Secrets in the Mist

by Anna Lee Huber

  But that girl was gone now, never to return. And as if he sensed that, Robert’s smile faded to something sadder.

  As he lifted the latch on the gate, I turned away and reached for my bonnet and my violin, cushioned in its case. Descending the stairs, I began to wonder what Robert was doing here. I couldn’t remember the last time he had come to Penleaf Cottage. Certainly it had been years. What could have induced him to seek me out now?

  Kate.

  Gripping the banister, I dashed the rest of the way down the steps and propelled myself around the newel post toward the back of the cottage. Robert already stood inside the kitchen doorway, speaking to Mrs. Brittle. They both looked up at me as I rushed into the room.

  “Kate?” I gasped, braced for the worst.

  Robert’s eyes widened. “Oh. No, Ella. Kate was still resting comfortably when I left.”

  I closed my eyes and heaved a sigh of relief.

  “I apologize,” he said, approaching hesitantly. “I should have realized you would fear the worst when I appeared on your doorstep this early in the morning.”

  I opened my eyes to find him staring down at me in concern. I brushed his explanation aside and crossed to the kitchen table. “Did her breathing become constricted again last night?”

  “Yes, but Nora took care of her. She said you had instructed her in what to do.”

  I nodded, glad the lady’s maid had been there to care for Kate in my absence.

  “Take another jar o’ the ointment,” Mrs. Brittle instructed us as she crossed over to the storeroom. “If the phlegm got in ’er lungs, Mistress Rockland may need it a few more nights.”

  “Thank you, Mrs. Brittle,” Robert replied when she returned with the salve.

  The old woman grunted and waved it off before turning toward the pot simmering on the cook top.

  “Is that why you’re here?” I asked him, curious what had brought him here if not concern for Kate.

  “No. I knew you would visit Kate today, so…” he cleared his throat “…I thought I would offer my escort.”

  I furrowed my brow, uncertain how to respond. What, if anything, did this mean? Had Father been right? Was Robert planning to court me again? Or was he simply being more solicitous than normal, even for him? I was hesitant to believe this was anything more than a friendly gesture, but the fact that he had not made such an offer since our unspoken engagement had so ignominiously ended could not be ignored.

  He shifted from one foot to the other, fiddling with the brim of his hat, reminding me I had yet to answer him. I certainly wasn’t going to openly question his motives. Not here, not now. And it seemed churlish not to accept, especially as I was bound for Greenlaws anyway. If nothing else, Robert was still a friend. There need not be anything more to it than that.

  “Thank you. That’s very kind,” I replied with a minimum of inflection, not wanting to offer him any encouragement if he intended for his actions to mean something more. Not after what had happened the last time.

  I turned to pack my basket of sickroom supplies and cast a glance at Mrs. Brittle, who was watching us from across the room. From the sour look on her face I knew she was biting her tongue, but whether she was displeased with me or Robert I couldn’t be sure.

  I ignored her and turned to precede Robert through the door he held open for me, avoiding his eyes as well. The early morning air was drowsy, making me suspect the afternoon would be warm. Even so, at this early hour I was grateful for my shawl, despite the numerous patches sewn near the hem.

  As we picked our way down the tidy kitchen garden path I could hear the song of a bittern in the distance. The gate creaked, like everything else in the cottage, as we passed through it, and I was suddenly glad we were moving away from my home. This way I need not read the shock and pity in Robert’s eyes at how dilapidated Penleaf Cottage had become. However, there was still our warped dock to be faced, though he graciously said nothing of its neglected state.

  He helped me down into his rowboat and passed me my basket of supplies before bending to unwind the tether from one of the weathered posts. My eyes strayed out into the marshes, unconsciously searching for the Lantern Man. The thought that he still might be out there, watching me even now with his dark eyes, made a shiver run down my spine.

  Robert glanced at me in concern as he dropped down into the boat. “Are you chilled?”

