Judith Ivory (35 page)

She only knew that somehow, sometime after, she made her way back to the hotel. The doorman helped her get another cab. Then she slumped back in her seat and jostled along toward the train station. She didn’t know when she
bought the ticket or how she got on the train. She only knew it was a slow one that stopped at every blessed town along the way. All in the dark. Daylight seemed to take a lifetime in coming, and, when the sun finally did glint under the blind of her second-class compartment, it found her dazed and empty.

And alone. Perfectly, absolutely, forever alone. By her own doing.

A man’s character is his fate. Touché. So was a woman’s. She would never want any man less than Stuart. And he had been a miracle. A miracle she’d missed for lack of trust. What cruel shortcoming in herself had made her forget to have confidence in the most trustworthy man she’d ever known?

Stuart’s lawyers did not have him free till five the next morning. Of course, he raced to the hotel, but was not surprised to discover that Mrs. Hartley had checked out. He was in less of a hurry to go home. He thought he knew what to expect: nothing. He expected the place possibly ravaged, a search for more money or other valuables. Perhaps the larcenous Mrs. Hotchkiss would even take the statue, since it looked fairly authentic and had its papers of authenticity.

What a surprise to recognize it, even before he’d lit the lamp, in the faint light of dawn where the figurine sat on his desk.

He lit the gas lamp and picked up the small statue, holding it toward the window, the morning’s rising light.

La Truie qui danse.
The Dancing Beast. He touched a grinning female chimera: head of a pig, tail of a dragon, with an undulant skirt of snakes that swirled to reveal dragon shanks poised with unaccountable grace on emerald cloven feet. It was an odd little piece, encrusted rather convincingly with a small fortune of gemstones. The dragon tail was an imbrication of emerald scales, so many, overlaid one on the other, each cut in multiple facets till it became a shimmer of every imaginable shade of green, from pale leafy green to deepest, darkest moss. This came up from the front of the animal till the pig breast became a deep swell of dark jade.
Green. A little, green, grotesque statue. Its snake skirts were beads of many crystalline green stones, wired together in a spine of green gold. Green gold filigree elsewhere.

Then the startling discovery: Amidst all this sparkle, in tiny holes in the pig’s ears, there they were: the earrings. An intricate, coherent piece of the whole. The pig-dragon wore Stuart’s mother’s dangling, gypsyish earrings of emerald and peridot and green tourmaline. When he picked the odd little creature up, its earrings made the little
clack
he remembered: his mother’s only vanity.

Ana Aysgarth’s favorite earrings. To wear them, she’d borrowed them from the gay Dancing Beast, the creature that pranced on its hooves, enjoying itself, despite its mythic, fire-breathing ugliness.

Staring at them, it was not the heartbreaking self-awareness that pierced Stuart first. Rather it was the joy in the pig’s expression, its posture that seemed to toss its pig head in simple insouciance: I don’t give a damn what I look like; I’m dancing.

He had never thought that, for even a second, his mother had known this variety of happiness. Or could even dream of borrowing such power or autonomy as might be had by a fire-breathing chimera. So restrained, so obedient, so relentlessly dutiful, biddable, proper, she was. Yet now a pure, devil-may-care joy seemed plausible, at least somewhere in his mother’s imagination. And a stab of relief, such relief, cut through him. Along with something else. Something dearer, sweeter.

Because his earliest memory of his dotty, lonely mother was of her wearing these earrings while building castles from matchsticks on the floor of his nursery with him.

Fine, he had the statue. He was glad. But at what cost, he didn’t know. It all depended on how difficult it was to find Emma again.

S
HE
arrived home, her farm, in the afternoon, to find the place not too bad off. Her neighbors and Stuart’s people had done a good enough job. And John’s ram had been brilliant: Marigold looked to be pregnant, a cherished and unforeseeable blessing since the ewe was old—her raddling hadn’t taken last time. All five of Emma’s other ewes were also showing signs. She went about that afternoon looking under sheep like a pervert, happy with all the dark, purple-pink tissue at their hindquarters.

