Shadow among Sheaves

by Naomi Stephens

  Shaking off his frustrations, knowing they were likely written too vividly on his face, he refocused his attention on the festival. From a small distance, William caught his eye, inclining his head meaningfully toward the perimeter of the dance, where several unattached young women waited with hopeful eyes for someone—anyone—to ask them to dance. Breathing out the rest of his irritation, Barric took William’s cue and reminded himself that he was still host that evening and needed to act the part.

  He approached the small cluster of women, all of whom were openly delighted by his unexpected advance. They tittered among themselves, smiling shyly, until he came to a stop directly in front of them. He narrowed in on the one with the kindest smile and extended his hand in silent question.

  Of course the girl wanted to dance with him. He didn’t even have to smile at her. Every woman at the festival wished he would ask her. He had a title and a fortune and was young enough to seem exciting despite his stern demeanor. Yet their eagerness wearied him, and the ones who were interested only in his money amused him even less.

  With a tired smile, he took the girl’s hand and led her to the row of dancers, hoping the music might help drown out his thoughts. The only light left to guide them flickered down from lanterns, the stray firelight fragmenting the girl’s features as she tilted her chin up toward him.

  His thoughts turned, disconcertingly, toward Rena. Though he had shared in several dances that night, none of the women had worn so elegant a frown as Rena. She had looked quite exquisite in her crimson gown, the first time he had ever seen her out of mourning. Barric told himself his interest in her didn’t mean anything—he was only trying to be kind. But two seconds more in the thicket, and he’d have pulled her into his arms and kissed her. His fingers had ached to curve around her waist. Too much wine, he told himself again. Still, there had been no twinkle of flirtation in Rena’s eyes when he had snared her in the thicket, no hint that her mouth was at all enthralled by his.

  He focused his attention back on the girl now in his arms. With blond hair tied up in ribbons, she seemed younger than Rena, though he suspected there was very little difference between their ages. Rena’s sorrow had altered her youth, though certainly not her beauty. She’d seemed small beside him in the thicket, and yet there was something formidable about her. Though her shoulder blades still pressed like rolling pins beneath her skin, pride ran a strong line from her shoulders down her spine. Would she seem younger, he wondered, if she smiled?

  He led the young lady through the dance, but he felt stiff and out of sorts. Too old for her, though he knew he wasn’t. As he took her hand at the end of a row, she leaned in, said something to him about the warmth of the evening, then the stars, and he smiled obligingly but didn’t answer. She didn’t seem to mind his silence. She seemed to wish only to smile up at him, to relish the feeling of his hand at her back, which made him feel slightly guilty for asking her to dance in the first place.

  He simply couldn’t hold on to his thoughts long enough to think up something to say, or to care that he couldn’t. Instead, he thought about the moment Rena had matched his stare out in the thicket. From that close, he had been able to make out every golden fleck glinting from her otherwise black eyes. Yes, he thought to himself, those eyes were unreasonably inconvenient. Depthless and dark, they sorrowed. It had been her eyes that had snared him in the thicket; it was her eyes that snared him now….

  “Lord Barric?” His dancing partner frowned hesitantly, as if she could sense his thoughts were not with her at all.

  He blinked and nearly laughed at himself. He was, as William had warned him, an utter fool. Wanting to kiss Rena meant nothing, he told himself one last time. A ridiculous fancy. Besides, if Barric were to be carried away by a woman, it certainly wasn’t going to be a foreign outcast with miserable eyes.

  He smiled apologetically at the heart-swept girl still watching him. He made a few light comments about the harvest and the festival, and finished the dance with far more presence of mind. When the music ended, he wished her well, made a low bow, and strode away.

  He did not dance again.

  CHAPTER 8

  Rena had searched everywhere. She’d turned out every drawer, crawled beneath every piece of furniture, even checked the weathered cracks in the floorboards until her fingertips were splintered and her thoughts were shuffled, impossible to regather correctly.

  Her necklace was gone.

