by Laura London
“Lord, no!” said Lynden, surprised. “Except maybe a snake I saw sliding away in the grass once. No, of course he didn’t remind me of anyone. He’s the oddest-looking man I’ve ever seen, particularly with those exotic eyes, although I do think his eyes might have been very attractive, unusual as they are, if only they’d landed in a less grim visage. Listen, you can always think of a fragment of verse for everything. Why don’t you think of one for Lady Silvia?”
Lorraine chuckled. “Actually, I have already. It’s from ‘The Rime of the Ancient Mariner’: ‘Her lips were red, her looks were free, / Her locks were yellow as gold: / Her skin was as white as leprosy, / The nightmare Life-in-Death was she, / Who thicks man’s blood with cold.’ ”
“Well done!” applauded Lynden. “That’s her to a tee, though she doesn’t ‘thick men’s blood with cold,’ at least not Melbrooke’s.”
There was a forlorn note in Lynden’s voice that wrenched her sister’s heart with pity. They walked together in silence, Lorraine absorbed in serious thought. Finally she spoke. “Lynnie, perhaps I oughtn’t to bring it up but—Lynnie, you—you did tell me that you and Lord Melbrooke hadn’t… oh dear, that your marriage was in name only?”
Lynden stopped dead in the path’s center, put her mittened hands on her waist, and turned around to glare at her twin. “Yes!” she said grimly. “I know I told you that and I hope very much that you are not about to say anything that will make me regret that I did!”
Lorraine stared down at the tips of her leather boots. “Dear, dear Lynnie,” she said gently. “You know that I would never want to do anything that would make you regret confiding in me and I don’t know very much about being married but…” She hesitated, screwing up her courage. “I feel that it might not have been right to, um, discourage Lord Melbrooke from claiming his marital rights. I—somehow I seem to have gotten the idea that gentlemen place great importance in such things, and if Lord Melbrooke isn’t sharing that… that sort of intimacy with you, then perhaps he feels it is quite proper for him to pursue that kind of relationship with someone else? Especially as yours wasn’t a love match?”
Lynden stared angrily at her sister, opened her mouth as though to speak, shut it again, then whirled around and marched off. Lorraine watched her in sympathy, deciding to say nothing more; she had already given Lynden quite enough to digest.
They walked under a grove of snow-covered boughs, Lynden’s head down, Lorraine looking up at the day. A sharp breeze whistled by, causing a fine mist of snow to settle down their necks and up their sleeves. The snowy mist disappeared when they came into the sunlight; the sun shone with a hint of warmth from a sky that was a deeper blue than its late steely hue. The path widened, and ahead the twins could see the flat, snow-covered surface of frozen Grasmere Lake stretching featureless to the opposite shore, punctuated near the shoreline by spiky dead pond sedge and hare’s-tail.
The path dwindled to nothingness at the end of a long spit of land which reached fifty yards into the lake. Here they stopped to rest, their breath making short-lived puffs in the air and streaming away in the stiff breeze. The snow on the lake surface was arranged in long, tiny rippling drifts which reached toward the center of the lake; here and there, in places where the wind was able to course unhindered by shore-bound growth, the exposed ice was gunmetal gray, unscored, and pristine. The sun reflected wildly from the millions of ice and snow crystals, so powerfully that the twins had to shield their eyes from the piercing sight.
“It’s so bright, so blank,” murmured Lorraine.
“Raine? See there across the bay?” Lynden was pointing with her free hand, not across the lake, but across the bay formed to their left by the spit of land on which they were standing and the curve of the lake’s end. “Do you see those weathered gray rocks there on the fellside? One of them moved. And another. Do you see them?”
“The light is probably making you see things,” answered Lorraine. “Let me look.” She peered where Lynden pointed. “You know what those are? Those are Herdwick sheep!”
“The rugged sheep of the Lake country, suppliers of wool and staple mutton! I know. We read about them in that fusty guidebook of yours. Let’s cross over and see what they’re like close up. Remember the guidebook says they have white faces and wide, wooly shoulders like lions?”