New lambs in the spring.

Ah, what hope, she thought, as she settled in that very first night. Yet she didn’t sleep. She lay awake all night thinking, You have done the right thing. All the way around. Congratulations. You are hereby an adult. A full-grown woman.

Living alone. Because you’re in love with the wrong man. Whom you betrayed.

Her first morning back was cool, but lovely. Emma rose with the sun, knowing all she had to do: her old chores. In fingerless wool gloves, she made her tea, then warmed her whole front room by baking scones in the oven, with old flour but new sultanas that she bought in the village. Then
she put on her plaid shawl and walked out her back door to eat and drink her breakfast in the sun.

And there was that damned castle, up on its hill. Empty. The turrets of Castle Dunord peered between treetops from above, its distant arching windows looking ominous, eternal: like blind eyes that did not see her, so far above a little village, looking down blankly on all that could not be. Emma sighed. Could she live under Dunord? In its shadow?

She was going to try.

Did she miss its owner?

She closed her eyes. Oh, only with every breath she took.

It would get better. Like having a stitch in one’s side after a long, hard run, she decided. One simply kept moving till the pain eased up. When she opened her eyes again, though, her gaze connected to the skyline of Stuart’s turrets, and the pain of his absence all but doubled her over. She jerked her gaze down, purposefully staring across the dale, seeing nothing. Why look up? When had she started doing that? Looking up? Putting on airs? Pretending she was other than what she was, a thirty-year-old quasi-sheep farmer, so distrustful of life she’d betrayed one of its rarest gifts: love.

Her dissatisfaction with herself didn’t get better. Over the next several days, it grew so bad she could hardly move, hardly function. Finally, in the middle of the night, she decided what was required was action on her part. She had to make amends somehow, do something for Stuart, something tangible that expressed her distress over hurting a man who had a history of those closest to him treating him miserably. Yet what did one do for a rich, powerful viscount?

A horse. His horse team was so important to him, while his eighth animal was unusable. If she could find him a replacement, he could run his team of eight again. Oh, if only she could find one that came close to matching.

Quite surprisingly, in relative short order, the local trader who specialized in fine animals, indeed was offering one that
sounded good. When Emma went to she it, she was elated. It was a coaching stallion with beautiful white socks up its legs, the perfect creature! The only thing was, it cost more than she could ever have dreamed a person could pay for a horse.

She laughed to John Tucker over the price. “A person could ride my entire farm for that kind of money.”

Which was how the idea came to her. The next day, she sold John Tucker her farm. He couldn’t pay cash, but he, herself, and the horse trader in Ripon came to an agreement. John arranged that Emma would stay with his sister, helping her and her aging husband out for a modest wage, while John made land payments to her—payments that would go straight to the horse trader in exchange for the animal, the land as collateral. The amazing horse became hers. Or Stuart’s. She wrote a polite letter, saying merely that she hoped the creature suited him and would fill out his team again. Please accept it and ask no questions.

She made arrangements for the animal to be delivered to him in London the following week and indeed felt much better for her efforts.

Maud and Pete Stunnel. She took up residence at their house, where on clear days she could still see the castle, but only distantly. On the very day that the horse and letter were to be delivered to Stuart in London, Emma was outside, helping Maud sort sheep into lambing groups according to when lambs were expected. The ewes were near lambing. First, the older crossbred ewes would give birth, then the younger fell ewes, then the shearling ewes. Spring in Yorkshire, on its way, was a time of renewal, new generations, new hope.

She and Maud looked up at the noise. The racket brought them into the house, then Emma picked up her step till she was running. What was that din? That familiar, horrible clatter? She reached the front drop, opened it, stepped through it.