  The contents of their home were now a scattered menagerie, items stacked in odd corners of the room. Nell sat at the table, her face crumpled as she sought to console Rena. “It will turn up,” she soothed. A heap of blankets was strewn carelessly beside the bed, and she slowly began to fold them, taking time to smooth the wrinkles with her fingers. “Things like these go missing, but they usually turn up.”

  Rena slammed the drawer she’d been rifling through, rattling every cup and plate within the cabinet.

  “What if it doesn’t?” Her voice sounded harsh and angry, but the catch in her voice betrayed her. She was frantic, not angry. She wanted so much to be angry.

  She hadn’t even realized the necklace was missing until the afternoon. As soon as she noticed its absence, she had turned into a windstorm, unsettling every item in their small home. She knew it was unfair of her to snap at Nell, but she hadn’t realized how Edric’s ring had kept her anchored until it had vanished, and now she was plunged deep beneath icy, punishing thoughts. She had been careless at the festival. She had been reckless. She had allowed another man to touch her. She had wanted him to touch her.

  “Rena.” Recognizing the regret in Rena’s eyes, Nell rose from the bed and crossed to her, pulling her up from her knees. “You haven’t lost him. It’s just a ring. Just a small scattering of sand.”

  Just a ring. Just sand. Rena pressed both hands to her eyes, knowing, of course, the necklace was trivial—two small trinkets joined together by a cheap, fraying cord. But now the necklace was gone, the sand and the ring, and Edric’s smile was in the grave, and she felt a great chasm opening within her chest, like a gaping mouth prepared to swallow.

  She’d felt the chasm first beckoning the night before, when Lord Barric had discovered the necklace. She disciplined her mind, trying not to think of him or how he had come upon her from the mist, smelling of smoke and wealth, or how he had matched her gaze in the thicket, as if he hadn’t matched eyes with a dozen other girls that night.

  She must have dropped the necklace at the festival. This realization stiffened her spine and gave her direction. Breaking her shoulders from Nell’s hold, Rena spun toward the door, catching a thick shawl up in her hands.

  “Where are you going?” Nell’s voice turned hard as she trailed Rena’s steps, trying to catch up.

  “I had it on at the festival,” Rena explained, grasping the handle. “I’m going to look.”

  “But it’s raining!” Nell looked worried now, her forehead lined with heavy wrinkles as she sunk into her familiar widow’s frown. “And cold!”

  “Then I will have to look quickly.” She shut the door on Nell’s next protest but teetered on the threshold, her skin already fitting tighter against her bones because of the icy rain. She pulled her shawl closer and barreled across the yard, forcing the gate’s rickety latch to let her through.

  Rena squared her shoulders as she walked, her eyes scanning the wet ground. Led by raw intuition, she checked the thicket first. She knelt down, her fingers stiff as they tore through the wet grass. Tufts of it were matted, where she and Barric had stood, but she found nothing there. She sliced her fingers on a scattering of fallen brambles which had been dislodged by rough wind. Still nothing.

  “Mrs. Hawley!” When she heard her name, she rose and headed in the opposite direction, refusing to slow as she eyed the giant pits which had been alight the night before. There was the bonfire where Lord Barric had stood surrounded by all those girls, with a drink balanced casually in his hand. There was the stretch of grass where Thomas had take
n her hand and pulled her against him. Her fingers curled as she fisted her trembling hands. How had the balmy festival air turned to ice so quickly?

  When she didn’t answer, William did away with decorum and tried her first name. “Rena!”

  She felt him come up next to her, but she refused to look at him as she ran her fingers through her now sopping hair and methodically scanned the ground.

  “I wish to be left alone.”

  She tried to sound pleasant, but her words cracked like a whip as she crouched to inspect the muddy grass once more. She splayed a hand against the ground and imagined she could still feel the crash of heavy drumbeats from the night before. Though the chaos had vanished, she still felt incredibly off balance.

  “It’s freezing out here.” William sounded worried as he reached for her arm. “You’re soaked. Please, come inside.”

