Bewitching the Baron
Page 31
At last he answered Paul, “I think it is Mr. Mowbray’s way of absolving me. Or forgiving me. Perhaps both. I have been writing to him for many months, trying to gain an audience with him, trying to find some means of making restitution, with never any answer. And then this morning a package arrived, containing this diary and a short letter.”
“What did the letter say?”
Nathaniel walked over to the fireplace, his thumb rubbing over the smooth leather of the diary’s cover. “Only that he had found the diary a short time ago, and that it had changed his perspective on his daughter, and on what had happened. He said he trusted that I would know what to do with the diary when I had read it.”
He looked down at the small book in his hands. Between its covers rested a young woman’s tortured world, filled with self-hatred, desperation, and death long before he himself had entered it. He had not behaved well with Laetitia, but he could no longer believe himself completely responsible for her demise. She had needed more than it was in anyone’s power to give.
“And?”
“And she has suffered enough. We all have.” He bent down, and gently tossed the diary into the fire. “Requiescat in pace.”
Chapter Thirty-two
Valerian shoved the front door closed with her foot, glad to be out of the biting air, her arms sore from carrying her market basket. City living was making her soft.
“Miss Bright?” a scratchy voice called out from behind the closest door.
Valerian grimaced, then smoothed her features. “Yes, it is I.”
Her landlady poked her head out of her apartment. “Thought it might be. Cold out there, eh?”
“Quite.”
“Like to freeze the nipples off a—”
“Yes, I entirely agree,” Valerian interrupted, stepping backwards down the hall towards the stairs. Her landlady had an unholy love of talking, and at this moment Valerian was much more intrigued by the cooling meat pie in her basket than metaphors involving frostbitten nipples.
“Now wait a moment, do not be in such a hurry to be gone—”
“My dinner, it is half-chilled already,” Valerian pleaded, gesturing to her basket.
“There be a letter came for you.”
Valerian stopped. “Letter?”
“Did I not just hear myself say that very word?” The woman pointed to the rickety console shoved against the wall.
Valerian dropped her basket to the floor and dashed to the table, sorting through the mail until she found it. It was Charmaine’s handwriting. She had almost convinced herself that her cousin would not write back.
She slipped a finger under the flap, ready to break the seal, then remembered her landlady. She looked up. Her landlady was watching with bright eyes, looking for all the world like a hungry squirrel.
“Thank you,” Valerian said. “I should not have liked to have missed this.” She retrieved her basket and nodded once more to her landlady, then hurried up the stairs.
She restrained herself until she had greeted and fed Oscar, built up the fire, and set her kettle to boil, and then could resist no longer. She sat in her big chair, pulled up close to the fire, her stocking feet resting against the fender, and broke the seal.
February 10
Greyfriars
Dear Valerian,
It gave me great joy to receive your letter, however disturbing some of the contents may have been. I had feared that I would never hear from you again, and that I would have no one to blame for that but myself.
Much has happened here in the time since you left. Gwendolyn Miller ran off with that friend of the baron’s, Mr. Carlyle. Eddie O’Connor ran off to sea, it is said to escape the presence of females, who have given him nothing but trouble. John Torrance injured a finger, and when all was said and done, the surgeon in Yarborough had removed his entire left hand. He blames Alice for the loss, claiming that if she had not driven you away, he would still have his hand. I do not doubt that he is correct.
The day does not pass that someone does not ask if I have heard news of you, and when you are to return. This winter has been especially hard, with many falling ill, and not a few dying. The nearest doctor is, as I have said, in Yarborough, and after John Torrance’s accident, few would be willing to see him even if he came to their homes. Which, of course, he does not.
We must sound a fickle lot: We hate you one day, and love you the next. Your reputation has taken on a faint glow of sainthood in your absence. The terrors of disease are proving far stronger than those of spirits and spells. Hacking coughs and watery bowels are winning you favor where your attentions and care never did.
Since receiving your letter, I have thought long about the bonds of family. A year ago, I would have asked for the name of the man who fathered me. Today I will not. It is difficult for me to express what has changed, except to say that I see more clearly the value of those who share my life. This man, whoever he is, does not. He doubtless has his own family to care for anyway, and would not welcome a disruption of this sort. When all is said and done, family are those whom you love.
You have always been a clever girl, and I think you know what I am trying to say. The cottage has been rented out, but you could stay with Howard and me until the lease is up, and then it would be yours.
Come home, Valerian.
Your cousin,
Charmaine
Valerian dropped the letter to her lap. Come home. Back to Greyfriars, to Charmaine, and to the cottage. The world she thought lost to her forever was asking for her to come back. She felt a tightness in her throat, and sat staring into space as she tried to comprehend being wanted again.
And what of Nathaniel?
Charmaine had made no mention of him. But did the omission mean that he had returned to Raven Hall, or that he had not? Did Charmaine think any mention of him would frighten her, or draw her?
The very thought that she might see him again made her stomach knot. He could treat her like a mere acquaintance, or perhaps not acknowledge her at all. She knew she could not do the same, not when she still woke in the night from dreams of being held in his arms.
