by Megan Daniel
All this is not to say that the sky now presented an expanse of azure unmarred by so much as a cloud. In fact, the morning was still heavily overcast, the air sultry with a threatening stillness about it Everyone crossed his fingers and hoped for the best.
Saskia, despite her nearly sleepless night, was up and about early dressed in an olive-green riding habit and with an air of anticipation in the way she attacked her
breakfast. As she laid thin slices of ham and roast beef and thick slices of creamy cheese onto butter-spread bread and gulped her coffee, Mrs. Jansen appeared with the final requirement for a complete Dutch breakfast, a perfect three-minute egg. At sight of Saskia’s attire she checked herself in the doorway, a scowl replacing her robust smile.
“Meisje Je gaat niet uitr she cried.
“Of course I am going out,” replied Saskia. “Why should I not?”
“De regen!”
“But it isn’t raining now that I can see,” said Saskia between bites. “And I for one do not think that it will. Besides, I have business at the Manor that will not wait, rain or no rain. You can see for yourself that the heavy storm has passed. If it does rain a little I shall get a bit wet, that’s all. It shan’t hurt me. My skin is waterproof, you know.”
Mrs. Jansen, who had a morbid fear of any sort of chill or fever—Mr. Jansen having been carried off by one twenty years before—propped herself mulishly before the door as Saskia rose from her chair, brushing crumbs from her skirt.
“Je moet niet!” she stated, her full arms crossed over her fuller bosom.
“Mrs. Jansen!” said Saskia in exasperation. “Ik ga! I am going! Right now.” Mrs. Jansen had heard that tone before. Reluctantly she moved aside to let Saskia pass from the room.
“Good morning, Ware,” she said to the butler as she drew on her gloves in the front hall.
“You are going riding, miss?” he asked, the slightest edge of concern in his carefully schooled voice. “The sky is still looking rather unsettled miss, if I might venture to say so.”
“Not you too! Really, I am beginning to feel myself back in the nursery with a whole gaggle of nannies about me."
“I am persuaded, miss, that Mr. Rowbridge would advise you to stay in.”
“Mr. Rowbridge. What, pray, has Mr. Rowbridge to say to the matter? I am hardly my cousin’s ward, you know. My actions do not concern him in the least”
His frown of concern was immediately replaced by his more usual and fully professional blank visage. “Of course, miss. As you say, miss,” he intoned in an icy voice.
She gave her jaunty hat, prettily adorned with a dove- grey veil and a curled ostrich plume, a final adjustment. “Good day, Ware. I shall be back in time for tea.” And without waiting for a reply, which in any case Ware was too well trained to offer, she sailed from the room in a passable imitation of her Aunt Hester.
Sunshine was waiting for her, fidgeting a bit in her eagerness. “Yes, my poor darling,” said Saskia in a soothing voice. “I know. You have been having a hard time of it, haven’t you, all cooped up for days and days. So have I, but we shall have a good run to shake the fidgets out of us both.”
The young groom threw her up into the saddle, then moved to mount his own chestnut Saskia stopped him. “I shan’t need you today, Jack.”
“But Mr. Rowbridge, he said as how I weren’t to let you go riding off alone anymore, miss.”
She bristled up in her saddle, her spine very straight. “Oh, did he?” she asked in an icily calm voice, her eyes sparkling dangerously. He would do anything to hold her back, even to setting her own servants to spying on herl ‘Tell me something, Jack. Whom do you consider your employer to be? Mr. Rowbridge or my mother?”
“Well, properly speaking, miss, it be your mother, in course, but...”
“Thank you, Jack. In future you will take your orders from my mother or from me. Mr. Rowbridge has nothing to say to the matter. And I will not be followed! Good day.” She spurred Sunshine into a trot and headed down Great Pulteney Street toward Sydney Gardens and the open country beyond.
The clattering of her horse’s hooves on the stones served to amplify her anger as she rode through the town. That odious man, giving orders to her servants, trying to run her life. Nosy! Back-handed! Insufferable! She would take such treatment from no one! And he had called her managing!
