by Danice Allen
As an added precaution, she had fastened an old horseshoe above her bedchamber window, a practice that Pye said was quite effective in scaring off stray spriggans. She also never failed to shoo toads from her doorstep if one should happen to squat there, since toads were known sometimes to consort with bad spriggans. Lastly, she kept a glove, turned inside out, on her bedside table. If a spriggan managed to sneak in, she had only to throw it at him quickly and it would send him on his way.
Pye Thatcher had advised her in these matters all those years ago. Now, watching him down his brew and think and mutter to himself over the tale he was about to tell, Beth knew with an awful certainty that Gabby should not be allowed to listen. Gabby’s imagination was every bit as lively and vivid as Beth’s had ever been. She was more precocious than Beth, especially since their father had died and Mrs. Tavistock had had the sole responsibility thrust upon her of raising and disciplining such an adventurous and rebellious child. Gabby was a taking little thing, much too engaging for her own good.
Mrs. Tavistock disagreed with Beth about sending Gabby to sit with Sadie till Pye was through. She insisted that Zachary, being the master of the house, ought to be applied to for advice. She would defer to him in this matter. Gabby had thrown Beth a triumphant look from the settee, which she shared so companionably with her mother.
Beth fervently believed her mother’s confidence in Zach to make the decision concerning Gabby was sadly misplaced. Zach had been drinking liberally during dinner, and he and Alex had sat in the dining room for another half hour after the ladies withdrew. Besides, Zach had little resolution against Gabby’s childish wiles. He spoiled her shamefully.
Beth’s brows furrowed with worry. Zach had seemed so restless and inattentive over the past two weeks, and it was unlike him to drink that much wine with dinner. She hoped he wasn’t regretting his decision to wed her in August. Perhaps he was having second thoughts about marrying so soon after his grandfather’s death. She determined that she would find out his true feelings as soon as possible. But tonight she must somehow prevent Gabby from twining him about her dainty little finger.
It would not be an easy task. Beth almost wished she’d refused to let Pye in when Stibbs announced his arrival. But she sympathized with him, knowing that he was probably tired and thirsty after walking across the moor. He lived to tell tales and would be hurt to be turned away from a house he had visited regularly over the years.
There were footfalls nearing the door. Beth turned eagerly and watched Zach and Alex enter the room. Predictably, her traitorous eyes fixed themselves on Alex. He was impeccably dressed as usual, his Devonshire brown jacket and white cravat complementing his swarthy complexion and dark eyes, as deep and black as midnight. Champagne-colored breeches hugged his muscular thighs.
And as he leaned his shoulder against the mantelpiece and crossed his legs at the ankles, his gaze met hers with a lingering, unreadable expression. The look was intense but shuttered, disguised.
What did he think of her? she wondered. What did he know about her that she wished to hide—from him especially? Could he tell she was drawn to him, shamefully drawn by desires that ought to be tamped down till Zach—till her husband—bedded her? Had she revealed her overwhelming attraction to him that night at her betrothal party when they’d danced together?
“Zach!” exclaimed Gabby, bouncing off the settee and running to throw her arms about Zachary’s waist. His hands dropped naturally to enfold her small shoulders. She lifted her face to look up at him, her expression full of melting supplication. “Oh, please, do please let me stay and listen to Mr. Thatcher! Mama says I may if you say I may, though Beth says I’m too young.” She threw Beth a look rife with childish resentment.
Zach laughed and pressed a caressing palm to the top of Gabby’s burnished golden head. “Mr. Thatcher’s here, is he?” Zach narrowed his eyes and scanned the room till he saw Pye sitting in the shadows. Beth thought Zach seemed to be having difficulty focusing. Obviously he was still feeling the effects of the wine he’d consumed that evening.
“Good evening, Mr. Thatcher,” Zach called across the large room. “Are you come to tell us a droll?”
Pye’s mumbling ceased, and he lifted his head, the firelight catching in the jewel-bright sharpness of his blue eyes. He peered at Zach from beneath thick white eyebrows as tangled as the nest of an untidy bird and nodded soberly. “Aye, sir,” he said in his low, gritty voice. “This eve I’ve come t’ tell ye about the knackers.”
