The Daughters of Eden Trilogy: The Shadow Catcher, Fever Hill & the Serpent's Tooth (133 page)

‘These days we hardly see Felicity,’ said her father with a smile. ‘It’s either the Belgian Refugee Fund or the Home for Convalescent Officers. And of course they’re all in love with her. I keep telling Adam that he’d better look sharp, or he’ll miss his chance.’

‘Oh,
Daddy
,’ said Felicity, blushing furiously. She was small and blonde, with a fresh complexion that had never seen paint, and beautiful, clear grey eyes. Since they’d arrived, she hadn’t stopped appraising Belle from under her lashes.

Belle stirred her tea and forced a smile. ‘Do you live at Kildrochet all year round, Miss Ruthven?’

‘Oh, yes,’ said Felicity. ‘I don’t imagine I could cope with London.’

‘Oh,’ said Belle.

‘One must have to be so . . . tough to handle it all,’ said Felicity. ‘Don’t you agree?’

Belle put down her spoon. ‘One gets used to it, you know.’

‘I don’t think I should,’ said Felicity. ‘All the parties and the dancing. I shouldn’t care for that at all.’

Belle nodded slowly, because she couldn’t think of anything to say. She hazarded a glance at Adam, but he was helping himself to a zoo biscuit proffered by Max, and pretended not to have heard.

Dr Ruthven asked Belle what sort of war work she did.

‘I’m afraid I don’t do any,’ she replied.

‘Belle has been ill,’ put in Maud. ‘This dreadful influenza.’

‘What a shame,’ said Felicity. ‘War work can be so rewarding.’

‘Actually,’ said Belle, ‘Maud’s being kind. I didn’t do any war work before I got ill, either. I suppose all the parties and the dancing got in the way.’

Felicity smiled at her. ‘At Kildrochet we lead a very quiet life.’

Ah, now you’re overdoing it, thought Belle. Again she tried to catch Adam’s eye, but he was staring determinedly at the tea tray.

She kept telling herself to be nice, but it was uphill work. The Ruthvens had arrived twenty minutes ago, but it felt like hours. Dr Ruthven treated her with the elaborate courtesy of someone tackling a foreigner of doubtful intelligence, while Felicity was as edgy as a sheepdog who’s just spotted a wolf. Maud sat tensely upright, dispensing the tea but saying very little, while Max was overawed to be allowed at a grown-up tea party. Adam simply looked tired.

Felicity turned to him. ‘I called on your friend Mr Talbot the other day,’ she said in her low, soft voice. ‘I thought it might help if he had someone to talk to.’

‘That was kind of you,’ said Adam.

‘What Felicity is too soft-hearted to mention,’ said Dr Ruthven, ‘is that the fellow was confoundedly uncivil.’

‘Oh, Daddy, please, don’t—’

‘It has to be said, Felicity. Fellow practically hustled her out of the door.’

‘He had a bad time of it at the Front,’ said Adam. ‘Shattered nerves.’

‘Then tell him to come to my surgery,’ said Dr Ruthven. ‘But it’s no excuse to be uncivil to a lady.’

‘He just needs to be on his own,’ said Belle.

‘The poor darling,’ said Felicity. ‘You see, Miss Lawe, that’s what you’re missing. I can’t tell you the joy it brings, to be able to help these poor, shattered men. You ought to come with me to the convalescent home. Then you’d understand.’

‘Thanks,’ said Belle, ‘but I think I’ll stay ill for a bit longer.’

Maud shot her a warning look, and Adam bit back a smile.

‘Maud tells me you’ve had a bad time of it,’ said Dr Ruthven.

Belle opened her mouth to reply, but Maud was quicker. ‘She’s through the worst of it,’ she said stoutly, ‘and getting better every day.’

‘Maud’s been wonderful,’ said Belle, ‘and so has Adam.’ She turned to Felicity. ‘It was amazing, he simply took charge. Scooped me up from the vice-dens of London, and whisked me up here to clean air and healthy living.’

Felicity opened her eyes wide. ‘Surely not vice-dens?’

‘Pretty close,’ said Belle. ‘Dancing till the small hours; drinking too much fizz. And of course, we were all taking the most ridiculous amounts of snow.’

Dr Ruthven frowned at his teacup.

Adam rubbed his temple.

‘Did you
eat
the snow?’ asked Max.

‘No,’ Belle told him. ‘What you do is—’

‘Time for bed,’ said Maud.

