The Pretenders (8 page)

He grinned. “It is pretty grand, isn’t it? It’s even better when the tide is all the way out. Then the beach is even wider than it is now. It makes for a great place to gallop.”

Lord Bradford said from behind us, “We’ll tether the horses on the edge of the trees, Reeve.”

Reeve nodded and swung down from his saddle. I got down myself and took Reeve’s reins so he could go to assist Mama, but Lord Bradford was there before him. I frowned as I saw the sweet smile Mama be-stowed upon our host as he handed her to the ground.

She would have to be careful, or that fellow would think she was making up to him, I thought.

The rest of the party was out of the saddle by now as well, and the grooms who had come in the trap with the picnic assisted with tying the horses to the tether rope they had stretched at the edge of the trees.

“I thought we might show Mrs. Woodly and Miss Woodly about for an hour or so and then return here to have our luncheon,” Lord Bradford said.

Of course, I thought, everyone else in the party had probably been on the island many times. It was just Mama and I who were the newcomers.

We started off in a large group, walking eastward along the wet sand, where the going was easier. The tide was receding quickly. The day was warm, and even though I was not wearing a riding habit but was attired in a lighter-weight riding dress and jacket, still I was too warm. I wished I had been able to ride bareback in a cotton muslin dress and no shoes. I looked at Reeve out of the side of my eyes. He wore a riding coat, and he also looked hot.

If we had been alone, we could have taken off our jackets and been more comfortable.

“Reeve, we must show Miss Woodly Skull Rock.”

Harry Lambeth had come up on my other side.

I turned to look at Reeve’s cousin. “Skull Rock?”

Reeve chuckled. “That is what we named it when we were boys. We used to make up horrible tales of what smugglers did to the revenue men they caught, and one of the things was bashing their brains out against Skull Rock.”

“How charming,” I said.

Harry’s gray eyes smiled at me. “We also used it as a lookout post to keep watch for smuggled goods coming in on the tide.”

“I would love to see Skull Rock,” I said.

As the two young men talked and reminisced I watched them, making appropriate replies when necessary.

It seemed that nothing but harmony reigned between Reeve and this cousin of his. If Harry had indeed just come down from university, then he had to be two or three years younger than Reeve, although he looked older than twenty-one or twenty-two. There was a gravity about his square face that I found particularly pleasing.

“Is your father looking about for a living for you now that you’ve finished school?” Reeve asked. ”In truth, I was very surprised when he gave away the living at Ambersley to Cedric Liskey. I was sure he’d keep it for you, Harry.”

“He wanted to hold it for me, but I wouldn’t let him,” Harry returned.

“Oh?” Reeve said. ”Why not? Not that there’s anything wrong with Cedric, but you would be a good man to have in the neighborhood.”

Harry said intensely, “I don’t want to go into the Church, Reeve. I have told that to Papa a hundred times, but he doesn’t listen. You know how he is, he always j thinks he knows what’s better for you than you do yourself.”

Reeve kicked at a shell with his boot. “I know that very well,” he said tightly.

Harry sighed.

Reeve turned to look at his cousin over my head. “What
do
you want to do then, Harry, if you don’t want the Church? You don’t strike me as the sort who is army mad.”

“I’m not,” Harry said emphatically. His gray eyes burned. ”I want to be a doctor, Reeve. I want Papa to let me go to the Royal College of Physicians in London. But no Lambeth has ever been a doctor before, and.

Papa doesn’t think it is respectable, and so he is trying to push me into the Church.”

My opinion of Lord Bradford’s insensitivity was increasing by leaps and bounds. While it was true that the Church or the army were the two traditional careers for younger sons of the upper classes, surely that didn’t mean one couldn’t take into consideration the needs and talents of individuals.

The wet sand squished beneath our shoes as we walked along the water’s edge, avoiding tidal puddles that had not yet dried in the sun. Reeve’s long legs had easily outdistanced the rest of the party, and since I was used to keeping up with him, we were far in the vanguard of the group.

Reeve raised his eyebrows at Harry. “So you want to be a physician, eh?”

“Yes. It is all I have ever wanted to be, and if Papa were not so stuffy, he would realize that I am far more suited to that than I am to the Church. It is people’s bodies I want to serve, not their souls.”

“That sounds to me a very admirable goal, Mr. Lambeth,” I said gravely.

He gave me a quick, attractive, gray-eyed smile. “Thank you, Miss Woodly.”

“You don’t have the money to go to school in London on your own?” Reeve asked.

“No,” Harry said. ”I am completely dependent upon Papa for money.”

“That is how he controls us all,” Reeve said with deep bitterness.

“Papa is not a bad man, Reeve,” Harry said awkwardly. “He just thinks he …”

“I know,” Reeve cut in. “He just thinks he knows what’s better for us than we do ourselves.”

Harry sighed. “Yes.”

Straight ahead of us, jutting up out of the wet sand like an ancient monolith, was a very large gray rock. Crying seagulls circled around it, as if keeping guard.

“Is that Skull Rock by any chance?’ I asked.

“Yes,” Reeve said, “it is.”

As we drew closer I could see that the lower part of the rock was wet. “At high tide the water is over one’s head at the rock,” Reeve informed me.

“My goodness.” I looked at the two young men. ”Did you ever get caught out there by the tide when you were young?”

They grinned at me.