“The knackers? Those little mine-dwelling sprites? How capital! I’ve not heard a tale of knackers for an age!” Zach exclaimed, much animated. “Come, Gabby, let us sit and listen.”
Gabby’s face lit up. She had won easily—too easily, by Beth’s estimation. Beth stood up and walked to Zach, clasped his arm and pulled him to one side. She tried not to feel self-conscious about Alex’s intent observation of her movements. She felt, rather than actually saw, his keen watchfulness. He had watched her during dinner, too. She’d hardly been able to swallow her food and had left most of it untouched on her plate.
Zach weaved a bit, and Beth allowed him time to steady himself while she sternly eyed Gabby from around the curve of his broad shoulder. The little girl’s arms were akimbo, and her usual piquant expression had turned thunderous. Returning Gabby’s glare unflinching, Beth whispered in Zach’s ear, “Do you truly think it wise that Gabby be allowed to stay? You know how her imagination sometimes runs amok.”
Zach cocked his head and grinned at Beth. “Lord, Beth, how I love it when you breathe in my ear. Do it again, won’t you?”
Beth frowned and pinched Zach’s arm, hard, just as she used to do when they were children and he teased her. “Don’t be a ninny, Zach. I’m quite serious.”
Zach grimaced and rubbed his arm where she’d pinched him. “Well, I think you’re acting like a fusspot, Beth.”
When she opened her mouth to heatedly debate this unfair description of her concern, Zach raised a restraining hand and continued. “’Tis an unflattering name, I know, and Gabby has been saying it to your face lately, which is quite wrong of her, I admit. But—beg pardon, Beth—it’s true. You worry too much. I want her to stay. It won’t hurt her, I promise you.”
“I thoroughly disagree with you,” Beth replied stiffly, stung by his name-calling. Did he think it was all right for him to call her a fusspot, though he admitted that Gabby should not? “But since this is your house, I suppose I must do as you say.”
“There’s a good girl, Beth,” he soothed, patting her on the back and allowing his hand to slide farther down till it settled briefly on her bottom. “It’s good practice to agree with me, y’know. I want a biddable wife.”
Beth was surprised and flustered by the intimate caress, especially since he did it in full sight of a roomful of people. And his condescension was insufferable! Embarrassed, she let her gaze dart to Alex. Their looks collided, held, then jerked away. He was scowling, lines of disapproval grooved deep on either side of his mouth.
“Don’t put yourself in a pet, Lizzie,” her mother scolded, no longer able to restrain herself from speaking, and apparently unmoved by Zach’s familiarity with Beth’s bottom. “You’re making a mountain out of an anthill. I know if I were Gabby, I’d simply die if I were denied such a treat,” she declared with her usual tendency to overstate. “Now sit down and quit being such a Friday face. I’m just as eager as Gabby to hear Mr. Thatcher’s droll.”
Beth moved woodenly to a chair on the far side of the room, at some distance from the others. She was angry and felt abused by those from whom she thought she deserved a little consideration. She stared at her feet, concentrating all her ill feelings on the ivory slippers embroidered with pink rosettes. She half expected the blossoms, fashioned from silk thread, to wilt and wither from the intensity of her darkling glare.
No one seemed the least aware of her feelings, though. Zach had settled on the settee with her mother and Gabby and was listening raptly to Gab
by prattle on about the puppies. Pye was finishing the last dregs of his cider and was wiping his lips on the sleeve of his dirty jacket in preparation for the telling of the droll.
But then there was Alex. She hadn’t looked his way—she had forced herself to look anywhere but toward the mantelpiece against which he’d propped his wide shoulders—but she felt his black eyes upon her. A rill of awareness shimmied over her skin, compelling her to look at him.
The movement was as slow and halting as a falling drop of dew clinging to a leaf, but she turned. This time when their eyes locked, neither looked away in embarrassment, though there was more than enough naked emotion reflected in his eyes—and probably in hers, too—to cause embarrassment. She saw compassion reflected there, certainly, but overshadowing, overpowering, the sympathy was … patent desire. He wanted her as much as she wanted him!
Beth’s stomach twisted, leaped, writhed with need. Her breasts felt heavy, flushed, longing for his touch. Her lips throbbed with anticipation. But all to be denied! All to be subdued and saved like a sacrificial offering for another man, a man she loved but didn’t desire. God help her. What should she do? Despair slipped cold fingers around her heart and squeezed.
