A Brush with Shadows

by Anna Lee Huber

  If the situation weren’t so serious, and water weren’t dripping from the brim of his hat, emphasizing how miserable he must feel, I might have found the tense mixture of both insistence and restraint he exhibited amusing. If our past inquiries had taught us anything, trouble had a way of finding us, no matter how much care and caution we took. Gage had learned he couldn’t swaddle me in cotton padding, and I had accepted that the nature of our exploits often placed him in dangerous circumstances.

  Instead, I simply offered him a word of loving caution. “Be careful. We don’t know exactly what we’re dealing with.”

  His pale blue eyes stared into mine for a long moment of silent affection and solidarity. “We will.”

  We watched him ride away, though this time it wasn’t long before the rainy mist that had descended swallowed him up. A shiver trembled through my frame. One I wanted to attribute to the chill wind and not a yawning sense of foreboding.

  To ease her anxieties, Lorna pottered around the cottage doing small tasks, cleaning things that didn’t need cleaning, while I paced fretfully about the small space and tried to stay out of her way. Our tea sat cold and untouched on the table. I couldn’t stomach the idea of even that panacea, though I wasn’t certain why my nerves were so raw. Alfred was the one in imminent danger, and I knew Gage was highly capable and vigilant. But I couldn’t shake the sense that something was very wrong.

  Lorna seemed to feel it, too, for she would glance up at me from time to time as if she had something to say and then resume whatever chore she’d begun. Finally the silence became too much for her. She threw down the cloth in her hand and planted her fists on her hips.

  “Who could have done this?” she demanded.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted with a frown of genuine frustration. “But I keep returning to the question of whether Rory is truly another victim or the villain of this whole piece.”

  She sank down on a stool. “What do you mean? You don’t believe he’s missing?”

  I shrugged. “He could be. Or he could be hiding like Alfred did before. But if so, the question is where? And why? It’s not as if he’s here, and we’ve searched the usual other places. As for why . . .” I sighed, turning to stare out at the rain-soaked moor, at least the small portion I could see that wasn’t shrouded in mist. “I can only think of two options. Either he felt he was in danger like Alfred, or . . .”

  “Or he suspected the truth about Alfred’s ‘disappearance,’ and vanished himself in an attempt to draw his brother out,” she finished for me.

  I nodded grimly. Neither scenario was good.

  “If the latter is true, then . . .” She gasped. “Then forging that note from me could have been his final ploy to lure Alfred somewhere secluded and . . . and finish him off.”

  “Yes.”

  Her shock turned to outrage. “Ooh, I knew there was a reason I never liked him.”

  I held up my hands. “Hold on. We don’t know yet that that scenario is true.”

  “Yes, well, the more I think about it, the more I believe it.” She picked up her cloth and began wiping the surface of a table again. “He was lurking around my cottage during the days before he ‘vanished.’ Alfred had to remain inside much of the time, lest he be found out. Said he saw Rory following you about the one day.”

  “I must admit, his actions have been suspicious. I suppose you could say I wouldn’t be surprised to learn he’s behind it all. But until we have proof . . .”

  She scoffed. “I don’t know how much more you could need.”

  Worry tightened her voice, and I knew she was speaking more from fear than anything else. However, she did have a point. If not Rory, then who else could it be?

  I resumed my pacing, watching an hour tick by on the clock and then another. Gage and the other men could be gone until nightfall, and I was beginning to feel I might go mad before then. Meanwhile, Lorna continued to clean and shuffle items about the cottage, finding it as impossible as I did to sit still. Having tired of dusting and organizing her already perfectly ordered shelves of herbs and tinctures, she turned to the cabinet near the door and tugged open the top drawer. Then she unceremoniously dumped the contents on the table behind her and began sorting through what appeared to be mostly a stack of correspondence.

