A Brush with Shadows

by Anna Lee Huber

  Hesitant to venture into her home uninvited, I paused on the threshold. In the tumult of the last few days, hunting for Alfred, I wasn’t certain if anyone had informed her about the bloody coat. I’d meant to come sooner, but then it had slipped my mind. I didn’t want to leave without letting her know, so I stepped inside. Leaving the door open, I tentatively began to search through the drawers in the cabinet by the door for a piece of paper and a pencil so I could leave a note.

  I located the sheets of foolscap in the second drawer, but as I pushed them aside to see if a pencil lay underneath, something gold caught my eye. It was a shiny button with ornate swirls. One, I realized with a start, that I’d seen before. It was the missing button from Alfred’s coat. But what was it doing here?

  I tried to tell myself there was a perfectly rational explanation for its presence at the bottom of Miss Galloway’s drawer, and for the fact she hadn’t brought it to our attention. He could have dropped it during a visit prior to his going missing. Or she could have found it on the moor and not realized who it belonged to. But those explanations didn’t sit quite right.

  I stared at the button, uncertain what to do. Should I take it with me, or leave it here and hope she mentioned it during our next meeting? In the end, I elected to put it back, as sort of a test. After all, the button wasn’t evidence of wrongdoing. But if she remained silent about it, even after I mentioned it on my next visit, then that would tell me more than direct confrontation.

  I jotted down a short message, along with a promise to call again soon, and left it on the table. But just when I’d turned to go, a soft thud came from the direction of the bedroom.

  I slowly straightened, feeling the skin along the back of my neck prickle as if a stray draft had blown across it. “Miss Galloway, is that you?”

  I inched forward in the heavy silence that followed my query, eyeing the gap below the closed door. “Is anyone there?”

  I paused with my hand hovering over the knob. Should I grab something to defend myself with? I’d left my reticule and the percussion pistol tucked inside back at the manor. But then, if it was only Miss Galloway in distress, I would feel foolish for scaring her.

  My breath fluttered in my chest as I turned the handle and thrust open the door.

  I gasped as an orange tabby cat leapt off the bed and streaked past me. Pressing a hand over my pounding heart, I laughed.

  I knew full well what mischief-makers felines could be. I’d left my own cat, a gray tabby I’d dubbed Earl Grey, under the care of my sister’s children in Edinburgh. There were times when I missed his companionship, but it had been for the best that I’d left him behind. Earl Grey would have despised the boat trip to Ireland and the journey here. And I could only imagine the look the dowager would have given me if I’d arrived at Langstone with a cat on my lap. Although further contemplation almost made me wish I’d done so.

  The orange tabby leapt up on the chair nearest the hearth, circled once, and curled into a ball to go to sleep. I smiled. Obviously he was comfortable here.

  My smile faded. I didn’t remember seeing him during my last visit. Maybe he’d been outside, lolling under the garden flowers in the sunshine.

  I glanced into the bedchamber, but there was nothing there. Nothing that hadn’t been before, anyway. However, I couldn’t quite shake the feeling I wasn’t alone. Something seemed to fill the space behind me with an almost audible silence.

  I closed the bedroom door and crossed back through the cottage, allowing my gaze to trail over the contents. It was all as clean as it had been before. No cup unwashed by the basin. No embroidery set to the side with the needle poised for its next stitch. No shawl draped over a chair. I wished I were familiar enough with Miss Galloway to know whether she was always this fastidious.

  Feeling I’d outstayed my welcome, and vaguely guilty for prying despite my discovery of the button, I left the cottage. I closed the door firmly behind me and stood at the corner of the porch to survey the small vale in which the home was set. All was peaceful, with nothing but the wind and the trickling water of the River Walkham in the distance to break the silence. I looked up the slope at the mammoth granite outcroppings at the peak of Great Mis Tor and decided now was as good a time as any to climb it. I imagined the views from its heights were even more impressive than those of White Tor.

