Thunder Heights

by Whitney, Phyllis A. ;

  Camilla paused and turned around. “Yes?” she said.

  “What on earth has upset you?” Hortense asked. “You look mad enough to sour cream.”

  “What about a bay mare?” Camilla demanded.

  “Only that she’s been trained to the sidesaddle, and I thought you might be interested—since you’re set on having a horse. I told him to send her over this afternoon for you to see.”

  “Thank you,” Camilla said stiffly. “I’ll look at her.”

  She hurried on to her own room, got out of her riding things and flung herself upon the bed. Already her muscles were feeling the effect of this first ride, and she knew she would be stiff and sore tomorrow. But it was not the soreness of her body that troubled her now.

  Why must her feelings toward Ross Granger always kindle her to anger? Why must she be furious with him, when all the while—she pulled her thoughts back from the path of danger. This was a road she would not follow!

  Before long he would leave Thunder Heights for good. He would no longer be here to sting her with his scorn and criticism. Never again would she ride with him up the mountain trail, or slip from a saddle into his arms. He would build his bridges and he would do it without her help. So why was she not pleased at the prospect?

  She turned her cheek and found the pillow wet with tears. That wouldn’t do at all. She got up and bathed her eyes, put on a fresh frock and went downstairs to join the family for the noonday meal. She was finishing her dessert, when one of Mr. Berton’s stableboys arrived with the mare Hortense had mentioned. Grace came in to say that he was holding her for Miss Camilla’s inspection at the coach house.

  Glad of something new to occupy her attention, Camilla took some lumps of sugar from a bowl on the table and turned to Booth.

  “Will you look at this horse with me?” she said.

  Booth had watched her curiously throughout the meal, and she knew he saw more than she wanted him to. But while his eyes were bright with speculative interest, he kept his manner matter-of-fact.

  “I’m no expert, Cousin,” he said. “But for whatever it’s worth, I’ll give you my opinion.”

  When they went out the front door, Letty followed them down the steps and called Camilla back.

  “Don’t buy this horse, dear,” she said.

  Camilla felt in no mood to listen to Letty’s whims at the moment, but she made an effort to be patient. “Why don’t you think I should buy her?”

  Aunt Letty put a hand to her breast. “I—I have a feeling about this horse. I can’t explain it sensibly. I just know that she’s wrong for you.”

  Letty, undoubtedly, would have premonitions about any horse that might be brought to Thunder Heights, but Camilla was unwilling to listen.

  “I’ll look at her, and perhaps try her out. If she suits me, I’ll buy her, Aunt Letty,” she said.

  She did not wait for further words from Letty, but went quickly to join Booth and walked with him toward the stable.

  “So the Judd temper is up,” he said softly. “That means trouble is brewing. There’ll be a storm at Thunder Heights, or I miss my guess.”

  Camilla kept her face averted and walked on without answering him.

  When they reached the stable, she saw Ross in the doorway, looking on idly, as Berton’s stableboy walked the mare up and down the drive. She did not want him there, watching, but there was nothing to be done about it.

  The mare was a dainty, flirtatious creature—a smooth bay in color, with one white sock. Her name was Firefly.

  Booth looked her over carefully, approving her lines and good health, but he shook his head over the white sock. “White feet on a lady’s horse are a bit fast, you know,” he told her. “Though I suppose since it’s only one foot—”

  “I shan’t be stopped by that,” Camilla said tartly. Indeed, she would like to be thought fast. She would like to be thought anything but what Ross Granger seemed to see when he turned his gaze upon her. He believed her simple and foolish, and he had said as much.

  She approached the mare and held out a lump of sugar on her palm. Firefly looked at her askance for a moment, and then thought better of her hesitation. She snuffled up the sugar with velvety lips and no unladylike snorting and blowing. Ross watched, and Camilla, for all that she was sharply aware of him, did not glance his way.

  “I still think I can do better if you’ll wait awhile,” Booth said. “But if you’re anxious, this horse will do well enough.”