  She kept her eyes trained on the ground, still searching for any glint of Edric’s ring. Nell had told her she hadn’t lost him, but it felt like she had. She had opened her fingers and let him slip through the spaces. “I’m…I’m just looking for something.”

  “This is madness.” William hooked a hand around her arm as he tried to guide her to her feet. “Let me walk you home. I promise I’ll help you look tomorrow, when it’s dry. Alice will help too.”

  She slapped William’s hand away and finally met his eyes. “I’m not leaving,” she snapped, hating that she wasn’t making any sense, hating the frightened, uncertain look now moving in William’s kind eyes. “Go!”

  William muttered a soft string of pleas that Rena didn’t allow herself to hear. His voice was uncharacteristically worried, but she couldn’t feel guilty. Not yet. Blotting him out, she crammed her hands deeper into the icy mud, not caring that her fingers felt bitten or that she could no longer feel her own skin. After a few moments, she stole a glance over her shoulder and realized William had indeed gone. He must have thought she had lost her mind. Maybe she had.

  Time hovered above her, crushing in its slowness, the darkness thickening around her by slow shades. As the shadows deepened, she at last allowed herself to remember the look of the missing ring on Edric’s hand. Commissioned in India, set with a prowling tiger around his initials and family crest, the gold band had glinted subtly in the low light as he made his usual cup of tea in the morning. It had cooled against her cheek whenever he cupped her face. It had hung awkwardly about his knuckle when he’d lost several stones of weight and turned gaunt with fever.

  “I’m sorry, Edric,” she whispered to the ground. “I’m so sorry.” Would she even have lost his ring, she wondered, if she hadn’t dallied with Lord Barric in the thicket? She wondered if maybe she was being punished. For wearing that dress. For dancing. For taking her eyes off Edric, if only for a moment.

  She ought to go back inside. Nell would be so worried about her, and her chest was beginning to tighten.

  “Have you lost your mind?”

  Rena froze. She didn’t have to glance upward to know Lord Barric had come—or that he was furious.

  “Please, leave,” she all but ordered, stiffening her shoulders as she continued to search. She knew she was behaving erratically. Madness, as William had said. But she had sunk into a dark, irrational place, where to give in was to give up on grieving. She couldn’t leave Edric’s ring in a field that was soon to be covered with mud and snow. It would be like burying him all over again.

  Without prelude, Lord Barric stepped forward, slipping his hands beneath her elbows and hauling her to her feet. “You’re finished,” he commanded, tugging her in the direction of Misthold.

  Rena rebounded quickly, jerking her arms from his hold and shooting backward. “I wish to be left alone!” she shouted, desperation climbing.

  She finally met his eyes, flinching slightly at his tight-jawed expression. He looked as if he had left his home in a hurry, his coat unbuttoned, ginger hair a mess, drenched two shades darker with the rain.

  “Mrs. Hawley,” he scolded, shaking his head as he gestured to the trampled field around them. “Come to your senses! You are stronger than this.”

  “Stronger?” She bit down a wild laugh as she repeated the word back at him. It seemed her life’s ambition to be stronger, stronger, always stronger. Had losing her husband not been enough to endure? Or following Nell into this strange world, away from her family, where everyone thought she was nothing? Had starving for weeks, or sleeping in gutters, or prostrating her pride at Lord Barric’s feet—had none of that been enough? She remembered what she’d wished for in church, to be strong rather than blessed, and cursed her foolish heart.

  She knew she was really lost, broken in nearly every way, when she brought up her arms to shove him. Barric foresaw the blow, grabbing a firm hold of her arm and using it to pull her flat against him. His skin was soaked through his shirt, frigid beneath her fingers. Startled, Rena tore back from him, coming to a stumbling halt a few feet away as she clutched at her dress and nearly shrieked, “I am sick to death of being strong!”

  Barric froze, lifting his gaze to meet her eyes. For a moment, there was nothing but ragged breathing between them, the drag of angry exhaustion, and Rena was pinned by just how much she wanted him to leave, just so he wouldn’t see her like this, but also by how much she hoped he’d stay, just so she wouldn’t have to be alone.