  By the time I reached the top, I was panting from the exertion. But it was well worth it. My suspicions had been correct. Not only were the granite formations massive, spilling over each other like towering stacks of crumpets, but the panorama was breathtaking. Now I understood why Miss Galloway, and her mother before her, were willing to live on the lower slopes of this isolated spot. To be able to have such a vantage point almost on your doorstep was ample compensation.

  I slowly circled the outcroppings, examining the fall of light over the landscape below, and enjoying the view across the moor from different angles. So when I paused to gaze out toward the north over Greena Ball and the bleak desolation of Cocks Hill, at first I was shocked to find I wasn’t alone. From this distance, I couldn’t see very clearly, but there was definitely a man with no hat striding across the moor from west to east, moving deeper into the moor. His dark hair—the only recognizable feature—ruffled in the wind. Instantly I thought of Alfred, and in my astonishment, I called out to him.

  The man swiveled to look up at the tor where I stood, shielding his eyes from the sun. Whether he saw me or recognized what I was saying, I didn’t know, but he lifted his hand and then turned and continued on his way.

  I called out again, but he didn’t stop. Perhaps he couldn’t hear me at such a distance, but I thought it unlikely he hadn’t seen me when he looked up at the tor. I was wearing a bright maize yellow gown, which should have stood out starkly against the gray, brown, and green landscape.

  Whatever the reason, he moved away swiftly to the east. If it was Alfred, I wasn’t about to let him get away.

  Lifting my skirts, I dashed down the slope of the tor as fast as I dared. Every twenty or thirty feet, I continued to call out, until I was too short of breath to do so. At the base of the tor, the rocky ground gave way to deer grass and heath, and I was able to stretch out my stride, almost running in my haste. The earth was soft beneath my feet, squelching with each step, but I paid it little heed. I had gained on the man slightly, and I was intent on catching him.

  So oblivious was I to everything else around me that I didn’t hear the person behind me until their arm snagged me about the waist, wrenching me to a stop and driving the air from my lungs. I gulped, trying to inhale as I sagged back against the man who had grabbed me. I thrashed weakly, attempting to free myself from his grasp, but he held on tenaciously.

  “Have you lost your mind?! That’s Mistor Marsh you were about to blunder headlong into,” Rory scolded, and then proceeded to ring a peal over my head for my foolish recklessness while I struggled to regain my breath and my faculties.

  When finally I could speak, I lifted a hand to point in the direction I’d been moving. “But the man. He’s getting away.”

  Rory glared down at me as if I were talking gibberish. “What man? What are you talking about?”

  I turned to look, lifting up onto my toes in my eagerness, but he’d vanished. “What? Where did he go?” I continued to scan the horizon, wondering if somehow I’d gotten turned around. “He was just there! Didn’t you see him?” I demanded, not understanding how he could have disappeared in such a vast expanse of nothingness. There were no valleys or hills for him to hide behind in that immediate direction. No large rocks or tall vegetation to duck behind.

  When I glanced back at Rory, it was to find him watching me with a strange light in his eyes. His anger mellowed into something more guarded, more wary.

  “I’m telling you, I saw a dark-haired man striding across the moor in that direction. I thought maybe somehow it was your brother, and . . . an
d I didn’t want him to disappear again.” I broke off, scowling up at him in frustration. “You don’t believe me.”

  He shook his head. “It’s not that. It’s only . . . I don’t think it was really a man.”

  I narrowed my eyes. “I see.” My words were clipped. “I’m hallucinating, then, is that it?”

  “I . . . I think you were being pixie-led.”

  “I beg your pardon?”

  “That’s what the locals call it. They believe pixies inhabit these lands, and sometimes they like to make mischief—playing tricks on travelers out on the moor, leading them into trouble.”

  I frowned, not knowing what to say to that. I felt vaguely insulted. My mind was perfectly clear, as were my eyes. I knew what I’d seen. And yet, I’d grown up with tales of pixies and sprites, bogies and selkies, and the fae. Just because I’d never encountered them didn’t necessarily mean they didn’t exist.

  I turned to look back across the marsh toward where I’d seen the man. How had he vanished so quickly? If he was real, then where was he?

