by Jane Ashford
“Indeed, my lord.”
A knock at the door heralded the entry of Tom. They’d formed the habit of chatting in the half hour before dinner, which Tom insisted on taking with the servants. Which was undoubtedly wise, Arthur thought, as Tom tended to be. Could such sensitivity simply be innate? He enjoyed hearing about the lad’s adventures, and in this case his description of the pageant rehearsal seemed promising. Arthur didn’t see just how at present, but it had certainly brought his targets together in an interesting way.
“When is Mrs. Thorpe coming?” asked Tom.
“A few days before the performance, I believe,” answered the earl. “It’s not as if she needs much rehearsal to recite a speech of Lady Macbeth’s.” Mrs. Thorpe had played the part on the London stage, to great renown.
“That Mr. Benson says the play ain’t true,” said Tom. “Claims Shakespeare got it all wrong. Can you do that?”
“What?”
“Call Shakespeare a liar. Ain’t he kind of sacred, like?”
“Drama critics have never thought so,” answered Arthur with some amusement.
“He’s trying to get the pageant to call off that scene,” Tom added. “Do you reckon we should tell Mrs. Thorpe?”
Arthur considered the matter. “I don’t think it’s our place to do so. I suspect the organizers won’t want to offend one of the foremost actresses in London. After she has agreed to come all the way up here.”
Tom accepted this with his customary good humor and proceeded to tell them more about his part in the pageant.
“It sounds like an interesting spectacle,” said Arthur when he finished. “Perhaps I’ll go by and watch a rehearsal one day.”
“Colonel Patterson’s liable to pull you into helping if you do,” responded Tom with a grin.
“Colonel Selwyn Patterson?”
“I don’t know his first name, my lord.”
“Not a large man, but a commanding manner and a fierce gaze. White hair, wiry. I suppose he’s about sixty years of age.”
“That fits,” said Tom.
“I’m acquainted with him.” Arthur wondered if this connection would be any help to his plans. He couldn’t see how at present, but one never knew.
Seven
Roger went out riding the next day at the same time he’d encountered Fenella before, and along the same path. There were clouds today, but the firm sand at the edge of the waves still beckoned, offering an invigorating wind and a sense of boundless freedom. As he’d hoped, after a while a figure on a glossy gray horse appeared, riding toward him. Fenella handled her spirited mount expertly, he thought as she came closer. Of all the ways she’d changed, this one was the most observable. “Shall we ride together?” he suggested.
She smiled at him, and for an instant Roger felt as if his heart had stopped. Had she ever offered him such an easy, open smile before? He couldn’t recall one. It lit her face and fired his spirits. “Let’s,” she replied, turning her horse.
They took a broad, smooth path that led inland from the North Sea, with no large stones or rabbit holes to endanger a horse’s legs. After a bit, Fenella drew ahead. Roger caught up and overtook her, just by a head. Fenella urged her horse to more speed and moved a little to the front. He did the same. She followed suit. And then they were galloping full tilt, side by side, bent over their saddlebows, grinning into the wind.
Roger’s mount was larger, but he was a heavier burden. She managed her reins with enviable skill. They were remarkably evenly matched, he thought as they hurtled across the countryside, clods of earth flying in their wake. The impromptu race was the most exhilarating thing he could remember in recent months.
When they at last pulled up, Fenella was laughing. Strands of ruddy hair had pulled loose and curled about her face under her small cocked hat. Her face was flushed, her blue eyes sparkling. She looked absolutely enchanting. Then a frown creased her brow. “How funny,” she said. “We’ve come to the Duddo Stones.”
Roger turned and saw the circle on a low rise a little way off. The gray stones stood out against a sky of racing clouds. “I didn’t mean to head here,” he said.
He would have turned away, but Fenella signaled her horse and rode up the incline. Roger dismounted when she did and followed her inside the circle.
The four standing stones were only about his own height, and yet they had a presence that made them seem larger. “You can see the Cheviot Hills from here,” said Fenella, pointing south. She turned. “And the Lammermuirs up north. It’s no wonder they built their monument here.”
“They?”
“The old people. That’s what my nurse used to call them. Whoever set up these kinds of places. There are others not far away, you know.”
“Yes.”
“People still leave offerings at some of them.” Fenella ran her hand along one of the lichened stones.
“What sort of offerings?”
“Flowers. Ribbons. Prayers and requests? I don’t know.”
“You’ve never done so?” She smiled at him again, and Roger felt that novel soaring sensation in his chest.
“No,” she said. “Why didn’t I think of that, when my father was being difficult? Do you think some old spirit would have helped me? What did they call them? Genius loci?”
Roger couldn’t be bothered with Latin. He couldn’t be silent, and yet he didn’t know just what to say. “Have you ever… Do you think we… When you came back from Scotland…and then this last year.” He paused to gather his wits. Why were words so dashed difficult? “I said and did some things—”
“You kept saying I killed Arabella,” she interrupted. She looked out over the panorama, her expression unreadable. “But you’ve apologized. Remember?”
It wasn’t as if his lost wife was here. She was gone. But the constraint that had bound them during her life lingered. Roger made a rejecting gesture. “I was an idiot. Full of anger and guilt.”
