Carried Away
Page 25
They fought and argued and played tricks on her. They hid when she called them and pretended she wasn’t in the room when she tried to talk to them. She found sand in all her clothes and they greased the doorknobs in her room and the inside of the bathing room. No two children could wreak the havoc they had.
They weren’t human. They couldn’t be.
But then why was she surprised? Their father wasn’t human either. No one but David was human in this godforsaken place and he’d been gone to the other side of the island for two days, fishing and trapping lobster with Fergus.
Her shoulders sagged back into the overstuffed chair and a puff of dust clouded around her. She sneezed, then rubbed her pounding temples.
Something sharp poked her in the backside. She lifted one hip and pulled out a sharp piece of walnut shell.
She rolled her eyes and flung it over her shoulder. “What’s one more shell in a room that looks like . . . ” She paused in thought. “Hell?”
“Miss Georgina!” Graham hollered, his feet thudding on the hall floors. “Miss Georgina!”
“There is no God,” she muttered, just as the doors burst open with such force they rattled against the walls.
She flinched. She lifted the hand that was covering her tired eyes and frowned at him. “Can you not just walk?”
“I was in a hurry.”
“You’re always in a hurry.”
“I have to be in a hurry. Otherwise Kirsty would get here first.”
“Heaven forfend.” She took a deep breath. “What do you want, child?”
“There was frost on the eaves and the trees this morning.”
“Okay.” She nodded as if she knew what that meant. “Frost.”
“Uh-huh.” He nodded like a sage. Then said absolutely nothing else. He was too busy rummaging in his pockets, taking out rocks and string and shells and something that looked horribly like a dead bug.
“Did you tell her?” Kirsty stood in the doorway, rocking on her heels and looking exactly like a small female version of her father. Blond hair, green eyes, a look that said she had Georgina pegged.
“Yeah.”
Kirsty turned to her and put her hands on her hips. “Well?”
“Well what?”
Kirsty gave a mammoth sigh. “Can we go?”
“Go where?”
She turned and scowled at Graham. “I thought you said you told her?”
“I did.” He was holding up an earthworm.
Georgina shuddered.
“Then how come she doesn’t know what I’m talking about?”
Graham shrugged.
“Why don’t you just tell me what you want, Kirsty?”
“Because Graham was supposed to. It’s his turn, not mine.” She crossed her arms over her small bony chest just like her father.
“Fine,” Georgina stood up. “Then the answer is no.”
Kirsty’s arm dropped to her sides. “How can you say no if you don’t even know what we want?”
“Easy. One word. One syllable. No. En. Oh.”
Kirsty just stared at her for a long time. The child despised her and made no point of hiding it. From the first moment she came back from staying with Fergus, she couldn’t look at Georgina without a challenge in her eyes.
She was smart as a whip and had a quick mind that kept Georgina on her toes, but she also found the girl entertaining, when she wasn’t exhausted like she was now. It was interesting to see what the child would say next. She eyed her for a long time. After all, she was the adult here. But for the briefest of moments she wondered exactly what the little girl was thinking.
From way in the back of the house, another door slammed shut. The windows rattled in this room.
“It’s Father!” Kirsty jumped up and down, then raced Graham out the door and down the hall.
“Ah. The prodigal father returns,” Georgina mumbled.
A few moments later Eachann strode into the room, a child on each side of him. He looked around the room. “Have you seen my riding crop?”
“No.”
“It’s got to be around here somewhere.”
“There were five in your closet.”
“They won’t work. I need this one. It has a special new leather grip.”
She rolled her eyes. A riding crop was a riding crop.
“Aren’t you going to help me look for it?”
“I’m not being paid to look for your riding crop.”
He straightened and gave her a pointed look.
“I’m a nursemaid, not a slave.”
Kirsty gave her a belligerent glare that mirrored her father’s. “If you’re a maid, why don’t you clean up the house?”
“A nursemaid doesn’t clean. She watches children.”
Kirsty planted her hands on her hips again. “Then why do they call her a maid?”
Before Georgina could answer she heard a loud clop clop clop down the hallway.
What was that?
A white horse came lumbering into the room.
Georgina screamed and stepped backward. She fell over a two-foot stack of horse journals.
“What’s wrong?” Eachann looked at her like she was crazy.
She waved a finger at the horse. “There’s a horse in the house!”
He glanced up. “Oh. That’s Jack.”
“Jack is Father’s favorite horse,” Kirsty informed her while Graham was busy tying something to the horse’s mane.
“But it’s in the house!”
“Don’t worry. He’s housebroken.”
Housebroken? “But it’s a horse.”
“Aye.” He scoured through more of the junk on the floor.
“Horses belong in the stable.”
“He doesn’t like the stable.” Eachann paused and glanced at her. His expression changed suddenly as if he just remembered himself. He walked toward her.
And here she thought he wasn’t going to help her up. She struggled a little, then reached out her hand.