  Rory’s feet shuffled backward, gurgling the boggy ground beneath our feet. “I don’t know if I believe that. But . . . Dartmoor is different. The usual rules don’t apply here. Maybe it’s the light, or the peaty soil.” He shrugged. “Who knows? But strange things do happen here.”

  I understood what he was trying to say. This mysterious place did feel different. The moors were almost a place out of time, somehow older than the rest of Britain, than the rest of the earth. If I stood still, and the wind stopped blowing long enough, I just might hear it humming beneath me, sharing its secrets.

  Or maybe that was the pixies.

  “Well, thank you,” I told him, recognizing how close I’d come to literally stepping into a quagmire. “Had you not been here to stop me . . .”

  I didn’t finish the thought because the consequences were too dire. But also because I couldn’t help but wonder why he had been here. Was he following me? Was he the one I’d sensed at Miss Galloway’s cottage?

  The look in Rory’s eyes said he knew what I was thinking, but he didn’t address it. He merely tipped his head in acknowledgment and offered me his arm to lead me out of the bog.

  “If you should ever feel you’re being pixie-led again, they say if you turn your coat inside out, that’ll break the spell.”

  I couldn’t tell if he was mocking me or in earnest. What I did know was that, despite his saving me from, at the very least, some troubling difficulties, I didn’t trust him. That, if nothing else, was quite clear.

  “Good to know.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  Upon our return to the manor, Rory and I found ourselves ushered into the drawing room. I expected to find Lady Langstone imperiously awaiting our attendance, but she wasn’t alone. Across from her sat Gage, listening attentively to a lovely young woman with soft red curls, while beside her hovered a man sporting gray at his temples.

  I halted just inside the door, acutely embarrassed by my appearance. Had I known we had company, I would have insisted on changing out of my mud-splattered frock and kid boots, and repairing my windblown hair. Rory seemed similarly discomfited, rooted to the spot beside me.

  Lady Langstone was, of course, the first to notice our arrival, narrowing her eyes in disapproval. I fought a blush and forced my feet forward to meet our visitors. Gage had risen to greet us, a question in his eyes as he took in my disheveled state, but I shook my head, conveying I would explain later.

  “Lady Juliana, may I present my wife,” he swiveled to announce, performing all the necessary introductions.

  So this was the Duke of Bedford’s daughter, the young woman Lord Tavistock wanted Alfred to marry. Gage had said she was soft-spoken and gentle, and I could see that was true. Her voice was so quiet I had to lean closer to hear her. However, whatever affection, or lack thereof, Alfred felt for her, it was evident she held some sort of fondness for him, for her eyes were rimmed with red from recent tears.

  The other man was her brother, and had obviously been pressed into accompanying her on this errand. He spoke only when required, and didn’t seem at all concerned with the whereabouts of his sister’s near intended.

  Apparently, Lady Juliana had heard about Alfred being missing, and the bloody coat we found, and had come to ask for answers.

  “It’s just so terrible,” she repeated, sniffing into her handkerchief.

  “Ah, don’t cry, Lady Juliana,” Rory murmured gently. “There’s still hope yet.”

  “Is there?”

  “Of course there is,” he exclaimed with far more conviction than I’d yet seen him exhibit. For certain, this was for Lady Juliana’s benefit, but I also couldn’t help but notice the way he flushed under her regard as she gave him a grateful smile. Alfred might not have been interested in her, but I would have wagered a tidy sum that Rory wasn’t averse to the idea of marrying her. If his brother was presumed dead, would he get his wish?

  “Lady Juliana was just telling us about the last time she saw Lord Langstone, a month ago,” Gage explained as we all sat. “She said he seemed distracted.”

  She nodded. “It wasn’t like him. He was normally quite attentive. I . . . I asked him whether something was troubling him, and he insisted it was merely concern for Lord Tavistock, since he’s been so ill. But . . . I wasn’t so sure.”

  Astute girl.

  “Did he seem himself otherwise, in manner, appearance . . . ?”