After Maud had taken Max upstairs, Felicity was the first to break the silence. ‘Well, Miss Lawe, I think it all sounds absolutely fascinating. And so very different from the way we live at Kildrochet.’

‘Don’t you ever get bored?’ said Belle.

‘That was quite a performance,’ said Adam after they’d gone.

‘Not as good as hers,’ said Belle.

‘It wouldn’t have hurt you to be civil. Dr Ruthven was one of my father’s oldest friends—’

‘And Felicity wants to be the next Mrs Palairet. Come off it, Adam. “We lead a very quiet life. I don’t imagine I could cope with London.” Tell me you haven’t fallen for that?’

‘She’s not normally like that. She was overdoing it because you were.’

‘She started it,’ muttered Belle. She went to the window and drew back a corner of the curtain to look out at the rain. ‘Sorry,’ she said over her shoulder. ‘But that kind of girl brings out the worst in me.’

‘What kind of girl?’ said Adam, coming to stand beside her.

With her finger she followed a raindrop down the window pane. ‘The innocent,’ she said. ‘Next to her, I’m damaged goods.’

‘Don’t say that.’

‘It’s true. I haven’t led a “quiet life” since – well, not for years.’

‘I know that. But—’

‘No you don’t. Not really.’ She looked up into his face. ‘You are aware that Osbourne and I were lovers?’

‘Yes, I had managed to gather that.’

She bit her lip. ‘He wasn’t the first, you know. Had you managed to gather that, too?’

‘Why do you do this?’ he said quietly. ‘It’s as if something comes over you, and suddenly you’re determined to show me the worst of yourself.’

She hugged herself in her arms. ‘The worst of myself? Oh, I haven’t shown you that, not by a long chalk.’

‘What do you mean?’

She turned back to the window.

‘When I found you in East Street,’ said Adam, ‘you said something that’s stayed with me. You said it was where you belonged. What did you mean?’

Again she looked up into his face. She wanted to tell him everything. She really did.

‘I don’t remember,’ she said.

Dinner was awkward, but mercifully brief, as neither Maud, Belle nor Adam felt inclined to talk. Afterwards, Belle sought him out in his study.

‘I’m sorry about the Ruthvens,’ she said bluntly.

‘Jolly good,’ said Adam. ‘Would you care for a brandy?’

‘Yes. Thanks.’

As he handed her the glass, he met her glance and smiled.

She smiled back. Suddenly her heart swelled with happiness. She loved the little flecks of gold in his warm brown eyes, and his tallness, and the way that he moved, and the lines at the sides of his mouth, but it wasn’t only that. For the first time since Cornelius Traherne, she was with a man whom she didn’t have to charm or seduce or fear. She just wanted to know him. And she wanted him to know her.

At least – she wanted him to know some things about her. But not all.

He went to the fire and threw on another log, then straightened up. ‘Belle—’

‘I’ve just realized,’ she said nervously, ‘these days, I never see you smoke.’

‘I gave it up.’

‘Why?’

He shrugged. ‘You said the smell made you ill.’

She thought about that. Then she said, ‘I meant it about the Ruthvens. They’re your friends and I was horrible.’

‘It doesn’t—’

‘I’m sorry I embarrassed you. And it wasn’t Felicity’s fault. It was mine. Next time I’ll try to be more . . . gracious.’

‘Gracious?’ said Adam. He burst out laughing.

‘I haven’t heard him laugh like that in years,’ said Maud as they walked on the beach the following morning. The weather had changed again, and Cairngowrie was experiencing an Indian summer. It was so warm that Max had been allowed to take off his shoes and socks, and now he stood at the shoreline, fascinated by the feel of the waves sucking the sand from between his toes.

‘Poor little Felicity,’ said Belle, trying to sound as if she meant it.

‘Bother Felicity,’ said Maud. ‘She’s a sly little thing. I’ve never cared for her.’

‘Then why did you invite them?’

Maud sighed. ‘I invited them a week ago, to spite you. Then I forgot all about it.’

Belle laughed.

Maud didn’t even smile. ‘I wish I had your courage,’ she said in a low voice.

Belle threw her a surprised look. ‘What do you mean?’

‘It takes courage to say what you think.’

‘You mean, to be rude.’

‘To say what you think. I don’t have that kind of courage. Not really. I believe that’s why Adam’s fond of you.’

Belle stopped. ‘No he isn’t.’

‘Of course he is.’

‘You’re wrong. He only—’

‘If he wasn’t fond of you,’ said Maud, ‘why did he bring you to Cairngowrie?’