  But Barric didn’t leave. Though Rena was covered in mud and raving, though she’d screamed at him and nearly struck him, though he didn’t even know what she was looking for, Barric dropped to both knees with a withered curse and began to search the frozen ground.

  Barric found the blasted necklace. It took him nearly an hour to find where it had been stomped beneath a muddy tuft of grass. He flexed his unfeeling knuckles, the bite of icy air sharp against his skin. He had no idea how Rena had withstood the rain for so long when he himself nearly gave up at least a dozen times. Though he had tried to convince himself she wasn’t worth the trouble, he’d seen the moment when she’d been about to hit him, her anger coiled tightly within her like a spring. She needed someone strong enough to withstand the grieving madness with her, if only for a moment.

  And so there he was, hunched over frosted stalks of grass, and all for what?

  His voice was gruff as he finally held up the cord and barked out the words, “It’s here.”

  Fighting his temper, he watched Rena scramble to her feet. There were tears in her dark, lovely eyes, and a hunger on her face. She pressed both hands tightly to her chest, where the necklace typically hung, clearly waiting for him to hand it over. He had half a mind to hurl it at her and leave, but she seemed half-wild in the rain. Her hair was made brittle by frost, her lips a ghostly shade of white. Still, she held herself well, straight-backed and poised as she extended her thin hand. “Thank you.”

  He didn’t care to learn what he might say to her if he opened his mouth to answer. Half a dozen curses were pressed tightly against his tongue. Swallowing them all, he spun away from her and strode toward Misthold, the necklace still dangling from his fisted hand.

  “Wait!” Rena called out, hastening to his side. Her voice sounded half-dead, raspy. “Let me have it…please!”

  He refused to answer. Instead, he barreled on, and she followed after him, silently, all the way up the steep hill to Misthold. He wasn’t entirely sure where he was going when he led them both to a back entrance, jerking on the wrought-iron handle. When he finally met her eyes, she drew back from whatever she caught in his expression. Could she tell he was furious? He hoped so. If he was going to feel this angry, then she could just as well know it.

  He held the door for her, and she entered, her movements slow and stiff as if it hurt to move. He took a moment to shake the rain from his hair with his other hand.

  “Infernal fool,” he finally muttered, slamming the door. He wasn’t sure if he meant himself or Rena, who trailed him all the way to his study, her hands clasped tightly together in front of her stomach.

  “Come in,”
he said, yanking the door open.

  Hesitating only a moment, she obeyed, instantly drawn toward the fire which was still lit from when William had come to find him. She took several steps, eyes on the flames as she clutched her shawl closer about her. Water ran down the soft edges of her face, hitting the floor in an odd pattern.

  “You’ll be lucky if we both don’t catch our deaths.” He bit out the words, grabbing her arm and leading her to the couch nearest the fire. He practically flung her down onto the red, upholstered seat. “William said he’d have gone with you tomorrow. Why didn’t you wait?”

  Her eyes flew up to him, and her voice was still a faint scratch of sound as she explained, “I had to find it.”

  This time he couldn’t stop himself from hurling the necklace at her. She caught it against her chest, her eyes wide and startled. “And was it worth it?” he seethed, shucking off his sopping coat and slinging it over the back of a chair. “Was it worth nearly killing yourself in the cold? People die from getting caught in weather like that.”

  He froze, wondering if that had been part of her plan. She wouldn’t meet his eyes again, which made his heart beat uncomfortably fast. Had she subjected herself to the cold on purpose, knowing it could make her sick?

  “I wasn’t trying to die.” She still avoided his eyes, running her fingers over his couch’s rich upholstery. “I—” She broke off, the words falling dead on her tongue. Then she stood, teetering on her feet as she shook her head and said, “I wish to go home.”

  He sidestepped, cutting off her path to the door. “No,” he said, hardly knowing what he planned on doing next. “Not just yet.”