  I cast a disinterested glance over the papers as I pivoted, but then something caught my eye as Lorna lifted the top page to crumple it into a ball. I reached out to grab her arm, preventing her from hurling it toward where the cat lay curled up on the rug before the hearth. Her eyes widened in surprise as I took the paper from her hand.

  “What is this?” I asked as I unfolded the paper and smoothed it out.

  “A letter I received yesterday.”

  My back stiffened as I read over the contents. “And it didn’t alarm you?”

  She shrugged. “No more than the others I’ve gotten.”

  “You’ve received more than one?”

  Her mouth twisted wryly. “One gets delivered to my door every few weeks or so to remind me they know I’m a witch, an abomination. And warn me that someday I’ll get what’s coming to me.”

  “What?! Someone actually writes such things to you?”

  “Oh, yes.” She sighed. “And worse.”

  I glanced down at the stack of papers. “Where are the others?”

  “I usually burn them as soon as they arrive.” She frowned down at the letter. “But I kept this one for some reason.”

  Whatever the cause, I was glad she had. “Are they usually addressed this way?”

  She stepped closer to peer over my shoulder at the offending missive. “Well, no,” she replied uncertainly. “I suppose I didn’t pay much heed to the contents, simply wanting it out of sight.”

  I grimaced in commiseration. “Take a closer look now and see if anything leaps out at you.”

  Vixen,

  You and yours will get what’s coming to you. A short, swift drop.

  Lorna inhaled sharply, grasping the same implication I had. An implication that would not have been so clear the day before. “You and yours.”

  “Precisely. What did you think they meant by ‘a short, swift drop’?”

  “I . . . I suppose hanging or some other witch trial. I tried not to give it much consideration.”

  I couldn’t blame her. Not if her receipt of these letters was a common occurrence. Not when there was nothing she could do about them. I would want to ignore them, too.

  “And what do you make of the fact they addressed you as ‘Vixen’?” I asked, curious if she would come to the same sneaking conclusion I had.

  She began to shake her head and then stopped. “Wait. Are they referring to that witch Vixana?”

  “I’ve heard the legend and I wondered . . .” I let my words die away as I saw the light of comprehension in Lorna’s face. “What is it?”

  “Rory has been very vocal in calling me a witch.”

  “Yes? I’ve heard him say so. But—”

  “And he’s accused me more than once of being the descendant of Vixana.”

  I turned to face her. “You think Rory wrote this?”

  She scowled. “Who else?”

  I had to admit, I could think of no one. And Rory had a history of using notes to carry out his mischief, given the fact he’d instructed his valet to poison my tea with a note. Then I recalled something else Bree had mentioned in her retelling of the legend. “Isn’t there a tor named after her?”

  “Yes. Vixen Tor. It lies a few miles south of here.” Her eyes widened. “And there’s rumored to be a small cave below it, though I’ve never visited to see if that’s true. Do you think . . . ?”

  I understood what she was asking even without her saying the words. “I think that if there is a cave there, that might be an excellent spot to hide. So long as one isn’t afraid Vixana’s spirit haunts
it.”

  “Rory would believe himself immune to such things.”

  I suspected she might be right about that.

  “We need to go there,” she insisted, grabbing her boots from beside the door and sitting down on one of the benches to remove her slippers.

  “Hold on.” I glanced at the window, where outside the rain fell and the mist swirled unabated. “I understand your urgency, but in this weather? I’ve been told over and over how dangerous the moor can be even with fair skies.” I gestured toward the door. “These conditions are far from favorable.”

  “Yes, but you forget I’ve lived out on these moors all my life. I’ve traveled to Merrivale many times, even if I’ve never gone beyond to Vixen Tor. All we have to do is follow the river. We can’t get lost if we do that.”

  I deliberated over what she’d said, not doubting what she claimed, but still hesitant to go. Was this a risk worth taking? Particularly when we didn’t know what sort of threat we faced at the other end, and with Gage and Anderley miles away. Alfred could already be dead.

  And if he wasn’t and I didn’t try to go to his aid? Could I live with that? Could Gage?