  “I’ll try her out,” Camilla decided. Toby had come over to watch, and she sent him for the silver-mounted sidesaddle in the attic.

  While they waited, she turned from the others and walked Firefly along the drive, gentling her and talking to her in a low voice. The little mare seemed to respond, and by the time saddle and bridle had been brought and she was ready, Camilla felt that they were becoming friends.

  Her stiffening muscles rebelled a little as Booth helped her into the saddle, but she did not permit herself to wince. She rode the mare around the drive, trying out her paces and her response to the rein. She seemed an altogether feminine creature, confident of her own charms. For all her delicate, ladylike ways, she was not above taking a few skittish steps now and then, as if to assert her independence and attract attention. She would, Camilla felt, be perfect in every way—spirited enough, but obedient to the touch, and ready to be friendly.

  When they rode back toward the stable, she found Ross waiting for her in the driveway. He put a hand upon Firefly’s bridle and halted her.

  “I wouldn’t buy her,” he said. There was no anger in his voice now, no emotion of any kind. He had simply put himself once more in the position of her adviser—and she would not have him there.

  “I like her very much,” she told him. “Why shouldn’t I buy her?”

  “I’m not exactly sure,” Ross said. “There’s something about the way she rolls her eyes—I don’t think she’s to be trusted.”

  At another time she might have listened to him. But Ross had hurt her too often. He had laughed at her offer to let him build his bridge, and had even grown angry at her words. All the hurt he had done her rose to oppose anything he might advise. But before she could speak, Booth came over and took the bridle from Ross’s grasp. A certain excitement had come into his face.

  “Miss King is capable of making up her own mind, Granger,” Booth said. “I think it’s time your interference around this place came to an end.”

  Ross relinquished the bridle at once, but he stood his ground without so much as glancing at Booth.

  “Don’t buy her, Camilla,” he repeated.

  The way he spoke her name was unsettling but she did not mean to hear the plea in his voice.

  “You sound as fearful as Aunt Letty,” she told him lightly. “I really don’t believe Firefly is as frightening as all that.”

  Booth laughed. “There you have it, Granger. And, after all, your advice hasn’t been asked.”

  The antagonism between the two men was close to flaring into the open. But Ross turned his back on Booth and looked up at Camilla.

  “I’m leaving for New York by the late afternoon boat. Is there anything you’d like me to do for you in the city?”

  She shook her head mutely, and Ross turned his back on them and went into the stable.

  “It’s easy to judge the caliber of his courage,” Booth said, his words carrying after Ross’s retreating figure.

  “I think there’s nothing wrong with his courage,” Camilla said, her tone unexpectedly sharp. “You had no business behaving in so outrageous a way.”

  She slid out of the saddle without Booth’s help and spoke to the boy from the stable. “Will you ask Mr. Berton to come to see me, please. I will probably buy the mare. Leave her here for the time being—the stable is ready. And do you suppose you could find me a boy in the village to take care of her?”

  His eyes still round with excitement over what had happened, the stableboy agreed to try, and set off for Westcliff. Cami
lla led Firefly into the stable herself, soothing her when she stepped uneasily among strange surroundings. Booth took off the saddle and put her into her stall. There was amusement in his eyes when he turned back to Camilla.

  “So that’s the way the wind blows?” he said oddly as they started back to the house.

  Before Ross left for New York that afternoon, the purchase of the mare had been transacted. The price was surprisingly moderate, though Camilla had been prepared to pay more. A boy was hired, and the lower part of the coach house once more became a stable. This was a beginning, Camilla thought. Later, when Letty and Hortense were once more accustomed to a horse at Thunder Heights, perhaps she would buy a carriage, and carriage horses as well.

  She did not see Ross again, except briefly, just as he was leaving. He passed her on the stairs after he had come in to bid Letty good-by. He was courteous enough, but distant, and she had a sudden impulse to plead with him not to go. If he stayed, she knew she would again be angry with him, and he with her, but she had a feeling that without him there would be no one here upon whom she could wholly depend.