The irony of the whole thing was that during her long hours of wakefulness Saskia had come to a decision. She no longer had any desire to compete with her cousin for Aunt Hester’s fortune. She decided to propose a collaboration. Obviously they could be far more effective if they would only pool their resources, work together toward a solution, and share the reward. It was obvious that Aunt Hester had enough money for all. Saskia had actually looked forward to the opportunity of working in tandem with her cousin instead of as his adversary. She had intended to offer up as a sort of peace offering anything she might discover at the Manor today.
Now she chided herself for her foolishness. She had not thought him so unscrupulous. Bribing her servants! Obviously he would stop at nothing to beat her. Well, she would tell him nothing, no hint, of anything she might find. She would use it any way she could. She would win this contest, and Derek Rowbridge could go to the devil with her very good wishes!
The open country when she reached it presented a slightly bedraggled appearance. The battering it had taken these past few days was evident in broken branches and seas of mud. But the rock outcroppings glistened in their cleanness, and the grassy hills glowed an emerald green.
As Saskia spurred Sunshine first into a canter and then into a long, rolling gallop some of her first flush of annoyance dissipated in the excitement and freedom of the ride. A little more of its heat was cooled by the first raindrops. They were not many, but they were large and each fell with a noisy plop. The wind started up, cutting easily through Saskia’s light jacket, and she slowed
enough to reach up and jam her hat further onto her head.
She had often ridden in the rain and never minded a little wetting, so she gave no thought to turning back toward Bath. But when she was slightly more than halfway to the Manor, the rain began to fall harder and colder. The wool of her habit could no longer shed it effectively, and it seeped through the fabric to chill her skin. She was beginning to feel distinctly uncomfortable and did not relish the notion of hearing the “I told you so’s” of Mrs. Jansen.
“Kom nou, Zoonschijn. WegF She urged the mare into a longer stride, and they fairly flew over the hills. The young horse seemed to understand her Dutch perfectly and was as anxious as she to reach shelter.
The full fury of the storm broke over her head with a blinding flash of lightning and a boom of thunder that sounded like the end of the world. The ground trembled with it.
Sunshine took violent exception to this nonsense—she had after all, been born in hot, dry desert climes—and she reared up, screaming at the way the earth was crashing all about her. Her front hooves pawed at the thick, watery air, but miraculously Saskia kept her seat Down came the hooves and off went Sunshine in a positive fury, pounding the earth and throwing up mud all around in her panic to escape the storm.
Saskia held on with all her strength, the reins slicing into the leather of her gloves, and she managed to slow the horse’s stride somewhat. When she thought it safe to do so, she let go one hand and reached down to stroke the mare’s neck in an attempt to soothe her terror.
Just at that moment, however, they reached a swollen stream. Sunshine flew over it with never a check, and Saskia flew into the sir. Sunshine disappeared.
Everything seemed to slow down then. It seemed several minutes at least that she floated through the air, and the odd thought went through her mind that this
must be what it felt like to be a bird, soaring over the fields. Then the ground seemed to rush up to meet her. She landed with a splash of mud and a painful thud that shuddered through her body. She was lying in a field, the rain falling on her upturned face.
It is odd the thoughts that pass through one’s mind in such moments of crisis. It seemed to Saskia as though her brain had split, one half of it in a panic, praying fervently, “Please God, don’t let me have broken my neck,” the other half noting prosaically, “I shall never get the mud out of this habit.”
She lay very still, afraid to try moving for fear she would discover that she couldn’t. She first became aware of a vicious number of pains from all parts of her body. Then, tentatively at first, she wiggled her fingers, then her toes. Thank God they moved. She raised a hand to wipe the rain from her eyes and slid her gaze to a large oak not far from where she lay. If she could reach it, it would offer some modicum of shelter until the storm passed and she was feeling more the thing.
She didn’t feel up to attempting walking just yet, so she raised herself onto her elbows and began dragging her battered body backward, slowly and painfully, toward the tree.