She blinked at the last word, but didn’t ask what he meant.
“I’ve done more than apologize,” Roger added. “I’ve told people I was wrong. My mother. Macklin. I’ll tell everyone.”
Still she didn’t look at him. “It might be better just not to speak of it,” she replied. “People have forgotten.”
Conscious that he had repeated the accusation a few months ago, Roger cringed. But that had been far away, in London. He would never say it again. Should anyone mention the idiocy, he would contradict them.
“There’s something unusual about this place,” said Fenella, pointedly changing the subject. “It’s almost as if we’re in a room, cut off from the countryside.” She walked around the circle, trailing her fingers over the whole rank of standing stones. When she’d made the entire circuit, she glanced at him. “Do you feel that? Or do you think I’m being fanciful?”
He didn’t think so. The air felt thicker and warmer here inside the stone circle. His ears buzzed. There were bees in the clover at the foot of the stones, but the sound seemed louder than that. A sweet scent fogged his senses.
Roger gazed through the space between two menhirs. The rolling hills looked too far away, as if viewed through the wrong end of a telescope. He suddenly understood the stories of fairy rings, where one stepped out of the familiar and entered another realm.
“We must hope that years won’t have passed when we leave,” said Fenella, echoing his thoughts.
He turned to look at her, and his memory finally gave him scattered images from their previous visit here. She’d bent over him when he fell from his horse those years ago. He’d seen her haloed by the sun like a descending angel. She’d put gentle fingers to the cut on his head. Despite his rudeness and really bumptious behavior, despite her fears, she’d tended him. Just as she’d brought him the tonic for his stomach when she noticed his pain. Which she’d had no reason to heed. She was kind through and through
.
“Is something wrong?” she asked.
Abruptly, Roger’s life spread out in his mind, a panorama of fits and starts, achievements and mistakes. At the same time, he was aware of Fenella in incredible detail. He admired the delicate curl of her eyelashes, the beautiful line of her lips, the intelligence in her eyes, and the grace of her carriage. His mind held a history of her image, beginning in childhood and running up to this moment. And it added up to the fact that this was the woman for him. Immaturity and interference had prevented him from knowing this for far too long. “May I court you?” he blurted out.
“Court?” She looked startled.
He felt his cheeks flush. How did a man gain the kind of finesse that his houseguest Macklin, for example, so amply possessed? Courting was a silly word. Yet it expressed his desire to deserve her, to win her, after the way he’d behaved.
“No,” Fenella said.
Roger felt as if his heart had dropped to his feet. She didn’t want him. He’d wrecked his life.
“My father would be too smug,” she added. “I can hear him going on and on, and on, about what a waste it was. Years of upheaval for nothing, and now we’re right where he wanted us in the first place. If we’d only listened, only done as he commanded. It would be so vastly irritating.”
Roger dared to feel some relief. Those weren’t heartfelt reasons. She hadn’t said she disliked him. He bent to catch her gaze and searched for an answer in her eyes. They softened under his anxious scrutiny, and she smiled. “What about a clandestine courtship?” he asked. Fenella laughed, and he felt as if he had indeed been reprieved.
“What?” she asked. “Hidden trysts and secret meetings?”
“What else is this?”
“A chance encounter of two neighbors?”
“No.”
“What?”
“It wasn’t chance. I was looking for you.”
“Were you?”
She didn’t seem angry, Roger thought. More…speculative? Was that it? He watched as a series of expressions passed over her beautiful features. He thought he saw doubt, interest, even yearning. But who could be sure?
Then she stepped closer, very close, stood on tiptoe, and kissed him.
It was a soft, sweet, simple kiss. And yet desire shot through him like a lightning bolt. He would have crushed her to him, but she drew back. One step, and then another. “Well,” she said. “That was…umm.”
“Tremendous,” said Roger. He reached out, longing to kiss her again.
But Fenella moved farther away. “Unexpected,” she said.
“How so? You kissed me.”
She acknowledged it with a nod. “Why did I do that?” She looked around at the stone circle. “There’s something about this place.”
“As if the rules don’t apply here.”
She looked surprised. “Yes, something like that.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “They do, however.”
Roger accepted his fate and moved a step back. “Still, I’m glad you did it.” He hoped she would say the same.
But Fenella appeared lost in thought. “I didn’t know it would be so—”
“Wonderful?”
She gave him a sidelong look.
“Mustn’t get ahead of myself,” Roger said, then bit his lip in chagrin. He hadn’t meant to say that aloud. He quickly suppressed a desire to leap and laugh in triumph. “Perhaps we could try it again some time?”
“Possibly,” said Fenella. “Clandestinely.”
The small smile that played about her lips made Roger’s pulse pound. “Absolutely. Have you a trusted maid who can carry my forbidden letters to you?”
“What?” She burst out laughing. “No, of course I don’t. Do you want all the servants gossiping about us?”
“Then how shall we arrange our trysts?”
“We see each other often.”
A few glances at church or a dinner party, Roger thought. It wasn’t nearly enough. He said so. Then he remembered. “The old oak.”
