* * *
“You have some experience riding.” Clive kept his comment matter-of-fact.
“When I was just a girl, I rode a bay. I spent days on her back, racing over the hills, jumping fences and fallen trees. There’s nothing quite like riding a strong, fast horse.”
“How young were you?”
“Young enough that I should have ridden something less powerful.” She leaned down to pat the neck of her horse. “I haven’t ridden for the joy of riding since I left France.”
She looked over her shoulder. The inn was out of sight. There was no one on the road, ahead or behind them. The air was crisp, the ground firm. Lena spurred her horse forward, leaving Clive behind. Even a decade or more later, she still knew the land, and when she reached the cutaway described by the innkeeper, she pointed her horse onto the well-marked alternate route, reaching the churchyard in barely half an hour.
She’d raced ahead both for the thrill of a fast horse and to give herself a few minutes alone at the churchyard. When the innkeeper had said Denby, her stomach had twisted into a tight ball, and nothing—not painting herself mental pictures or casting the servants as characters from famous novels—helped. She had only one choice: to face the truth, whatever that was, and bear the consequences. She’d believed she’d met Horatio by accident, but if he knew to send her here, well, she didn’t want to think about what that meant.
Clive was wrong: the Rotunda was far safer than this pretty rural cemetery. As she stood at the gate, she felt nauseous, but not from marsh gas. She had to face a past she’d been running from almost her whole life. She should tell Clive, but he was too kind, too gentle for that confession—at least not before she knew what revelations Horatio had left her.
Chapter Twenty
By the time Clive caught up with Lena, she was talking to a village boy about the horses. For a few pennies, Clive hired the lad to walk their horses in the lane while they visited the churchyard.
With heavy clouds and old trees blocking the sun, the churchyard was gloomy. The chill in the air made it even drearier.
At the churchyard gate, Clive held up Horatio’s map. “That structure must be this squiggle with a box around it.” He stepped into the churchyard from the lane. “If these lines here are headstones, then we have to go that way, toward the hedge.”
“No, the church should be at our back, and the crypts should run along the bottom of the churchyard.” She turned the page in his hands, but she didn’t need the map, not any more. “This way.” She walked to the edge of the churchyard.
Clive followed, counting off the rows of gravestones that Horatio had scribbled into the map as if they were exact. There had been no wrought iron gate when she’d left the village, and the trees beside the gate had been striplings her father had planted when her mother had died. Seeing them grown thick and strong made her eyes water with unspent tears.
“Yes, you are right. I believe that’s the crypt there.” He pointed at a large monument, square with columns. It was a gaudy thing by any measure. Angels blowing trumpets, putti looking to heaven, and a great variety of styles and ornaments. The crypt door was a heavily ornate iron, with giant yews carved into the marble on either side.
“It’s the door to the crypt, not the gate to the cemetery. We’re lucky to have found it.” Clive tested the door. “Locked,” he called back to her.
“I’m going to investigate the other sides.” He walked around the crypt, describing each of the sides as he encountered them. “A long poem here. What you would expect: loss, grief, regret, hope for reunion.” He rounded the next corner. “Just decoration here: ornamental yews, columns, putti.” He continued on to the next side. “Ah, here it is: the inscription to the dead. Family name is Winters. One body.” Receiving no response from Lena, he read the rest silently.
Lena stared at the pile of marble, more in shock than anything. The old man had always been one for pomp, and she should have expected he would bury himself in style. He’d probably spent months designing it, then several more overseeing its installation. The only surprise was that he’d thought that far ahead.
Clive picked up the knapsack and placed Horatio’s note inside. Then, starting at the entrance door, he ran his fingers across the edges of the crypt, working his way down the front of the monument.
“What are you doing?” Lena stood, arms across her chest, holding herself in. She’d known the old man had died, and she’d mourned in her way, but she’d never expected to be looking at his grave. She found the experience unsettling.
“I’m looking for something that’s out of place. When I was ten or so, Judith’s husband invited us to his country house, and to entertain us younger boys, our brother Benjamin explained how to find the secret passages. This occasion seems to warrant the technique.”
“That line there is wrong.” She pointed but kept her distance.
“You can’t have discovered something that fast—and from a distance. It requires touch to find the secret places.”
“I’ll wait.” She sat on a nearby stone. “I’m sure you’ll work your way to it eventually.”
He sighed. “Which line is wrong?”
“The border near the bottom.”
He bent down to the ground, examining the course of the line with his fingers as well as eyes. He felt a small bump along the edge of the egg and dart design. “How did you see that?”
“I’m an artist. I’ve spent my life looking at patterns.” Lena sounded angry, and she bit her tongue. There was no reason to be difficult with Clive. He’d been kind, more than kind. She added apologetically, “That’s where Horatio’s arrow pointed.”
“What arrow?” Clive looked up from the crypt.
She carried Horatio’s note to Clive, positioning herself so that the crypt’s inscription was too oblique to read. “That one.”
He looked the note over, shaking his head. “You didn’t mention it?”