It might have been five minutes before she reached it; it might have been an hour. She couldn’t say. But she got there at last. Though far from dry beneath its sparsely leaved boughs, the rain attacked her less viciously, the lightning seemed less threatening, beneath the canopy of the oak. She pulled herself upright and sagged against the solid mass of the tree, sitting in the mud.
“Thank you, tree,” she muttered just before she passed out
Derek Rowbridge had had little more sleep than his cousin on the previous night. When he did manage to drift off it was to an agonized image of Saskia van
Houten and Captain Edward Durrant, arm in arm and with loving smiles on their faces, standing at the rail of a full-rigged schooner, waving good-bye as they sailed away in a glow of happiness.
Or there was the equally distressing vision of Saskia, in tatters and with all her brothers and sister in tow, appearing before a triumphant Derek, begging a shilling to keep the children from starving. All in all it was not a very restful night.
He awoke confused and irritable and very unlike himself. Pike was thoroughly grumbled at; the waiter who had the bad fortune to bring his breakfast was snapped at. His toast seemed to turn to cotton wool in his mouth.
Then over his second cup of coffee he decided on a course of action that brightened his outlook. This absurd rivalry must stop. He couldn’t afford to lose the contest and he couldn’t stand to win it. And he felt sure that Saskia hated the whole thing as much as he did.
He would speak to her this very morning. Together they could go to see Aunt Hester, explain their willingness to help her get Rowbridge Manor but say that they would no longer be pitted against each other in this absurd fashion.
Lady Eccles might be an eccentric, but she was not an unreasonable woman. And Derek had lately felt that she had grown genuinely fond of her young relations. Surely they could come to an arrangement that would suit everyone.
And perhaps, just perhaps, as the cousins worked together, Saskia would in time . . . He daren’t complete the thought.
Pike was mightily surprised to see his master rise from the table with a smile in place of the black frown with which he had seated himself. The valet was treated to a cheerful good-bye, then watched out the window as his master stepped jauntily out into the light drizzle that had just begun.
Derek’s cheerful air lasted only as long as it took him
to get to Laura Place, there to be informed by an apologetic butler and an abashed groom that his cousin had set out less than an hour before, quite alone, for Row- bridge Manor.
“And you let her go?” he berated the poor groom.
“Couldn’t stop her, sir. Said as how I didn’t work for the likes o’ you, and I weren’t to take no orders from you. Then she jest took off.”
“I should have expected as much,” muttered Derek, slapping his gloves against his thigh. “That girl would do anything she thought I wanted her not to do.” The rain was falling steadily now, and black clouds hung low in the sky. “Damn!” he exclaimed. “Headstrong, mulish ... I shall have to go after her.”
“Beggin’ yer pardon, sir,” said the groom, “but I knows this sky. *Bout to break wide open any minute now in a real nasty one.”
“I know! I can’t leave her out there all alone in it. Anything could happen to her.” Buttoning his heavy cloak up to his chin and jamming his hat low on his head, he mounted the roan and headed into the rain.
Saskia opened her eyes with a convulsive shiver. She was drenched through, felt frozen to the marrow, and her chattering teeth seemed to have taken on a will all their own, quite oblivious to her attempts to still them. She had no idea how long she had lain here, but she knew she must get up. The rain had slowed somewhat to a steady drizzle, but it could go on all day. She was sure to freeze or drown or something equally uncomfortable.
She pulled herself painfully to her feet, calling on the support of the tree to help her. By leaning rather heavily on the oak, she managed to stand, waiting for the wave of dizziness that engulfed her to abate. When it had subsided a little, she took a tentative step, letting go the tree, and promptly sat in the mud again.
She didn’t seem to be able to stand. What a scene this will make for one of Mama’s stories, she told herself, in
an attempt to joke away her rising panic. She wondered vaguely if one’s teeth could be permanently damaged by so much chattering from the cold. With an effort that shot a pain through her whole body, she managed to regain the tenuous shelter of the oak which was beginning to feel like her only friend.