“Yes, but let’s walk across the ice. That sheep track across the rocks looks too rugged to scramble on this afternoon.”
They set off across the bay, Lynden in the lead, skating on the soles of her boots. Lorraine trudged behind, absently examining the double track Lynden was impressing on the thin layer of snow. The exposed ice was opaque and dark, spotted with tiny frozen bubbles and an occasional trapped, frozen leaf. The color of the ice slowly lightened as they neared the middle of the little bay; at the center there was a long patch the wind had bared of snow. Lynden slid across it, whooping gleefully. Lorraine, walking behind, noticed that she was able to see down through the ice to the bottom of the lake, where green waterweeds waved in emerald spirals. It seemed to Lorraine that she was privileged to see a hidden underwater world through a thin viewing glass.
How thin the viewing glass proved to be! As she watched, Lorraine noted hundreds of tiny cracks radiating outward from her feet, and before she had a chance to move, she cried out in pain as the icy water rushed to cover her ankles; then, with a dull crack, the ice finished its division into three separate islands, and she fell among them. She screamed as the frigid water clamped ruthlessly about her.
“Lorraine, grab my scarf!” Lynden was coming back across the ice, unwrapping her scarf from her neck; the ice cracked threateningly under her feet as she drew near Lorraine, forcing her retreat, the short scarf dangling uselessly from her hand.
“Lynnie! Go back toward shore,” said Lorraine hoarsely, trying to tread water. “It’s no good, you’ll fall in, too. You’ve got to go for help… Cottages back up the path.”
Lynden’s eyes were frightened and desperate as she cast about for an aid. There was a thick, fallen tree limb, thinly glazed with ice, at the frozen edge of the water; Lynden yanked it free and returned. “I’ll push this limb to you; try and put your arms around it and I’ll pull you out.” She pushed the end of the limb to Lorraine, who tried futilely to follow her sister’s instruction.
“I don’t know if I can… so cold. There.” Lorraine succeeded in hooking one arm around the limb. Lynden strained on the other end, fruitlessly.
“I… can’t lift you, Lorraine… too heavy.”
“Go, Lynden, now…”
“Yes, yes, I will. But you must hook your elbows over the limb on either side—it will hold you up.” Lynden’s voice was breathless with exertion and fear. “I’m going now, Lorraine. Please, please hold on.” And she was gone, flying along the shore, over the rocky sheep path, her skirts billowing.
Lorraine was alone. The sky loomed overhead like an inverted blue bowl, pressing down upon her, suffocating her; her limbs were a great weight. There were no sounds other than the crisp, slow slosh of the thick water. Time slowed, stopped, then started again. A tall distant figure was standing on the shore, and a male voice came to her, booming and unintelligible. She could not follow his movements. If he was moving rapidly, agonizingly slowly, or wavering in and out of reality, Lorraine could not tell. Suddenly, a broad, flat, lightning-split tree trunk was sliding ominously toward her, a slithering dark mass, and the figure, man or spirit, was leaning cautiously, stretching an arm low over the surface of the ice, his hand reaching closer, across an eternity of time and an infinity of space…
As she was dragged out of the water, Lorraine felt the savage bite of the wind on her soaked skin and clothing, and the sharp, stinging suck of her icy skirts. She felt heavy and sick and aching, then light and numb. She looked up, blinking her ice-encrusted eyelashes, trying to focus on the face of her rescuer. She saw only a bright blur, a harsh white light—and then nothing.
* * *
Lorraine’s se
venteen years had been filled with books, music, and Lynden. There had been no sweethearts, no stolen kisses, no flirtations. Thus, when she awoke in a man’s arms, it was the first time she had ever done so.
But it was long after light had pierced the darkness before she was aware of that. For a while she knew only, and in a dim way, that she was being moved, lifted, turned, rubbed, and comforted. At last she was lying still, with a gentle arm encircling her waist. Someone was stroking a towel through her damp hair and from time to time the hand would leave her waist to tuck a coarse woolen blanket closer around her. There was a fire; she could hear its strong, snapping voice and she lay near it, quiet, content.
