Darling obstacles (21 page)

And then Rane smiled at her, a warm welcoming smile that lighted his tired face. "Well, cousin, we would be hard pressed to deny kinship. I'm Rane, R-a-n-e, not Rain. Welcome to Clovelly." He had a sudden urge to hug her and reassure her as if she were even younger than her age; she looked so scared and somehow fragile, her eyes too big in her thin face and shadows making them seem even larger. She was holding herself stiffly upright, as if only pride were keeping her from bolting though she essayed a small attempt at a smile when he spelled his name.

The cold knot of misery that had gripped Alex since she had first heard of her exile to the West Country began to ease, thawed in some mysterious way by the mere presence of this tall young man. It was hard not to stare at him; it would take time to grow accustomed to this shared image. And she could not begin to understand why the features she found displeasing in herself should be so handsome in him. She had long known that her tall earthy looks had nothing in common with current fashion, her wild dark hair and green eyes so strong and vivid that she seemed out of place even in her own family. But the same in him formed a marvelous symmetry and seemed fitting for an inhabitant of this strange village by the sea.

The first days at Clovelly sped by so swiftly for Alex, she could scarcely keep track of where they began and where they ended; they were a rush of light upon light of new experiences with pauses of nightfall for sleep.

Virginia had seen the change even on the first day when Alexandria and Rane had returned to the house. The granddaughter she knew had reappeared—green eyes wide and alert with interest, mouth curved in a smile, and color beginning to show again in her cheeks.

She had come to her grandmother without hesitation, putting her arms around her and murmuring low, "I never should have doubted you! This is a wonderful, magical place! I shall be happy here, I know I shall!"

For Virginia, there was pain and pleasure both in Alexandria's acceptance. It was best for the child, but for the old woman, it meant weeks, months, a very long time without this being who so brightened her days. And she knew that Alexandria, already such a strange mix of young and old, would surely have passed beyond childhood completely by the next time they saw each other. But she had steeled herself against showing anything except approval and had known it would be better were she to leave the following week when she could get the coach from Bideford to Exeter and on to London. To tarry too long would only make it harder for both of them.

For Alex the farewell went as quickly as everything else seemed to in her new life. The pain and sudden longing for life in Gravesend, no matter how complicated, was sharp, but Gweneth was there to tell her that Seadon and Barbary woud pick her up on their way back tomorrow for a visit to the farm, and Rane was there, too, with more immediate plans, asking her if she would like to go aboard Magnus's ship, the Lady Gwen.

She had not yet been aboard the graceful ship, and the excitement of Rane's offer did much to banish the sorrow of her grandmother's departure.

Rane rowed her out to the Lady Gwen. Though the ship could be brought in close to the quay when tide and wind were right, Magnus preferred to keep her farther out for safety.

Alex had been on ships before, at Gravesend when she was quite small, and her father had taken her with him a few times when he was making sure goods he'd supplied were being properly delivered. The Lady Given was surely one of the trimmest and best kept vessels she had ever seen. Everything from wood to brass gleamed with care. But one thing puzzled her. Though the ship was obviously built for speed, the sleek lines

cut down on the cargo space enough so that she noticed. However, she did not register the sly looks the two men on watch exchanged when she questioned Rane about it.

He barely restrained his start of surprise. He had discussed Alex's sharpness with his mother, and they both agreed that she was too quick-witted to be kept in ignorance forever. But Gweneth had insisted that it was better for the child to have time to adjust before she knew all of the Falconers' business, and Magnus had concurred. Still, even Rane had not expected she would question the limited cargo space of the ship. He had suppressed his unease and managed to answer calmly.

"We don't deal in large, bulky cargoes such as lime or clay. We carry more precious things, er ... china, housewares, some foodstuffs. We're paid more for transporting them, and we can do it swiftly with the Lady Given." He made the details purposefully vague and was relieved to see it made sense to Alex.

Though she found the ship interesting, she was even more enchanted by the view of Clovelly from out on the water. "I still find it difficult to believe what I'm seeing," she sighed. "It is surely the most beautiful village in all the world. You are very fortunate to live here."