And there, from the stoop, she saw a team of six shiny
black horses, heads bobbing in unison, galloping shoulder to shoulder, quite nearly at the exact same breakneck speed as last August, pulling behind them a large, dark, barreling, recognizable coach. It trundled toward her for all it was worth. Then as it neared the front gate—astounding—the noise grew worse: a lot of annoyed, resisting, complaining animals, clopping, cobbling hooves, many
whoa
s and
hey
s with much lurching, creaking of springs, a lot of jangling tack. The coach came to a complete stop right there at the end of the Stunnels’ winter-dead vegetable patch, a big, fancy, crested vehicle with six shiny, black coaching stallions, all of them stomping and neighing out warm blasts of visible breath into the Yorkshire February air.

Emma was transfixed. Behind her, Maud murmured, “I have something in the kitchen that needs tending.” While before her, a footman dropped down from the back of the vehicle, came around, and opened the carriage door. Stuart stepped out, no coat on a sunny brisk day, though he took his hat off. Emma could hardly grasp it.

She feared the worst as she greeted him by calling, “Have you come for revenge then?”

Without answering, he sailed up the Stunnels’ garden path, between dormant rosebushes pruned to nothing and rows of empty bean trellises, he himself looking strikingly alive, his frock coat flapping against his striding legs. Vigorous, teeming with good health and purpose. He took the two steps up to the front stoop in a single leap, bouncing on his feet.

“I’ve given revenge up. I’ve come with a future in mind, not a past,” he said and pulled flowers from—yes, one rubber muck boot. He held another, a mate, under his arm. Red roses protruded from the one he offered. Her favorite, even though they were trite, the sort of predictable flowers everyone bought to express a whole range of predictable sentiments.

She stared at them, then braced her fists on her waist,
blocking the doorway. “They didn’t hold you in jail too long, I take it?”

“No,” he said, smiling.

“How did you know where I was?”

“I threw my weight around. Brute power. I’m very fond of it. Did you honestly think you could keep me away very long?”

“I sold my farm.”

“I know.” He nodded, frowning. “But you didn’t go very far away. I’m glad.”

She shrugged. “Not enough money to do much.”

“You could have had it. You held two thousand pounds in your hand.” He pressed his mouth, then twisted it sideways into contemplation.

Why was he here? she wondered again. “Are you angry about being arrested?”

He seemed to think about the question, as if truly mulling it, then said, “No.”

“Why?’

“I killed your lamb. I’m fairly sure. I’m sorry. I didn’t know. I didn’t mean to. I wasn’t driving the coach.” He added, “Please accept my apology and these flowers and new boots.” He held his offerings out again.

She didn’t take them. “You should sack your driver, you know. He drives too fast.” Then she realized, “You’re not in London. I sent you something. You’re supposed to be there to receive it.”

“What?”

“A horse, so you can have eight sane ones.”

“Well, I’m here instead, because I want you,” he said.

“Yes, you and the British government. For fraud. None of you will ever have me though.”

Still, to see Stuart Aysgarth standing there at her own front door. Just to set her eyes on him again—it really was he! Not a dream. The sight made her eyes want to water. He was such
a handsome fellow. Tall. The sun gleaming in his dark hair. His large, beautiful-sad eyes with the darkest, most dramatic circles she had ever seen under them, as if they said,
I can’t sleep without you
.
I’m up all night. Please
.

Rubbish. She told him, “I always take up with outlandish men. I’m not having another one.”

“Ouch.” He winced. Then laughed where he stood in the shade of the meager three-foot-wide portico. “All right. I’m a little outlandish,” he admitted and held out his hands, his bootful of red, leafy flowers in one of them: as if helplessness against his own nature was a form of pleading his case. “Only a
little
!” he insisted. “And in an excellent way much of the time.”

She pressed her lips together, feeling flummoxed, confused; she didn’t dare hope.

He said, “Perhaps it simply hasn’t been the
right
outlandish man. Do we men all have to be perfect?” He pointed his finger—“What if we were?”—then wagged his finger at her, a stuttering finger trying to make a cogent point. “Then what would you do? You aren’t so perfect yourself, you know, Miss Muffin. How would you keep up with us then, hmm? Tell me that.”

She eyed him, raising one eyebrow, while she lowered the other one—a trick she’d learned from him. What did he mean,
she
wasn’t perfect?

