Since showing the young woman into the parlour, Scarlet had made every effort to busy herself in the kitchen, having started several different tasks in her frustration, and leaving each one unfinished. Twice she had heated the iron for the purpose of pressing her father’s long-tailed shirts, and each time she had withdrawn the iron to the hearth where it had grown lukewarm. Several times she had set the wooden tray with her mammy’s best rose china teacups, only to return them to the wall-cabinet on recalling her father’s express instructions, ‘I don’t want you pampering to this woman when she arrives… no foolish notions of bringing in a tray. You stay well out of the way until you’re sent for.’
Scarlet was greatly excited at the prospect of Shelagh Williams coming to live at Greystone House; how wonderful it would be, she thought, to have someone she might learn to confide in and who could be a friend to her. Every few minutes Scarlet was compelled to tiptoe down the long gloomy corridor from the kitchen to the parlour, where she would lean with her ear to the door and her fingers crossed, in the fervent hope that her father would see fit to employ the young woman. She was horrified at his tone of voice and the hostile manner in which he addressed Miss Williams, although she admired the young woman’s quiet firm response, and she knew that hew father also would be favourably impressed. She hoped so; oh, she did hope so!
‘Oh, there you are.’ Vincent Pengally was relieved when he saw that Scarlet had seemed to be waiting for his call. He watched until she had come within the glow of the hall lamp before impatiently instructing her, ‘Miss Williams has accepted the terms of employ and will move into Greystone House within the next week.’ He paused at Scarlet’s delighted expression, and was made to wonder whether he had come to a decision he might later regret. He felt uneasy about the whole matter, but saw it as the lesser of two evils; certainly he dared not risk the possibility of Scarlet buckling beneath the strain which Hannah’s regrettable malaise had inflicted on her. Impudent though John Blackwood had been, his warning had only told Pengally what he already knew. He had no choice!
‘I’m so pleased.’ Scarlet could not hide her enthusiasm, her glowing smile astonishing the young woman as she was made to realise how extraordinarily beautiful Scarlet was. She thought of her own commonplace appearance and, for the briefest moment, her returning smile was constrained by feelings of envy. ‘Thank you,’ she said, desperately trying to suppress those uncharitable thoughts that would well defeat her purpose here.
‘Don’t be so quick to assume it’s all settled,’ interrupted Pengally, who was irritated by the amiable exchanges. ‘She’s yet to meet your mother. Take her up there now.’ His smile resembled a grimace as he added in a cutting voice, ‘Once she’s seen what she’s taking on… she’ll likely change her mind!’ He turned from them and returned to the parlour, closing the door behind him and his quiet laughter echoing in the air.
‘My father finds illness offensive.’ Scarlet’s loathing for her father bubbled inside her as she mounted the stairs, occasionally glancing behind her to ensure that the young woman was following.
‘Does he give you no help with your mother?’
‘None.’ Scarlet paused at the top of the stairs as she waited for her companion to arrive. The question had revived painful and bitter thoughts. ‘My mother prefers it that way,’ she said, reaching out to the stairpost where she turned up the lamp there, ‘and so do I.’
In the soft light Shelagh Williams detected the hostility on Scarlet’s face at the mention of her father, and it only strengthened her resolve to stay. ‘I see,’ she said quietly, and no more was said until they reached Hannah’s room.
Propped up against the pillow, with her anxious blue eyes trained on the door and her hands feverishly twisting the sheet into tight spirals, Hannah looked a haunted and pathetic figure. ‘Is this the young woman you told me about, Scarlet?’ she asked. There was a surprising degree of confidence in her voice.
Thrilled that her mammy had even remembered the conversation they had earlier enjoyed, Scarlet enfolded her in a warm embrace. ‘This is Shelagh Williams,’ she said, beckoning for her to come forward.
‘Hello, Mrs Pengally.’ Shelagh stretched out her hand as Scarlet moved aside. For a moment it seemed as though Hannah might grasp it, but then she cringed into the bed, her eyes wary as they looked into the young woman’s smiling face.
‘Shelagh will be such a help to us, Mammy.’ Scarlet sat on the edge of the bed, her dark eyes pleading, ‘and it will be wonderful, won’t it… for me to have someone I can talk to… someone nearer my own age? And there’s so much work to be done, another pair of hands will be a blessing.’
