Mists of Moorhead Manor

by Bancroft, Blair

  This then was what I could hear each night when all was quiet—the inexorable rhythm of the sea attempting to cut a path inland, swallowing the road, the house . . .

  My imagination would be the death of me yet.

  It occurred to me those precipitous heights would be a very bad place to come over faint. Not that I was subject to fainting spells, but . . .

  I backed up, cutting off my view of the rocks that jutted out of the sea like the teeth of a great sea monster. And then I was running back to the road, down the lane, slowing my pace only when a stitch in my side and lack of breath forced me to a halt. Hands on hips, I glared at the landscape around me. I had grown soft since the Peninsula, become a town bloom all too quickly wilted by physical challenges. I must walk more often, ride whenever I could. And I would return to the cliffs on a regular basis, until the threat of danger, coupled with bad memories had been conquered by the sheer beauty of the rugged Devon coastline.

  On the following Thursday, I set off on my first ride with what I suspected was the same eager anticipation experienced by the great Portuguese and Spanish explorers setting off to find new worlds. I was riding high, on horseback for the first time since those last days in France. And, yes, the moment was bittersweet, though I quickly tamed my thoughts to the good moments only. I would not be melancholy on my first ride in months.

  I soon discovered that although the land along the coast was windswept, it was not as barren as the heart of Exmoor. Most of the fields had been harvested, the land lying fallow, but it was clear that crops could be grown here. And when I came across a large and clearly well-tended farmhouse, barn, and outbuildings, I wondered if I had found the home farm and the family that had produced Mr. David Tremaine.

  A fine-looking woman of fifty-some years looked up from where she was gathering an armload of herbs in the kitchen garden. “Good morrow, miss,” she said with a broad smile. “You’d be Miss Ballantyne, I suspect.”

  “I am,” I replied with an answering smile. “Have I found the home farm?”

  “You have indeed, and our Davy has told us all about you. He says you’re a ray of sunshine cutting through the fog. A bright face long needed in those gloomy halls.”

  I suspected I was going to like Mrs. Tremaine as much as her son. She bawled a word in the direction of the barn, and two men soon emerged, both the image of David Tremaine—though one was clearly old enough to be his father, the other likely a brother. “So you’ve found us, have you?” the elder boomed. “Come in, come in, and try m’wife’s cider. A fine remedy for a parched throat on warm autumn day.”

  Their hospitality was not to be denied, nor did I wish to. These were good people, and friends were always welcome. Besides, my curiosity was piqued. I needed to know more about the strong, dynamic young man who seemed willing to devote his life to an invalid.

  I returned to Moorhead Manor convinced that David Tremaine had basically sacrificed the normal life of a young man of prosperous family in order to become a beast of burden, and sometime whipping boy, for Lady Vanessa Wetherington. Why? His mother had made no secret of it. “Infatuated, now wasn’t he?” she declared before heaving a dramatic sigh. “Off he went without a ‘by your leave.’ Leaving us short-handed.”

  “Sends his wages to pay for help, now doesn’t he?” his older brother cut in. “Fair-minded our Davy, even if we think he’s dicked in the nob.”

  I was hard put to find responses to these confidences, my mind soaring with this sudden influx of knowledge. Each day I was finding myself more and more in sympathy with David Tremaine and less certain that the great class divide should keep him from his love. If indeed Lady Vanessa was his love. Though I had to admit I could not see how he could still be dazzled by the sour, petulant young woman Lady Vanessa had become.

  It was a full hour before I once again mounted Bess and, following directions given my Mrs. Tremaine, trotted through a cleft in the rolling hills until I came to an imposing mansion, a structure far closer to what the name Moorhead Manor had originally brought to mind. The home of Thomas Ridgeway and family, Mrs. Tremaine had told me, adding on a whisper, “’Tis his brother, the nabob, who ran away with Lady Hycliffe. Five years ago, it was. A great scandal. Earl’s become a recluse, poor man, and who can blame him?”

