Black Heather (3 page)

“Come,” said the man.

I had the wisdom to obey him. Walking along beside him into more mysterious regions that I rightly took to be the abandoned kitchen and servants’ quarters, I felt like a scolded child. Furthermore, I was terribly conscious of my sopping, clinging dress, which seemed frozen to my spine, and my nearly new morocco slippers, which were waterlogged and going slup-slup as I pattered along trying to keep up with him. It didn’t make me feel more grown-up to know that even though my companion did not laugh aloud, he was vastly amused at me and my plight and also, I suspected, at my being forced to yield to his wishes.

Take me before the magistrate, indeed! What a fool I had been to believe that! I supposed he had also been joking when he spoke of the ghosts that the moorland people had seen at the Hag’s Head.

It occurred to me that I might distract his attention from my disreputable appearance and at the same time find an explanation for the odd sounds in the Hag’s Head that had so puzzled Timmy and me. It would do me no harm and might even impress this superior creature with my adult qualities if I prefaced my questions with the businesslike statement, “Should I find something suitable, I may purchase a disused building in the area.”

“Really? One would not have suspected it.” This comment was as bad as his first upon my ability to conduct such dealings. He looked me over, and
I began to wish I had used some other opening gambit. I could only hope he saw beneath my soggy surface to the competent, grown-up Kathleen Bodmun I knew myself to be. He did not, though. “Now, what’ll a leggy lass like yourself be doing with that many guineas?” Before I could think of something sufficiently hateful to say to this, he added, “The Hag’s Head is no place for children.”

He could not possibly mean me. He must be referring to the schoolgirls who might attend my academy for young ladies. Nevertheless, instinctively, I glanced up overhead. We were in the kitchen now, and the high, smoke-blackened ceiling looked as normal as Mama’s Cornish cooking house. It was easy, in the circumstances, to dismiss those “haunts” with the contempt they deserved.

“I am not a child, sir, to be set afraid by your silly talk of ghosts. I don’t believe there are any!”

“What a brave wrench it is!” was all the satisfaction I got—that and a smile that would have softened a woman less hardened against him. Besides, the smile had been at my expense. “Whether there are or are not ghosts has nothing to do with the evil of this place. The very walls are pervaded with it. I don’t want to see you here again.”

As if there was-any likelihood of that! What an impossible man!

I was surprised to notice how late it was when we came out of doors behind the inn. The heathery glow encompassed the moorland world, thanks to the storm, which had passed over, taking sunset with it.

“Mount up before me,” the Yorkshireman commanded as he led a skittish mare around from one of the outbuildings and swung easily into the saddle. He extended his hand to me, and I, with Timothy to think of, could do nothing but obey. After all, I didn’t want the poor kitten wandering about the moor all night so far from his warm hearth in Maidenmoor village.

I found it difficult to mount, in the circumstances, and was almost afraid to accept the Yorkshireman’s hand up. But he lifted me with such ease that I felt I might have underestimated him.

There was no doubt of it. I found the ride from the moorland heights back to the village infinitely more pleasant than my earlier pursuit of Timothy across endless sheep tracks, through gorse and heather and the fury of the autumn storm. Yet I could not but regret, now we were safely away, that I had not made a more careful examination of the Hag’s Head Inn, especially in those upper quarters which had so puzzled me.

“Where are you lodged?” demanded the Yorkshireman, squeezing me uncomfortably between his two arms as he jogged the reins.

“At Mrs. Sedley’s. She is an old school friend of Mama’s.”

“I should not have thought it possible,” he murmured, with that detestable note of amusement which I resented so much. “Only to think of Clara Sedley absorbing any form of genuine culture beggars the imagination.”

“She is a very knowledgeable lady,” I said, taking up the cudgel for my sponsor. “There is
not a person in the village who does not come in the way of her house for information, sir.”

“You may call me Nicholas,” said the Yorkshireman. “I don’t doubt in the least that the villagers seek out Clara,” he added. “She is an incorrigible gossip.”

“That is a lie—an untruth if ever I heard one, Master Nicholas. Mama is no gossip, and she sent me to Mrs. Sedley.”

