Evergreen
Page 19
“That I would keep an eye out for them? Of course I will.” He looked at her keenly. “Should I take this to mean that you’ve seen something yourself? By the lake or in the woods?”
Grace hesitated. “Um…”
He held up a hand. “If you don’t want to talk about it—”
“I…still haven’t made my mind up about it—what I should think. I don’t know if it’s good or bad, or if terms like that even apply to it.”
He was silent for a minute, staring out at the mist-shrouded mountain. “Good and bad. Black and white,” he said quietly. “It’s a gray day…but it’s a gray world, isn’t it? Not only the weather, I mean, but everything. These…things we’ve seen—even they’re gray, somewhere between real and not real. I don’t think there isn’t anything in the world that isn’t gray… Forgive me, Miss Boisvert. Mountains make me philosophical, it seems.”
“Not at all,” she said politely. “Papa once said something like that to me, before I left for Newport—that life was not black and white.”
“Did he?” Mr. Rookwood smiled. “He’s a wise man, your father.”
As he spoke, a buckboard came jolting up the road. It drew to a stop in front of one of the camps down the road, and the three young men it contained jumped out, joking and laughing with each other. One of them tipped the driver, and then they climbed the stairs and went inside. Further sounds of laughter and greeting could be heard before the door closed behind them. The driver brought the buckboard round to the stables behind the clubhouse.
“Newcomers,” Mr. Rookwood commented. “It will be pleasant to see some fresh faces about.”
“Especially young male ones!” Grace said vehemently. Would having three presentable young men around improve Alice’s mood? Then she noticed Mr. Rookwood looking at her oddly and laughed. “I’m not excited for my sake,” she explained. “I was thinking more about Alice. Maybe having some new faces around will help take her mind off—” Flustered, she stopped as she remembered to whom she was speaking.
“Off my son,” he finished. “Yes, I can see that. How do matters go there?”
She remembered their conversation the day after her arrival and decided to be frank with him. “Not very well. I—I have the feeling Kit is trying to disengage from her, but she doesn’t want to admit she knows it. It’s quite uncomfortable all around.”
“I can see that it might be.” Mr. Rookwood looked pensively out at the mountains again. “Well—I won’t keep you any longer, Miss Boisvert. Rest assured that I’ll keep an eye on matters up at the lake.” He put his hat back on, gave her a reassuring smile, and ambled off into the rain.
Chapter Fourteen
Alice pretended to yawn when Grace told her over their checkers about the new arrivals. But she wore a Newport shirtwaist to lunch and, by meal’s end, had the three young men presented to her and invited to tea that afternoon. She invited Kit, too, in an offhand way that made Grace suspicious.
After lunch, she took Alice’s arm as they walked back from the clubhouse. “Let me guess. You’re plotting some Captivation this afternoon on those poor boys, in an effort to make someone jealous.”
Alice shrugged. “What if I am? It will make for an amusing afternoon since I’m unable to enjoy the delights of catching slimy fish with the children, tramping around and admiring trees and rocks the way you do, or trying to shoot defenseless woodland animals like my brother.” Ted had gone off hunting with one of the guides after returning from fishing that morning. “And if someone should happen to get jealous, it’s no more than he deserves. It will be a—a salutary experience for him.”
And an unlikely one. But Grace didn’t say that out loud.
The rain tailed off shortly after lunch, so the tea was on the porch. The young men—Mr. McNaughton, son of the family who had lent the Roosevelts their camp, and two Mr. Robinsons, students at Harvard’s School of Law—clustered around Alice in a manner that Grace was sure she found gratifying. She sat holding court with her injured foot propped on a chair and clad in one of her lace-trimmed peach satin slippers.
When Kit arrived—attired in a Newport suit, Grace noticed—Alice gave him a curt greeting. He smiled in response, introduced himself to the other young men, then took a chair by Grace where she perched on the railing in the corner of the porch, determined to make sure Alice took the limelight.