  I offered him a weak smile. “It was just a passing breeze.”

  He eyed me closely as he settled onto his bench across from me, and I turned away from him, uncomfortable with his scrutiny. The boat lurched as he lifted one oar to push against the dock’s piling, maneuvering us out into the waterway. Once we drifted past the tallest of the reeds and grasses, he dipped his oars into the water and expertly turned us north toward the River Yare and Greenlaws.

  It had always amazed me how isolated one could feel gliding through the waterways of the broads and fens. Sitting so low to the water, the grasses and reeds seemed to stretch upward like trees, ensnaring you in their boggy world. Periodically, you would come across a stretch of marsh where an industrious landowner had cut back some of the reeds to reveal the shore, but for the most part you floated along through a sunken world of water and rippling stalks of vegetation, with only the occasional sighting of a dock to assure you there really was land beyond these swampy beds.

  Just like on the paths, it was all too easy to become lost among the numerous tiny waterways stretching throughout the Broads like fractures in a broken piece of glass. When my brother and I were young, before Mother’s and Erik’s deaths and all that came after, Father used to tell us stories about the treasures sitting at the bottom of these channels and inlets, just waiting to be discovered. They’d either been thrown overboard to avoid discovery or sunken in tubs by smugglers in an attempt to hide their cargo from revenue men. If the casks then leaked and flooded, or the tubs drifted loose from their inconspicuous moorings made from a float of reeds, they sometimes became lost. Depending on the seal, the contents of many of these casks were undoubtedly ruined, but that had not stopped Erik from dragging me through the marshes with him to search for these missing treasures. Most of the time, I hadn’t minded. Especially when Robert joined in the fun.

  I risked a glance at him now. His brown hair was always cut neat and ruthlessly restrained by his valet, but that did not stop a wayward lock from falling across his brow due to all the effort of his rowing. As a girl, I would have been fascinated by that lone curl. As a young woman, I would have reached across the distance between us to brush it from his forehead. Now, I merely looked away, wrapping my fingers around the handle of the basket in my lap.

  “You’re very quiet this morning,” he remarked as he turned the boat into a wider channel.

  “I didn’t sleep well,” I replied truthfully, though that was not the reason for my silence.

  I could feel his eyes on me, though I did not turn to meet them. The morning sun shone just over his shoulder, blinding me from any clear view of his expression but revealing every nuance of mine.

  A stronger breeze blew across the water here, ruffling the shorter hairs framing my face, and carrying with it the salty scent of the North Sea. The fresh air was welcome, for if the day warmed as I suspected, they might be the last clean breaths I inhaled until after sunset. The stink of the marshes only increased with the heat of the sun, reeking of damp earth and rotten vegetation.

  “Worried about Kate?”

  I glanced at Robert in confusion, and then realized he was referring to my previous comment. “Yes. Partly.” I could practically hear the questions forming in his mind in the silence that followed, but I wasn’t about to discuss any of the other things that had kept me up last night, so I threw out a hand to gesture toward the height of the reeds. “They grow quite tall, don’t they?” I pronounced lamely. “I haven’t been out in a boat for some time, but I swear they’ve grown another foot since I last passed by here.” It was inane, but it was the only topic I could think
of on such short notice.

  Robert cleared his throat. “Yes. They have. But it’s high summer. They’ll die back when the weather turns colder.”

  I smiled tightly at his polite response and turned aside to stare into the dense grasses.

  “You know there’s no need to feel awkward around me,” Robert said.

  I grimaced. So he’d noticed. Though in truth, it would have been difficult to miss.

  “You do know that, don’t you, Ella?” He leaned forward, his voice earnest. “I’m still the same boy you grew up with. The same man you’ve always known.”

  I looked down at the expensive leather of his shiny boots, curling my toes inside my mother’s worn pair. “Except…you aren’t.” I lifted my gaze to meet his, watching as he opened his mouth to argue. “None of us are the same. How can we be? Too much has happened.”