“Once in a while,” Harry said. ”But there isn’t much of an undertow, so it is an easy swim back to the shore.”

By now we had reached the bottom of the rock, which I could see had barnacles growing on it. I looked all the way up to the top of it.

“Can we climb it?”

Harry gave me a nervous look. “I don’t think you want to do that, Miss Woodly. It is slippery.”

“Oh, don’t worry about Deb,” Reeve said cheerfully. ”She can climb like a boy. Come on, and we’ll show you the view from the top, Deb. It’s grand.”

Lord Bradford would probably have a heart attack at the sight of me on top of Skull Rock, but I didn’t care. I followed Reeve to the first foothold.

By the time the house party returned to the picnic area, the food had been laid out. The salt air and exercise had made me hungry, and I bit ravenously into a meat pastry, which I washed down with some lemonade.

Lord Bradford had not provided champagne.

Mama had color in her cheeks, and her curls were feathering around her face in a way that made her look extraordinarily young and pretty. I was not at all sure I liked the way Lord Bradford was looking at her.

Sally shared a blanket with Edmund Norton and chatted away comfortably about some people they both knew. Harry and Mary Ann had their heads together over some shells that Mary Ann had collected during her walk. Mr. Norton talked amiably to Reeve about horses, and Mrs. Norton, who had her children’s lovely large brown eyes, talked to me about the summer fair that would be held in a few weeks’ time. I listened to her and tried to keep an eye on Mama and Lord Bradford at the same time.

Mrs. Norton said, “The fair is a hangover from the midsummer festival that was held from the Middle Ages right through the first part of the last century. The Church was deeply suspicious of the pagan origins of that festival, so about fifty years ago the local parish succeeded in canceling the midsummer festival and substituting this summer fair instead.”

“What does the fair involve?” I asked.

“Oh there are games for the children, and dancing and food for the young people and adults. There are horse races and boat races as well. Last year Lord Bradford brought in a dancing bear, which was a great hit.

This year I believe he is sponsoring an equestrian exhibition.”

Mama laughed at something Lord Bradford said to her.

“The fair sounds like fun,” I said to Mrs. Norton.

She frowned. “Mind, it still has its rowdy side. Too often the young men and women from the local villages sneak out at night and meet in the woods. The old midsummer festival has not quite let go its grip on this part of the world.”

I gathered that the young men and women who met in the woods were not there in order to discuss the latest happenings in Parliament.

“Disgraceful,” I said gravely.

She gave me a smile.

“Who organizes the fair, Mrs. Norton?” I asked curiously. ”Lord Bradford?”

“Oh no. The rector’s wife, Mrs. Thornton, does most of the organization while the women from Wake-field village do the actual work. Lord Bradford only provides some of the entertainment.”

By this time, everyone had finished eating, and Lord Bradford asked if we were ready to return to Wakefield Manor.

“If you don’t mind, I would like to show Deb the south side of the island, Bernard,” Reeve said. ”We can follow you home later.”

Lord Bradford hesitated, and then he looked at Mama. “It is all right with me if it is all right with Mrs. Woodly.”

“Of course you may show Deborah the rest of the island, Reeve,” Mama said quietly.

Lord Bradford nodded. Even he could scarcely object to an engaged couple riding by themselves for a short period of time.

So it was that while the rest of the party headed toward the causeway and the mainland, Reeve and I went in the opposite direction. We rode along in silence under the hot sun, and I noticed how the landscape began to change as we approached the south shore of the island. The beach became much narrower, and the horses walked more carefully as the sand underfoot turned into pebbles and small rocks. Gradually the trees gave way to a growing wall of stone, and, after a few more minutes of walking, there was only about six feet of pebbled beach left between the cliff wall and the lapping water.

I thought that at high tide there must be no beach on this shore at all.

“There’s Rupert’s Cave now,” Reeve said with satisfaction. ”This is what I wanted you to see.”

I looked ahead of me and saw a great arched opening in the cliff wall to our left. “Rupert’s Cave?” I asked.

“I have no idea how it got that name,” Reeve said cheerfully, ”but it’s been called Rupert’s Cave forever. It probably should have been named Smuggler’s Cave because that’s what it’s famous for.”

I looked from the cave to the waterline six feet away. At the moment the tide was almost at its lowest point. “Doesn’t the cave flood at high tide?” I asked. “I shouldn’t think it would be much use to smugglers if everything they hid inside it got soaking wet.”

“It does flood at high tide,” Reeve replied. ”In fact, the water gets almost halfway up the entrance. But the cave goes surprisingly deep, and there are a few high spots way inside that always stay dry.”

I shivered at the thought of crawling so far away from the light of day. I have never liked small, dark places.

“Let’s get down,” Reeve said.

We both swung down from our saddles and walked over to stand in the entrance of the cave. It was actually high enough for the horses to enter if they had to. The ground inside was very wet, as the sun never got at it to dry it fully.

I stepped back out into the sun and squinted as the midday brightness struck my eyes.

“Let’s sit down for a few minutes before we go back,” Reeve said. ”We need to talk.”

I looked around for someplace dry, and Reeve motioned me to follow him. A moment later, we had come to a place where the cliff descended toward the sea, and there was a flat rock that we could climb up to with relative ease.

We sat down and I took off my jacket.

Reeve looked at my bare arms. “You’ll get a sunburn, Deb, if you’re not careful.”