A Yuletide Treasure (2 page)

She thanked him once again as she pulled open the front door. A chill breeze blew in, skittering around Camilla’s ankles like a playful cat. The freshness of the air made a sharp contrast to the fuggy heat of the inn. She heard Sir Philip inhale and sigh as if he, too, responded to the invigorating effect of the wind. “I’ll come with you.”

Camilla shook her head. “No, you mustn’t trouble. I’ll be perfectly fine.”

Without waiting for him to come up with another reason to delay her, Camilla walked out, pulling the door behind her. She had hardly stepped into the now deserted courtyard before she heard the door open again. Glancing over her shoulder, Camilla saw him standing in the opening, watching her. She paused, but he seemed to have nothing further to say. Throwing him a smile and a nod which she hoped indicated her complete competency, Camilla turned away.

Her sense of urgency growing by the minute, Camilla walked swiftly out of the courtyard, avoiding as much as possible mud, water, and other effluvia.

Outside the shelter of the inn’s encircling brick walls, the wind seemed to blow with cheerful enthusiasm. She remembered seeing drawings in books that showed the wind as a disembodied head among the clouds, cheeks bulging with the force of mighty exhalations. Now she understood from where those early mapmakers took their inspiration.

She made certain her pelisse was closed up tight to her throat and walked on, head down, pushing forward against all the buffeting force of nature. She hoped by exertion to keep herself warm, but the hope was in vain. For all the good her pelisse did, she might as well have been wearing light summer muslin.

Something kept her going, however, despite the knife-sharp cold. Stubbornness, perhaps, a sin of which she was often guilty, or a reluctance to meet Sir Philip’s eyes while admitting defeat. She would have to wait humbly with him until he could drive her to Nanny Mallow’s cottage. Whether he would gloat or not, she couldn’t say, but her experience of the male sex made her think that he wouldn’t be able to help himself.

As she paused at the first turn in the road, Camilla realized just how many of her mother’s favorite restrictions she had shattered today. True, the edict against young ladies traveling alone had been broken by Mother herself.

When Linny’s first baby had decided to arrive somewhat ahead of schedule, Mrs. Twainsbury had girded her loins and gone to offer aid, comfort, and the certainty that the task would not be satisfactorily accomplished without her presence. However, to take Camilla—young, unblemished, and innocent—into that situation passed the bounds of the permissible.

Mrs. Twainsbury had chosen the lesser of two evils and sent Camilla to the very reliable if elderly Nanny Mallow.

Since kissing her mother farewell this morning, however, Camilla had broken other rules all by herself. She’d spoken to a strange man, entered an inn quite on her own, had given the strange, if charming, man her name, and had set off on a walk entirely unaccompanied. Camilla did not know if she felt exhilarated or frightened by her temerity. Perhaps a little of both, she thought.

If at times in her life she’d felt trammeled in by her mother’s rules and restrictions, she had at least always acknowledged not only Mrs. Twainsbury’s right to be thus, but also the good sense of many of her dictums. What defenses did she, young and hardly intimidating physically, have except good sense, determination, and hygiene?

She breathed a deep sigh of the sharp, cold air, relishing now the metallic tang in the back of her throat. Maybe that’s what freedom tasted like, she thought wickedly. She found herself gazing with approval at a snarling lion holding a shield, one side of a long stone wall that ran off at an angle. Between the lion on one side and the lamb on the other stretched an imposing wrought-iron gate, a padlock as large as Camilla’s head hanging, sprung, from one of the bars. Curious, for the maid hadn’t mentioned any local great house, Camilla peered down the somewhat neglected drive. H there was some manor down there, it was hiding behind a grove of trees. No doubt Nanny Mallow would be able to tell her all about the house and its inhabitants since the Year Dot.

Camilla marched on, passing the worn stone cross that the maid had mentioned, the once-deep carving all eroded away into a blur of half-glimpsed animals and men. The landscape, fields and wooded copses alike, waited under the deep silence of winter. What snow had already fallen this season had lost its pristine whiteness in the last half-thaw, like a threadbare blanket washed too many times. A few ravens perched in a dry-leaved oak tree made hoarse comments as she passed, reminding her of the deaf old women talking about the neighbors on the porch of her village church.