‘Because I was ill, and there was no-one else.’

‘Of course there was,’ said Maud. ‘There’s that duchess friend of yours down in Lincolnshire. He could have taken you there. But he didn’t.’

Belle hacked at the wet sand with the heel of her shoe. Despite her denial, she knew Maud was right. Adam was fond of her. She didn’t want to put it any higher than that, but she felt it to be true.

And yet – what then? How could it possibly work?

There was too much she hadn’t told him. And when he found out, he wouldn’t be fond of her any more. How could he? It would be like learning to be fond of an entirely different person.

The answer came to her in a flash.

So don’t tell him anything. After all, why does he need to know? What good would it do?

Her heart began to pound. It could be done, she told herself. It really could be done.

She looked at the sun-diamonds on the blue waters of the loch, and the purple heather on Beoch Hill. Scotland was utterly beautiful.

She turned her head to find Maud watching her. The older woman’s expression was anxious and a little sad. Belle said, ‘If you’re right about Adam; and if I – if I felt the same way. Should you mind?’

Maud turned and glanced back towards Cairngowrie House. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘It depends on how it turns out.’

They walked on in silence. Then Maud went back for Max, and Belle stayed behind, to sit on the beach and think.

The sun was warm on her back, and the sea lapped and sucked at the sand. In the shallows, a flock of terns was diving for sand-eels. Belle watched them for a while, feeling the hope growing inside her. Then she took off her shoes and stockings and walked barefoot in slow circles.

She glanced towards the Point and the tithe cottage, where poor Drum was struggling to deal with the secret he could never reveal. She looked back towards Cairngowrie House, where her mother had lived with parents who’d done their best to keep their secrets from the world. She seemed to see herself walking down the long stretch of beach: or rather, a succession of selves in all her different disguises.

‘You’re an extraordinary child,’ Cornelius Traherne had told her, just before he’d made her into someone else. Since then she’d been so many different people. Schoolgirl, innocent, demi-mondaine; ‘infant’, nurse, and ‘sick young woman’.

Now what? Could she perhaps simply be Belle?

She walked down to the water and watched the waves wash away her footprints. That gave her a strange sense of renewal. One moment there were her tracks, and the next – only clean, smooth sand.

You were right not to tell him the truth, she thought. It can all be washed away. It can be as if it had never been. You
can
start again.

Adam woke with a start. His heart was racing. He didn’t know where he was.

You’re at the Hall, he told himself as his heartbeats returned to normal. It was only a dream.

He got up and went to the window, and drew back the curtains. The grounds were awash with moonlight. On the lawn, a trio of fir trees was standing guard.

It was only a dream, he thought.

Except that it wasn’t. It was the nightmare. He hadn’t had it since before East Street, but now it was back.

He’s crouching in the shell-crater with St John Cornwallis: crouching in rottenness, with shells screaming all around. A whizz-bang is coming towards them, getting louder and louder. He turns to warn St John to get down – but it isn’t St John any more: not Dodo’s younger brother, but his own. ‘
Get down!
’ he tries to yell – but he can’t make a sound, and Erskine doesn’t hear. Then the world explodes. Adam is pitched forward into the mud. When he gets up, Erskine isn’t there. Where he’d been there is just a boot, and a gobbet of blackened flesh.

It’s a
dream
, Adam told himself as he stared at the moonlit garden.

Yes, but why now?

He thought of Belle as she’d looked when she’d come back from the beach that morning: flushed and laughing at something Max had said.

She could be so utterly different. Sometimes the polished Miss Lawe with the porcelain skin and the perfectly painted mouth. Sometimes the difficult, impulsive invalid. Sometimes the wry, perceptive Belle. He never knew who she would be next, and the change was fascinating. Confusing. Exhilarating.

But he knew now why he’d had the dream.

It was a warning.

Careful, Adam, it said. You lose the things you love. You know that. You always do.

Chapter Twenty-Four

A week had passed since the Ruthvens had come to tea, and Belle had hardly seen Adam.

He now spent most of his time at the Home Farm, and when he was at the Hall he was polite, considerate, and utterly uncommunicative. Something had changed between them. She couldn’t work out what. Suddenly her optimism on the beach seemed wildly misplaced.

The
Dumfries & Galloway Standard
had reported that the influenza was finally on the wane, so Maud announced that she was taking Max to Stranraer to see the boats. ‘And it wouldn’t do you any harm to come too,’ she told Belle. ‘You want to watch yourself, or you’ll turn peaky again.’