Evergreen

by Marissa Doyle

  He rubbed his forehead as if it hurt. “Yes, the Shadows.”

  “I didn’t think—climbing Mount Marcy sounded like a fine idea when Colonel Roosevelt suggested it. But I have to go. Someone has to look out for everyone. I know I can’t do anything,” she said as he opened his mouth to protest. “But I can at least watch and—and warn.” She glanced over to where Colonel Roosevelt stood. The crowd around him had thinned, and Mrs. Roosevelt had gathered the children in preparation for leaving. “It’ll be all right. If things get bad, I can make us all come back to the club.” She looked back at him. “Shouldn’t you be careful as well where you’re going?”

  “I’ll be fine—” He broke off as she raised an eyebrow at him, then grudgingly smiled back. “All right, point taken. But I still wish you would stay here…or better yet, go home to Boston.”

  “Boston!”

  “If that’s what it would take to keep you safe, yes.”

  She wasn’t quite sure how to interpret that. But before she could decide, he glanced behind him. “I have to go. Be—be careful. I wish…” He shook his head, gave her one final look, and left.

  * * *

  They left the next day at noon in what seemed to Grace like a parade: in addition to her and the seven Roosevelts and Miss Young (Quentin had been left in the care of Mrs. Hunter), the Robinsons, and Mr. McNaughton, there were also two guides, Noah LaCasse and Ed Dimick.

  “Are we going all the way to the top of the mountain right now?” Archie asked. “’Cause I can’t see it.” A fine, misty rain was falling, obscuring the hills and even the tops of the taller trees at times. “An’ I don’t know how we can climb it if we can’t even see it.”

  “Don’t worry, it’s still there even if you can’t see it through the mist. Right, Noah?” The colonel clapped the guide on the shoulder.

  “Last I check, it was there.” Mr. LaCasse’s French-Canadian birth was evident in his accent. “Don’t you worry, it’s too big to lose.” His moustache twitched in amusement.

  Grace wasn’t sure if she was worried or not about the fact that they couldn’t see very far; poor visibility went both ways, though she doubted Shadows needed eyes to find them. She shivered, though she wore a sturdy wool serge divided skirt, riding boots, and both a snugly belted cardigan and a waxed canvas coat and hat to help keep off the rain.

  It was five miles up to their first stop, Lake Colden, where they would spend the night before climbing to the top of Mount Marcy tomorrow morning. Despite the weather, everyone seemed to be in good spirits, though Grace wasn’t convinced that Alice’s weren’t mostly a sham. To her relief, not much actually happened on their hike. Alice laughed and chattered to “her” boys; Archie used globs of pine sap to glue pine needles to his upper lip so that he could “look like Father and Mr. LaCasse;” Ted cut her a stout walking stick and bounced back and forth between walking with her and the adult men, whose company he felt entitled to join now that he’d proven himself as a hunter. Even the trees had little to say; their overheard murmurings were all about the autumnal taste of the drizzle that afternoon. At one point Grace was sure she had spotted Crow, but as she couldn’t call out to him to make sure, it was difficult to discern whether it was her acquaintance or a more mundane bird.

  The last part of the day’s journey was via canoe across the lower part of Lake Colden to their campsite—two small, log-built cabins lined with rough bunks. Mr. Dimick took Ted and the Robinsons to cut balsam boughs to spread in the bunks, while Mr. LaCasse built a roaring campfire and made a start on preparing supper.

  “Branches. We’re sleeping on tree branches,” Alice said, standing in the doorway of the cabin designated as the ladies’ dormitory.

  “I know.” Grace grimaced, but for a different reason. Although trees didn’t feel physical pain and wouldn’t suffer to have limbs lopped off, she would rather have slept on bare ground.

  “And I suppose we get to pee into a hole in the ground behind a tree somewhere.”

  “Yup!” Ethel said brightly, edging past Alice with an armful of balsam. “There’s even a plank with a hole in it to sit on, but it’s all slimy because of the rain. It’s all right if you put some branches down on it first.” She dumped her armful on a bunk and began arranging it. “Want me to show you where it is?”