Eachann walked right past it. “There’s my crop!” He bent down and pulled it out from under her and the journals, then he turned and went back over to the horse. “Thanks, George.” He saluted her with the crop.
“Miss Georgina won’t take us to the cove, Father,” Graham whined.
“She won’t.” He looked back at her. “Why won’t you take them to cove?”
“I never said I wouldn’t.”
“Yes, you did,” Kirsty argued. “You said no. En. Oh.”
“Take them to the cove. As you said, that’s what I pay you for.” He mounted the horse and rested an elbow on the saddle. “It’ll do you good. You could use the exercise. A nice little walk in the sand will build strength in your legs. You need some strength in your legs, George. Then you won’t have so much trouble getting up.”
He rode the horse right out of the room, leaving Georgina struggling to get up so she could kill him.
Chapter 47
Sailing blossoms, silver fishes,
Paven pools as clear as air—
How a child wishes
To live down there!
—Robert Louis Stevenson
Kirsty, Graham, and Miss George walked down the hill to Piper’s Cove. Kirsty and Graham ran ahead, racing to see who would reach the sand first.
“I’m first! I’m first!” Graham hollered like the silly old boy he was.
Kirsty pretended like she didn’t care. “Let’s play firsts! I see the first seagull!” She pointed up at the sky.
“I see the first sand crab!” Graham fell to his knees in the wet sand and scooped up handfuls of sand and scuttling crabs.
“I see the first grass.” Miss George stood in a clump of grass on the dunes near a great pine tree.
Kirsty looked at her. “That’s not plain old grass.”
“It isn’t?”
“It’s called poverty grass.”
Miss George looked down at the grass and gave a short laugh. “Oh, then this must be my spot.”
“Somehow it seems fitting. I’ll sit here.” She plopped down in the grass and looked “moor-rosed.”
Kirsty remembered that spelling word too. Although she could never figure out how the Moors and a rose could mean something very sad, unless the Moors trampled all the roses in Spain.
“I don’t suppose there’s any wealthy grass around here, is there?”
“There’s no such thing as wealthy grass,” Graham informed her in a tone that said he thought she was dumb.
“Rich grass?”
Graham shook his head.
“Now, why am I not surprised,” she said, then hugged her knees and rested her chin on them.
It seemed to Kirsty as if Miss George was having a whole conversation all by herself.
She turned around and spotted Graham holding something shiny.
“What’s that?”
“Nothing.” He hid it behind his back really fast, so she knew it was something.
“Let me see.”
“No.” He ran down the beach.
Kirsty ran after him. “What is it?”
Graham ran past her, holding up a silver bottle. “Look what I have,” he said in a singsong voice.
Kirsty tried to grab the bottle, but Graham danced away, laughing and pointing and taunting her like dumb boys always did.
She dove for his feet but missed. Graham laughed and turned to run . . . right into Miss George.
“What are you two fighting over?”
“Nothing,” Graham lied.
“A silver bottle,” Kirsty said at the same time.
“It’s mine!”
“No, it’s not!”
“Hand it over.” Miss George held out her hand.
Graham looked at her hand, then put the bottle in it. She held it up to the sunlight. “Doesn’t look like it’s worth anything. But if you two are going to fight over it, neither of you can have it.” She drew her arm back and flung the bottle far out into the sea, then turned back to them. “That should teach you two to stop fighting over everything.”
Kirsty and Graham looked at each other. “It was just a dumb old bottle,” she whispered to her brother. “It looked really old, probably older than Miss George. And it’s gone now.”
Graham nodded. Like most things, he probably only cared about it because she wanted to see it.
“Let’s find real live firsts!” she said.
Kirsty and Graham then ran along the water, splashing each other and seeing who could find “the first live firsts.” Kirsty found the first starfish, but Graham had found the first crab. Then Kirsty chased the first sandpipers that were teetering along the shore.
Miss George hadn’t found the first of anything, even though she had made one try.
Kirsty looked at her. She was standing near a great pine tree and she was staring off in the distance, out at the sea and beyond as if it was going to give her some important answer.
Kirsty turned away, then whipped her head back around. “Look! Graham. I have the first blue heron! Look! It’s the first blue heron! The very first!” She pointed at a huge rock covered in windflowers, and tucked into one end of the cove, right next to that rock, stood a heron that was almost four feet high.
A second later the great bird pulled his long neck in and took off, wings flapping as he climbed high into the sky, squawking, “Frahnk, frahnk, frahnk!” She watched him soar until he was only a small black dash in the sky.
When Kristy turned back around, she saw that Miss George had taken off her shoes and stockings and she was standing in the water, holding her skirt up around her knees while the waves slapped at them. She was laughing.
Kirsty stared at her, gaped at her if the truth be told. She hadn’t imagined Miss George laughing. Really laughing, anyway. She had never seen her laugh. She seemed so . . . not angry really, except when they had played tricks on her, but so . . . well, unhappy all the time. She must be lonely if she had to talk to herself.
Sometimes Kirsty had to work hard to remember that she didn’t like her. Sometimes when she looked at Miss George, all she saw was the pretty lady with the long shiny hair that was the color of night and the white skin and clear blue eyes. She knew that Miss George had tried to be nice to her and Graham.
But Graham never paid attention, because he was a boy and boys didn’t pay attention, and Kirsty didn’t want to like her. She wanted to not like her because she didn’t want a pretty woman like Miss George to take her father away from her.
Kirsty wondered what a pretty woman like her had to be unhappy about. Then she realized that she, herself, was unhappy a lot of the time and she wasn’t ugly. Maybe Miss George didn’t have a mother and maybe her father didn’t want her around. Maybe she was lonely and scared like Kirsty.
Another wave came in and slapped her legs and Miss George laughed louder, so Kirsty turned around because it confused her when she saw her being a real person like her and Graham. She wanted to think of her as an enemy like Miss Harrington and Chester Farriday. They were easy to not like.
She heard a horse whicker and turned. Her father was riding Jack and they stood high on the rise above the cove. She waved, but he didn’t wave back. Her hand fell to her side and she just stood there, feeling silly and ashamed for waving at him.
He wasn’t looking at her. She followed his gaze. He was watching Miss George.
Kirsty stood there for a long time watching Miss George. She was walking through the water, not paying any attention to her or to Graham.
“Look! I got the first lobster!” Graham was standing on a rock ledge. He was tugging a lobster trap that they’d found in an old boat on the other side of the island. Fergus fished for lobster all the time and he had told them how to use it.
Kirsty ran over to look at the lobster. “For something that tastes so good it sure is ugly.”
Graham was squatting down beside the cage and he was poking a stick inside the trap and watching the lobster grab it. “Look at those pinchers! I bet he can pinch even harder than you can.”
Kirsty looked at the lobster, then back to the spot where her father had been. He was gone now. She glanced out at Miss George, who was walking up the sand, her skirt flapping in the wind and her hand shading her eyes.
Kirsty was very, very quiet, then she looked at Graham and said, “If you want to test those pinchers, I have a great idea.”
“Sure.” Graham nodded.
Boys were always so easy.
Chapter 48
Whenever the moon and stars are set,
Whenever the wind is high,
All night long in the dark and wet,
A man goes riding by.
Late at night when the fires are out,
Why does he gallop and gallop about?
—Robert Louis Stevenson
Georgina had come here every night, to this spot just below the hemlock tree that looked as if it sprouted right out of the granite cliff. It was cold tonight, colder than it had been the night before. Graham had told her there was frost in the mornings now, icing the trees and ground.
Had this year been like all the other years, had she been at home in the family town house in Boston, she would have never noticed the moon or when the first frost came or if the night was colder than the night before.
She would have been too busy, flitting from soiree to soiree, toasting friends who weren’t really friends with glass after glass of champagne. Laughing and dancing, probably with John Cabot, whose nose came to her shoulder and whose bald head had been known to catch the glare of the glittering gaslights in a ballroom.
She leaned back against the trunk of the tree and watched the orange moon rise, a bright ball of fire against the deepest purple sky you had ever seen. That moon was so bright it almost hurt to look at it.
The leaves had begun to fall the past few days, floating down the ground every afternoon when the sea breeze
blew in. Now the harvest moon turned those leaves bright gold.
It was beautiful here on this isolated island, especially at night. She left the tree and walked along the trail, listening to the leaves crackle under her feet.
She went up the hillside, back into a meadow where a winding path led to a small bridge near a pond. A pair of swans were sleeping in a cluster near the bridge, their heads tucked safely under their wings.
Georgina walked along the edge of the pond, where the pussywillows were thick and the elderberries grew wild. In the last hour the wind had slowed to just a light breeze and the air seemed quieter, the sea in the distance sounded calmer.
She stood near the bridge, watching the lazy swans floating on the still water while they hid from the night. She looked way up at the stars and thought about Amy. She wondered where she was and what she was doing.
She wondered what her own life would be like now, where she would go from here. What would happen to her?
She tried to believe she had a future, yet she didn’t feel she did, not deep down inside. She felt as if she had absolutely no control over anything that was happening to her.
With an eerie suddenness the air grew still. She glanced up and could almost see the stars freeze and the golden moon turn silver.
As if the someone had just called out his name, Eachann MacLachlan rode over the hillside. At first he was nothing but a dark silhouette riding the air like some legendary midnight image galloping out from Sleepy Hollow.
His mount jumped a stone fence and thundered down the hillside. Closer and with amazing speed and grace. It was a sight that took her breath away.
She barely found that breath, caught it quickly when he and his horse turned sharply and rode toward the bridge. Right at her. She didn’t run, because for some reason she thought he might be trying to scare her. She didn’t know how she knew it, but she just did.
He reined in the horse and just sat there, high in the saddle, looking at her as if he wasn’t surprised to find her there.