But to go home. . . . She looked around her rented rooms, at the touches she had added in an effort to make the place her own, to make it cozy and homey. They were comfortable rooms, but she knew they could never be home, not when friends and family were elsewhere.
Truly, it was not such a hard decision to make.
“Oscar!”
“. . . is a greedy guts. Rrrawww!”
“Pack your biscuits, darling. We have traveling to do!”
Chapter Thirty-three
“Grey skies over Greyfriars, Oscar,” Valerian said as she set down his cage on the muddy road. “Have you ever seen anything more lovely?”
“Biscuit!”
Valerian tucked up her old black skirts to keep them out of the mud, and squatted down to unfasten the door to the cage. She had hitched a ride with a tinker up until a mile back, and come the rest of the way from Yarborough on foot. Her silk dresses and other belongings were in her trunks at the Yarborough inn where she had stayed last night, waiting to be picked up. If, that is, she definitely decided to stay.
She lifted Oscar out on her wrist, and let him ruffle and stretch his wings. “Go on now, go see if Charmaine has laundry drying that you can pull into the mud,” she said, and gave him a boost up into the air.
“Rrrawww!” he cried, and flapped his way upwards. He circled her twice where she stood on the rutted road, then flew off towards the trailing chimney smoke of the village.
Valerian picked up the cage and continued on, then paused when she came to the millpond, grey-brown and edged with the yellow stalks of dead weeds. The millwheel turned with its regular thunk-splash sound, peaceful in the quiet of the day. She felt no lingering fear, despite what had happened here. It had all been washed away by her miraculous experience in the water’s cold depths.
She walked slowly on, strangely reassured by the sight of the mil
lpond, so placid as it powered the wheel. It was a part of her internal landscape now, forever linked to her vision of her family, and that overwhelming sense of universal connection that had led, she was certain now, to the increase in her ability to heal. It was linked as well to her awakening in Nathaniel’s care.
She doubted he would ever again look at her with such caring as he had at that moment.
She pressed her lips tight together and locked away the thought. If she were to come back to Greyfriars to live, she would have to learn to think of their relationship as something in the past. Learn to think of neither it nor him at all, if she could.
Her lip trembled, and she clenched her jaw against it. She had done the right thing by refusing him, the right thing for both of them.
Charmaine’s home was only a few houses from the edge of town, and Valerian made her way quickly to it, nodding a greeting to the surprised woman feeding chickens next door. She pushed open the shop door, only to have it bump against something that yelped a protest on the other side. She craned around the door to see a young boy with a broom.
“Oh!” Valerian said. “Excuse me!” And then, realizing she had never seen him before, “Who are you?”
“Bertie, miss.” He looked none too pleased at her interruption of his task, a fierce little scowl on his face.
“Ah, Bertie.” As if that were explanation enough.
“Valerian?” came a tentative voice, and then Charmaine appeared in the doorway at the back of the shop. “It is you! Why did you not tell me you were coming?” Charmaine rushed halfway across the shop, then stopped, looking suddenly self-conscious.
Valerian closed the distance between them and gave her cousin an awkward hug. It was not something she could ever remember doing, but it felt like the right thing at this moment, and after a few stiff seconds Charmaine gave her a quick hug back, then pulled away.
“Here now, let me look at you,” Charmaine said, standing back and eyeing her up and down. “Why are you wearing that old thing? I thought you would have spruced up a bit, having been to London, and living in a city like York.”
Valerian shrugged. “I thought I would be more comfortable in this.” Thought, too, that it would be easier to slip into her old life. But perhaps wearing her old clothes had been a mistake. She was not the same person she had been when she left, and dressing as if nothing had changed could not change the fact that everything had.
“Aye, well, suit yourself. I see you have met Bertie,” Charmaine said, gesturing for the boy to come closer.
Valerian raised a brow in silent inquiry.
Charmaine’s narrow mouth twitched for a moment in what might have been the beginnings of a smile. “Howard’s apprentice. From the orphanage in Yarborough. He has been with us for almost two months now. Right, Bertie?” Charmaine said, nudging him on the shoulder.
“Aye,” the boy grunted.
“I think you have done enough in here today,” Charmaine said, indulgence in her voice.
“Aye!” Bertie repeated, with considerably more enthusiasm. He needed no second hint, and was out the door like a shot.
“Be home in time for supper!” Charmaine called after him, and then to Valerian, “The boy is three parts mischief, four parts stubbornness.”
“Why did you not write that you had him?”
“Why did you not write that you were coming back?” Charmaine retorted, and then relented. “We did not know if we would keep him, that is the truth of it. I was afraid that if I wrote of him, the moment I sent the letter all would go sour.”
“But it has not.”
“No.” Charmaine’s mouth twitched again in that hint of a smile. “Not that he has not been plenty of trouble, but he helps Howard and learns quickly.”
Valerian followed Charmaine into the kitchen, where her cousin filled a kettle with water for tea and bent to hang it on the hook over the fire. The smells of the cobbler’s shop and Charmaine’s kitchen comforted her with their familiarity, even as it felt like she had been to the moon and back since last she was here and still felt the unreality of her own presence. “You have rented the cottage?”