Alex felt violence course through his veins, violence spawned by thwarted passion. In all fairness, he could hold no one responsible for the dilemma he found himself caught up in, so he turned the violence inward, allowing it to scorch his insides like a raging inferno. He stood rigid, unmoving, stifling his urge to carry Beth away, out into the freedom of the dark, concealing night where secret passions could unfurl beneath the vastness of the heavens.
In this room—this cramped, confining room filled with obligations and commitments—he was fettered, caged. This stifling chamber represented all his pent-up emotions, everything he felt for Beth. Beth … Beautiful, beloved, and betrothed to his brother.
He pulled his eyes away from hers, rejoicing yet despairing in the sure knowledge that she felt the same depth of emotion for him. God help him, what should he do?
“I thought you were going to order tea, Alex.”
Alex was stirred from his troubled reverie by Zach’s prosaic comment. He focused his eyes on his brother, who was staring at him as if he were a Bedlamite, and mentally struggled to form an appropriate reply. But tea and other such everyday rituals dimmed in the wake of this new revelation. Beth wanted him.
“I forgot, Zach,” he managed at last, digging deep inside himself for a convincing semblance of composure. “I suppose we had better have it served before Mr. Thatcher begins his droll or wait till he’s through. I’m not familiar with the process, but I imagine he doesn’t like to be disturbed once he’s begun his story. Are you feeling more the thing, brother, or do you still need tea?”
“Why don’t we wait till after the droll, Zachary?” Mrs. Tavistock suggested, wringing her hands dramatically. “Indeed, I don’t think I can wait another moment to hear Mr. Thatcher’s story.”
“Neither can I, Mama,” Gabby added, imitating her mother’s hand-wringing display. “I should think I might fall into a swoon if I wait much longer!”
Zach laughed and softly flicked Gabby’s cheek in an affectionate gesture. “We don’t want Gabby swooning and skinning her pert nose on the floor, do we?” he said, winking across the room at Beth. Then he turned to Mr. Thatcher and said, “Commence droll-telling, my good fellow. We’re all ears!”
The spell had begun. The droll-teller’s deep, rough voice softened and lowered to the soothing cadence of a wide river’s easy tumble—flowing, mellifluous, carrying its listeners along on a lazy raft to parts unknown. But their gentle passage was fraught with tension—delightful, teasing tension.
Gabby felt it right down to the tips of her toes. A cool waft of sea breeze skimmed across the floor, and gooseflesh rose on her arms. Pulling her feet up and under the hem of her skirt, she snuggled close to Zach and listened to Pye Thatcher spin his tale.
“Bob Lovell was a lad—about yer age, lass—what didn’t believe in the knackers,” he began, staring hard at Gabby from beneath his wildly snarled eyebrows, “though his dadda was a tinner, and his granddadda before ’im. Tin run in their veins like blood runs through yers and mine.” He swept a gnarled hand about the room and finally rested it, palm down, against his sunken chest. He leaned forward.
“But the knackers are there whether ye believe in ’em or not, down in the mines, workin’ away each day ’cept Christmas and Easter. Then ye kin hear ’em singin’ carols deep below the earth. But few has seen the knackers, only heard the tap-tappin’ of their tiny picks in the far chambers of the mine.
“Knackers be friendly creatures, ’less they be spied on. They don’t like t’ be spied on, nor do they fancy bein’ disbelieved in, like Bob Lovell disbelieved. The knackers worked the best parts of the mine, and if a tinner be wise, he followed the sounds they made as they worked and played games deep below, and he’d find the richest veins and be the richest tinner in all o’ Cornwall.
“One day Bob’s dadda took him along with ’im, minin’ fer tin. Bob didn’t want to go, ’cause he didn’t like how dark it was in the mines. The miners wore stubs of candles on their caps t’ guide ’em through the long, twisting passages. The mines were damp, and water dripped from the ceilings, sometimes snuffin’ their candles and leavin ’em in the dark and the quiet. On this day the water dripped on both their caps at once, and Bob and his dadda found themselves in dark what were as black as a witch’s heart.”
Pye’s eyes widened and glistened like sapphires. “And remember, down below there be no sound—no wind in the trees, no mother’s voice callin’ ye t’ dinner, no birds singin’. It be as quiet as the grave.”