He immediately saw his mistake. “I take it back. You are perfection personified, my dearest. A princess. A jewel. An example of everything exquisite known to comprise female form and grace.” Then he laughed.

He didn’t mean it! He wasn’t serious! “Outlandish,” she muttered.

“In love with you,” he said. “In love. Insane, upside-down-on-my-head in love. With the most splendidly imperfect woman on the planet. I wouldn’t have you any other way. Your imperfections are juicy, delicious, wonderful bits to you.” He laughed again, a smart aleck if ever she heard one: “Some of them are your best points.”

Did she like this? Well. No. All right, yes. Or at least the “in love” part.

He was in love with her?

“You aren’t,” she said bluntly.

“What?”

“In love with me.”

“Did I bring you flowers?” He added, smiling, “
And
muck boots?”

He had.

Then the indictment: “Did I not even consider rescuing my horse in London, when I was more worried about you, which by the way, they shot. I lost my horse.” His voice broke. He looked down.

“Oh, Stuart. I’m so sorry.” His crazy horse. His crazy horse was dead. She tried to help. “He wasn’t right, that animal. He was bad, he was sick. He hurt things.”

“He was beaten;
he
was hurt.”

“You can’t save all the things your father tried to destroy.”

“M-my father,” was all he could get out.

Emma’s throat grew tight for him. “I—I—ah. I bought you a beautiful new horse to be delivered today. It matches so well, you won’t be able to credit it. You’ll have eight again!”

“No.” He shook his head. “I sold my extra horse to some woman in—” His brow went up. “Oh, dear. To some woman in Yorkshire. You?”

She frowned. They both realized at the same moment, then laughed together.

After a moment, he looked at the ground and explained slowly, “My driver tells me that whenever he pulled the reins tight, the one horse went wilder than the others. He—he thinks it went for the lamb, in-in—” He couldn’t get it out. She waited, patient. “In-in
tend
ing to hurt it.” He compressed his lips taut, his expression sad, so sad, as he tried to explain. “It-it was a kind of mistake, you see. When the reins pulled tight, a pressure the horse hated, it mistook the lamb for the
enemy somehow. He thought the horrible control he was subjected to, the rein, h-had to do wi-with the lamb.”

“Yes,” she said with wonder. It occurred to her: “Like your father.”

His face filled with surprise, yet he nodded. Then he looked up. His head stayed like that a long minute, his eyes fixed on a cloud in the sky perhaps. Or a man balancing an overflow of tears he refused to shed.

They were quiet on the stoop for a moment. Quiet for a father who mistook whatever happened to be in his path for the enemy. The lambs of the world. No, Stuart couldn’t save everything his father had gone after.

After a moment, Stuart recovered and continued. “Did I bring roses and muck boots?”

She laughed and held out her hands, receiving his gifts. “Thank you.” She drew her presents to her chest.

“Did I say ‘I love you’?” he asked.

She blinked. “I don’t think so. Not those precise words.”

“Well, I do.”

Then he dumbfounded her. “Did I bring you an engagement ring so heavy that your hand will shake when you wear it?” He hesitated. “Only I’m afraid to show it to you, because now it seems excessive and I’m not even certain ya-yo-o-ou’ll take it?”

Oh. Bless his heart. Her own melted. “Oh, Stuart.” Did he do such a thing? Bring a ring? To a sheep farmer? Then stutter over it? A man who had worked most of his life around not stuttering—or at least learned how to make it his song? Oh, Stuart, don’t let me do this to you.

But he only smiled. While her throat tried to close. He bowed his head and looked down, as he sheepishly bent his elbow. He dug his hand into his coat pocket.

In the sunlight, the ring was glorious. “Ah, coo, will ye fancy that?” she said, when he dropped it into her palm. It was heavy, with a diamond the size of a pea. The ring itself
had a white ribbon tied through it, connected to a dangling little note, a slip of paper.

The note read, in Stuart’s beautifully florid script: