Black Heather (13 page)

The sky at this time of day lulled me to a sleepiness not at all usual for me. Or perhaps it was caused by the monotonous rolling moors that I stared at, imagining all sorts of creatures alive and peopling the view before me; but it was singularly bereft of human signs. My eyes closed briefly. When I discovered this disgraceful weakness, I opened my eyes wide and stared intently at the view from my borrowed windows. I had one or two more near temptations to sleep, but I managed to fend them off by concentrating upon finding some live thing upon the moor.

And then I did find it. What a liar that insufferable Sir Nicholas was! Telling me first that no dog of his ever visited Seven Spinney, and second that no one else’s dogs were permitted upon the heath in that region; for I could dimly see some sort of dun-colored animal prowling across the moor, apparently unafraid of potholes and boggy patches. As I watched, I began to realize that the animal was headed toward Everett Hall. Worse and worse! Exactly what Sir Nicholas had said was not possible.

I blinked, trying to throw off sleep, and leaned forward to watch this curious animal whose habits were denied by everyone at Everett Hall. Its approach was slow, deliberate, not so much creeping along in canine or feline fashion, but huddled against the slap of rain and wind. There was an almost human look to the stature and movements of the creature. My eyes, which had closed in spite of all my good intentions, snapped open, and I felt the first nibble of a new fear when the sight of that peculiar, indistinct creature began to prey upon my senses. I told myself,
This is no hunting dog, no vicious hound that snarls on the trail of a poor fox or a girl like Kathleen Bodmun
.

No. It was something else, but I refused to name it. I only wondered why someone at the Hall did not see it and make some signal, go out to stable or corral or kennel the beast, for surely its approach was being watched by someone at the Hall other than myself.

I seemed to doze off as I watched, but this was so unusual that I wondered if I was truly ill and not merely relieving a pulled muscle in my foot. The chilling of the water in the ewer upon my foot aroused me. I dried my foot on the towel left by Mrs. Hardwicke, marveling at how much these older people Mama’s age knew about such simple cures for the sickening pain I had suffered an hour or two before.

When I had finished with my foot and folded the towel, I listened, amazed at the quietness in this great household. At home I would have heard a hundred different friendly, companionable noises both in the high road outside and within our household at this hour. But here in Everett Hall it was as though the whole world of the moors reached out to shroud the manor house in a silence I found abnormal.

Confused by the few minutes I had closed my eyes, I almost forgot to look out the windows upon the carefully formal garden and park of Everett Hall, then beyond to the endless rolling moors now blurring into obscurity in the sunless sunset, and once more to catch sight of that peculiar creature moving toward the Hall, much closer now and less like a great hound. I would have taken it for a human being, except that it moved so very bent over, huddled against the drizzling heavens and against old age. In short, an old crone, a witchlike hag!

I must be dreaming still. I got up and limped to the windows to get the closest possible look at the queer thing I had seen. At the very gates of the Hall it seemed to vanish, swallowed up in the general gray dusk, which crept up from the moors, higher and higher, so that with surprising speed the darkness engulfed my windows as well.

I was still puzzling this out when there was a brisk rap upon the door. Before I could say, “Enter,” Sir Nicholas strode in, completely ignoring the amenities, for I was, after all, wearing somebody or other’s dressing sack, which may have been voluminous in the style of 1780 but was emphatically not a thing in which to receive gentlemen!

The difficulty between me and Sir Nicholas, I decided at that moment, was that he would not take me seriously as a woman. When he walked over to me, he behaved exactly as my father might have, with no consideration for the dignity of my eighteen years. Such an attitude only made me more determined than ever to purchase the Hag’s Head Inn or, at the very least, show my grownup skill at bargaining for it.

“Well now, I trust you are feeling more the thing. How is that lively little foot? More lively and less painful than when last we met, I trust.”

“It was nothing. I scarcely noticed it,” I lied, remembering to concentrate upon dignity and self
-
assurance.

He smiled and held out his hand. I was confused by the gesture and surprised when he reached for my foot on the chaise and, squeezing it in a very businesslike and unromantic manner, asked me if it hurt. I winced but was impressed by a definite improvement, for the pain was more a remembered thing than actual.

“Stand up,” he bade me.

I did so, now quite at my ease before him as I put my weight upon that foot, feeling the first stabbing, fiery pain give away to an ache that was at worst bearable.

“Excellent,” said Sir Nicholas. “You may come down to dinner.”

“Oh, but I cannot,” I protested quickly. “If I can walk, I must return to Maidenmoor. Mrs. Sedley will be very worried, for she cannot know what has happened to me.”