  Alice shuddered. “Thank you, but I’ll just cross my legs.”

  Fortunately, supper was more pleasant than the sanitary arrangements. Mr. LaCasse was a skilled campfire cook and produced potatoes baked in the ashes and sizzling steaks and hot coffee. After they’d eaten and rinsed their dishes in the lake, Mr. LaCasse related some funny anecdotes about his life as a woods guide, and Colonel Roosevelt told ghost stories.

  “If someone is not able to sleep tonight, he’s staying with you,” Mrs. Roosevelt said, nodding to a wide-eyed Archie sitting at her feet and clutching her skirt after the colonel had told a particularly gruesome tale.

  “Nonsense. He knows that it’s all moonshine,” the colonel said heartily, but beckoned to the boy and held him on his knee, encircled in one arm.

  “What about you, Mr. LaCasse?” asked one of the Robinsons, who appeared not to have heard Mrs. Roosevelt. “Surely you must have a spooky story or two about the woods, considering how long you’ve been guiding.”

  Mr. LaCasse had just finished filling his pipe. He put the end of a stick in the fire till it caught, then used it to light the tobacco. “I have,” he said after the pipe was drawing to his satisfaction. “More than one or two.”

  “Won’t you tell us one?”

  Mr. LaCasse silently puffed for several seconds. “No,” he finally said. “This is not a good time nor place to tell stories like that. No telling what might be listening. But let me tell you about the feller I was guiding down Santanoni way, who was telling all and sundry about the two-foot bullhead he said he’d caught down in Lake Harris—”

  Grace pulled her sweater more snugly together at her throat and was glad that Mr. LaCasse had declined to tell any of his “spooky” stories. Their campfire in the midst of the dark woods felt like a beacon; no stars or moon shone from above to distract unfriendly watchers from its light. She was grateful when it started to drizzle again, and they all retired to the cabins for the night. Even so, she lay awake listening to the night sounds of the woods long after Alice and Mrs. Roosevelt and Miss Young and Ethel and Archie had gone to sleep on their beds of balsam.

  Chapter Sixteen

  Grace blinked into the blackness. Why was it so dark and cold, and what was poking into her side?

  And then she woke a little more and remembered where she was. She shifted the boughs beneath her, then pulled up the blankets that had slipped over the edge of her bunk, but it was no good. Something had disturbed her sleep, and it wasn’t a tree branch.

  She sat up and squinted around the cabin. Dryads had better-than-normal night vision, so she could see that everyone who was supposed to be there was in their bunks. Now that she was fully awake, she remembered that it had felt like someone had called her. Might one of them have called out in their sleep? But they all appeared to be slumbering peacefully. It must have been a dream…but she somehow had the feeling it hadn’t been.

  She slid carefully from her upper bunk so as not to disturb Alice below her, swiftly pulled on her skirt and sweater over her chemise and drawers, then tiptoed barefooted across the cabin floor to the door. Pushing it open, she peered through the gap.

  A beam of light struck her full in the face, dazzling her. She gasped.

  “I wasn’t sure that you’d heard me,” said Kit’s voice quietly. He closed the shutter on the lantern. “I’m sorry if I blinded you.”

  Grace clung to the door, glad she hadn’t shrieked. When she could see again, she slipped outside. “What are you doing here? I thought you were going to Lake Schroon,” she whispered.

  “I came to talk to you. It’s urgent,” he added as she opened her mouth.

  She hesitated. “All right. But not here or we’l
l wake everyone in camp.”

  He nodded and took her hand. He led her toward the lake, then along its shore, where it was easier to walk quietly in the soft, sandy earth, cold on her bare feet. It had stopped raining, but the sky was still low and heavy with clouds. A faint, uneasy wind rustled the branches of the heavily slumbering trees above them. Grace felt strange moving among them and not feeling their awareness of her, their usual quiet acknowledgement of her presence. It was like she had become invisible. Or a ghost.

  When they were out of all possible hearing of the cabins, Kit stopped next to a young beech. He hung the lantern from a low branch and opened one shutter. His face was so somber as he turned to her that she was moved to ask, “Has something happened?”