“What has your mama to do with anything? I have known Clara since time out of mind, and if you have any secrets, I warrant she’ll have them off your tongue before the night is out.” He stopped speaking, and I thought he had done with his ungallant comments, but he added presently as the mare trotted along a sheep track high up behind the village, “Yet, though she knows every secret in Maidenmoor, she is careful never to divulge her own.”

That was odd. But upon thinking it over, I decided Master Nicholas was merely venting some personal spite upon my crippled hostess.

He looked down at me, smiling. “Poor child. Life is full of troubling facts. I have merely given you a few before you were ready. In the end, you will thank me.”

“I doubt it!” I said, shivering as the first breeze of evening struck my wet garments.

Master Nicholas surprised me by drawing
Timmy
and me back closer to his body, where
Timmy
meowed plaintively but I was much warmer. When I started with embarrassment, not knowing what to expect and stiffening against some impending liberty, he quickly set my fears at rest, while deflating any pretensions I might have.

“Your arms were freezing. Now behave. Do you want to fall? You were a fool not to bring a wrap today. Do you know nothing at all of the moors?”

To cover my embarrassment at having suspected him of attempting my virtue—an absurd idea, it seemed—I said quickly, “Speaking of the cold, there was a fire in the Hag’s Head at one time, wasn’t there? Yet it doesn’t show. Nothing is burned.”

The muscles of his arms seemed suddenly harder than I had previously noticed. It would have been awkward to try to look up into his face; yet I knew that quite a different mood was upon him.

“The fire was confined to the cellars and the heather outside. The good York stone of the ground floor saved the rest of the house.”

I sensed that there was more to the fire than he had told me. “Was this very recently?” I asked.

“Some twelve years gone. Here we are at the village. By daylight you may see the warnings posted on the edge of Heatherton Moor. Next time, heed them.”

He was undoubtedly right in a general way, but I had been on an errand of mercy, the rescue of Timothy, and regarded myself as excluded from his ste
rn
prohibition.

“Set me down at Sedley House, please. It’s just this side of the parish graveyard.”

“How singularly appropriate!” remarked Master Nicholas sardonically.

I pretended not to hear this.

As he set me down, rousing the sleeping Timothy in my arms, I stopped a moment, still pursuing that curious mystery of the old Hag’s Head. “There really was something abovestairs at that old inn today,” I said. “I heard it. So did the kitten.”

The dark, dour look came over his face again. Even the glow from the lamp in Mrs. Sedley’s upstairs sitting room failed to illuminate the darkness in those deep-set eyes of his. He was somehow involved in the mystery of the old Hag’s Head, and his connection with it troubled, or perhaps just tantalized me.

“You heard nothing but the rain,” he said coldly. Then, seeing that I was not convinced, he added, “And the rats, perhaps. Very probably, you heard the rats. At any rate, there has been nothing human in that tavern for twelve years, except foolish visitors like yourself. And they usually end
by telling fanciful tales, just as you will, I’m sure.”

“They are not fanciful!” I contradicted furiously. “And you may as well know I don’t believe you.” I saw his eyes flash with anger, but I had begun and had to finish. “Did something happen there? Why do people think ghosts hang about?”

“Stand away from the mare. She is skittish and the kitten frightens her.”

I moved away abruptly, turning my back and starting into the cozy, candlelit little entrance hall of Sedley House. I was surprised but somehow relieved when he called to me, “Wait.”

I looked back, saying stiffly, “I beg your pardon. I did not know it concerned you.”

“What do you mean—concerned me? What have you heard?”

Startled at his tone, which was unexpectedly tense, I said hastily, “Nothing, sir. Good night, and—thank you.”

Whether he acknowledged this or not, I couldn’t hear. The mare started off at a gallop, and they were gone in the dark.