  “Please.” Lorna sat up. Her eyes pleaded with me. “We can’t just let Rory kill him.”

  I inhaled, still torn about what to do.

  Her eyes hardened. “I’m going whether you will or not. And short of tying me up, you won’t stop me from taking your horse.”

  She’d called my bluff. I wasn’t very well going to tackle her. I could aim my pistol at her, but I suspected she knew I wouldn’t pull the trigger. And I certainly wasn’t going to let her go alone. “Very well,” I relented. “Give me a sheet of foolscap and a pencil to write my husband a message. And pack us some food and water. We may have need of it.”

  Minutes later, we both mounted my horse and set off down the trail to follow the River Walkham southward. Before descending the hill, I glanced behind us to see the cottage swallowed up by the haze of mist and falling rain. I could only hope it wasn’t the last human habitation we would ever see, and that we weren’t riding into a trap.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO

  There was one thing I could say for our journey. I now intimately understood what Gage and so many others had been trying to convey about the treacherous nature of the moors. Traveling through the swirling, eddying mist over such boggy, rocky terrain disoriented and terrified me. Not only could I not see beyond a few feet in front of me, but I also started to doubt if anything outside of myself was even real. It was like wandering through the fog of your dreams—or, more accurately, nightmares—uncertain where reality ended and illusion began. If not for Lorna’s solid presence at my back, I was quite sure I would have panicked.

  It was no wonder so many people had died on the moors, swallowed up eternally by the mist. If not for the river and Lorna’s keen sense of direction, we could have roamed forever until either bog, or dehydration, or mysterious beast claimed us. It was also clear where the idea of being pixie-led had derived from, for if I’d been a slightly less logical person I could well have believed there was some supernatural force at work.

  I had to blink my eyes several times when the few buildings that populated the village of Merrivale emerged out of the mist, just to be certain I wasn’t hallucinating. Much as I wanted to knock on one of those doors and demand sanctuary, we pressed on. At some point, the rain had slackened, but that only made the mist intensify. And now we had to contend with the falling darkness. Though we couldn’t see the sun, we could still sense its setting, taking what little light it had afforded us with it.

  We clung to the course of the ever-meandering river like a limpet until about a mile south of the village. Then the most dangerous part of our trek began. At the river’s junction with a trickling spring we struck out to the southwest along a little-used trail. Here and there, there were signs of recent usage, which was both encouraging and alarming. As such, we didn’t dare light the lantern Lorna had enough foresight to bring out of fear that if Rory was at Vixen Tor, he might see us coming. Fortunately, the horse was a hearty soul and kept to the trail almost by instinct, avoiding the blanket bog that edged the path to the north. In this way, we inched our way onward, peering intently into the dim fog for any sign of the towering Vixen Tor.

  Making the matter all the more difficult was the fact that Vixen Tor was not situated as many of the other tors at the top of a stark hill. It was nestled on the upward slopes of a woodland area studded with trees and bracken. So there was no telltale rise in elevation, especially as we were approaching it crossways. In fact, we might have blundered right up to it if not for the sharp thuds emanating from the mist before us.

  I pulled Eyebright to a stop so that we could listen more carefully. The mare tossed her head, not liking the sound, and I reached forward to run my hand over her neck, to soothe her.

  “What do you think it is?” I whispered to Lorna over my shoulder.

  “It sounds like . . . stone hitting stone.”

  I paused to listen. “I think you’re right. But what does it mean?” Was Rory building something?

  “I don’t know.”

  We sat listening for a moment longer before I spoke again. “The ground here looks less boggy, yes? Perhaps it’s time we approach on foot.”

  “I think you’re right.”

  She slid off Eyebright’s back and I followed suit, gripping her reins to draw her off the path toward the right where I spied a stand of trees peeking out of the mist. Leading her to the farthest rowan tree, I tethered her to a branch and rubbed her flank before rejoining Lorna on the path.