  But she could not put any of this into words. “Have a good trip,” she told him, and held out her hand.

  He took it briefly and thanked her. In a moment he would be gone.

  “Will—will you be back in time for our lawn party at Thunder Heights?” she asked in an unexpected little rush of words.

  “I hadn’t thought about it,” he admitted. “Nora is coming, isn’t she?”

  Camilla could only nod. If he came only because of Nora …

  “I’m not sure I’ll be there,” he said, and she could not bring herself to urge him.

  He went quickly down the stairs and out the front door.

  The next morning, disregarding her stiffness, Camilla went for her first real ride on Firefly. The little mare was a delight, and Camilla took her up the mountain trail again, feeling it familiar now.

  The air was calm today, and even up on the rocky top of Thunder Mountain, there was no wind to tear at her hat and veil. She drew rein on the wide treeless plain of the bald top, and sat quietly for a while, to give Firefly a breather and look out over the tremendous view. But somehow the place was filled with memories of Ross, and in a little while she turned back to the trail. This time she followed it on along the side of an incurving hill to see where it might lead. As long as she avoided the back trails that wound inland, she could easily keep from getting lost.

  Today she had no sense of buoyancy as she rode, no feeling that she might shed the dark influences of Thunder Heights up here in the hills. All the worries and problems of the house seemed to ride with her. There were so many small things to add up disturbingly by now. There had been the matter of the tea, to which she had found no answer. There were the hints that something untoward had brought on her grandfather’s heart attack. There was Letty’s odd behavior about the riding crop, Hortense’s open dislike of Althea’s daughter, to say nothing of Booth’s strange attitudes which Camilla did not understand at all. Each segment of the puzzle, however, remained just that—a segment. She could not glimpse the pattern which made up the whole, and of which all strangeness at Thunder Heights was surely a part.

  The trail wound inward through a thick stand of pines, and then emerged beyond in the open. Now she could look across the intervening cove of blue water far below, with the railroad trestle cutting across it, to the hill on the opposite side. Surprised by what she saw, she reined Firefly in.

  There, crowning the opposite hill—a less impressive prominence than Thunder Mountain—rose what looked strangely like the ruins of an ancient castle. There was the castle tower, crenelated at the top, with a stretch of broken wall falling away behind. The stones looked weathered and old, as if they had withstood wind and storm for hundreds of years. But this was the Hudson valley, and not a countryside given to age-old castles.

  She wanted to ride on along the hill and examine the ruins at close hand, but the stiffness from yesterday’s ride still troubled her and a glance at her watch, fastened to the breast of her habit by its fleur-de-lis pin, told her it was nearly time for the noon meal at Thunder Heights.

  Firefly was willing enough to head for her new home, and they followed the mild incline that led back beneath the trees until a path forked suddenly ahead of them. Camilla could not resist the invitation to explore.

  “We’ll just follow it a little way,” Camilla told the mare. “Just to see what direction it takes.”

  The new fork dipped toward a stream that she could hear not far away, and when the woods opened to a small clearance, Camilla reined Firefly in. The path went down an incline to the place where a small bridge hung above the stream, leading across to the other side.

  But this, as Camilla recognized at once, was no ordinary woodland bridge. It was as beautiful a little suspension bridge as she had ever seen, and she knew at once that it was the model Ross had told her about. Though it was only a miniature compared to a bridge that would cross a river, the cables dipped from the posts that anchored them on either side into gleaming crescents spanning the stream, with other supports dropping in thin strands to hold the planked path of the bridge in immobility. Camilla rode the little mare across its length and back again, and the bridge did not sway or jolt beneath Firefly’s dainty hoofs.

  She knew she had glimpsed a bit of Ross’s dream—a glimpse that was far more vivid to her than any number of diagrams on paper. It gave her, too, a clearer picture of the man. A picture that twisted at her heart. Ross had rejected her from the first, and she must not think of him.

  She turned back toward Thunder Heights, knowing she must put this vision of his, this dream of his bridge, away from her, and forget it, as she must forget the man.