“The hollow tree where your gang left messages for each other?”
“You knew about that?” Roger asked.
“All the neighborhood children did. We read them, too.”
Roger felt ridiculously chagrined. His troop of friends had thought the hidey-hole in the old tree’s trunk was a deep secret. Now he found his boyish schemes had been common knowledge. But that was years ago. He had no reason to feel betrayed. “We could meet there,” he said. “At the oak.”
The idea seemed to amuse her. “All right.” She turned away. “I must go back. My father gets restive if I’m away too long.” She stepped out of the stone circle. “No roll of thunder,” she commented. “I haven’t suddenly aged a hundred years or my clothes fallen into dust.”
“Pity,” said Roger.
For an instant he hoped that the word hadn’t actually left his lips. That he’d only, fleetingly, seen that dizzying picture in his mind. But then they both flushed, the bane of redheads. He’d spoken.
Fenella walked away. But she gave him a speaking glance over her shoulder. “And by the way, I was never anything like a sheep,” she declared.
“No. You were some far more elusive animal, always slipping out of sight at the edge of perception. Not there if one turned to look.”
She stared at him. Roger was as surprised as she by the phrases that had come from his mouth. Very nearly eloquent, he thought. How had that happened?
They returned to the horses, cropping grass outside the circle. Roger reached out to help her into the saddle. “I could stand on that rock,” she said, pointing to a low boulder.
“So near a fairy circle? Never.”
She laughed and let him lift her. Roger kept his hands on her waist for one warm moment, and then went to mount up.
They rode back the way they’d come, much more slowly. Shafts of sun broke through the clouds, illuminating swaths of heath before closing up again.
“Why are you taking care of your father?” Roger asked after a while. “I seem to remember that he always treated your sisters better.”
“I’m the spinster daughter,” Fenella answered as if this was obvious. “We’re meant to nurse aging parents, aren’t we?” She made a wry face. “And mind our errant nephews.”
“Spinster,” he snorted. He couldn’t imagine any woman less suited to the word.
“Greta and Nora have families and households to manage,” she said. “I don’t mind helping out. And should the situation grow impossible—if Papa decided he wished me away, for instance—I can go back to Grandmamma. She’d welcome me.”
Recognizing how much he didn’t want that, Roger dropped the subject.
They rode on, sometimes silent, sometimes talking, until the tower of Chatton Castle appeared on the horizon. Soon they would have to separate if they really meant to keep their ride private. Fenella was about to say as much when two figures popped out of the long grass at the side of the path. It was John and Tom. So much for clandestine, she thought as they rode closer.
“I’ve got a smooth snake,” shouted her nephew. He held up the creature in question, gripping it behind the head.
“Aren’t all snakes smooth?” asked Roger.
“I have never had the least desire to find out,” she replied.
The boys trotted toward them. “You hardly ever find them so far north,” John said. “This one must be an adventurer!” He held it out.
Fenella suppressed a flinch and examined the brown snake. A double row of small, rather indistinct dark spots ran down its back toward the tail. Four parallel, shadowy stripes ornamented its back and flanks. The snake was winding around John’s arm as if to squeeze it. “Not a viper?” she asked.
“No,” John scoffed. “This isn’t poisonous. But you know what, Aunt Fenella? Smooth snakes are one of the ones th
at don’t lay eggs. They have live young.”
“Like a dog or cat?” asked Roger.
John winced, but nodded. “They’re very rare here. And secretive. I was dashed lucky to find it.”
Tom was watching them, not the snake, Fenella noticed. His homely face was full of friendly curiosity. No, clandestine was right off for this particular outing, she concluded. Tom didn’t seem like a gossip, but she suspected he told Lord Macklin everything he got up to. Their expedition would undoubtedly be mentioned to the earl. Probably that didn’t matter. Macklin was unlikely to care about the affairs of a stranger.
* * *
At that moment, the earl in question and Roger’s mother were sitting in the Chatton Castle garden once again. Having established their status as simply friends, they found they enjoyed a daily chat. Arthur suspected that Helena was lonely, now that she was a widow, and he understood that feeling very well. “Another splendid afternoon,” he commented. The sea rolled away to the horizon beyond the castle walls. There were wisps of streaming clouds but no threat of rain. Bees were busy in the flowers and at the hives down the garden. Sweet scents wafted through the air.
“We often have a stretch of fine weather in August,” Lady Chatton replied. Her face, shaded by a parasol, was serene.
“I suppose it’s quite a different prospect in the winter.”
She nodded. “Oh yes. We get some tremendous storms. The spray can reach all the way up the walls. And the days are very short then. The sun is down by four o’clock.”
It seemed to Arthur that Chatton must be a desolate place at that season. But he didn’t like to say so.
“The thing to do is make it cozy inside,” she added, as if answering his thought. “And find pleasant occupations. We often play…played chess.” Arthur tried to hide his surprise, but she noticed and laughed. “You don’t think me capable. Raymond didn’t either. He taught me the moves as if I was an amusing child and would soon grow bored with the game. How I cherish the memory of the first time I beat him in a match. He was dumbfounded.”
“Did he mind?” Arthur asked. Many men would.