  We slowly edged our way toward the sound, straining to see anything ahead of us. At first there was nothing but trees and the occasional rock. Somewhere off to the left, I could hear the jangle of a horse’s harness. Then the craggy stones turned into boulders, growing in size, until suddenly the massive tor loomed up before us. We turned sharply to the right, drawing closer to the granite outcropping. From this position, I could tell the sound was coming from the other side of the tor.

  “Let’s see if we can climb up onto the rocks to get a better view from above without being seen,” I suggested.

  She nodded, following my example as I reached between my legs and drew the now-sodden hem of my skirts through my legs and tucked them into the belt of my redingote at the front. Then I carefully began to pick my way up onto the tor toward the direction of the thuds.

  The climb was not as difficult as I’d anticipated, what with all the ice-shattered grooves and ridges to place my hands and feet into, but it was by no means easy. At one point, a wrong step sent a cascade of tiny pebbles down the face of the tor. I dropped down against the rock, fearing discovery. But the sounds on the opposite side of the tor never abated, I supposed drowning out the softer noise of the shingle.

  I began to climb again, slower this time, but even so, I gained the summit within a minute. The stone there was worn smooth from the wind and elements. I crawled across it before lying down to peer over the edge.

  At first, the mist seemed too thick, but then the wind shifted, billowing some of the smoky haze away from the figure who stood before the gleam of a lantern. My breath caught and Lorna smothered a gasp with her hand as she crept up beside me.

  “Isn’t that . . . ?” She couldn’t seem to form his name.

  “That’s Mr. Hammett,” I whispered, still reeling from the revelation. “Lord Tavistock’s majordomo.”

  She turned to look at me, her eyes still wide with shock. “But why?”

  “I can answer that. Or we can stop him from doing what I think he’s doing.”

  We peered over the rock face again to see Hammett stacking another stone on the pile before him.

  “If that’s the cave we’ve heard mention of . . .” I leaned closer to her ear to murmur “. . . and he’s attempting to close it off, then there must be
something inside worth hiding. Something, or rather someone, he doesn’t want found.” The butler was about seventy, and while hale and hearty, I couldn’t imagine him eagerly undertaking such backbreaking labor without very good reason.

  “Alfred,” she gulped.

  “And perhaps Rory. We won’t know until we can get down there.” We wouldn’t know if they were alive or dead either, but I wasn’t about to mention that.

  Her eyes flashed with fear, but I could hear resolve ringing in her voice as she turned to ask, “What should we do?”

  I glanced behind me and then below once again. “How do you feel about channeling your supposed ancestress?”

  She blinked and then smiled with vicious glee. “Tell me what to do.”

  * * *

  • • •

  Pressing my back against the cool outcropping, I leaned to the right to peer around it at the man who’d fooled us all. I’d believed him a steady bulwark of the family, a sympathetic figure to Gage, but if I was correct, his duplicity stretched back much further than the past few weeks. The thought of his high-handed, self-righteous deception made me want to slap his face and more.

  Instead, I tamped down my anger and turned to hurl the pebble I had chosen up toward the top of the tor. I hoped my aim was true, but not too true, lest it strike Lorna where she lay in wait. Then I transferred my pistol to my right hand and pressed close to the rock, waiting to see how Hammett would react. I only hoped he would prove himself a proper Dartmoor man about superstitions so I wouldn’t have to use it.

  A hair-raising shriek pierced the air, making me jump even though I’d been expecting it.

  “How dare you use this place for your own purposes,” Lorna screeched, glaring down at Hammett from above.

  Hammett startled, dropping the rock he hefted. He howled in pain and stumbled back a step.

  “You have no right to meddle in my domain, or with my people. Begone from here!”

  “I knew ye were in league with the devil. An eye-biter to tempt our young.” He fairly spat the words, though he trembled with evident terror. “I warned ’em not to have anything to do with ye. That naught good could come of it.”