“You need have no concern on that score. I sent Jacob off to relate to that woman the tale of your harrowing encounter with my savage dogs.”

“You need not make me a figure of fun. It
was
savage dogs, or something very like,” I assured him with spirit. “And what is more, I saw it again, just now.”

He seemed to be teasing me; yet I could not but suspect that he was more intrigued by my remark than he pretended.

“I’m sure that you did. Where was this? In one of the old armoires, I don’t doubt. A ghostly apparition that disappeared in a clap of thunder.”

“No, sir. Out those windows. Down on the moor.”

He went over to the windows and looked out upon the carefully tended park of Everett Hall with all its stately trees in precise formations and the carriage drive swept clean of all the debris blown upon it during the day’s fierce wind.

“Where was this guytrash who pursued you?”

I limped over to him and looked down upon the park and then beyond to the Hall gates and the open moor, which was now scarcely visible in the darkness.

“Well, of course you can’t see it now! It is dark out!”

“Very true. However, if you saw this monster dog howling at the gates out there, you must have seen it within the house since then; for it is certainly not there now.” A nasty thought, that what I had seen out there, huddled against the elements, looking for all the world like an old hag, was locked within these walls with us.

I was just drawing myself up to resume this argument when he smiled at me and offered me his arm. “If your foot is feeling more the thing, suppose I show you about the Hall and assure you, once and for all time, that we do not harbor monsters and other skulking creatures behind doors or in powder closets.”

I was just about to accept his escort, being anxious to see as much of Everett Hall as possible and assuring myself that what I had seen was not here hiding somewhere, when I looked down at my low-cut, square-necked robe, horribly embarrassed. I remembered that I was not dressed for dinner at a great Hall or for a stroll with a baronet or, indeed, for the company of any male. Sir Nicholas, who seemed to have a disconcerting habit of guessing my thoughts, told me to sit down, went to the big chest at the foot of the bed, and threw out handfuls of finery that was exquisite, though out of the mode at present. He tossed me a wide ribbon sash of lilac-watered silk, which I looked at much puzzled, for I did not see how this would save the day. He tossed me some lilac slippers, which fitted tolerably well, though a trifle cramping to my toes, and he ended by finding a smaller lilac ribbon, which I rightly guessed was for the hair.

I asked him to leave me to my own devices, but he gathered up his various finds and while I protested indistinctly, telling him I would not be putting him to this bother, he swung me around and bound the big sash around my waist, letting the streamers fall in the back. It transformed the dressing sack into an elegant lilac-sprigged gown, and I was vastly pleased with myself when he pushed me rudely over to the long pier glass in one co
rn
er of the room.

My hair, of course, was impossible. Dried now, it was still snarled and badly needed brushing. I fumbled around for a brush, but before I could find one, Sir Nicholas came up behind my mirrored image and began to brush my hair down, smoothing it, after each brush stroke, with the flat of his hand. I watched his reflection in the mirror, marveling that he was so skillful. I felt exactly the way Timothy looked when I stroked him, blissfully content and purring. During those few minutes I nearly forgot the thing I had fancied I saw approaching Everett Hall across the heath, the thing that must be within these walls at this very moment, I thought, unless I had dreamed the whole of it.

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Sir Nicholas t
ook the narrower ribbon, threaded it through my hair above my forehead, and tied it at the nape of my neck while I enjoyed the sensation of being the focus of the busy man’s attention. He had by no means abandoned his brusque superiority, however, and his first comment after bidding me to look at myself in the glass was typical of him. It was one of those remarks whose truth I feared while at the same time wondering if this was his notion of humor.

“Now then, I think you look respectable enough not to disgrace either Everett Hall or me at dinner. Come along.”

I started to make objections, fearing what the servants would say, the tales they would carry into Heatherton and Maidenmoor, but he merely repeated, “Come along, I say. I detest being made tardy, as you have made me.”

“I!” I began heatedly, but took the arm he extended and, with only one brief glance at the black out of doors, I limped out into the hall, trying with all my might to appear as sophisticated and worldly as my situation warranted. It was not easy for the upper gallery was shrouded in warm, flickering shadows between the branches of candles, and several times during our progress I was startled enough to grasp his arm tighter, hoping he did not notice what I had just imagined I saw beyond those shadows.

I had never known a person could have so many grandpapas or such a collection of haughty aristocrats to crush all the pretensions of an outlander yeoman’s daughter like myself. I was amazed that Sir Nicholas could take so much time out of his crowded day to entertain me, as I conceived it, for I had obviously spoiled his hunting and probably interfered with any number of the pursuits in which gentlemen usually indulged. Yet I could not but feel that Sir Nicholas enjoyed these few minutes out of his busy day, and I was well aware of the compliment implied in his expenditure of time in the company of a casual acquaintance like myself, whom he had always patently disliked.