  “No.” Then he laughed shortly. “At least, not yet.”

  This didn’t sound like Kit. “Then what’s so important that you had to come five miles on a mountain trail in the middle of the night to tell me about it?”

  He was watching her face intently. “That I love you.”

  The unreal feeling that she’d had moving among the trees intensified. Or…no, she was dreaming. She had to be. She was back in the cabin, in her bunk among the balsam boughs, and in a moment she would turn over and awaken—

  But the cold earth under her feet and the drip-drip-drip of moisture from the trees made it clear that she was not. “Are… Did you say what I think you said?”

  He smiled a little, but the intent look in his eyes never wavered. “Yes, I said I love you. Don’t sound so incredulous.” He grasped both of her hands and drew them to his chest. “I fell in love with you about five seconds after I first saw you at the Casino. I couldn’t tell you then. But you have to know now.”

  “But—but Alice—” she began.

  “Oh, hang Alice! I don’t give a fig for her. It’s you I love.” He gave her hands a little shake to emphasize his words.

  She took a deep breath, and another. “But I do give a fig. Why did you make up to her and seem to hate me in Newport if…if neither was true?”

  “Sometimes I did hate you, actually.” He gave her a wry smile. “At least I tried to, because I wanted you so badly. Why do you think I tried so hard to beat you at tennis that day? I thought that if I did, then maybe I’d be able to get you out of my head. And I wanted to throttle poor Livingston and any other man who even looked at you, no matter how angry I made myself feel at you.”

  So that was why he’d been so rude to poor Tom all the time. “But Alice—”

  “Can’t we please forget about Alice for now?”

  “No. She’s my best friend, and you made her fall head over heels in love with you, and now she’s miserable because she’s afraid you don’t feel the same way about her. What will she do when she finds out that it’s true?” She lowered her voice. “Oh, Kit, why? Why did you do that to her?”

  He had avoided her eyes while she spoke. At her question, though, he squared his shoulders and looked at her. “It wasn’t my choice.”

  Grace drew in a quick breath. “You mean someone else told you to make up to her?”

  He nodded, looking unhappy.

  “Dear God! Kit, that’s—”

  “A rotten thing to have done. Do you think I’m proud of myself, even though I didn’t have a choice? And all the while I knew you were watching—and judging.” He looked away quickly. “I’m sorry, Grace. If my telling you the truth means that you’ll hate me, I…I don’t know what I’ll do.”

  Grace opened her mouth, then closed it. It was like she’d been looking at a picture, and then someone had turned it ninety degrees so that she realized it was completely different from what she’d thought she’d been seeing. Kit had been making up to Alice because he’d been told to—by whom? And why? Why?

  “This is… I don’t know what to say,” she finally said.

  “Don’t say anything, then, except…oh, Grace, please…give me some time to sort this out. I’ll make things right with Alice somehow. She’ll probably hate me forever—and I’ll deserve it—but it will be over. Will you wait for me? Because I’ll wait for you…well, forever. I love you,” he said again, quietly but firmly.

  She shook her head. “I’m—It’s—” And then a horrid thought struck her. “You don’t… It isn’t because I’m…well, pretty, is it?” Could he be another Tom after all, enchanted by her dryadness?

  “Grace.” He shook his head. “Give me more credit than that. Of course I like to look at you. But that’s not who you are. I love Grace, not Grace’s exterior.” He tilted her chin up with one finger so he was looking directly into her eyes. “Please—this is important. You don’t have to understand now, but listen and remember. Something’s going to happen, and I want you to know that it’s none of my doing—”

  “What’s going to—”

  “Ssh.” He touched her lips. “I can’t explain now. It will also likely happen that people will say false things about me when I’m not there to defend myself. That’s when you have to remember that I love you.” He paused. “I’m asking you to trust me.”

  Trust him. “Kit,” she whispered.

  He glanced up at the sky. “I have to go soon. Oh, Grace.”

  He pulled her toward him, closer than they’d been at the dance…and then his arms were around her and her cheek was resting against his shoulder so that she could hear his heart beating strong and fast, and they were pressed together, so warm that in another minute she would melt into him—or he into her. His breath quickened, and she felt his cheek against her forehead. “Oh, Grace,” he said, so softly—and something inside her rearranged itself.