  She had also added another warning, which I had trouble heeding on this lovely, unusually sunny day. “Don’t go no farther than the Ridgeways, miss. Beyond is the most treacherous part of the moor, and no place for a unwary stranger. Bad things have happened there, and not just sum’n lost in a bog. Only a few months back, the miller’s daughter was found lying at the foot of a tor. Some said she put a foot wrong when she climbed, others swore she was strangled. Whatever it was, miss, leave the moor to those who was born and bred here.”

  Such dark thoughts when the comfortable-looking manor house of stone, timber, and stucco gleamed in the late afternoon sun, looking totally benign. Suddenly feeling like a Peeping Tom, I turned Bess and headed home, my head ringing with all I had learned in one afternoon’s ride. David Tremaine and Lady Vanessa, the warmth of the Tremaine family, the scandal of Lady Hycliffe and Mr. Ridgeway’s brother, a death on the moor. The army had its share of gossip, but somehow I had not expected quite so much of it in the wilds of North Devon.

  Nor did I expect the reception that awaited me when I joined Lady Vanessa for late afternoon tea, which I looked forward to with great eagerness as Cook always prepared scones with the rich cream for which Devonshire was famous. And jam tarts, fairy cakes, or perhaps macaroons to ensure we did not fade away before dinner at seven. After my first ride in months, I was famished, though I suspected not even a long, soaking bath would relieve the muscles that were bound to scream at me in the morning.

  The bath would have to wait, however. I washed myself as best I could, changed into a gown of dark blue muslin, and hastened into Lady Vanessa’s sitting room, where the tea tray was already laid out. Her voice, rising loud and shrill, cut through my apologies for being late.

  “You rode Bess! My mother’s horse. How could you? And how dare you flaunt yourself before me, riding like the wind, when you know I am tied to this chair, forever maimed by a horse. Insensitive dolt! Get out of my sight!”

  Absurdly, my first thought was that I had walked Bess out of the stables and returned at the same pace. Riding like the wind was hyperbole of the first order.

  I pictured the view from her window. Yes, it was possible she had caught a distant glimpse of me as I put the mare to the gallop and flew down the road to the home farm, my spirits soaring as they had not in many months.

  And then the full impact of her anger struck me and I could only stare. Mr. Tremaine had pulled Lady Vanessa’s chair backwards, wheeling it around until her back was toward me. His head was bent to hers, clearly scolding. Her arms flew up, pummeling him in frantic movements that seemed to have no focus. Indeed, I’d swear her eyes were closed. Miss Scruggs never moved, seemingly as frozen as I.

  Surely Lady Vanessa could not expect me to give up riding—the thought was somehow sickening. I had not fully realized how much I’d needed the freedom of being on horseback once again until the possibility of losing that privilege loomed.

  And yet as Lady Vanessa’s companion, I should not do something that upset her so greatly.

  She was quiet now, her head bowed, hands in her lap. David Tremaine, looking down at her, had not lost his scowl. Interesting. He might care for her, but he was far from blind to her faults. I stepped forward. “I beg your pardon, Lady Vanessa,” I said, “but Lord Hycliffe, knowing I had spent much of my life on horseback, offered your mother’s mare for me to ride. He said Bess was the only horse trained to the sidesaddle. Otherwise, I assure you I never would have presumed to ride her.”

  When she offered no reply, I added, “I am most sincerely sorry if I have upset you. I will make every effort to keep out of your sight the next time I ride.”

  At that, her head jerked up, eyes once again blazing with a
nger. “You are a paid companion, yet you defy my wishes.”

  Alas, being a daughter of the regiment was not easily put aside. I bit back the hot words on the tip of my tongue, while telling myself I was employed by the Earl of Hycliffe who wished me to add a bit of spirit to his household. The struggle was intense, and once again David Tremaine became the peacekeeper.

  “Miss Ballantyne has but one half-day a week, my lady. I think you must grant her the right to spend the time as she pleases. And you know quite well poor old Bess has been doing nothing but eating and growing fat. It’s high time someone exercised her.”

  A remarkable young man. Though once again I wondered at his alleged attraction to Lady Vanessa.

  Silence reigned, tense and uncomfortable. I tried to imagine myself a young subaltern in the regiment, forced by military discipline to follow orders he could not like. I swept toward the tea table, sank into my usual embroidered chintz chair, and said, “Would you like me to pour today, my lady?”