  He lifted the oars from the water, allowing us to drift, and turned to stare out across the fens. It was my turn to watch and wait as he considered my words. I studied the pattern of rings created on the surface of the channel by the water dripping off the blades of the oars, and tightened my grip on the basket in my lap. There were so many things I was not prepared to discuss with Robert, but trapped with him out in the middle of the fens, as I now realized I was, I might not be able to avoid them. The air between us had become so heavy, it was almost as if his late wife, Olivia, physically sat in the tiny boat between us. I half expected to smell the cloying French perfume she’d persistently dowsed herself with.

  I had disliked Olivia from the first, and our continued acquaintance had done nothing to change that. She had been vain, selfish, and manipulative, and as much as I had delighted in her extreme unhappiness at finding her new home with Robert so isolated from the high society she loved, I had also wished for Kate’s and even Robert’s sake that she wasn’t so difficult. I had never been able to warm to Olivia, no matter how I tried—a failing I feared I would always regret, particularly since she and the child she carried had died in such a horrible way.

  But that was almost two years ago now, and by necessity most of us had carried on with our lives. Robert, on the other hand, had grieved long and hard, though whether that was because he had truly loved her or because his conscience insisted upon it, I didn’t know. I was not privy to his private thoughts. I hadn’t been since even before his marriage, though I hadn’t realized it at the time. Whatever had been between us had begun to break when we received word of my brother’s death on a battlefield in Portugal, but in my own grief I had not seen it. Not until three months later when he’d returned from London with Olivia on his arm as his new bride.

  “Do you remember that last trip Erik and I made to London?” Robert finally asked.

  I began to nod, but then realized he wasn’t looking at me. “Yes.”

  His eyes seemed to search for something on the horizon, perhaps something in his memory. “Your mother had died only a few months before.”

  “I remember,” I replied, unsurprised my voice had grown hoarse. “That’s when Erik bought his commission in the army.”

  Erik had looked so proud when he came home to tell us, as if a weight had been lifted from his shoulders, but Father had been furious. Mother’s death had truly shaken him, and he’d begun to drink more often in the evenings. He’d railed against Erik’s decision and ordered him to sell out, but my brother had remained steadfast in his conviction. I sometimes wondered whether Erik had known what was coming, whether he was escaping the only way he knew how.

  Thinking back on it now, I tried not to feel resentful. After all, I knew he’d had every expectation that Robert would marry me. He had no reason to believe he was abandoning me to the fate he was so eager to avoid. But the truth was that Father had never improved, and when Erik had been killed a few months later, he’d sunken even deeper into despair and the temporary release of the bottle.

  “Did I ever tell you I almost bought a commission as well?” Robert looked up to see my brow furrow in disbelief.

  “No. Although,” I added, considering the matter, “I suppose it’s not surprising you would keep such a thing from the girl who believed you were going to marry her as soon as her period of mourning was up.” He blanched, but I refused to feel bad for stating the matter so bluntly. “But who would have managed the estate, and looked after your sister?” I rushed on to ask, not wishing to dwell on the impact his commission would have had on me.

  He stared down at his hands where they flexed on the handles of the oars. “That’s what Erik said. He told me my place was here. That I had no business purchasing a commission in His Majesty’s army.”

  “He was right.”

  “Maybe,” he admitted. “But you know, sometimes I still wish I had.”

  I frowned at the top of his head, wondering what on earth he meant by that.

  The boat drifted into a bank of reeds behind Robert, forcing him to act swiftly lest we get tangled at the boggy edge of the waterway. He expertly steered us away from the verge and into one of the tighter channels which would take us west toward Greenlaws—a shortcut known only to those of us who traveled this way often, and one to be avoided during a dry season.

  I did not question the luck of my temporary reprieve from further discussion of our painful past, and did not dare ask him about his strange confession, despite my burning curiosity. I knew better than to think Robert would divulge more without expecting me to do the same. Instead I helped guide him through the reed-choked passage and out into the broader waterway where the Greenlaws docks perched.