Hannah looked into her daughter’s face and was moved by the loneliness there. She had so much wanted to escape from the bed which had become her prison, she had prayed for the strength that would enable her to carry out her duties, and in her most sensible moments she shamed at how the illness which had brought her down had also blighted Scarlet’s already deprived existence. But her prayers had not been answered. It was as though the devil held her down, sucking the strength from her, besieging her troubled mind and darkening her thoughts with the awful belief that, if she was ever to leave the sanctuary of this room, she would be lost for ever. ‘Are you coming to look after me?’ she asked the kindly faced stranger.
‘If you’ll let me.’
‘You won’t make me leave this room?’
‘Not unless you want to.’
‘I’ll never want that. I’m safe here.’ Hannah returned her gaze to Scarlet. ‘I’m a trial to you, aren’t I, child?’
Taking her mammy’s fingers into her own, Scarlet touched them to her lips. ‘Don’t ever say that,’ she murmured, a little sadly. ‘You won’t always be ill. Soon you’ll begin to get better… and you’ll want to do the things you have always done.’
‘Do you really think so?’ Hannah was trembling.
‘Of course I do, Mammy… and you must believe it too.’
‘Promise me something, Scarlet?’
‘What is it?’
‘You won’t leave me, will you?… You won’t ever leave me?’
‘You know I won’t, Mammy.’ Scarlet kissed Hannah’s brow, then she rose to her feet. ‘You’ve got two people to care for you now… and we won’t ever be far away.’
‘Let me rest now, child.’ Hannah was weakened by her self-imposed confinement.
When Scarlet enquired whether there was anything else she wanted, Hannah shook her head. But then she said a strange thing, and it was to Shelagh Williams. ‘No one sent you, did they… to punish us?’ When, obviously taken aback, the young woman passionately objected to such an unseemly suggestion, Hannah looked deep and long into her small brown eyes, saying presently, ‘That’s alright then… but someone will come, one day. That’s why I have to hide.’
Scarlet lingered, eager to put her mammy’s mind at rest. ‘No one’s coming to punish you,’ she told her firmly. ‘You have done nothing to be punished for.’ Hannah shook her head, smiled, and lay back in the pillow, closing her eyes and softly singing to herself.
At the door, Scarlet turned. ‘I’ll be up later with your milk,’ she said softly. She was surprised when the singing stopped and the blue eyes opened wide. ‘Yes, Mammy?’ she asked, hoping that Hannah was about to request that she be given a helping of food with her milk.
‘That boy… the one in the barn.’
‘You mean Silas?’
‘Don’t be fooled by him. He knows! He was there… I’m sure of it. He’s evil. Be warned.’
‘All right, Mammy. Don’t worry.’ Scarlet’s voice was soothing, but it always disturbed her when her mammy spoke about Silas in that way.
When she bade Shelagh Williams goodnight, Scarlet was not surprised when that young woman made reference to Silas, asking, ‘Who is he… where does he come from?’ Even if she had wanted to, Scarlet could not have answered, because she herself had long yearned to know the truth of Silas. After all these years, she had le
arned nothing; only that she loved him. ‘He’s just someone who works in my father’s smithy,’ she replied.
Shelagh Williams made no comment, merely nodding her head and seeming to be satisfied. But when the door was closed and she stood in the darkness alone, her curiosity was already aroused. Why had Vincent Pengally been so adamant that part of her job would include keeping Scarlet and Silas apart? What had so frightened that poor demented woman upstairs that she had imagined someone would be sent to ‘punish’ her… and why had she also warned Scarlet to stay away from Silas, whom she called ‘evil’?
She hurried from Greystone House, finding her path lit by the soft light from John Blackwood’s window. She secretly thanked his wife for leading her to the position with the Pengallys. What she had heard there tonight was strange and unsettling. But it had not deterred her, for she was not easily frightened. If anything, she was intrigued, and more determined than ever that her place at Greystone House would prove to be all that she had hoped.