  His eyes steely, Mr. Tremaine turned Lady Vanessa’s chair and pushed it close to the table. One glance at her continued pout and he offered, “An excellent idea, Miss Ballantyne. I think we could all benefit from a good cup of tea.”

  He had power over her, I had to grant him that. Without further ado, she accepted the cup of tea I poured and raised it to her lips. I avoided looking at her as I poured tea for the rest of us and doled out scones and cream. We ate in silence, each aware of who had won the Battle of Penelope’s Ride. And it wasn’t Lady Vanessa. Nor was it I.

  Chapter Five

  I sat on the windowseat in my bedchamber and gazed out at the thick blanket of fog that had failed to dissipate as an obscured sun rose higher in the sky. It was almost as if the gray clouds above had reached out and joined hands with the mists rising off the sea. We had not seen such a fog since the day I arrived . . .

  The oddest urge struck me. It was Lady Vanessa’s naptime, I was free for two hours, and suddenly I felt I must brave the mists, finding my way through the fog to the junction where I had first been set down by the stagecoach. Absurd, I know, but it was a challenge I must face. It was not, after all, as if I had not walked to the cliffs when the weather was fine. If I stuck to the road, getting lost was highly unlikely.

  I grabbed up my cloak, clapped on my sturdiest bonnet, and practically ran down two flights of stairs. Ignoring the protests of Allard, the butler, I slipped out the door. For a moment I stood there in the shelter of the cloistered walkway and breathed in the cool damp air. After a rueful shake of my head over my eagerness to challenge the mist, I made my way across the courtyard to the archway that led to the great white world beyond Moorhead Manor’s walls. Fortunately, the fog was not so thick I could not make out the drive, at least for the span of a few feet in front of me.

  Five or ten minutes down the lane a shocking thought struck me. I was enjoying myself. I was enveloped in mist, the house vanished behind me, nothing but a wall of white between me and a four-hundred-foot drop into the sea. Yet my spirits soared. I felt even more free than I did on Bess’s back.

  I was mad.

  No. Just sadly mistaken about what I wanted.

  I had so longed for peace and quiet, shelter, a settled existence, yet now that I had it, I was restless, my constant struggle to cope with Lady Vanessa not enough to satisfy my sense of adventure. Merciful heavens, I was charging toward the cliffs as if I welcomed danger, missed its spine-tingling call to arms.

  I came to a sudden halt right there in the middle of the lane, the mist swirling around me, and gaped at the audacity of the thoughts in my head, unsure what to make of a Penelope Ruth Ballantyne who was not the woman I thought she was. Perhaps I was simply reveling in the privacy of the moment, thoroughly enjoying being hidden from the residents of Moorhead Manor, from the harshness of the world . . .

  And perhaps I was my parents’ daughter, with adventure in my blood, the tramp of cavalry and the roar of cannon forever in my ears. A woman not easily adaptable to a sheltered existence.

  But I’d wanted to come to this quiet part of Devon. Yet after a scant three weeks, I was driven to taunt danger, plunging through the fog toward a sheer drop to teeth-like rocks far below. Nonsense! I wasn’t reckless. I must cross the main road a good fifty yards before the edge of the cliff. As long as I kept my feet on well-packed earth, there would be no problem. What I felt was nothing more than a delicious sense of adventure. There was no true danger here. I set my feet back in motion, heading toward the sound of the surf crashing against the rocks.

  But of course a walk to the main road was too tame. To the raucous, almost mocking cries of seagulls, who seemed to have no difficulty navigating the mist-saturated air, I crossed the road and kept on going, the wind stronger here, occasionally parting the fog so I could see a good ten or twenty feet ahead, with an occasional glimpse of the gray sea beyond. I kept going, though far more slowly as I approached the edge of the cliff, until I was close enough to look down and catch glimpses of white spray pluming a third of the way up the cliff. High tide, I realized, as the peaks of only the tallest rocks could be seen below.