Gradually the deep, aching coldness began to leave her body, and as her well-being returned, so did her curiosity. Lorraine opened her eyes. Immediately she was taken by the shoulders and lowered carefully, until her head rested on a rag-stuffed pillow. Above her, bathed in the soft, rusty firelight, she saw the wonderfully chiseled features of her highwayman, his lips curved in a light, caressing smile.
“Welcome back from the underworld, darling,” he said. “But tell me, is your life always this eventful?”
“N—no. Was it you who pulled me from the water?”
He shrugged. “I thought it was a touch cold for lake bathing, and your white little teeth were chattering so hard that I couldn’t get your opinion. Was it presumptuous of me? I’ll throw you back in, if you like. Lie peacefully, child, I want to get you something hot to drink.”
He rose and left her, walking to the wide hearth in long, graceful strides. Lorraine lifted her head to examine her surroundings. Her overwhelming impression was of dark, fragrant wood everywhere; it seemed that she was in a small cabin. A square, frost-whorled window in the wall opposite the hearth let in a cold, gray light which contrasted with the warm blue-and-yellow of the fire. As her eyes adjusted to the light, she considered the other features of the room: a beamed ceiling, a leather-strapped trunk in the corner, a round cricket table on which were scattered a few books, a simple oak bed with hay mattress, and a country-copy Hepplewhite chair in elm with a brace of pistols slung over one arm. The pistols seemed an incongruous detail, though she was aware of her rescuer’s profession.
The man ladled liquid into a cup from an iron pot hung over the fire and carried it to her, lifting her so she might drink comfortably.
Lorraine sniffed it uncertainly, and looked up at him. “What’s in it?”
“Better that I don’t tell you, you might not drink it.” He put the cup to her lips and tilted it, and she drank. “No, don’t stop. Have some more.”
She took two more swallows, and he set the cup down. Lorraine tried to smile.
“ ’Tis very tasty,” she said. “I—I’d like to thank you.”
He laid her back on the pile of blankets. “No need. Actually, I bring a different lady home every night, feed her some broth, and if she doesn’t expire in five minutes, I know it’s safe to eat myself. Is the blanket scratchy against your legs? I could wrap a sheet around you.”
“My legs? No, the blanket is soft but—oh, why is it that… Sir, are my clothes off me?” she asked plaintively.
“Yes, but they haven’t strayed far. See, princess, they’re on the hearth there, drying rapidly, not a mite worse for their adventure. Except your boots—the leather’s ruined, I’m afraid. Why, poor darling, don’t look so distressed. What’s one pair of boots, after all?”
“It isn’t the boots,” whispered Lorraine with horror, her face beginning to sting with color. “It was—did you—oh, could you have removed my clothing?”
The highwayman ran a hand through his hair. “I’m afraid so. My lady’s maid is on vacation. And since I’ve begun confessing, I suppose I’d better admit that I molested you while you were unconscious. Too bad you weren’t awake to enjoy it, but I thought it would be just the thing to warm you up.”
Never in her young life had Lorraine been the recipient of any remark quite like this one. She stared at him for a mortified, panicked moment and then said, “You haven’t really, have you?”
“No, child, my tastes don’t run in that direction, I’m afraid, not that you don’t look damnably seductive there in my shirt that’s seven sizes too big for you.” He put a lazy finger under her chin and traced her lips with his thumb. “But now that you’re awake and thawed, perhaps you might like to try…”
“No! Oh, please, no!” Lorraine interrupted him hastily.
He removed his hand and patted her cheek kindly. “No’s enough, sweeting, you don’t have to beg me. You haven’t been around much, have you?”
“I suppose not,” she said shyly, “not in the sense you mean. Well, I haven’t in any sense, really. And I’m sorry, truly sorry, to have seemed so… mistrustful of you. I could see that you didn’t like it at all. But it wasn’t that. You misunderstood. It overset me to think what you must have seen.”
