst possible note on which to start the new year. Although we had our cloth promised to Porter & Byrd, which would cover our next mortgage payment, after that -- what? Without the millwheel, we could power none of the machines -- not the carding engines, not the spinning jacks, the plying frames, the fulling stocks. We were crippled.

And it was a curious thing, to stand in Stirwaters with the mill silent and still, no gears rattling overhead, no water rushing by underfoot. The mill felt strange and empty. Dead. I wondered if it felt itself gone still, its great heart torn from its chest, its limbs sundered from their brain. The thought gave me an eerie sort of chill, and I shoved it aside, but firmly. Rosie took it badly, as if her own heart were wrenched from her. She haunted the silent wheelhouse, heedless of the icy wind whipping through the ruined walls, and looked at me, stricken, when I'd call her name. It was going to be a long winter.

My homecoming as a married woman was thus a subdued one. As I lingered at Stirwaters that first awful afternoon, conferring with Harte and Rosie, Randall slipped off to the Grange to unpack us, and when at last I dragged myself out of the mill and into the evening, Rosie had to stop me climbing the stoop into the Millhouse.

"Go home," she said, a trace of weary irritation in her voice. "Your husband is waiting."

Confused for a moment, I hesitated, and then forced a laugh. Helplessly, I held out my arms, and my sister almost fell into them. "What are we going to do?"

She hugged me fiercely, pulling back at last. "We'll be all right," she said, a furrow creasing her brow, and though I nodded, I wasn't sure either of us believed her.

I trudged up the long hill to the Grange to find that Randall had been busy in my absence, turning the stiff, formal dining room into a space nearly as warm and intimate as the Millhouse kitchen. A fire blazed in the hearth, and we ate hand to hand across a corner of the vast oak table, borrowed silverware clinking cheerfully on the hand-me-down plates. We had forgotten to buy our own, and the Bakers had come to our rescue, loaning three or four of everything from the bakeshop, from the chipped coffee mugs to the mismatched bowls, plus their daughter Colly and a roast-hen dinner.

"It's a sad state of affairs when the miller and the banker can't feed themselves without help from a nursemaid." I laughed.

Randall smiled and squeezed my hand. "We'll send for a catalogue from the shops in Harrowgate tomorrow." He traced a pattern on my palm with his fingers. "Do you want to talk about the wheel?"