  I glanced along the shoreline and gasped, going very still while castigating myself for the fool I undoubtedly was. There was a fissure in the cliff, a gash at least a yard wide cut into the earth but four feet to my right. Idiot! I could so easily have approached the cliff just there, where erosion had softened the ground . . . How far inland did the crevice reach, I wondered. Was it a danger to the road? Perhaps I should mention it to the earl. Silly me. The estate likely had someone who kept an eagle eye on every inch of the shoreline. I was the stranger here, blundering about like some silly widgeon without two thoughts to rub together. Shaking my head, I backed away from the gash in the earth and turned toward the road.

  Except of course there was no road. Only a blanket of white. Resolutely, I put my back to the sea and marched straight ahead. The road was there, I simply had to find it. But the sound of the surf at my back was little help. It reverberated around me, enveloping me almost as thoroughly as the fog. And I finally began to realize just how foolish I’d been, thinking I could conquer a Devon mist. I slowed my pace, concentrating so hard on moving straight ahead—cautiously sliding each foot ahead, testing the ground before settling my weight on it—that pounding hooves were almost on me before I heard them. Hooves, rumbling wheels, the jingle of harness. The sound, distorted by the fog, was all around me, menacing me from every direction. Panicked, I stumbled, arms flailing, my feet moving backward of their own volition. I screamed as I felt the ground crumble beneath me. I threw myself forward onto my belly, my hands grasping at short, windswept grass, my right knee bent beneath me, my left foot dangling into nothingness.

  Long moments with both body and brain frozen before I was able to take stock of my situation. It could have been worse. I could have been dangling by one hand on the edge of that gash in the cliff, which clearly was more severe than I had thought. Or I could have fallen in, plunging to my death.

  Perhaps the gash in the cliffs was not larger than I had thought, and I had been walking in circles . . .

  No, I had not, for I was clearly close to the road. My situation was not as dire as I feared. All I had to do was crawl forward on my belly, away from the fissure. But it wasn’t easy to convince my frozen limbs to move. I, who had thought myself up to any challenge . . .

  Road. I suddenly realized the sound of horses’ hooves and rumbling wheels had stopped.

  “Helloo, Helloo! Anyone there?” A disembodied voice echoed around me, impossible to tell from what direction.

  Thank you, Lord! “Over here,” I called. And kept calling, adding “Be careful. The ground is soft here.”

  A tall dark figure loomed up out of the mist, stopping a good five feet from where I lay. “Good God, woman,” he exclaimed. “Are you mad to stray so close to the crevice?”

  “Just a foolish newcomer to this part of the world,” I admitted, much chagrined.

 
; “Crawl forward until you reach me,” he ordered. “The ground is stable here.”

  Thoroughly humiliated, though eternally grateful, I did as I was told. Strong hands swept me up and set me on my feet. Oh. My. I had been rescued by Adonis himself. I recognized him from his portraits at various ages hanging on the walls of Moorhead Manor, and from Lady Vanessa’s many sketches. Robert Wetherington, Viscount Exmere. Heir to the Earl of Hycliffe.

  “Might I ask what you are doing here?” he inquired, his concern giving way to the quizzical smile that adorned so many of his portraits.

  “I am Lady Vanessa’s new companion, my lord.”

  “Ah!” Azure eyes so like his father’s gleamed with an emotion I feared to analyze. “Your name?”

  “Penelope Ruth Ballantyne.”

  A bark of laughter cut through the swirling mist. “Surely a great burden for a child,” my rescuer said.

  “Indeed, my lord. “But instead of waiting faithfully as Penelope did, my mother and I were more like Ruth, following my father wherever his regiment led.”

  “An intrepid adventurer then, undaunted by mists or cliffs.”

  “A foolish adventurer, my lord, now thoroughly chastened, though exceedingly grateful for the rescue. Thank you.”

  Tucking my hand beneath his arm, he led me unerringly through the fog to a curricle and pair, where a young man stood at the horses’ heads, keeping them in place. The viscount helped me mount the bench seat then took up the reins, waited for his tiger to mount at the back, and off we went down the mist-enclosed lane, as if the skies were blue and the sun shining brightly. A surreptitious glance at my companion showed my first impression was not wrong, nor had the portraits lied. Brown hair fell in waves about his ears, one lock dangling precariously near his eyes. His features were classically handsome, breathtakingly so. His smile ready, his attitude kind and far from condescending.