A shadow slowly crossed in front of the lamp in Mrs. Sedley’s sitting room upstairs, and I looked up, wondering. It was extremely difficult for her to move about without the help of her servants, but she had apparently been so interested in the dialogue between Master Nicholas and me that she had reached over from her chair and pushed open the casement. I began to suspect that in one point, at least, the Yorkshireman had been right.
I looked up and waved to her, but she withdrew her head with a quick movement and closed the windows, pretending she had not seen me.

Timothy was meowing for his supper with lung power that would have done justice to a creature three times his size, and I would have been strongly tempted to do the same, but for my last words with Master Nicholas. I was disturbed, because when I had pried into matters that did not concern me, I felt myself at fault, a rare and unattractive experience. I was not given to much penitence for mistaken acts or judgments. In the general way, my mistakes during my eighteen years had had a way of turning out well. Perhaps I had merely been lucky thus far.

Meg Markham, Mrs. Sedley’s flaxen-haired maidservant, met me outside the ground-floor parlor. She reached for Timothy, who suddenly betrayed a touching anxiety not to be separated from me, and we were forced to pry each of his claws from the muslin of my ruined dress.

“Go along, Miss,” the girl said in her friendly way. “I’ll see to the beastie. Missus is that anxious to speak with you, you’ve no notion! She spied you talking with Sir Nicholas. He’s the magistrate in this riding.”

So my surly rescuer was a knight and a judge! That gave him his airs of command, no doubt. Well, he should not impose his airs upon me! Nor his sly jokes about bringing me before the magistrate—himself!

“I’ll bring your tea things to Mrs. Sedley’s sitting room, Miss.”

“Thank you. First, I must change. I’ve got soaking wet today.”

“Kathleen!” Mrs. Sedley called from upstairs. “Do come and sit by me; there’s a dear. And tell me whatever you were doing with my Elspeth’s betrothed.”

Surprised, I looked at Meg Markham, who nodded. I had not yet met Mrs. Sedley’s granddaughter, Elspeth, but legends of the girl’s slumberous beauty had preceded her. Mama was forever receiving letters from Mrs. Sedley extolling the good looks of the winsome Elspeth, and one such letter had included a miniature of her. All this had aroused in me an aversion to the poor beauty before ever I met her.

Small wonder the most important man in the West Riding, the magistrate, Sir Nicholas Somebody-or-Other, had fallen in love with Elspeth Sedley. But I thought with some surprise that he did seem fifteen or more years the senior of his seventeen-year-old future bride. I did not envy either of them the prospect of sharing a life or even a household. As for myself, I had long ago determined, after reading a prodigious number of romances, never to marry any man my senior by more than a year or two, no matter how much pressure my parents brought to bear. In point of fact, I could not quite see Mama or Father forcing me to do any such thing. I could really afford to pity the beauteous Elspeth—but somehow I did not.

For a few minutes these amusing thoughts almost took my mind off the haunting of the Hag’s Head Inn. Then I went up to change and to find out why Mrs. Sedley was so curious about the subject of my farewell conversation with Sir Nicholas.

CHAPTER THREE

“Dear Kathleen, d
o come and sit with me. Here,” said Mrs. Sedley, who looked round and pink and glowing over her steaming-hot tea as she indicated the uncushioned stool beside her.

Obediently, I took the stool, feeling much improved in a comfortable and dry gown, which was a trifle faded from many washings and whose skirts were too full for the current mode I had spied in London. But the gown had always put me in very good looks. This was important, since I was in momentary expectation of meeting that paragon of loveliness Elspeth Sedley.

Clara Sedley was almost excessively conscious of her modernity and was dressed up to the very latest mode. Not for her the dear, old-fashioned look of my own Mama, who still wore the many petticoats and wide skirts of her girlhood, along with a new fichu each day. When I had hugged her when I was a child, I had loved the clean, crisp scent of those fichus against my nose. Of late, I had shot up to Mama’s height, but the fichus were as fresh as ever and as well loved. For all their outward appearance, my parents might never have known the great revolutionary upheaval that had swept Continental Europe during their lifetime. I marveled at their detachment from the present and was even more surprised at it when I journeyed to Yorkshire, for everywhere I saw the developments of a wondrous new century, but I still loved the old eighteenth-century ways of my parents. I had always found them conformable to my ideas and conduct, and it was a shocking thing, indeed, to come up against a creature like Sir Nicholas who disputed me so abominably.