“How is the foot?” he asked presently, thus impressing me again with the good manners of the gentry. After this night, despite Sir Nicholas’s abrupt way with me, I told myself I would always remember his concern for my injury and the effort he expended to make me look my best. Then with my Cornish suspicion of any gift given without expectation of payment, I thought it was more probable that he had carefully arranged my gown and hair so that I might be worthy of Everett Hall and not disgrace him at dinner.

My head began to ache with trying to remember all these family connections long before we had completed the recitation and study of all the ancient Everetts. When he showed me the portrait of his brother who had been the last baronet before Sir Nicholas, I was busy thinking of what a triumph it must have been for Sir Nicholas to show Mrs. Sedley and the world his new dignity.

I remarked, without thinking of the causes that gave him the properties and fortune, “Weren’t you exceedingly happy to acquire your title, sir?”

He considered the portrait of his brother thoughtfully. It was a splendid figure of a man, much jollier than Sir Nicholas, not so dark-eyed or somber, gloriously decked out in his navy captain’s uniform.

“No. I was not. You see, I loved my brother George very much. We grew up as companions, neither of us caring for our uncle’s title. For many years it was supposed that we should have a cousin who would succeed to the title. Then uncle died suddenly of a chill after a day’s shooting on the moors, and George became the baronet. Three months later, George was dead on the quarterdeck of his ship. It was off Cape Trafalgar.” He looked away from the portrait abruptly. “It was a sickening thing, and happened close upon another—deep wound. For a while I was very bitter.”

“I’m so sorry,” I murmured, feeling like an idiot for having so badly expressed myself. “Of course you would not rejoice over the title. And
Mrs. Sedley told me how she wronged you in
...
another matter.”

He smiled, the only tender smile I had ever seen upon his face, and it was amazing how it softened all the severely handsome lineaments of his face. My heart, heretofore blissfully unaware of the physical complications of love, began to beat in a very odd and stifling way. I could not be so silly as to “throw my cap” at such an unattainable nobleman, but I could at least enjoy these attentions of his and promise myself not to let him anger me so easily as he often did.

“Yes,” he said. “I was sure Clara Sedley would relive the entire affair for your benefit, although frankly, I should prefer to forget it, if it were not for my conviction that Megan’s murderer still hangs about the district, hoping to make off with Megan’s little fortune.”

“Her fortune!” Could this be what the Macraes and even Patrick found so fascinating about the Hag’s Head?

“Megan wished to buy the inn from her mother. She had amassed a sizeable box of coins and paper, roughly several hundred guineas, and spoke often of the money. I warned her, but it was useless. Women!” He condemned us all out of hand with that single word pronounced as bitterly as an epithet.

As we moved along the gallery, he showed me brief glimpses of the other rooms on this floor, but
I thought the bedchamber he had assigned to me was the prettiest and most comfortable of them all. There was nothing romantically dashing about him, no matter how kind he was to devote all his valuable time to me, his totally uninvited guest, and I was constantly aware that there were mysterious depths to his personality that no other person would ever know. I would catch his dark eyes glancing at me, as though weighing the kind of person I truly was, and it made me nervous. Yet I was oddly disappointed when we went down the great staircase and saw Mrs. Hardwicke waiting for us by the elegant newel post in the ground-floor entrance hall.

Sir Nicholas murmured, “Too bad. I daresay she has something unpleasant to relate—she looks so self-satisfied.”

“May I speak to you, sir? Certain—guests have arrived,” Mrs. Hardwicke announced.

Sir Nicholas’s dark eyebrows arched.

“Are we expecting guests other than Miss Bodmun?”

“Not as I’d be knowing, Your Worship. I think it was because Mistress Sedley heard Young Miss was here. She and Miss Elspeth come hard on the track of notice from Jacob.”

“I have a painful feeling that our pleasant and promising evening is ruined,” he remarked to me, thus flattering me enormously. Then he added in resigned tones, “Very well. See to it that Mrs. Sedley has the green chamber and Miss Elspeth the one next to her. And send them all down to dinner as soon as possible, or Miss Kathleen will be starved. Isn’t it so, Miss Kate?”

“Oh, yes! I am excessively hungry.”