After the cross, the road gradually sank down between banks of trees, offering some shelter from the wind. Without that constant buffeting, she could increase her pace.

Her muscles soon began to protest. Her mother didn’t believe in vigorous exercise for young ladies. A gentle amble around the village green in clement weather was quite enough to bring roses into her girls’ cheeks. Camilla never worried about her figure. Her mother also didn’t believe in large meals for young ladies.

No sooner had the wind ceased to blow than fat white flakes began to swirl down like hunks of greasy lamb’s wool thrown off by a mad sheep-shearer. It was a smothering snow, a thick, floundering snow that came down in a blinding fog, withdrew and returned, bringing greater confusion. Being hit by one flake was like being struck in the face with a wet pillow. Pushing her way through many of them was as if she were being attacked by enraged mattresses.

If Camilla had not reached where the road dipped before the snow hit, she might have gone wandering off across a field and become lost. As it was, she blundered to the left, tripped over a tree root, shied, and staggered back onto the crown of the road. She stopped, catching her breath. A wild sort of fear seized her. Camilla fought off the panic, knowing she was close to her destination. “It’s foolish to be frightened of a little snow,” she muttered.

But in just that moment, her skirt had become entirely white. Camilla beat her hands against her thighs, shaking the caked snow loose, leaving damp and dusted fabric behind that soon became covered as before, making her skirts heavier. She realized that her feet were cramped with cold. If she did not walk on at once, she’d soon find herself cowering down in the middle of the road, covered with snow like a tree stump.

But it was hard to will herself to move on. Far easier to stand still, dazzled and mesmerized by the dancing flakes buzzing before her eyes like white bees. The cramp in her feet became a flame, driving her a few stumbling steps forward.

It seemed to take forever to walk the hundred yards of the road in the hollow. Nanny Mallow’s cottage should be just a little farther beyond this point. “It might as well be on the moon,” Camilla grumbled.

Just then, she heard a muffled howling. The sound cut through the cold fog, rising up to unearthly levels before stopping abruptly. Camilla staggered onward. She’d gone no more than a few steps before she heard the ululation again, dark with all the misery of the world.

Camilla could have no more refused to succor the maker of that cry than she could melt a path through the snow. She could only struggle on, her direction now determined by the howling cry.

Ahead, she spied the dim grayish outline of a building. She started toward it. At once, a dog began to bark, dry, weary barks that yet held something of joy in its tone. Camilla permitted herself to whistle, since there was no one to hear her.

She half tripped over a wooden bowl and, putting her hand out to balance herself, touched fur. A black and white dog, wet and shivering, stood next to a post sunk into the ground. The rope that tethered him was wound many times around the post until he could only move a few inches in any direction. She looked into bright brown eyes and thought,
This is a nice dog. Why would anyone leave a dog tied out in a snowstorm?

Pulling off her gloves, she let him sniff her fingers. Despite his situation, he licked her hand, perhaps as much to taste the melted snow as to show his harmlessness. “There now,” she said. “Let me just...”

She found the knot under his jaw. The thin rope tied around his collar was wet and seemed to have fused into a solid mass. She broke a nail and was about ready to use her teeth when a loop loosened at last. Once she’d broken the back of it, the rest came undone quite easily.

“You’re free,” she exclaimed.

The dog took a few halting steps, stopping at the same distance from the post he must have learned by half strangling himself every time he tried to go farther. Camilla backed up and clapped her hands, calling the dog to her. “Come on, come on, sirrah!”

The moment the dog realized he was no longer tied, he bounded away over the crust of snow, running toward the house. “You must be thirsty,” Camilla said, picking up the wooden bowl and her gloves. She had to brush the snow away to find them. “I’ll find you some water.”

He stood outside the door, pawing restlessly at the smooth brown varnish and whining. “Stop that,” she said. “You’ll scratch it.”

The dog danced backward, whined again, and charged at the door, leaping up to claw at the knob.

Ordinarily, Camilla would have no more walked uninvited into a stranger’s house than she would have spoken to a strange man in a coach. But the freezing weather, the dog’s imploring eyes, and her own increasingly miserable condition would have to explain her being so bold. Even so, she hesitated until, the wind having died for the moment, she heard a faint human cry for help.