Gabby shivered, and Zach’s arm eased around her, squeezing her reassuringly. She looked up and was comforted by Zach’s smile and wink. She snatched a glance at Beth, wanting to share the frightening delight of the story with her sister, but Beth was staring out of the window, as if she wasn’t listening at all. Her eyes seemed fixed and dull. Gabby frowned. How oddly Beth was behaving lately! Lord Roth, too. He looked so grim tonight, so stern, as he, too, stared out of the window. She shrugged and turned back to Pye.
“As they stood there in the dark and Bob’s dadda fumbled fer his tinderbox to relight the candles, they heard a sound nearby, like pebbles kicked by fast little feet, and sly giggles and snickerin’. Bob felt his dadda’s hand squeeze his shoulder. At least he hoped it was his dadda’s hand grasping him there in the thick, black bowels of the earth.
“‘Did ye touch the horseshoe four times afore ye come down here, Bob, like I told ye to do?’
“‘No, Dadda,’ Bob confessed, trembling like a cornered moor mouse. Bob hadn’t done it ’cause he didn’t believe in knackers.
“‘Did ye tip yer cap in all directions afore ye picked up yer ax?’
“‘No, Dadda,’ Bob said again.
“‘May the good Lord be with us, then, Bob, ’cause we’ve knackers all about us and we’ve not done as we ought to do fer tinner’s luck.’
“Bob was afeard now and stood shivering while his dadda lit first Bob’s candle, then his own. Bob squeezed his eyes shut, not daring t’ look at whatever it was he felt crowdin’ against him.
“‘Open yer eyes, Bob,’ said his dadda, ‘and pull out yer sack of dinner yer ma made fer ye.’
“Bob opened his eyes and started to reach into his bundle for his dinner, just as his dadda had told him to do, but his hand froze in place. He could do naught but stare at the ghastly creatures that stood all about, leaning on their wee tools and staring at him and his dadda. They were old, wrinkled elves with broomstick legs and apelike arms that hung to their boot tops. They’d no necks, just huge heads like pumpkins with greasy red curls poking out. Their eyes were tiny, squinty slits, and their toothless mouths stretched from cheek to cheek in a hideous grin.
“’Bob,’ said his dadda. ‘Take out the pasty yer ma made ye and break off a piece. Crumble it on the ground in fron
t of ye fer the knackers. ’Tis said that if ye share yer dinner with ’em, they be pleased. Do it now!’
“Still Bob was too afeard to move. When the knackers saw how frightened he was, they all began at once to waggle their long, hookish noses with their thumbs, taunting him. Then they turned their backs to ’im, stooped over, hung out their tongues, and grinned at him from between their knees.
“’Bob, do as I tell ye,’ hissed his dadda.
“Still Bob didn’t move, and one of the knackers crept close and pinched his leg. Then another crept forward and kicked him sharply on the ankle. The others, some thirty of ’em, took a step or two toward ’im. Then Bob realized he’d better move or else be pinched and kicked black-and-blue by these squatty little sprites. He reached inside his bundle and pulled out the pasty his ma had made, full of mutton and fresh turnips from the garden, tore off a piece, and crumbled it on the ground in front of ’im. The knackers scurried and squawked like a flock of distempered peahens, snatched the crumbs up, then disappeared into the far shadows of the cave. Bob and his dadda together heaved a big sigh of relief.
“‘Do you believe in ’em now, son?’ his dadda asked him.
“‘Aye, Dadda, that I do,’ Bob told him. ‘But kin we be through with tinnin’ for today, Dadda?’
“Bob’s dadda chuckled deep in his tinner’s throat. ‘As long as ye promise to do as I tell ye next time I bring ye down to the mines. Now leave the knackers a few more crumbs afore we go and drip a bit of candle grease on the floor. The wee fellows scoop it up and make their own small lights. If ye befriend ’em, as I’ve done over the years, they’ll bring ye luck, Bob, and won’t begrudge ye comin’ and working in their mines. Let’s go home now, son.’
“And home they went,” finished the droll-teller, leaning back in the chair, his eyelids dropping slowly down to shutter the mesmerizing brilliance of his keen blue eyes.