Another giant wave of dizziness poured over her, and she feared she would pass out again. She daren’t do so. She must have something to focus her mind on, to force it into alertness, into full consciousness. She looked about her. There were a number of small pebbles around the tree. These she gathered into a little pile. Then she began painstakingly laying them in neat arrangements, concentrating all her remaining energy on getting them just so. Do not think of fainting, she told herself. Just concentrate on the arrangement.
First she lined the pebbles up into a long straight line. She added a graceful curve and saw that she had formed the letter “D”. The next arrangement began to look very like an “E”.
It was thus, propped casually against a tree, spelling out nonsense in the mud and looking as though she hadn’t a care in the world, that Derek found her.
He had grown more and more worried with each mile, for it was shortly after he left the town that the lightning struck. But it wasn’t till he spotted the frothing Sunshine, wild-eyed and riderless, racing back toward Bath, that real panic set in. He thought at first to chase the mare, but it was clear that he must find Saskia, and quickly.
Horrid visions of her broken body lying in a ditch filled his mind. His pace was slow for he had no wish to miss sight of her, but impatience at the snail’s pace increased his anxiety.
He saw her before she was aware of his approach. The sound of Pasha’s hooves was lost in the steady plop-plop of the rain, and she was so intently concen-
trated on her pebbles that by the time she saw him he had already dismounted and was striding toward her.
She quickly swept away the silly things she had been spelling out in the mud and looked up. A smile that mingled surprise, overwhelming relief, and something else she was not yet ready to name wreathed her face.
But her smile was not returned. In fact, Derek Row- bridge had never been so angry in his life. He had pictured her dead, or at the very least in deadly peril. At sight of her sitting there so calmly playing a child’s game as though she were at a picnic, his overwhelming anxiety for her safety turned to overwhelming wrath at her thoughtlessness.
“Of all the pigheaded, stubborn, perverse females, you take the prize! You’ll do anything, go to any lengths, to beat me in this stupid contest, won’t you, Saskia?”
At his furious tone, she straightened up against the tree, all desire to faint now forgotten. “TU do anything? But.. .*
“Yes, anything. You’ll commit any folly! Riding out here in such we
ather, quite alone and on an inexperienced horse, for no better reason than to search for some phantom clue which may not even exist.”
Her eyes sparkled, her anger rising at such Turkish treatment and acting like a tonic on her battered body and mind. “Oh, I see! And you, of course, just happened to be out riding for the sheer pleasure of getting wet. And of course it was the merest coincidence that you happened to ton toward Rowbridge Manor! How very convenient!”
“I came out here looking for you,” he said in a voice of barely concealed rage.
“Doing it far too brown, Cousin. I really believe even you can come up with a better story than that. Why should you do any such thing? You don’t give a fig what happens to me.”
“I wish to God that were true!” he muttered as he removed his cloak. “Here, you’re freezing.” He wrapped it
about her shoulders, giving her no chance to refuse. She was all but lost in its huge folds. “Come on,” he said gruffly, reaching out a hand to pull her to her feet.
She didn’t take the hand, however. “I’m quite comfortable where I am, thank you,” she said stiffly and inexplicably, for it was obvious she was no such thing.
“Of all the obstinate ... I You’ll do as you’re told, my girl. Now get up and get on that horse!”
She stopped bristling—which was in any case rather difficult while she was shivering so much—and lowered her defiant gaze. “I can’t,” she said to the ground.
“Now what the devil . . . ?” Realization hit him, his scowl was instantly replaced by a look of grave guilt and deep concern. He kneeled in the mud beside her. “You’re hurt!”
“Oh, no,” she said. “It is only that I don’t seem to be able to walk. I did try, but my legs wouldn’t hold me up. I’m sure if I just sit here a bit longer . . .” Before she could finish she was scooped up in two strong but amazingly gentle arms. Her cheek was resting on a pleasantly scratchy coat, and she could feel his heart beating through it. Her own was pounding out a sort of tattoo against her ribs, and she wondered idly if she could have done it an injury in her fall to cause it to behave so strangely.