‘He’s planning to leave. If you love him, Scarlet, then you mustn’t let him go.’ Shelagh had been at Greystone House for a month now, and she had seen for herself how hopelessly in love the two young ones were. She knew no more about Silas now than she had done on first arriving, but it irked her to see how cruelly they were kept apart.
‘Don’t torment me, Shelagh,’ Scarlet implored, turning her face into the pillow. ‘If he wants to go, what can I do to stop him?’ Silas had deliberately avoided her of late. Even when she had craved that secret smile which always gave her hope, he had kept his gaze averted. Twice recently she had crept into the barn, hoping that he might take her into his arms the way he used to before her mammy was taken so ill. But he was never there. She had even wandered the moors, searching for him, in vain. Day and night she was tormented until now, she had begun to shut out all thought of him. Her mammy was right. He was evil!
‘Go with him,’ Shelagh urged her now, ‘He will leave… and soon. I’ve seen the way he’s gathering together all the things that are precious to him… that small knife with the bone handle, those carvings of wood creatures and the leather boots that John Blackwood gave him… all tied up in a neat bundle.’
‘Then let him go!’ Scarlet sat up in the bed, her unhappy eyes raised to the young woman who had lately become a treasured friend. ‘We can only ever bring heartache to each other… it’s always been that way.’ She bowed her head into her hands and began quietly sobbing. In her heart of hearts she had known that Silas would soon be gone from Greystone House.
‘Then you’ll do nothing to stop him from leaving?’
‘Oh, Shelagh,’ Scarlet looked up and her face was desolate, ‘if I thought I could stop him, I’d move heaven and earth… if I thought there could ever be a future for us, there’s nothing in the world I wouldn’t do. But Silas and I… we were never meant to be.’ All the bitterness came flooding back. ‘Let him go,’ she said in a hard voice, ‘it’s probably for the best.’ She dropped her gaze, thinking of Silas, and loving him.
‘As you say, it’s probably for the best. But if it were me… and if I loved someone, I wouldn’t let him go so easily.’ Shelagh stood a while longer by the bed. In a moment she was gone and the room was plunged into darkness.
Throwing back the bedclothes and shivering from the rush of cold air, Scarlet left the relative warmth of her bed and went to the window. Here her forlorn gaze was drawn to the barn. All was in darkness and Scarlet wondered whether Silas lay sleeping inside, or whether he had gone into the night, as on so many other occasions. It was almost as if he was tasting little freedoms before venturing out into the wide unknown beyond.
Scarlet’s heart was heavy as she thought on the uneasy closeness that was always between her and Silas. Nothing had really changed to make life easier for either of them. Silas was ruled by a hard taskmaster, and she was at the mercy of fate. A cruel fate, that had taken away so much of her innocence and had denied her any normal relationships. She had grown up in a web of deceit and suspicion, and even the comfort she had derived from Silas’s company was tainted with real fear. Life was strange, she thought, looking back over the years; strange and terrifying. Yet what was normal? Perhaps John Blackwood and his little family… was that normal? So many times she had heard John muttering about how ‘Pengally’s a curious fellow… it ain’t normal the way he makes you live.’ So what was normal, and what was unnatural? Certainly Scarlet knew very little of life outside of Greystone House. There were no friends of her own age with whom she could compare herself: the young ones in the village always kept their distance and Scarlet suspected they had grown afraid of her. John said they didn’t mean to hurt her, ‘it’s just that folks are allus suspicious of them they don’t know… them that seem to be… different.’ Garrett Summers had been a friend. But his father had sent him away to a business college some two years ago. On the eve of his departure he had waylaid Scarlet on the moors, and reminded her of her promise that one day she would be his wife. ‘That’s a promise you’ll have to keep,’ he had told her, ‘when you’re of age.’ Scarlet had mixed feelings about him going, because, although she found him tiresome in comparison with Silas, and she soon wearied of his uninteresting company, he was a familiar figure in whom she could confide at least a measure of her troubles, and he was besotted with her. She was vain enough to revel in such adulation. It crossed her mind that, soon, Garrett would be returning home to the business of overseeing his ageing father’s affairs. It was a passing thought to which Scarlet paid little attention.