  I waited patiently as Robert tossed the boat’s rope to one of his wherry men and climbed out. I even accepted his assistance in disembarking. But once my feet were planted firmly on the pier with my basket of sickroom supplies and violin in my hands, I thanked him and made my excuses, only having to partially feign my eagerness to see Kate. Robert did not delay me, but I could tell he was also not fooled. His troubled gaze told me he knew I was fleeing.

  Chapter 6

  I

  found Kate much improved. The rattle of phlegm in her chest was less pronounced, her appetite had returned, and her hacking cough, while still bone-rattling, at least proved some of her strength had returned. Though by no means was she well enough to rise from her bed. However, by afternoon the color in her cheeks and the renewed vitality of her voice had convinced me it would be safe enough to allow her to lounge on the balcony; in fact, the fresh air might do her some good.

  The balcony spanned the entire length of the house at the rear, connecting a number of the bedrooms. It looked out over the fens and Greenlaws docks, and because of its shaded covering and heightened vantage point, often remained the coolest part of the house even on the warmest of days. Breezes that failed to penetrate the thick tangle of grasses down in the marsh, or even at the top of the hill on which the manor perched, blew refreshingly across the gallery above. So much so that I insisted Kate drape a blanket across her lap.

  I left her on her fainting couch and stepped closer to the railing, closed my eyes and breathed deeply of the cooler air. Kate’s bedchamber had grown stuffy and close in the afternoon heat, and the effort it had taken for Nora and me to move her out to the balcony had made the sweat gathering at the back of my neck run down my spine. I pulled the bodice of my green sprig gown away from my chest and fanned myself. I sighed as the air rushed down my chemise to dry my skin.

  The sails of Reedham Windmill turned slowly in the distance, catching what wind there was coming in from the North Sea. It was the tallest structure for miles around, breaking up the monotonous expanse of water and grasses that made up the marshes. The faded white of its cap and sails and the weathered red brick were also the only spots of bright color visible in the sea of brown and green and faded yellow.

  Hearing a man’s deep voice, I opened my eyes to see Robert striding across the lawn below toward the docks. He was issuing instructions to two servants standing at the edge of the waterway. In the distance, I could see tw
o wherry boats approaching, loaded down with cargo.

  Whatever was being delivered, Robert seemed particularly animated about it, waving his hands in broad gestures. The two servants shouted to the men on the boats while Robert looked on. His hands planted on his hips, he glanced from side to side, and something in the tightness of his posture communicated to me his agitation. I frowned, trying to understand why he seemed so vexed.

  “Robert is always like that when a shipment of supplies is delivered,” Kate murmured behind me. I turned to find her watching me with taut brackets between her eyes. “You would think they were transporting a load of porcelain for all he fusses.”

  I crossed to perch on the edge of the seat next to her couch. “Does he not trust his men?”

  Kate lifted a shoulder negligently, as if the matter didn’t interest her. She started to cough, and I waited while her chest worked to clear itself of the phlegm constricting it. When she sat back, breathing heavily, I handed her a glass of water and watched as she swallowed large mouthfuls.

  I returned the glass to the small table between us, shifting the jar of precious ointment further from the edge. When I looked up, it was to find Kate watching me through half-closed lids.

  “Nora said Robert went to collect you in the skiff this morning.”

  I turned to stare out across the flat expanse of the fens. I could hear the speculation in her voice, even as she tried to restrain it. I couldn’t fault her for her curiosity—Robert was her brother and I was her closest friend—but that did not mean I wanted to discuss it.

  “Yes. It was very kind of him,” I replied carefully.

  “I suppose.”

  I glanced up at the annoyance in her tone. Her lips pressed tight together as she waited for my response. When I gave none, she huffed.

  “Oh, come now. We both know kindness had nothing to do with it.”