Somewhat to my surprise, Sir Nicholas laughed at this perfectly honest answer, and after eliciting my promise to play the hostess, he settled me in the room adjoining the less imposing of two dining salons, an old-fashioned Jacobean study, dark with leather, but glowing in the light from the big, blackened fireplace. He poured me a glass of Madeira, assuring me it was of excellent quality, having been smuggled in from the Continent during the late wars with France. I was not a connoisseur of wines and found it pleasing to the taste, which was all I cared about. I did not like to tell Sir Nicholas, but the truth was that during my life I had become much more familiar with the smugglers on the Cornish Coast than with their product.

After a few sips of the wine I felt myself surprisingly mellowed, enough so that when Elspeth and an upstairs maid helped Mrs. Sedley into the little study, there to await our host, I scarcely knew myself for that bumbling girl of the moors who had run from what Sir Nicholas assured me was a mere figment of my imagination. One recurring thought did bother me now and then: If Sir Nicholas possibly could be wrong, then that same weird creature whom I saw approaching the gates of the hall today at dusk was closeted somewhere in the great house, and at this very moment. But the
arrival of Mrs. Sedley effectively banished those haunting thoughts.

Although Elspeth Sedley’s lovely features were more sullen than ever, her grandmother seemed extraordinarily pleased with herself as she was carefully seated with her back to the crackling fire.

“How very comfortable it is to be here. I’m sure I have remarked it times without number. Have I not, Elspeth?”

“Times without number.”

“And to think of my little girl as mistress of this house!” She drew out a lacy handkerchief and dabbed ineffectually at her eyes.

I had risen and curtseyed as the older lady entered, just as I had been taught, but I could see from the look Elspeth gave me that she thought me fearfully antique in my manners, which was amusing; for I had heard at great length about Elspeth’s elegant last-century ways. Nevertheless,
I felt a little foolish, though I remained standing in order to carry out Sir Nicholas’s orders that I should perform as his hostess.

“May I offer you some Madeira, ma’am?”

Mrs. Sedley frowned ever so slightly, waved her handkerchief at Elspeth, and said to her, “But what are you about, girl? Will you force our guest to take over your own tasks? Dear Kate, so sweet of you to volunteer, but after all, it is my naughty Elspeth’s responsibility.”

Elspeth moved over to the sideboard but I held doggedly to the task assigned me by Sir Nicholas
.

“It’s quite all right,” I said, pretending to misunderstand Mrs. Sedley. “Sir Nicholas asked me to make you comfortable until he arrives.”

“Really!” said Mrs. Sedley. “I am persuaded you have not understood him correctly.”

Elspeth looked from one to the other of us unsmiling, with her heavy-lidded eyes shadowed so that I could not imagine what she was thinking.

“And where may our host be, my dear?” Mrs. Sedley pursued the matter.

“I believe he is speaking to the cook about dinner. Will you have Madeira, ma’am?”

“No, dear.” Mrs. Sedley rose magnificently to the occasion of my discomfiture. “My granddaughter knows what I like. Elspeth—if you please.”

Defeated, I was forced to step aside while Elspeth moved to the sideboard, found a crystal decanter, and poured a glass of what appeared to be sherry, offering it to her grandmother, who, it seemed to me, did not appreciate it now that she had gone to considerable trouble to obtain her special wine. Elspeth herself took Madeira and stood there observing me from beneath her long eyelashes. I had a nasty feeling that she would have looked the same way at a peculiarly revolting insect.

Partly to break out of the self-consciousness she induced in me, and partly because I could not forget the odd and disturbing things. I had seen on the moors today, I said to Elspeth, “I have been told recently that you were followed by some odd creature when you last visited Everett Hall.”

I had not miscalculated. This remark was quite enough to change the direction of Elspeth’s thoughts as well as to arouse her grandmother.

“What absolute nonsense!” said the older woman, greatly upset. “Such fancies are best found between the covers of Mrs. Radcliffe’s romances. Where could you possibly have heard that tale? Certainly not from dear Nicholas, who, I am sure, would make much point of denying it.”

“The housekeeper told me.”

Mrs. Sedley was about to go more thoroughly into her severe opinion of Mrs. Hardwicke’s mental capacity, when Elspeth laughed. “Grandmama, when I expressed my own feeling about Mrs. Hardwicke you were quick enough to tell me how wrong I was. Please be more consistent. The truth is”— she faced me, pouring herself more Madeira without even looking at the decanter or the glass— “I did see something follow me across the moor from the Hag’s Head, and since that time I have not been in the least anxious to visit this place
...
I keep thinking that ‘it’ won’t approve.”

“It?” I echoed uneasily.

“Whatever it is that appears to trouble so many different people.”

“You think the Hall is haunted?” I asked seriously.

“My dear!” protested Mrs. Sedley, but in vain; for Elspeth contradicted me only in part.