“Yes, until summer. You are welcome to stay here with us until then, of course.”
“I know. Thank you.”
Charmaine turned away from the fire, giving her full attention to Valerian. “Are you home for good?”
Valerian bit her lower lip, unwilling yet to give a definite answer. She was like her cousin, afraid that if she spoke of it, it would come to naught. “I would like to be.”
“Nothing has changed since my letter to you. The townsfolk still ask me when you are coming back.”
Valerian could only look at Charmaine, the question that mattered most stuck in her throat.
Charmaine studied her back, then said with more softness than Valerian would ever have expected of her, “But it is not the townsfolk that worry you, is it?”
She shook her head.
“The baron is here,” Charmaine said. “He has been since the first of January.”
Valerian had more than half-expected it, but even so it shocked her, the news like a blow to her chest, the air forced from her lungs. “Has he. . . .” she paused before she could go on, hating herself for needing to know. “Has he asked after me?”
Pity flickered in Charmaine’s eyes, and Valerian answered the question herself. “No.”
She left the village behind and started down the path that led to the cottage, needing to escape from the familiar faces of Greyfriars. After her tea with Charmaine, she had gone to see Sally and discovered that the news of her return had already spread through the village.
The tentative but sincere greetings she received as she walked down the street were followed quickly by requests for treatment, either for the speaker or someone else, and Valerian realized how correct Charmaine had been in her assessment of the mood in Greyfriars. She could have horns sprouting from her head and cloven feet, and she thought they would still ask her to look at their sores and listen to their coughs. John Torrance’s missing hand was a more fearful prospect than dealings with a maybe-witch.
Or perhaps she could thank Alice Torrance for her welcome. The witch-dunking test may have at long last proved her innocence to the entire village, no matter how illogical it was. Whatever the reason for the greetings and smiles of welcome, they were so numerous as to be overwhelming. She almost doubted they would let her leave, if she decided not to stay. It was an unfamiliar, but warming thought.
When she came to the fork in the path, her feet of their own volition took the path that led to the Giving Stone. She was not ready yet to see the cottage, with strangers living in it, rearranging things, doing things differently than she and Theresa had. She did not want to see the garden choked with weeds, or the walls in need of whitewashing. Better, perhaps, to wait until the cottage was hers again, and she could change everything back to how it was.
Oscar cawed and flew by overhead, and she smiled. He looked happy to be back in familiar grounds.
A gust of cold March wind struck her as she came around the final bend to the circle of stones, and she pulled her mantle more tightly about her. The Irish Sea was a grey smudge in the distance, a bank of low clouds obscuring the line between water and sky. The wind and Oscar were the only sounds, buffeting the hills and trees and twisting round the stones. She had almost forgotten how much she loved the rough beauty of this place.
She walked slowly to the Giving Stone, her skirt hem dragging in the damp grass. The stone was bare of offerings, and she sat down upon it, slipping off her muddy shoes and bringing her feet up under the warmth of her skirts, wrapping her arms around her knees. She rested her chin on her kneecaps and half-shut her eyes, listening to the wind, feeling the cold seep into her buttocks from the stone beneath her.
She was dimly aware of Oscar hopping about in the grass, but when he suddenly spoke it startled her out of her reverie.
“Finders keepers! Finders Keepers! Rrrawww!”
“Drop it, Oscar!” she ordered.
“Finders keepers!” He spread his wings, then flapped up into the air, carrying his treasure to the top of his favorite standing stone.
Valerian squinted up at him. She should let him have it, whatever it was, except that for a moment she had thought she recognized the thing.
She stood and went barefoot over to the menhir, and climbed atop the fallen stone beside it. If she stood on tiptoe, she could almost reach the top of Oscar’s stone, but not quite. She hiked her skirts, tucking the wet hem into her waistband. She found a foothold in the rough stone and hoisted herself up.
Oscar was surprised enough by her head appearing over the edge of the stone that he fluttered backwards, leaving his treasure trove exposed. Valerian’s eyes widened as she took in the trinket-filled depression atop the stone. So this was where all that hat trim ended up, along with pieces of glass, coins, fragments of jewelry, and nameless bits of junk. And on top of it all, the silver bracelet.
She plucked the bracelet off the pile and lowered herself down. She stood upon the fallen neighboring stone, skirts still tucked up, wind whipping her mantle, and looked at the bracelet in her hand. It was the same one Nathaniel had offered to her that day almost a year ago, in payment for her pulling the stitches from Paul Carlyle’s behind. She traced her finger over one of the flowered ovals, remembering.
“Eee-diot!” Oscar cried. “Eee-diot!”
Valerian sucked in her breath, fist closing over the bracelet as she looked up. Nathaniel stood watching her from the other side of the circle. Her heart beat a rapid tattoo, stars sparkling in her vision as a momentary dizziness swept over her. He was as handsome as ever—more so, even, for there was a quiet certainty in his stance that had not been there before.