  EIGHTEEN

  A week later Hortense went off on another trip. This time she went alone and not very far. She mentioned her intention casually—that she was going across the river to visit friends, and that she would stay overnight. No one objected, or even commented, and she left for the ferry from Westcliff early in the day.

  Letty spent the morning in the downstairs larder, boiling freshly picked horehound plants to make the juice for horehound candy—useful for colds and coughs through the winter. While the horehound mixture simmered, she prepared marigold petals to be mixed with other herbs for seasoning. Leaves of mint, tansy, and thyme had been set out for drying, to find their way eventually into small bags to be used for scenting linens and blankets, and for keeping insects away. Camilla worked with her, helping where she could, learning under Letty’s skillful instruction.

  It seemed to her that Letty looked a little wan today, but that was perhaps due to the unusual heat of last week. This morning it was exceedingly hot and close for June, and when Letty had worked for a while she began to complain of a headache.

  “Let’s go outside,” she said. “This is one of those days when I can’t breathe within walls.”

  Camilla brought notepaper and pen and ink to the herb garden and sat on the grass in the shade of nearby woods. Using a breadboard for a desk, she continued the writing of invitations to the lawn party. Letty rested listlessly for a little while, and then began to cut branches of yellow tansy to fill a pewter jar. Now and then she glanced anxiously at the sky as if she saw some portent there.

  Once Camilla paused lazily in her writing to admire the herb garden spread at her feet. “June’s a lovely month for herbs. I know what you mean about the garden beginning to look like a carnival. Individually the flowers aren’t very impressive, but they’re wonderful in a mass.”

  Thyme had spread its purple blossoms around the sundial, and coriander was dressed in white, shining against gray-green leaves of sage. Bees darted above the scarlet balm, while butterflies preferred the purple. Letty sat down to rest a moment on the marble bench near the sundial, rubbing a finger between her brows to lessen the pain.

  “How is Booth’s painting going?” she asked. “I haven’t looked in on you lately.”<
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  “I’m not sure,” Camilla said. “Sometimes he seems keyed up and eager to work and pleased with what he’s doing. Then the next day he will be dissatisfied and do it all over. I think he’ll never finish at this rate. Aunt Letty, why did Hortense go across the river today?”

  Letty sighed. “I’m afraid she has gone to see another lawyer, dear. She doesn’t give up very easily, you know. She’s still looking for some way to break the will.”

  Camilla was silent, and Letty picked a sprig of mint where it encroached upon the bed of thyme, her thoughts drifting back to her garden.

  “How greedy mint is! It would take the whole garden for itself if I let it.” She crushed the leaves between her fingers, and the scent was pleasant on the warm air. “I think it’s going to storm,” she said abruptly.

  Camilla looked up at the bright cloudless sky. “Why do you think that? There’s not a thunderhead in sight.”

  “There’s a feeling,” Letty said. “It’s so hot and still and breathless. Don’t go riding today, dear.”

  Camilla laughed. “I hadn’t meant to, but you almost tempt me. I’ll have to prove to you one of these days how safe Firefly is.”

  “Ross didn’t trust her either,” Letty said.

  Ross! Camilla thought. Ross was gone and she had firmly dismissed him from her mind. There had been no word from him since he left. That was a book that would be closed shortly, and she did not want to so much as ruffle the pages.

  “Tell me, dear,” Letty said. “What do you plan to do with yourself from now on?”

  Camilla was silent for a moment. She knew only too well what Letty meant. What was she to do with herself for all the rest of her life? Where was she to find the fulfillment and joy that should be a part of living? When would she ever be loved as a woman hungered to be loved? But she could not say these things to Letty, and tried to answer her brightly.

  “It seems to me I’m busy from morning to night. And with the lawn party ahead I have hardly time to catch up with all I want to do. What do you mean?”

  Letty was not deceived. “Life,” she said quietly, “is loving and marrying and having children. You haven’t so much as touched the edge of life as yet. How can you manage it if you bury yourself here? Don’t you think about these things?”