The Bet

by Rebecca King

  “Come on now, let’s get you in here. How about a nice hot cup of tea?” Mabel murmured as she tugged the blankets down to reveal the pristine white sheets beneath.

  They looked so inviting that Estelle sighed. She yearned to be able to just curl up beneath the heavy blankets, get warm, and sleep all of her cares away. It was going to be difficult to get there, though, because each time she moved, her feet hurt and the room began to sway.

  “Come on, I’ll help you,” Myles murmured. Rather than risk making her dizzy some more, Myles held his elbow out to her. “Just take your time.”

  Estelle hobbled over to the bed and sat down with a huge sigh of relief.

  “Let me take a look at those feet,” he suggested, kneeling before her. “I need to see if these need bathing, or if you need something for them.” He turned to the housekeeper. “Mabel, Estelle needs to sleep in here because when she woke up earlier she was disorientated and confused. I don’t want her wandering around the west wing at night. In here, I will be able to hear her if she does wake up and try to move around,” he explained.

  “I am here, you know,” Estelle reminded him gently.

  In spite of her pique, she couldn’t bring herself to be angry with him for his high-handedness. Still, it was not something she was inclined to allow him to continue to do.

  Myles acknowledged her slight rebuke with a brisk nod. “My room is only next door. If you take ill in the night just shout out if you cannot reach the bell. Don’t take any risks by trying to push yourself too hard and go in search of someone. It is easy to get lost in a house like this. Just get some rest.”

  “I can get Bobbi and Katie to keep watch, if you like, in case you take poorly? If you do then we will send someone off to the doctor, fog or not, but it might take a while. There is a storm promised before tomorrow. It has already started to rain. If those winds pick up the fog will lift but we will be just as stranded.”

  “I wouldn’t recommend anybody heading across the moors on a night like this,” Myles sighed, fervently hoping that the predicted storm was nothing more than a rain shower.

  “I will help her with her boots,” Mabel added. “It would be more appropriate, sir, if you don’t mind me saying so.”

  Myles nodded and stepped back. “Let me see them, though.”

  He was aware of Mabel’s curious look but didn’t explain. He looked at Estelle, who appeared so tired he suspected she would fall asleep at any moment.

  When he turned around and walked to the door, the effort it took was alarming. It was the first time he had actually left any woman and felt a physical wrench by doing so. Because of that, rather than leave and go to speak with his father, he hesitated and watched Mabel remove Estelle’s boots.

  “Here, let me see those,” he ordered softly when Mabel dropped one boot onto the floor and set to work on the other. He stalked across the room and caught sight of several bruises on Estelle’s feet. “You need to soak them,” he murmured in concern.

  Estelle studied her aching feet and sighed. She knew they were sore, but she hadn’t expected the myriad cuts and bruises which covered her feet.

  “These are ruined,” Myles murmured as he studied her boots and poked one finger through a small hole. “Whatever you ran over was sharp.”

  He shook his head and dropped the boot onto the floor. Unsurprisingly, the other boot was just as bad but, thankfully, they had protected Estelle’s feet enough for there not to be any lasting damage. She would heal with time and rest.

  “What are you thinking?” Estelle murmured when she saw Myles staring angrily down at her ruined footwear.

  Myles met her curious gaze. “I think that wherever you ran in those woods, it was a long way. Something must have frightened you a lot for you not to stop, or even notice the discomfort of standing on something so sharp it would tear your boot.”

  He didn’t say as much, but in his book the state of her boots was proof she had been telling him the truth. Unfortunately, it put the hooded figures outside in a different light. They now posed more of a danger than he had first thought. They didn’t just look sinister, they were dangerous.

  “Let me see the back of your head,” he murmured, wondering if she had fallen and hit her head, or someone had tried to hit her with something. In this fog, if someone fell over and didn’t get back up and remained silent and still, it would be damned near impossible to find them again. Had that saved her life?

  Estelle sat perfectly still while Myles poked around in her hair.

  “I cannot see anything,” he murmured a few seconds later. “Show me.”

  Estelle dutifully parted her hair where it hurt the most.

  Myles studied the duck-egg on the back of her head and only just managed to muffle his epithet. He didn’t touch it because he knew already that it hurt her. Strangely, now that he had seen it, he didn’t think he had been the one to cause the injury.

  “Get some rest,” he murmured. “You have hit your head on something somehow but haven’t pierced the skin. We will keep an eye on it. As long as it doesn’t get any bigger, you should feel no more discomfort than what you have already. If it does get worse, or you start to fell ill, send for me.”

  Myles would have to get her some more professional medical attention, and if that meant going to find the doctor himself then he would. He almost relished the possibility of crossing paths with the people in the cloaks once more. Next time, though, he would be armed, and have one or two of the more heavyweight men in his employ with him.

  At the door, he paused. His gaze was somewhat hardened when he pierced Mabel with a stern look. “Has there been any other unusual activity going on around here while I have been gone?”

  Strangely, Mabel didn’t turn to face him. Instead, she continued to fuss over Estelle with a diligence he would worry about later.