  She tilted her head, gazing up at the ceiling. “I did notice he seemed a bit tired and, well, pale.” She smiled in remembrance. “He kept yawning, and then apologizing, though it was obvious he couldn’t help it. Mother suggested later he might have been suffering from some sort of illness himself, but, of course, it would have been impolite for him to speak of it.”

  Gage’s eyes met mine over her head. Was this confirmation that Alfred had been suffering from some sort of complaint weeks before he disappeared? We needed to speak with his odious valet about the matter. Unless Gage had already done so and not told me. After all, he’d questioned some of the members of the staff.

  “In any case, he didn’t visit with us long. He’d hoped to speak with my father.” A tinge of pink colored her cheeks, letting us know what she’d believed that conversation would be about. “But Father had already left for London. Though he did spend a quarter hour with my father’s steward. He said his grandfather had some questions about the mine partnership.”

  “Mine partnership?” Gage repeated. “Between the duke and Lord Tavistock?”

  “Yes.” She glanced uncertainly at her brother, who was looking at his pocket watch for the second time since my arrival. “I assumed you were aware. It was announced in the newspapers and everything.”

  “It was,” her brother confirmed. “Some men near Gunnislake uncovered a copper vein, and the duke and Lord Tavistock bought up the land to open a mine.”

  Was this, then, what that newspaper article Alfred dropped in the garden had been about? But why had such a partnership concerned him? Unless he recognized it meant there was no backing out of marrying Lady Juliana. Was their union supposed to seal the deal, so to speak?

  “Juliana, we really must leave soon or we’ll be late,” her brother reminded her, already half rising to his feet. It was evident he expected compliance now and not in five minutes.

  “Yes . . . of course.” She lowered her face to hide how flustered she’d become as she gathered up her reticule. I recognized the move because I often employed it myself to cover some social blunder I’d made. Except she’d done nothing wrong but inconvenience her brother.

  “Must you leave so soon?” I demurred, feeling a pulse of empathy for the girl. There was also the investigation to consider. I’d barely had time to even begin to develop an impression of her, and it sounded as if she might know more about Alfred and his possible whereabouts than sh
e realized.

  She glanced up, her eyes lighting with something akin to gratitude. How rarely was this girl’s presence sought after or missed that she should so appreciate my eagerness to talk to her? It left me feeling rotten that all my motivations hadn’t been so altruistic.

  “I’m afraid so,” she replied, glancing at her brother again, who was tapping his leg in impatience. “We’re traveling to London today. Father wants us all there for the king’s coronation, and there’s much to do to prepare.”

  I suspected this was somewhat of an exaggeration. The coronation was scheduled for early September, and it was not yet August. Though as Lady Juliana was the daughter of a duke, I’m sure there were many arrangements to make—gowns to be ordered, soirees to plan, endless rounds of calls to make.

  There was nothing we could do to make them stay, so we thanked them for coming and promised Lady Juliana we would keep her apprised of our progress in our search for Alfred. Lady Langstone soon followed them from the drawing room, but not before offering me a parting quip.

  “A word of advice. Perhaps in Scotland, society is accustomed to such slovenliness, but here in England we prefer that our ladies make their appearances looking a bit less like heathens.”

  I scowled at her back as she swept from the room in all her understated elegance. Insult aside, she was cognizant I’d grown up on the English side of the Borders. Though, I realized many in the south viewed the wilder counties of the far north as essentially foreign soil.

  Rory mumbled some excuse and ducked out after her, leaving me alone with Gage—a state I’d been endeavoring all morning to achieve. But I found, as I turned to face him, that suddenly I felt unaccountably tongue-tied. Perhaps it was Lady Juliana’s reserved, apologetic behavior, or maybe it was Gage’s perfectly groomed appearance, a glaring contrast to my rumpled, unkempt state, but I was starkly reminded of the person I’d been only a short year ago when I’d first met him. A frightened, lost, downtrodden woman feigning bravado and in desperate need of a reason to push beyond my pain and fear. If not for Gage, if not for our first inquiry together, I might still be hiding away in the Highlands.