“Not the Hall, but the Hag’s Head.” She peered into her glass, but I do not think she saw its contents. “It is some—feeling ... something not right, which everyone notices at the inn. As though it is not really empty at all. And when you leave the inn, you take with you that aura of another presence. Frankly, Kate, I can’t imagine your wishing to purchase the inn. It is downright unhealthy.” Sir Nicholas’s voice cut into this chilling monologue. “I too hope Miss Kate takes your advice, though I shall think her an absolute little fool if she chooses your reasons.”

“What a way to speak of our young visitor,” murmured Mrs. Sedley, exactly as she must have coquetted thirty years before. “How do you go on, Nicholas, my dear boy?”

“Exceedingly well, thank you.” Sir Nicholas bowed over her hand, kissing it with the flourish she expected, but I was curious to note that Elspeth not only did not appreciate his manner, which may, of course, have been ironic, but upon her face was an expression of active dislike. Such was the influence of Patrick Kelleher, I had no doubt. It seemed odd to me, though, because I could enjoy Patrick’s charm and yet give it its due value, such as it was, without ceasing to admire other people. If only Sir Nicholas would always be as kind to me as he had during the past hour! But I felt sure he would be returning soon to the sardonic woman-hating gentleman I first met in the Hag’s
Head Inn. Or was it, indeed, the malign effect the inn had upon all who entered?

“But what is this?” Sir Nicholas asked, and to my embarrassment, turned to chide me. “Has not my young friend seen to your wants? I see you carrying the decanter, Elspeth.”

Even Elspeth had the grace to flush at this cutting little setdown.

“She intended to, but Grandmama
...
”

“Ah, yes,” said Sir Nicholas. “I was sure my dear old friend Mrs. Sedley would be in it somewhere.”

There followed a certain amount of small talk, chiefly between Mrs. Sedley and our host, and when we all adjourned to the small summer dining room, Mrs. Sedley, as her natural right, indicated that the Hardwickes should help her to the hostess’s chair at the foot of the long table. It was all so elegant—the service, the epergne in the center of the table, the lovely slim candles in their scones, and the napery heavily laced—that I was much relieved to let her play the hostess and to sit where I was placed at Sir Nicholas’s left, with a reluctant Elspeth, who shrank from his touch, on the right. I was careful to mind my manners and behave exactly as Mama and Father had taught me, but this did not make it any easier to exchange light banter as the others did.

Sir Nicholas made several attempts but cried off when I blurted out little truths that seemed to amuse him but aroused disdain in the others. Inevitably, the matter of today’s curious happenings cropped up again as I said, “Excuse me, sir
...
”

“By all means. You have not strung two words together since we sat to
dinner.”

“Then, if Elspeth and I have imagined the whole of these odd apparitions wandering across the heath, would you tell us, sir, what they truly are?”

“Quite simple. An overactive imagination. You expected to see something of the sort and therefore you have seen it. But Mrs. Sedley has not expected, nor desired, to see any such thing, and like me, she has not seen them.”

“Indeed, you express it delightfully, Nicholas.” Mrs. Sedley beamed down the table at her host, who spoiled this new understanding by adding, “This is not to be taken for an endorsement of the sale of Megan’s inn. Except to me. A good healthy burning is its greatest need.”

I felt uneasy when he pronounced the name of the girl who had been the great love of his life, but Mrs. Sedley, whose daughter Megan had been, seemed much more anxious about the sale of the abandoned inn than the tragedy to Megan. I could not but sense that Sir Nicholas had felt more deeply the death of his beloved Megan Sedley than had Megan’s mother.

“I have said, and I shall continue to observe, that those flickering lights observed on the moor and those trifling sounds within are merely what one can expect of a disused house.”

“Yes,” said I brightly, “but then, what did Macrae and I see upon the staircase that killed the poor man?”

Mrs. Sedley rose from her chair at the foot of the table as we stared at her in astonishment; for we had not known that she could stand so straight without help. She asked drily, “Is this true? Macrae dead
...
for such a reason?”

It was dreadful. Mrs. Sedley stood there swaying, putting much weight upon the balls of her fingers and looking excessively white.

“She would never—do such a thing!”

As Nicholas sprang to help her, Elspeth and I gasped at the picture conjured up, the ghostly face that I remembered so well and so painfully, and with which, apparently, Elspeth too was acquainted. I wondered when she had seen the ghost and whether she truly felt that there was something very sinister about the thing that had staggered across the moor to the Hall, hunched and hidden. In plain fact, I felt that my old Hag phantom had been seen very vividly by Elspeth.