"Indeed I am," Rane agreed gravely. "And now you live here, too." He meant a great deal more than an observation on life in the village. His mother had told him much about Alex's background, and he still could not credit that parents should be so careless with such an appealing child. She made him feel much older than his eighteen years and very protective.

"You don't have to tell me, but if you'd ever like to talk about the trouble at your home, I can listen," he offered gently and was instantly sorry he had.

She stiffened and looked so hurt and lost, he wanted to comfort her as if she were truly a small child, but instead, he listened intently as she told him the story of what she had done. The words tumbled out very quickly, the condemned confessing right before the execution.

"Is that really what happened?" he asked, his voice strangled.

'Tes, but my mother and my sister don't like me very well in any case, so that made it worse."

Despite his efforts to prevent it, Rane was laughing. He knew it was important and tragic to her, but the image of this grave-faced child creating such havoc for her dull family amused him mightily.

"Oh, Alex, don't you see how foolish they all were?" he gasped. "If this Carrington were any kind of man and your sister any kind of woman, nothing you could have said would have made the slightest difference. It's just our good luck that your mother and sister are so hideously stupid and the rest of the lot so cowardly." He stopped suddenly, appalled by what he had said.

But her reaction was again unexpected. "Not my grandmother," she protested solemnly, and then she was laughing, too, suddenly seeing her mother and sister as red-faced, ranting puppets, too small and far away to harm her more. And Rane had called her "Alex" as if they'd been friends for a long time, his voice warm; it gave her an identity beyond the odd relative left to be cared for.

She saw the truth of Rane's contention—if Florence and St. John really cared for each other, neither she nor anyone else would be able to keep them from each other. She thought of Gweneth and Magnus and doubted that any power on earth could have kept them apart. Peace and joy flooded through her; she felt as if she had come home.

In the days that followed, her sense of newness was replaced by a feeling that she had always lived here, and gradually she began to play an active role in Falconer family life, finding her skills appreciated, her help eagerly accepted when she offered it. She loved the farm from the first day she saw it and proved herself useful in milking the cow, collecting eggs from the fowl, and other chores long since familiar because of time spent on Virginia's land.

In Clovelly she was soon helping Gweneth prepare the meals, and more, she was trusted to treat minor

ailments. Magnus was her first patient when he suffered a nasty gash on his forearm. At Gweneth's command, he kept his skepticism to himself and allowed Alex to clean and dress the cut. When he found how much she had eased the discomfort and saw how well the wound healed, he could not have been more generous in his praise had she been one of his own children.

But as much as she was warmed by the kindness of the rest of the family, best of all for Alex were the hours spent with Rane. He took her fishing, and she was soon adept at repairing nets and lines. She applied holystone to the decks of the Lady Given with a will and polished brass fittings until they shone as brightly as Magnus liked. If Rane were helping out on the farm, she was glad to do any task as long as she was allowed to be with him.

Alex sensed a restlessness in Rane stronger than that in the other men. He was seldom still, but when he was, there was often a faraway look in his eyes, as if he were contemplating horizons he had not yet seen. His need for action was to her advantage because it led to their explorations of the countryside, on foot or sometimes on the ponies. And even in the bitter cold with a knife-edged wind blowing salt spray, one of Rane's favorite haunts was Hartland Point, a jutting red-hued cliff over the sea. Jagged rocks waited some three hundred and fifty feet below to rake the fragile hulls of unwary ships. Alex did not question why it was so, but in spite of the bleakness of the place, she felt exhilarated and washed clean when she came to the Point, and she knew Rane felt the same. Sometimes they would sit for a long time, hunkered down against the cold, sometimes talking lazily, sometimes silent because they could not compete with the roar of the wind and the sea. Even when the elements were wild, here Rane was often at his most peaceful.

On clear days, they could see Lundy, the Norse name meaning "Isle of Puffins, ,, a place rich in legend. It was said that a member of Parliament from Barnstaple had transported convicts there instead of to Virginia in America where they were legally bound. He had used

them as slaves to hack out a cave for storing smuggled goods until his malfeasance was discovered and he was arrested.