“What I must have seen? Of all the prissy notions! You were comatose from the cold, child. Ought I to have left you in wet garments?” He stopped, a thought occurring to him. “Have you ever been with a man before? No? I suppose that accounts for it. Listen, princess, the last thing you need to worry about is letting anyone see your body. Believe me, I’ve seen plenty, but nothing ever that compares with yours.” He watched her closely, his sensitive mouth gathering into a grin. “What a blush! If nothing else, I’ve succeeded in raising your body temperature. That must be good for you.” He lifted her head, brought the cup again to her lips, and ruthlessly fed her the remaining broth.
As he helped her settle back once more against the pillow, it occurred to Lorraine that to be rescued from peril by an outlaw, and to lie upon his cottage floor exchanging risqué riposte, was an adventure that might, more conformably, have befallen her sister Lynden. She was about to remark so to the highwayman when a frightening thought intruded.
“Lynden,” she said, trying weakly to sit. “Lynden will come back to help me and I won’t be there! She’ll think I’ve drowned! Oh, please, I must dress at once and go to her. She’ll be in agony!”
He shook his head and sat back on his heels. “I’ve thought of that, so I pulled the branch you were holding back to the bank, with your scarf wrapped around it and your bonnet perched on the end of a twig. Come to think of it, I wrote ‘safe’ in the snow there, as well. She’ll put it together. If you’ll close your eyes for another half hour, you’ll feel much stronger and your clothes will be dry. I’ll ride you home on my mare then, if you like.”
Warm before the fire, Lorraine shut her eyes and wished that she was Lynden. Then, surely, she would have had the courage to talk to him, to ask him the many questions that were shining in her mind. His beautiful, lilting accent—was he indeed Irish? What need forced him to cover one eye with a patch? And why must he pursue his living as a criminal? His speech and manner were that of an educated man. She nerved herself to ask one small, experimental question.
“From what was the broth made?”
The highwayman was sitting in the elm chair, tipped back against the wall, sipping broth from a chipped, handleless cup. He smiled into Lorraine’s eyes over the cup’s rim and said, “Polecat.”
Chapter Eight
“Polecat?” repeated Lynden, several hours later as the twins sat together in Lorraine’s pretty bedroom at Fern Court. “I wonder that you weren’t poisoned!”
“After he told me, there was a moment or two when I felt a trifle weak inside,” confessed Lorraine. “But I didn’t want to be such a Poor Thing—which I could tell he was already thinking I was. So I mastered myself.”
“And after that?” asked Lynden eagerly.
“He told me to be still again. After a bit, he said he was going out to saddle his mare and that I should dress. I did, and when he returned, he wrapped me in the blanket. He set me in front of him on his horse.”
“That’s dandy!” cried Lynden. “Did you talk on the way home?”
“No. But, Lynden, there was the murm
ur of the wind, the sparkle of the stars… and the warmth and strength of his arms around me.”
“Rainey, it’s the oddest thing, isn’t it? Here am I, the ill-behaved, wild twin making the most envied match of the year, while you, the good, quiet one, have fallen in love with an outlaw!”
“I’m not in love with him,” protested Lorraine, perhaps without the degree of conviction she would have wished. “Indeed, I hope I’m not so impressionable and flighty as to fall in love with any gentleman on so brief an acquaintance.”
“No,” agreed Lynden. “But if you’d been alone with him for another quarter hour, Lord knows what would have come of it. Did he say anything before he set you down from the horse?”
Lorraine stretched out her palms toward the fire. “I asked him if I might see him again, and he said it wouldn’t be right, he liked me too well to see me in the kind of trouble that could cause.”
“Didn’t you argue?”
Lorraine crossed her arms, hugging her waist. “No, I was afraid he would think it much too coming and you know I’m not much of a hand at it, anyway. I thanked him again for rescuing me, but he’d have none of it, and said that from what he’d seen of you, Lynden, you’d have had me out of the ice in no time, anyway. Oh, then he frowned, rather, and said that it might be better if I wasn’t to tell anyone that he’d taken my clothes off, because if he knew anything about people, ten to one they’d be making something of it that it wasn’t.”
“If that isn’t just like a man!” said Lynden in disgust. “He tells you to fib, but does he help plan a convincing lie? Not a bit! And as a result, you walk into the house and announce you were saved by a tinker and his wife!”