“Now, do tell, my dear.” Mrs. Sedley fanned herself vigorously and leaned a little nearer to me.

I withdrew from her mentally, but I hoped she could not see my revulsion at her eagerness.

“You mean about you and Mama? She often speaks of her years with you at Mrs. Pendecort’s Academy and of the time you wore Mama’s Sunday gown and bonnet so you might play that trick upon the young man who professed to favor you both. It was such a funny—”

“No. No, child.” Her tight curled white head shook impatiently. “About dear Nicholas. Do tell about dear Nicky.”

I was aghast and could scarcely believe I had heard her correctly.

“Nicky! Good God, ma’am! Don’t be telling me you call that black, forbidding creature—Nicky?” She watched me take my teacup in my palms and wince at the heat of it, and she smiled.

“You will become used to our North Country in time, but meanwhile, you had best take to our local customs. Are you not used to hot tea—even to the point of scalding? Your Mama told me it was a custom even among Co
rn
ishmen.”

I saw her tiny eyes like sparkling glass peering at me out of her plump face, and for some reason absolutely incomprehensible to me, I felt a cold chill, lost my trend of thought, and hastily warmed myself with another sip of her strong tea.

“Yes, of course,” I replied vaguely, hoping she would ignore my confusion. “I mean to say—”

“You have not confided your little secret to me, my dear,” she said in her sugary voice. “Where did you encounter the dear boy? And how long have you known him?”

“If you refer to the justice of the peace of this riding, ma’am, he came to my rescue on the moor and carried your kitten and me to the village.”

“Ah!” She seemed relieved. I wondered if it was possible she feared I would throw my cap at Sir Nicholas under her granddaughter’s pretty nose. She went on, however, “A charming man. We are forever seeing him at our hearth, for you must know my dear, he dotes upon my granddaughter, Elspeth. Simply dotes!”

I could recall no signs of this in Sir Nicholas’s manner, but I did not say so.

Mrs. Sedley went on confidentially, “If I can but bring Elspeth up to the mark, I am in daily expectation of his making a formal declaration of his intentions. But sweet Elspeth is just a trifle difficult. Talks of age differences and other bits of nonsense. However, she will come around.”

I could not mention what I privately thought, that Elspeth might be more serious about the age difference than her grandmother supposed. I could not imagine a union of any lasting happiness between the sharp, sardonic cynicism of Sir Nicholas and the innocence and lack of experience possessed by Elspeth Sedley; so I ventured merely, “Mama says Miss Elspeth is very young, whereas it is my impression that Sir Nicholas—” My voice wavered indefinitely. I hoped she would not make me go on, for I had been foolish to utter any such sentiments about a matter that did not concern me.

“Such a sweet creature, to be sure!” said Mrs. Sedley.

“Sir Nicholas?” I asked incredulously.

“Heavens, no! My granddaughter. And small wonder. All other females pale beside my Elspeth. Even you—pardon me, my dear; you are well enough in your way. A fine figure of a lass. But my granddaughter is a beauty. I thought her mother was lovely. My son’s wife. But she had a stubborn streak. A bad thing, that, my dear. I believe in being modern. I think I may be said to be the glass of fashion when I entertain, for example. But young ladies are the better for a strong rein.”

I assumed this to mean that she wielded the strong rein. I began to
t
hink that a marriage between Sir Nicholas and young Elspeth was not so
impossible after all. He was just the sort of man, as Mrs. Sedley
p
robably knew, who prefers his women simpering and passive.

But I was torn between resentment and amusement at Mrs. Sedley’s setdown of whatever pretension to good looks I might have had, and I took leave to doubt her assertion that I would dote on the fair beauty. But I merely smiled. I could be submissive too, if necessary, but only on the surface.

“Elspeth is said to resemble me in my younger days,” said Mrs. Sedley complacently.