  “Everything that goes on around here is strange,” the housekeeper replied evasively.

  Myles knew immediately that there was something but the housekeeper wasn’t prepared to tell him just yet. He opened his mouth to speak but when his gaze fell to Estelle, he closed it again. Later. He would get the facts about what she had seen from Mabel later. Right now, he was starkly aware that his father was waiting for him downstairs.

  Estelle’s stomach lurched when she lifted her gaze and realised Myles was watching her.

  “Thank you,” she mouthed.

  Myles smiled. With a nod, he quietly let himself out.

  Even though he had met her less than an hour ago, Myles was already disturbed at his ever growing need not only to protect her but to remain with her. Not only that, but he wanted to find out as much about her as he could, and not entirely because of her missing memory. His curiosity was personal. He wanted to know who she was, where she had come from, how old she was; all of the mitigating facts that were deemed important in order to get to know someone, and decide whether they could be a part of his life. In spite of sternly warning himself that it was foolish to allow his sense of duty to stray into personal territory, his gaze had fallen to her ring finger. He had been more relieved than he had expected when he had found it without a band. What that meant, he wasn’t quite sure.

  Purposefully ignoring the flurry of attraction that flickered to life within, he went in search of his father. Now that Estelle was receiving the best care he could provide, Myles went to tackle the next biggest problem in his life; why he had received a letter saying his father was on death’s door when he wasn’t.

  CHAPTER SIX

  “Who is she?” his father demanded when Myles entered the study a few minutes later.

  “Her name is Estelle. She is new to the village, and has been staying with her grandma.” Myles sighed. He crossed the room and sat down, relieved to be able to rest for a while.

  “What’s her grandma’s name?”

  “Wynne,” Myles replied.

  “I know her. She lives on the other side of the village next to the cove.” Barnabas sighed; a little disappointed
that the girl was so impoverished.

  While her clothing and hair had already hinted at there being a somewhat wild side to her character, he hadn’t banked on her being so badly lacking in social status. Still, a union was not impossible. Stranger things had happened to families before and, when his son behaved in such a proprietorial way toward any woman as Myles had toward the young woman, Barnabas knew it was best not to dismiss any probability until all avenues had been thoroughly investigated. If there was a chance he could persuade his son to marry and produce an heir, even if it meant Myles marrying someone like the beautiful yet untitled Estelle, Barnabas would fully support it.

  Right now, you have bigger problems under your roof, Barnabas mused, and turned his attention back to his son, whom he suspected would be able to provide him with some of the answers he needed.

  “What’s going on?” Barnabas demanded.

  “With you or Estelle?”

  “Let’s talk about your friend first,” Barnabas replied. “Seeing as I know I am alright.”

  Myles snorted but didn’t reprimand his father about his assumption of a connection with Estelle. He carefully explained how he had met her the first time, culminating in his running her over this evening.

  “It was too late to avoid her,” he finished.

  “She was fleeing them, you say?” Barnaby asked. He stood up to pace before the fire; always a credible sign that he was in a bad temper. “I am not having that behaviour on my land.”

  “I know,” Myles replied. “But it isn’t wise to go out there in weather like this. Even if I could find them, what could I do when the fog is so thick it is impossible to identify anyone? They certainly looked sinister enough to terrify her so much that she ran and didn’t recognise the pain in her feet.”

  “I wonder what she had done to draw their attention to her in the first place?” Barnabas murmured.

  Myles threw him a sharp look, slightly perturbed that his father would consider Estelle guilty of anything. “I don’t think she had done anything. She may have been in the wrong place at the wrong time, and stumbled across them doing something illegal.”

  “Like trespassing,” Barnabas finished for him with a nod.

  Myles agreed. “I am convinced she had nothing to do with them. She was fleeing them, father. I only caught sight of her face a few seconds before she fell beneath the curricle but she looked absolutely terrified. That, I did see. If she is guilty of anything, I shall eat my hat.”

  “Don’t think with your pants, boy,” Barnabas scolded. In spite of his chastisement, he suspected that Myles was right. However, he didn’t know the young woman well enough to be able to say whether she could be trusted or not. “Her grandma is a village elder. She has been a part of the village for as long as I have. While I would vouch for her, I cannot say the same for her grand-daughter. I had no idea Wynne Matthews had anybody stopping with her.”

  Myles squinted at the fire while he contemplated the layout of the village. He knew where Wynne lived. Her home, while humble, was neatly kept, well maintained, and pretty. It was located just off the harbour, which explained why Estelle had been up on the bluff when they had first met.

  Barnabas looked at his son. “What do you know about her?”

  Myles puffed his cheeks out. “I don’t really know much about her at all. We only met the once before today. She is rather beautiful, I will admit, but I am not thinking with my pants, father. I am just saying that she was running away from whoever was in those woods. I can only assume that she disturbed them. With the cloaks on they look sinister. Maybe she was so scared, or lost in fear that she didn’t notice her feet as she ran away from them. She certainly left the trees so fast she couldn’t stop until it was too late. A curricle can’t creep up on anybody, foggy weather or not, but she didn’t hear me. She couldn’t have done or she wouldn’t have run out in front of me like that.”