The cottage had been built in a typical fashion, a series of small whitewashed rooms telescoping out from each other. She peered into the largest of them, an impeccably clean and tidy square room with a sloping chimney-breast. The mantel was crowded with mementos, bracketed by a pair of Staffordshire lovers, she in pink panniers, he waving a tricorne hat. Along one wall was a row of square windows, like the rear galley of a ship. All the curtains were open. The cold beat in remorselessly, as if there were no walls to shelter behind.

The dog pushed in ahead of Camilla, sure where she hesitated. With a yip, he ran away into one of the other rooms.

“Is anyone there?” Camilla called, following. She hoped that she’d only imagined that faint cry for help. She didn’t want to face whatever caused this sense of desolation in a place meant to be cheerful and cozy.

“Who’s there?” The voice, a woman’s, came like a ghost’s whisper, barely audible above the moaning of the wind.

“I’m Camilla Twainsbury. Where are you?” She followed the dog and found him sitting before a half-closed door. He looked over his shoulder at her, as if to ask what was taking her so long. Once again, as soon as she laid her hand on the door, he rocketed through it ahead of her.

“Oh, good boy, Rex. Good boy. I’m sorry... so sorry.”

“Nanny Mallow?”

An elderly lady lay on the floor, her gown twisted around her. A pillow and counterpane had been pulled from the bed beside her, leaving the sheet half-drawn to the floor. The light from the net-covered window allowed Camilla to see details but not colors. She didn’t need to see Nanny Mallow’s color to know the older woman was in a bad way.

“How long have you been here?” she asked, dropping down on her knees beside her.

“This will be the second night. The first, I think, I was out of m’head. Thank mercy m’leg doesn’t hurt the way it did before. I can hardly feel it now. But it won’t bear me. I’ve tried.”

“What’s wrong with it? “

“I believe I broke it. I was reaching to knock down the cobweb in the corner and fell off the footstool like a right fool.” She lifted her hand to pat her dog, lying shivering with delight near his mistress. “It’s poor old Rex I felt sorry for. I could hear him crying in the yard, and there was nothing I could do for him. Be a good lass, Miss Camilla, and go to the kitchen. There’s a fine fat shinbone there for him.”

Her voice faded out as her eyes rolled back in her head. She slumped down, but even as she fainted, she moaned from pain. Camilla caught her by the shoulders as she fell back and laid her gently on the pillow.

“Well,” Camilla said, sitting back on her heels. Her mother’s old saying, perhaps passed down from the very woman before her, came into her head. “First things first. But what’s the first thing?”

Her own white puffs of breath told her what to do. She found a flint and steel in the kitchen, kindled a fire there and set the kettle on, not forgetting to unwrap the butcher’s bone for Rex. He drank thirstily from the bowl of water she set down on the floor. She refilled it, and he drank again. A mop and bucket in the corner reminded her of other duties.

Once she started a fire in the bedroom hearth, the cheerful glow heartened her for the unpleasant but necessary task of cleaning the floor. A quick search of a cedarwood chest on the far side of the bed discovered a treasure trove of warm blankets and a silken tie-quilt as warm and light as good white goose down could make it. Two fresh pillows under the woman’s heavy head and she looked as if she lay on a very low bed.

Camilla had everything ready before Nanny Mallow’s wrinkled lids fluttered. “Tea,” she moaned between cracked lips. “Two days I’ve been dreaming of tea....”

“Right here, Nanny.” Camilla slipped her arm around the frail shoulders and brought the cup near. Despite her weakened condition, after a moment, Nanny Mallow held the cup herself. “Too sweet,” she said, smacking her lips thirstily, “but a good cup, withal. I taught your mother how to make a good cup of tea.”

“And she taught me. A clean cup, a hot pot, and boiling water.” Camilla reached out to the brown-glazed teapot on a tray on the floor. “A little more? Then something to eat, perhaps? I can have this bread toasted in the twinkling of a bedpost.”

“I’ve been lying here day and night, and I can’t say I’ve seen ‘em twinkle yet,” Nanny said crisply. “But I’m most grateful to you, Miss Camilla. I’d begun to believe I’d lie here ‘til spring, and a fine moldering heap I’d be by then.”