I obliged with the correct sentiments. I was less inclined to agree, however, when Mrs. Sedley mentioned what a splendid prize it would be to capture the darkly handsome aristocrat, adding, “I am persuaded he is not the least high in the instep, for all his fortune.”

If he was anything, I thought, the man I had met in the darkness of the Hag’s Head Inn was “high in the instep” with me. But, I supposed, a man with a fortune might always be said to be pleasant, no matter what fiend’s temper he possessed.

I began to think that I should learn nothing more about my hectic adventure on the moor and that if I ever wished to pursue the matter of the Hag’s Head Inn, I would do well to behave more obligingly to Sir Nicholas himself.

“Perhaps I should buy the stupid place myself, and then the mystery of it must be told me,” I murmured, beginning to consider how much would be asked for the wretched place with its blackened heather, burned cellars, and unseen inhabitants who went tap-tapping along the upper walls. It occurred to me that if the inn had a reasonable assortment of bedchambers upstairs, and if the ghosts who produced the tapping would kindly desist, I might even become serious about purchasing it; for it was bound to be exceedingly cheap, and I was looking for a bargain.

Mrs. Sedley sipped the steaming tea, and her eyes gleamed over the rim of the cup.

“What can you be talking about, child? Have you found a school to purchase upon the very first day of your visit? What a busy girl you are, to be sure! My Elspeth must learn from you to be more aggressive, as befits a modern girl. She is so very feminine, you know.”

I cringed inside at this backhanded slap at my “aggressiveness” and lack of femininity, but I tried not to let her guess she had struck home, for I had begun to suspect she was one of those tireless women who keep searching for the vulnerable spot wherein to jab their needles.

“It was quite by accident, ma’am. When Timothy scampered so far over the heath, we were caught by that cloudburst and had to climb into an old building, where we met Sir Nicholas.”

“Dear me, I cannot imagine what Sir Nicholas would be doing in a place like that.” Her f
l
uttery manner seemed to invade the air around me. Her plump upper body and even her fingers, knotted
at the joints with their painful swelling, were busy with little movements. “But do go on. You spent some time with Dear Nicholas, I take it. I feel sure you are much too intelligent to bore him. A tiny hint to you on that score, my dear. You will forgive me for my advice, since your mother looks to me to guide you during your stay
...
Nicholas has a great fancy to the sweet, modest fashion in young girls. No opinions. No putting oneself forward. Of all things, that is the most odious to him, I feel certain. He cannot abide directness or one of those straight—almost too candid—looks of yours, lovely as those eyes may be. I tell you this in the hope of guiding you in your dealings with the Opposite Sex, a mysterious animal, my dear, as you will find. Your mother understands this sort of thing very well. She would tell you, as I do, to stay away from Nicholas, for your own good. But you were saying—you took shelter in a cottage with Nicholas Everett.”

She was right about the dour and dark Sir Nicholas. Anyone could see he had detested me from the first moment. But I fully returned his opinion. I could not like those overbearing, positively medieval males who refused to acknowledge any common humanity in a woman.

“No, ma’am. I was saying I took shelter in an old
house,
which appeared to be haunted, and where—”

Everything about Mrs. Sedley might be said to have suddenly ceased. She sat there perfectly still,
staring, not at me, but at her knotted hands. I found this curious change in her far more upsetting than her overactive attempts to show me that she was every shred as feminine and ruffled as her beautiful granddaughter.

I could not understand why she had seemed to take me in dislike so oddly after my adventure today. Months ago, it had been her insistent suggestion that Mama and Father send me to Maidenmoor to find an inexpensive situation for our projected young ladies’ academy, which in due time Miss Higsby, my former governess, was to superintend. What had brought about this curious reversal in Mrs. Sedley’s attitude toward me?
Yet now, in her sudden stillness, I felt for the first time since I had returned with Sir Nicholas that she was as sincere as she had been upon my arrival this morning. I wondered why.

“In any case,” I began again, a little hesitantly, “I thought it just possibly might suit. That is, if it’s inexpensive. You know, truly a bargain. It’s a bit remote, perhaps, but that’s all to the good. For the sake of the young ladies, I mean.”