“They seem like a nice crew,” he said. “I gather that my nose should be thoroughly out of joint by now.”
Grace frowned down at him. “You don’t have to joke about it.” She hesitated, then added, “Alice is miserable, you know.”
To her relief, he didn’t change the subject. “I’m sorry. Yes, I know that, and I honestly hope that she’ll find one of them to be a much more engaging companion than me.”
“I don’t want her hurt any more than she has been. She’s very vulnerable under all of her—her Aliceness.”
“It was never my intention to hurt her.”
Grace glanced over at Alice, whose attention was completely taken by her guests. “What was your intention, then? Because you hurt her badly.”
He wouldn’t meet her eyes. “It was just a flirtation.”
“Just a flirtation?” Grace wanted to box his ears. “Your ‘just a flirtation’ was her practically planning your wedding.”
“I’m sorry.” He swallowed hard. “I…I never meant it to go that far.”
If anything, his admission made her angrier. “That’s even worse! What did you do, plan it all out beforehand? Oh, I wish we’d never set foot in Newport!”
“Grace…” His voice was pleading. “If I could do Newport again, it would be completely different. I wish to God I could.”
“Why couldn’t it have been different the first time?”
“I—I can’t tell you.”
“Why not?”
“Not now. Not yet. But I will. I’ll explain all of Newport. I owe it to you.” He reached out and touched her hand.
His touch stilled the words on her lips. She stared down at him, and this time he met her eyes. “I promise,” he whispered.
Grace couldn’t look away. There it was again—that something drawing her to him, just as it had the day they met—
“Grace!” Alice called. “Did you hear that?”
Grace nearly toppled from her perch. Kit put up a hand to steady her. “What? No, I’m sorry I didn’t. What was it?”
“Good heavens, don’t fall off the porch. There’s to be a dance over at the Hewitt Lake Club, and we’re all invited!” Alice’s eyes sparkled.
“I’m sorry your foot should be injured right now, Miss Roosevelt,” one of the Robinson boys—Grace thought it might be Beverley—said.
“We-e-ell, I expect it might be feeling better in a few days’ time if you wish real hard.” She grinned and waved it at him.
A dance! Well, if it put Alice into a better mood, then Grace was all for it. “Where is it?”
“A little way from Aiden Lair,” Mr. McNaughton said. “The moon will be half-full—plenty of light to come home by.”
“A moonlight ride sounds perfectly romantic.” Alice smiled dreamily at no one in particular.
Grace’s confusion over her cryptic conversation with Kit receded as she thought about driving through the woods at night. Even with a half-moon, would they be safe when there were Shadows potentially about? Crow had said that they hated moonlight, but was the light of a half-moon enough to keep them at bay?
* * *
While Alice hopped on her injured foot to make it stronger in time for the dance and frowned over her wardrobe, Grace spent the next two days haunting the woods, looking for Crow. She was sure she saw two other Changers, though they didn’t speak to her. One took the form of a small cloud, which wasn’t the most articulate of shapes, though it did return her tentative bow before drifting past her. But she also felt that cold watching sensation that seemed the calling card of a Shadow, and had tried not to run away in a blind panic from it.
“Because I brought you a ham sandwich?” Grace surveyed him with arms folded across her chest.
“I would have liked chicken better,” he said, though he’d made short work of the sandwich when she’d offered it.
“Why doesn’t it surprise me that you’d be a cannibal?”
He cackled. “But I’m not really a bird.”
“If this is your favorite shape, you must have some bird-like tendencies,” Grace said. “Now—do you really not have any idea about how much moon there needs to be to keep the Shadows away, or will I have to bring you a chicken sandwich in order to get an answer out of y—”
Crow vanished, and a tiny salamander took its place on the side of the tree. Grace was about to scold him when a whoosh of icy air rushed past her, making branches thrash and filling the hollow with a dark coldness.