  Barnabas had to concede that Myles had a point. He had little doubt that if Myles believed Estelle to be innocent of any wrongdoing then she was innocent of any wrongdoing. Myles was nothing if not a good judge of character.

  “So she was in the Whistling Woods,” Barnabas replied thoughtfully. “The Whistling Woods which are reputedly haunted.”

  “Yes, but she isn’t dead. Nor were those people who were carrying the lights, who appeared to be chasing her.”

  “I wonder if they are relying on folklore to keep people out of the woods,” Barnabas murmured.

  “I don’t know but it has to stop,” Myles warned darkly. “I damned well nearly killed her tonight. The next person who gets chased by them might not be so lucky.”

  Myles explained what had happened on their journey to the house, and the way the figures had followed him.

  “Well, let them stray any closer and we will put them firmly in their places,” Barnabas muttered grimly.

  Barnabas stalked toward the window and stared out into the gloom for several moments, in the direction of the main gates. Myles moved to stand beside him. Shoulder-to-shoulder father and son stared out into the fog. Now that he was inside, Myles felt a deep sense of frustration at not being able to take several men back out to round the hooded figures up. Unfortunately, there was nothing they could do with them even if they could locate them. Bodmin was at least an hour away by cart, probably two hours in this fog, and that was assuming it was possible to find a safe route through the moors. The alternative was to confine them in the cellars in the house which was too close to the family for comfort.

  “Whoever they are they chased her and put her life in danger. Estelle is local, and she saw them. It isn’t safe for her to go home,” Myles explained.

  Barnabas nodded. “It has always had a bad reputation; that place. Why, nobody who ever goes near it has a good thing to say about it. I should have felled it many years ago, and be done with the whole damned place. If it wasn’t there anymore maybe the rumours would stop. As it is-” He shook his head when his temper began to stir.

  “Others who have been near the place, even in the daytime, have run away from it and have claimed they were chased. I cannot help but feel those people in the hoods, whoever they are, are the reason why.”

  Barnabas looked at him. “Why were they wearing hoods?”

  “I want to say that they were hiding their identity, but they looked like monks hoods. They were white cloaks, with pointed hoods pulled high over their faces so nobody could see their facial features. To anybody looking at them they appeared monk-like, but were distinctly sinister shrouded in fog like they were,” Myles explained.

  Barnabas nodded in complete understanding. “So she ran.”

  “You can’t blame her for wanting to get away from them.”

  Barnabas turned to look at his son. “You are right. She has to stay, Myles, for as long as possible,” he said firmly. “Whoever her relatives are, they need to be informed that she is alright, but she has to remain with us for the time being. At least until we can find out who those cloaked figures are, and put a stop to whatever it is they are doing.”

  “What is it?” Myles looked at his father when he heard the grimness in his father’s voice. Barnabas was busy staring at the fog again.

  “Because you were followed here, my boy. Look.” Barnabas didn’t point toward it but turned to stare avidly in the direction of the main gates.

  The fog swirled outside of the window. For a few minutes, Myles could see nothing more than that. Then, just as he was about to turn away, the fog cleared for a few precious moments and allowed a brief glimpse of a light still flickering at the end of the driveway.

  “Are they still on the property?” Myles murmured, surprised that whoever it was hadn’t gone home by now. Why he was talking quietly he had no idea but he didn’t remove his gaze until the fog swirled again and obliterated the unnerving vision of the light at the end of the garden.

  “It seems that they are willing to trespass, yes,” Barnabas replied, his voice cold and dispassionate.

 
Once they were sure they couldn’t be seen, they both turned away from the window and closed the shutters and curtains. Safely hidden from prying eyes, they returned to the fireplace.

  “Do you have any suspicions about who they might be?” Myles asked eventually.

  Barnabas stared down at his fine French brandy while he thought about that.

  “There have been rumours off and on over the years, but nothing can be proven, if you know what I mean?”

  “I can remember hearing stories about that place from Grandfather,” Myles sighed.

  Barnabas nodded. “There are also reports that someone mentioned an old hag living in the woods. I took Chalmers and several of the men to take a look a few years back. We searched every inch of those woods but found nothing, so I can only assume it was someone who mistook a villager or something. I don’t know. There are also rumours of an old priory having been located in there at some point in the distant past but I have checked the history books, and there is no mention of any priory in the area. I have gone back as far as 1115AD when the original Icklehampton Hall was built. I have asked the parish clergy, and even written to the Church, nothing.”

  “So the priory doesn’t exist. What would that have to do with those cloaked figures though?” Myles asked, feeling more and more uncomfortable about the entire situation the more they spoke.

  “Didn’t you say they looked like monks to you?”

  “Yes, but if the priory disappeared many years ago, why would anybody want to dress as a monk and worship there now?” Myles shifted uncomfortably in his seat. He suddenly became aware that his father was staring hard at him.

  “Strange people are apt to do strange things,” Barnabas replied.

  “If they pose a threat to people, and after tonight I have to say that I think they do, I think we need to act quickly before someone really is badly injured or even killed.”