  She knew her feelings for him had been changing; their dance at Hewitt Lake had shown her just how much. But wanting him was only part of the matter. Could she trust him, after he’d hurt and deceived Alice—and her too? He was asking her—begging her—his arms felt so good, so right…and yet, was she sure? Alice had had these arms around her as well and had probably felt the same way. Why couldn’t he tell her what was going on? Until he did, she would wonder if his embraces of her, too, had been at someone else’s command.

  But she couldn’t pull away.

  She lost track of how long they stood there, but her icy feet eventually reminded her of their existence. She shifted them, and Kit pulled away. Without a word he led her back along the shore by slender beam of light from his lantern, until they were near the cabins. They stood by the banked campfire, close but not touching.

  “Will you be able to get back all right?” she whispered to ease the tension.

  He nodded wordlessly, looking at her. And then he set down the lantern and took her in his arms again. But this time he bent his head to hers, and then he was kissing her, gently and slowly so that she didn’t pull away but stayed still, astonished by the feeling of his mouth on hers, firm and smooth and then softer, warm with his breath. It seemed to go on forever and yet it didn’t, and when he drew his head back, her lips felt the chill night air and longed to be warm again.

  He brushed back a stray wisp of her hair. “That’s the third time I’ve kissed you,” he murmured. “Doesn’t doing something three times mean it’s true?”

  She tried to concentrate, but her head felt like it had after she’d drunk a glass of champagne at her first party in Newport. “Wh—when were the other times?”

  “I kissed your hand when we first got here. Remember?”

  Yes—when they were fishing up at Lake Henderson, when poor Ted had been so shocked, but—“When was the other time?”

  “When I dove off the Livingstons’ boat to rescue you. You were unconscious, I think, and everyone else was so busy getting the launch out to us that they didn’t notice a quick kiss right here.” He touched her temple and smiled into her widened eyes.

  “But you yelled at me right afterward!”

  “Because you’d scared the hell out of me. You don’t know what a struggle it was not to hug you to pieces in front of everyone on the launch after they’d pulled us aboard. I had t
o use that fear to make myself angry and stop myself.”

  So Mrs. Fish had been right. Grace opened her mouth, but he’d already released her, caught up his lantern, and started back down the path toward the lake. She watched him go, because at that moment she was incapable of motion. She wished she could call out to him to tell her more, to explain. What did all this mean? And what was going to happen that he couldn’t tell her about?

  She shivered and waited, but the night and sleeping trees around her held no answers to her questions. She crept back into the cabin and climbed into her bunk, onto the slowly bleeding balsam boughs, and lay awake until a gray, drizzly dawn slowly filled the woods.

  * * *

  They ate breakfast sheltering from the heavy drizzle under the imperfect umbrella of a tall balsam. Grace nibbled her biscuit and ham sandwich and stared across the water, wondering where Kit was. Was he lying in his bed back at Tahawus thinking of her, just as she was thinking of him, or had the Rookwoods already left for their fishing trip?

  The heavy chill of the morning managed to subdue even the Roosevelt children, who ate their breakfasts almost silently. Mrs. Roosevelt watched them and finally announced, “I think we’re going to leave the mountain climbing to you, Theodore. The children had their night in the woods, but I think that was enough for them.”

  “No it wasn’t,” Archie muttered, then sneezed. Miss Young looked at him anxiously.

  “Well, I’m going on,” Ted said. “I want to climb a mountain for my birthday.” He was turning fourteen that day.

  “And so you shall,” Colonel Roosevelt said, clapping him on the shoulder. “Gentlemen?” He looked at the Robinsons and Mr. McNaughton.

  “We’re going on,” Herman said. “It would take more than a little rain to stop me.”

  “Stout lad!” The colonel turned to Alice. “And you, Sister?”

  Alice was drinking from her tin coffee mug as he spoke. She lowered it and met Grace’s eyes for an instant before looking away. There was an expression in them that Grace couldn’t decipher. “I wouldn’t miss it for the world,” she drawled.