What played on Scarlet’s mind most at that moment was the warning Shelagh had made, and it only echoed the fear in Scarlet’s heart; she did not doubt for a moment that Silas was preparing to leave. ‘Go with him,’ Shelagh had said, but such a thing was impossible. Silas was a man now, and he was free as the wind, to go wherever his fancies took him, while she would be a prisoner here for as long as her mammy needed her; that much she had promised. Scarlet asked herself whether she would go with Silas, even if she were able. The very thought filled her with great excitement, yet it was a prospect that secretly horrified her. The dark fearsome images created in her young vulnerable mind by the beast who was her father were too deep, too real. Even her mammy was in dread of Silas, and though Scarlet told herself over and over that it was the illness talking, her own ingrained fear was always reawakened when her mammy spoke of ‘that boy… he’s evil!’ All the same, Scarlet could not imagine Greystone House without Silas around. The thought was too painful.
For a long time Scarlet stayed by the window, her dark sorry gaze intent on the barn, and a terrible conflict going on inside her. Then, so strong was the desire to go to him one more time, that she could fight it no longer. Quickly she wrapped a shawl about herself and went on silent footsteps down the stairs, out of the door and across the yard to the barn. The night air was chilly and penetrating.
At the barn door Scarlet paused. Did she really want to go on?… To find his bed of straw was cold and he was long gone? Or, if he was sleeping there, would he awaken only to send her away? What should she do? Oh, if only she could know how he truly felt towards her! She was painfully undecided. But now that she had ventured so far there was no choice, only to go in and pray that he would treat her kindly.
Coming softly into the barn, Scarlet could never remember a time when she was so unsure of herself, so afraid that she might be rejected. Her heart beat so furiously that she imagined its echo all around her. Slowly she felt her way forward, the pitch blackness relieved only by the shafts of moonlight filtering in through the dust-laden windows. With outstretched hands she touched those familiar things that marked her way… the railing in the horses’ stable, the harness hung close by, and the studded wall that told her how close she was to the place where Silas had lain his dark head these long years: as an outcast infant, then a boy, and now a man.
The smell and unique atmosphere of the barn assailed her senses: that dry warm smell of horse and the sweet sting of
leather, the sharp crackle of straw underfoot and that special cosiness that only the four walls of a wooden barn could create. Little by little she inched towards the spot which she knew Silas had made his own. In the semi-darkness, Scarlet peered downwards. He was there! Silas was sleeping there! Her tremulous heart skipped a beat, then a sudden urge to run away took hold of her. She turned, but was quickly halted and then astonished by the softness of his voice. ‘Scarlet.’ It breathed into her heart and soothed away her fears Oh, how many times had she prayed that he would break the silence she had so deeply resented? The tears sprang to her eyes as, turning again, she gazed down at that shadowy face that was imprinted on her heart. ‘You called my name,’ she murmured, with a soft nervous laugh. ‘You called me back.’ She thought she had never heard a voice so lovely.
He reached up and, falling to her knees, she tenderly moulded herself into his arms. ‘You’re not angry?’ she asked, a great happiness spreading through her when his answer was a kiss. She felt the shawl being plucked from her back; her nightgown was slid gently away, and she was naked beside him. The touch of his hand against her skin was like gossamer. ‘I love you so,’ she murmured against his mouth, shivering with unbearable delight when his fingers played with her breasts and teased her nipples. There was a fire inside her, devouring everything that was gentle. ‘Take me, Silas,’ she urged, beginning to claw at his nakedness.
‘Ssh.’ His quiet murmur sought to soothe her. She felt him harden against her and her passion was all-consuming. His warm firm nakedness excited her. She wanted him, needed him as she had never craved anything before. When he straddled her, his mouth clinging to hers and his whole magnificent body covering her, she cried out to possess him, arching herself into him and gripping his skin with such fierceness that he began moaning. When he entered her, it was as though her very heart had burst with ecstasy. They were one. At last! At last, he was hers. Oh, how naturally they moved together, how desperate was their need of each other. The tender gentle rhythm became frenzied, the exquisite pain he created in her made her gasp, but she felt herself fulfilled at long last. Something beautiful was happening and she wanted it never to end. ‘Oh, Silas… I love you so!’ He was in her arms, in her body and soul, and nothing else mattered in the whole world.
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