She fell to her knees to keep from being blown over. Her canvas jacket and twill skirt did nothing to halt the chill that cut through them as if they weren’t there. The cold wind swirled around her, and she felt it examining her with a remote, contemptuous interest before it blew out of the hollow and up the hillside. Small twigs and leaves fell from the trees around her as it passed. Leaning to pick one up, she saw that it was edged with frost.
“Crow,” she said when she could breathe again. She climbed to her feet, trying not to cry. A feeling of despair and emptiness had been left in the wake of the cold, and her teeth chattered, no matter how she tried to stop them.
He popped back into crow shape. “Do you still want to know how much moonlight will keep a Shadow away, dryad?”
She shook her head. It seemed like a ridiculously naïve question now. “What was it doing?”
“Just passing through,” Crow said. “It seemed angry, though. And it saw you all right.”
“Grace!”
She looked up. Kit was sprinting down the side of her hollow. Crow muttered something under his breath and turned into a salamander again.
“It’s—I’m all right,” she said as Kit reached her.
He didn’t seem to hear. Grabbing her shoulders, he pulled her roughly against him. “Grace,” he muttered into her hair. “Oh, Grace.”
She rested her head against his chest and gave a little sigh. His warmth and solidity felt so very good… The icy despair the Shadow had left in its wake began to recede. “It was so cold…”
His arms tightened around her in response. “You’re sure you’re all right? It didn’t hurt you?”
“I’m fine. It…scared me.”
“It scared me too.” His heart pounded under her ear, strong and steady. She would happily stand here for the rest of the day listening to it, warm and safe—
“Miss Boisvert!”
Kit jerked and let her go. Mr. Rookwood was hurrying down the slope to them, looking worried. He still clutched a fly rod—had he and Kit run here all the way from the lake?
Grace realized that her hat had been knocked off. She stooped to retrieve it and nearly fell over. Kit caught her arm; she wished he would hold her again, but with Mr. Rookwood’s arrival, the moment for it had passed.
“The wind—we felt it at the lake.” Mr. Rookwood was panting for breath. “Kit said— thought you—walking here—” He examined her anxiously. “Did it— Did you—?”
“It was here,” she said. “But it didn’t stay long.”
“If it had wanted to hurt her, she wouldn’t be here.” Crow had abandoned his salamander guise once more and glared at them as he glided to the ground, ruffling his feathers. Then he jumped into the air and took wing, flapping his way out of the trees and out of sight.
Mr. Rookwood leaned against a tree. “A…friend of yours?” he asked, wide-eyed.
Kit’s hand fell from her arm as he stared after Crow.
“Um…an acquaintance, anyway.” How was she going to explain Crow to them?
But they didn’t ask. Instead, Mr. Rookwood stared thoughtfully at the ground for a long moment. Grace started to shiver; Kit took off his jacket and wrapped it around her.
“Miss Boisvert,” Mr. Rookwood finally said. “I don’t pretend to fully comprehend the nature of…of whatever it was we all felt, but it frightens me. You…seem perhaps to have a little more experience with these things—”
“Oh, no,” Grace interrupted. “I don’t know any more about them than you do. And Crow, the thing you saw—he simply sort of…introduced himself to me, and—”
“I don’t blame him,” he said gallantly. “But it makes me apprehensive. I confess to feeling somewhat in loco parentis as your father is not here, and the thought of you wandering alone in these woods when entities like what we’ve seen—”
“Shadows,” she supplied.
He nodded. “Shadows then. Miss Boisvert, I’m asking you not to walk alone here anymore. Kit or I would be happy to accompany you whenever you wish to walk, and I for one would breathe easier knowing you’ll never be alone. Kit?”
“I’m at your command.” He gave her his lopsided smile. “That is, if Ted doesn’t shoot me. Or his sister.”
“I must confess that some hurt feelings are of secondary importance to me,” Mr. Rookwood said sternly.