“I wasn’t certain we would get this far, and an arrow would have given you incentive.” Curious about how the old man had described himself, she stepped in front of the inscription. The words were like a hit to her stomach.
“Incentive.” He tested the area around where the arrow pointed. “Keeping you alive wasn’t incentive enough?”
“I’ve managed that quite successfully on my own, though you have proved helpful.” Silent tears ran down her cheeks in salt-wet trails.
“You’re crying,” he observed, surprised. “You never cry, not when we discover dead bodies or damage to your panorama. Is this the crypt of someone you know?”
“A friend. I expected it to be someone else’s, not hers.” One tear reached the edge of her mouth before she brushed it away with the back of her hand. “I don’t know why I’m crying. She’s been dead a long time.”
“Ten years.” He pressed above and below the indicated corner, but nothing happened.
“How did you know that?” Lena felt exposed by her tears.
“The date of her death. It’s on the epitaph. ‘Here lies Frances H. Winters, beloved daughter. 1793 to 1805.’”
“Her death notice in the papers said much the same thing: ‘beloved daughter.’ Then it made me angry.”
“And today?”
“It merely makes me sad. After her mother died, he was mercurial, and she was the one who suffered for it.”
“Sometimes grief cuts both ways. A child loses one parent to death and the other to grief.”
“If he grieved, it was for something other than the loss of love.”
“You cannot measure all griefs on the example of one bad father and his mistreated child. What of your own parents?”
“I was a child of the streets, adopted by chance and luck, and grateful for both.”
“Then your guardian—the one who adopted you—surely he taught you the power of friendship.”
“She was my friend, yes, but having lived at court, she taught me to be wary of others, even as you enjoyed their company.”
“That’s a bit pessimistic.” When she didn’t respond, he continued. “Why would Calder send us to the tomb of your childhood friend?”
“I don’t know.” She wiped the tears from her cheeks and tried to sound matter-of-fact. “But we haven’t searched his hiding place yet.”
Clive, taking the cue, returned to his search.
“The egg and dart don’t line up exactly here, and this dart is thicker than the rest.” He pushed in. Below it, a drawer jutted out, and he pulled it free. In it was a document folded over to resemble a little book. Lettered on the outside in her father’s hand was her name: “Lena Frost.”
Lena felt the ground shift under her feet, and for a moment she thought she might faint. She struggled to breathe. But the moment passed.
As she tried to regain her equilibrium, a silver-haired man approached, dressed in old clothes, carrying a book and a trowel. Clive stepped in front of Lena, giving her time to slip her father’s note into her sleeve.
Clive held out his hand in greeting. “My good sir! Can you tell us something of this monument?”
The man assessed Clive, then Lena. “A bright, sunny child, Miss Helen was. She died at boarding school, and her father was heartsick at her loss.”
“We can tell that from the monument.” Clive noticed that Lena was standing very still. “We were wondering if there were more to the story.”
The man grew silent, clearly unwilling to tell tales.
Lena spoke up. “Helen and I were bosom friends at Mrs. Edstein’s school in Nottingham. She was always begging her father to go home.”
“Ah, then you knew her. Some think that a fancy tomb can make up for all manner of guilt.” The old man shook his head. “Baron Winters was a changeable man, excited one day, desolate the next, and drunk in between. Even as a wee girl, Miss Helen managed him, so when he sent her to school in Nottingham we thought it would be a blessing for the child.”
“Mrs. Edstein’s school was more like a hell.” Lena rubbed the cuff of her sleeve, using her thumb to keep the document out of sight. “And Helen could never submit when the headmistress was unfair or capricious.”
“Aye. That were our Miss Helen, a just child, as different from her father as milk from water. As long as she was docile, her father indulged her in every whim. But his pride couldn’t allow her to oppose him. I was a groom then in the baron’s stables, and I helped ready the carriage that took her to school that last time. It broke me heart: the poor child threw herself, weeping, at her father’s feet, and begged him to let her stay.”
“What happened then?” Clive studied the old man, noting his clothes, his hands, his book.
“A sin it was. Her father kicked her aside, then dragged her by her clothes through the gravel to the carriage. It wrenched all our hearts to see her treated so. Soon after we heard she had died at that school, and within the year, he’d married again.”
“Who did he marry?” Lena’s voice was narrow and strained.
“The headmistress, Mrs. Edstein, herself. The baron was quite taken with her, even started her a school for mill children when she grew restive. But when the children started refusing to go, we all realized—the baron included—that Miss Helen had not exaggerated Edstein’s cruelties. At least the old baron did right by his child in the end.”
“How, if she was dead?” Clive looked from Lena to the old man.
“His will cut Lady Winters out, giving her only a pittance to live on.” The silver-haired man pursed his lips and nodded his head slowly. Then staring solidly in Lena’s face, he added, “The rest is in trust, waiting for Miss Helen to return.”
“In trust? For a dead girl?” The answer offended Clive’s logical sensibilities. “Surely he knew that was impossible.”