Alex shivered at the thought of being a prisoner there. "To be confined to so small a piece of land, I would go mad!"

Rane nodded, relieved that the fact of the M.P.'s business seemed to be of no importance to her compared to the lot of his victims. "I, too. There is so much of the world to see!"

"If you marry Mary Forthy, she'll understand that. She might even sail with you, being Clovelly born. But then, I suppose the same could be said of the widow from Buck's Mills or any other woman who lives so close to ships and the sea, born here or not."

For a moment, Rane was speechless. It hadn't occurred to him that Alex was aware of his love life, but he saw now that she could scarcely be in ignorance of it. His brothers teased him unmercifully about the accommodating woman at Buck's Mills, and Mary Forthy, a comely blond of seventeen, was less than subtle in her pursuit of him. The widow, ten years older than he, had long since lost her status as an amateur and was not a candidate for marriage, and would undoubtedly refuse even were she asked. She was clean, discreet, and skilled, but the favors, physical and otherwise, of one man would never satisfy her. Local wags had it that her husband, years older than she, had died of overwork without leaving the house. Mary, on the other hand, was exactly what most men looked for in a wife. She was pretty, capable of running a household smoothly, and bright enough though not overly educated. But the idea of spending his life with her gave Rane exactly the same feeling he got when he contemplated being a prisoner on Lundy. Mary's adoration was more of an embarrassment than a compliment, and Rane found it very convenient to have Alex beside him as she tended to serve as a buffer against Mary's attentions.

"Mary is a sweet lass, but I haven't any plans in that direction, so please don't make any for me. And as

for the widow, well, she is not the sort of woman you ought to be thinking about at all," he added.

Alex blushed, remembering the painted women in London and those she had seen in Gravesend, but she was relieved. She, too, thought Mary a nice enough person, but not good enough for Rane. She hoped he would find someone more like the women his brothers had married. Suddenly she was up and running away from the Point, calling that she would beat him to the ponies.

She just managed to do it because of her head start, and they rode companionably back toward the farm, stopping only to watch a flight of swans pass overhead. These were not the common Mute swans nor yet the Whooper swans, but rather smaller foreigners. Their wing beats did not sing as did the Mute's; they passed over in nearly silent grace, the soft hoo-hoohoo of their voices sounding like nothing more than the wind sighing. And they flew in what seemed a random pattern rather than in the trailing chevron of Whooper swans. They were not native to Britian, nesting instead in more northeasterly countries, some said as far away as Russia, and their coming was an indication of hard weather elsewhere.

"I love them all," Alex said reverently. "These with their soft music when they're feeding, Whooper swans with their loud chorus, and the Mute swans, the royal birds who act as if they own the Thames and every other river and pond in England and are surely not mute! I remember the first time I heard one of them hiss. I was very small, and it frightened me properly. My grandmother explained that it was just warning me not to come too close, and that seemed reasonable once Td thought about it."

They watched the birds out of sight, sharing their mutual love and knowledge of the wild things. Many were not even aware that these frosty white birds were swans, thinking instead they were geese and thus missing the essential mystery of the birds who wandered so far. Knowing exactly what things were was a way of

getting closer to the earth, a skill long taught to Alex by her grandmother and to Rane by both of his parents.

"Perhaps they are swan maidens with fine gold chains around their necks/' Rane murmured, whimsy as much a part of his nature as the more rational aspects. "When they settle on secret ponds and lakes, they take off their feather cloaks and are beautiful women, eternally young. That's who I'll wed, one of the swan maidens."

Alex knew the old legend as well as he. "You'll have to take care. Remember that if you do not hide the cloak, she will fly away."

Though he did not remember it, that night Rane dreamed he captured a swan whose feather cloak fell away to reveal not Mary Forthy nor the Buck's Mills' widow, but Alexandria. In his dream she was older, her body more curved, but still she was Alex.