“Thank you, but…well, what difference would it make if there were ten of you with me if a Shadow was intent on harm?”
He sighed. “You’re right, of course. But I still request that you consider it. And now, I for one could use a cup of strong, hot coffee, and I expect you could too. Shall we go find one? Mrs. Hunter always has a pot on at the clubhouse.”
“Yes, please,” she said meekly.
* * *
Grace couldn’t help being on edge when they set out for Hewitt Lake on Friday afternoon, even though the sight of them all in evening clothes (Alice in her demure yellow silk and not the black dress, thank goodness) clambering into the wagons and setting off down a rough Adirondack road was amusing enough. She and Alice sat in the rear of the wagon where the jolting was the worst, but it allowed Alice to twist around in her seat and exchange gestures and snatches of conversation with the Robinson boys in the wagon close behind them.
Alice’s friendship with the Robinsons had flourished over the last days to such a degree that Grace hoped that she’d gotten over Kit after all. At least, her chatter was full of them, while Kit figured hardly at all. It was a relief to have her more herself again—at least mostly. Grace had caught her once or twice staring into space with a lost, desolate sort of expression, but she’d immediately brightened when she’d noticed Grace looking at her.
Where Kit had figured prominently was her own life. Though she hadn’t promised Mr. Rookwood that she would avoid walking alone, Kit seemed to have a mysterious faculty for knowing when she was setting out and meeting her where the road went into the woods. In the silences during their walks she often thought about how he’d held her after the Shadow had blown through the woods and wondered if he did too.
But no Shadows blew anywhere on either their walks or on the road to Hewitt Lake, though Grace felt sure something was watching them. Crow, perhaps? She spotted several crows along the way, but none gave any sign that it might be anything but a bird.
The Hewitt Lake clubhouse was larger and more elegant than theirs at Tahawus, a fact that struck Alice. “I hadn’t noticed how poky our place is till we came here,” she muttered to Grace as they entered the spacious dining room, cleared of tables and chairs for the dance. “Why couldn’t Father have been invited here instead? Oh, look! Aren’t those some of the boys we met on the train to North Creek?” She limped toward a group of young men, who greeted her uproariously.
Grace did not follow. Watching for Shadows and worrying about what might happen on the drive home had destroyed any sociability
she might have felt. But Ted, his voice cracking with nervousness, asked her to dance, and she could not refuse. After that she found a place to sit in a corner, half-concealed by a large stuffed bear, forepaws raised before it in a threatening manner. It seemed like an odd decoration for a dining room, but it was perfect to hide behind.
“Thank goodness Archie and Quentin aren’t here. They’d try to take it home.” Kit somehow materialized next to her. He patted the bear’s shoulder.
She’d nearly forgotten how good he looked in evening dress, so used to him was she now in soft-collared shirts and corduroy trousers. “They’d probably succeed, and there would go my hiding place. Why aren’t you dancing?”
“Why aren’t you? Women are in the minority tonight. You’re depriving all the sports of a partner.”
“They’ll have to do without me. Please don’t let me keep you from joining the dance.”
She saw a glint of mischief in his eyes. “Actually, you are keeping me from dancing. Because I want to dance with you.”
He wanted to dance with her? A bubble of nervous laughter rose in her throat. “I told you, my feet are both left ones tonight. I’m just…I would make a wretched partner.”
“You’re thinking about what we might meet in the woods on the way home, aren’t you?” he asked more gently.
“Yes.”
“I see.” He paused. “Will it make you feel any more like dancing if I give you my solemn promise that our drive home will be completely uneventful?”
She shook her head, nettled. This was not a joking matter. “It’s very kind of you, but you shouldn’t make promises you can’t keep.”
“I never make promises I can’t keep…well, almost never.” He grinned his old lopsided grin at her.
She didn’t smile back. “Which may be why I can’t quite bring myself to tru— Oh, never mind. Go dance with Alice and make her happy. Leave me here to worry in peace.”