“Shortly before he died, the old baron confided in the curate and his housekeeper that Miss Helen didn’t die. She ran away. The old man was so angry she defied him, that he announced she was dead and gave her this tomb. But he left her the estate, and for another five years, she can claim it—if of course she can answer the questions the baron left with his solicitors. He left the curate with a list of clues to jog Miss Helen’s memory, but the clues have gone missing, and we think her ladyship paid for them to disappear. She isn’t an old woman, Lady Winters, and five years isn’t that long to wait.”
“Where is Lady Winters?” Clive put his arm around Lena’s shoulders, rubbing the outside of her arm as if she were cold.
“She’s lady of the manor and a bitter one. None of the local girls will work in her kitchen, so she brings in servants from London or Manchester, but they never stay more than a month or two. She has a companion now, and the whole town pities the poor woman.”
“How do you know so much about her?” Lena ventured quietly.
“Secrets are hard to keep in a village. My wife—generous soul that she is—invited her ladyship to tea when she first arrived, and Lady Winters treats it as a perpetual invitation. Arrives each week at the same time, expecting tea and cakes, she does. On those days, I visit Miss Helen or the baron—over there under that yew. He used to sit by Miss Helen’s crypt for hours, and I would join him. He was a kinder man in the years before his death, perhaps even a father Miss Helen could have been proud of, but t’were too late for that.”
Lena turned toward the monument once more, her hand clenched at her side, her back rod straight. “That foolish old man. He could have . . .” She let the words trail off. She felt dizzy, out of sorts, inexpressibly sad, and angry all at once.
“He could have what?” Clive asked.
“You wouldn’t understand.” She picked up her reticule and walked away, the stiffness of her shoulders and the tilt of her head revealing more of her anger than any words.
Clive took a few steps, then paused, uncertain of what comfort he might offer.
“You should follow her, boy, if you love her,” the old man said.
“I’m not certain she wishes to have company.” Clive watched as she walked farther into the churchyard.
“Aye, that might be so. She can send you away, if that’s the case, and then you can stay away. But it’s better for her to tell you to go than for you to assume she doesn’t want you.”
“That makes no sense. You’re telling me to ignore her express wishes to be left alone.”
“I’m telling you that girl is upset and angry, and she doesn’t know how to accept help or even kindness. Her hurts run deep—betrayal, abandonment. She was cast out on her own before she could understand what that meant.”
“What hurts? What betrayal?” Clive stared at the old man as if he were a fortune-teller.
“Ah, that’s for her to tell you, if you decide to follow her.”
“And if I decide not to? If I decide to listen to what she says?”
“Then she might come back to you.”
“Might?”
“If you follow her, you might learn what she’s thinking. If you stay here, it’s certain you’ll never know. But if you stay near to her, even when she pushes you away as now, she might come to believe that you aren’t going to leave her or let her go without a fight.”
“I don’t understand.” Clive shook his head, furrowing his brow.
“But that’s the beauty of it: you don’t have to. If you love her, you only have to be present. You don’t have to ask questions, or give her solutions. You simply have to be available for her.”
“I think I can do that.” Clive felt the knowledge that he loved Lena deep in his bones.
“Then you should go. The longer you wait, the harder it will be for her to believe you are sincere.”
“Your congregation is very lucky in their parson.”
“Oh, I’m not the parson, my boy. I’m the bell ringer. But I’ve listened to whatever parson we’ve had for the last fifty years, and more than that, I have a wife of my own.”
“Thank you.” He shook the bell ringer’s hand. Turning down the path Lena had taken, he saw her back in the near distance. Tw
o men, large and unsavory, stepped into the path before her. He couldn’t hear their words, but he could tell from the way she recoiled that they had accosted her.
“What ho!” Clive called out, gripping his walking stick with both hands. A present from his brother Colin, the walking stick pulled apart to reveal a rapier. But he delayed showing it. Weapons always made a situation more dangerous if the opposition was prone to take offense. “May I offer my aid?”
The men looked from Lena to Clive and back again. Lena took advantage of Clive’s distraction to step backward, out of immediate reach. She pulled a thin blade, not much longer than a penknife, from her reticule. Immediately—as Clive had feared—the men’s stances grew more belligerent.
She pointed the narrow knife toward them. “Don’t underestimate the power of my blade.”
“You can’t possibly think we are afraid of a little knife or a little woman.” The youngest of the men stepped forward menacingly, though the older man stepped back.
“Then you aren’t very wise.” Lena let the light glint on the blade. “A small blade can easily puncture a lung or kidney. If I aim for the right place, you will be in the grave by nightfall.”
The older man pulled the younger man back. “Our employer wants information, and he hasn’t any patience with those who don’t give it.”
“Information about what?” Clive motioned Lena to step farther out of reach.
“We’re looking for our former associate, Mr. Seamus Byrne.” The older man assessed Clive’s strength.
“I know no one of that name.” Lena stepped closer to Clive.
“He’s Horatio now, Horatio Calder. We saw his map at the Rotunda, and we followed it here.” The man leered at Lena. “He’s got a partner supposed to look like the lady here.”
“I’ve met his partner,” Clive interjected. “She’s severe, sharp-tongued, and demanding, not the kind of woman a man would want to spend time with.”
Reckless in Red Page 26
