Stranger at Stonewycke

by Michael Phillips

  “Once or twice.”

  “Then you know. A worse city there never was—for civilized folks, that is.”

  “I’m sure you’re right.”

  “Gentlemen have to watch what they’re about in that city.”

  Logan said nothing, only returned Fairgate’s gaze. The cards had been laid face down on the table, and now only the eyes betrayed the steely determination of the bluff.

  “No telling when you’re going to be fleeced,” went on Fairgate, probing Logan’s eyes.

  Still Logan did not reply, but his blood was starting to run hot.

  “Why, I remember one time—”

  “I don’t mean to sound rude,” Logan broke in, glancing over at Allison with an easy laugh intended to convey warmth and hopefully enlist her support in halting Fairgate’s runaway reminiscing about the past. “But I promised Jesse I’d get this winch to her this afternoon.”

  “Don’t let us keep you from your work, by all means,” said Fairgate. But he had no intention of releasing this grip he had by now so forcibly seized. “You know, Macintyre,” he went on, as if the thought had just occurred to him, “since the other evening at Bramfords’, I’ve had the strangest sensation that I’ve met you before.”

  “I’ve never been in this area before in my life.”

  “Could it have been in Glasgow?”

  “I suppose anything’s possible,” returned Logan bravely, deciding to face it squarely.

  “Something about your face reminds me of that city.”

  “I have a terrible memory for such things myself.”

  “There was one fellow,” Charles pressed relentlessly, clearly enjoying every moment. “You resemble him somewhat.” Here he paused and laughed. “But of course, it couldn’t have been you.” He laughed again. “He was a grubby little street waif . . . and it was some years ago. Fancied himself a card sharp.” As the words flowed from Fairgate’s mouth, his good humor gradually turned into an icy stare of hatred, even while his mouth kept up its smile for Allison’s benefit. “And he proved it by cheating me out of a tidy sum. Spent a few days in jail for it as I remember.”

  He turned to Allison, who was now more bewildered as she found herself torn between the two men. The old Allison stood beside her companion while he grilled a low employee; the new, squirmed with compassion and genuine sympathy for Logan. “Quite something, wouldn’t you say, my dear?” laughed Fairgate merrily. “Can you imagine, a runny-nosed little kid trying to slick me and get away with it?”

  He threw his head back and roared with laughter.

  “Of course getting thrown in the clink wasn’t anything new to him, for it came out in court that his father was a dirty jailbird too—”

  “That’s enough, Fairgate!” Logan exploded. Had Fairgate chosen any subject other than his father, Logan might have been able to let it pass. But he had spent too much time trying to dissociate himself from that man, too much time trying to forget his past, to hear Fairgate’s accusation calmly.

  Even then, Logan might have been able to restrain further outbursts had it not been for the silky, smug grin of satisfaction that spread across Fairgate’s patrician face. That look caused Logan to lose his cherished control.

  “Enough?” sneered Fairgate. “Enough! After what you did to me, infinitely your superior in every way, and you say enough!”

  “Yes!” snapped Logan, “and I say it again—enough, or you’ll be sorry you ever opened your mouth.”

  Fairgate roared with laughter again. “I’ll be sorry! This is really too much, Macintyre! And what are you going to do if I persist?”

  “To find that out,” replied Logan, “you’ll have to call my hand. But in the meantime, you leave my father out of it.”

  “Oh, so that’s it! Your father! Sensitive whelp you are, I must say. But I hardly see what’s to defend. The man was nothing but a lowdown—”

  Logan lunged forward, his hand knotted into a fist and his eyes full of rage. The blow nearly felled the fine lord, but as it reached its mark and he staggered back, he caught himself against the work table and remained on his feet. Fairgate made no counterattack, only stood his ground and grinned back toward his assailant. Then he turned, almost casually toward Allison, who was looking on with horror. “So, Allison,” he said, bringing his hand to his chin to stop a small trickle of blood, “at last we see the true colors of your houseguest. Or should I say your trusted family employee?”

  White with mingled rage and chagrin for what he had done, Logan shot a glance at Allison. He had nearly forgotten her presence. And suddenly he knew why Fairgate still wore his proud grin. Logan had played right into his hand. He had proved with his angry outburst that every word Fairgate had said about him was true. Fairgate had raised the bet to the limit, had called Logan’s hand, and had won it all. In that single act of violence, Logan had undone everything. And Fairgate’s unmistakable victory was only punctuated by his refusal to reciprocate in kind. He was the gentleman, Logan the cad.

  Allison had been so shocked by the turn of the confrontation that she merely stood gaping, hardly noticing Fairgate’s words. When she did speak, all pretense and command was gone. The sensitive side of her nature was struggling desperately to absorb what had happened. She tried to answer, but her voice had not yet caught up with events.

  “People of our station must take care for such riffraff,” Charles advised, pressing his advantage to the full.

  “He’s . . . he’s not a houseguest . . .” said Allison at length, still lagging behind Fairgate’s half of the exchange. But her sentence ended unfinished as Logan swung around and strode from the stable.

  Seeing her gaze following him, yet more sure of himself than ever, Fairgate chuckled cockily. “Let him go, Allison,” he said. “He can mean nothing to us now.”

  But the words were unwisely spoken. He had pressed Allison too soon to make a choice between the victor and the vanquished, and like most sensitive women, Allison allowed her heart to follow Logan in the pain of his defeat.

  Coming awake suddenly, without realizing what she did or why, Allison turned and ran after him. “Logan!” she called. “Logan!”

  Whether her voice was not loud enough or whether he chose to ignore it, Logan kept walking, and was soon out of sight behind the stable.

  She stopped and watched him silently, while Fairgate walked slowly up behind her from the open stable door.

  “Let him go,” he repeated in the same self-important tone. “He has deceived you, Allison. If I were you, I’d go and check the family silver.”

  She spun around, her face flushed with anger.

  “What could you possibly know about him? He has behaved nothing but honorably since he came to us!” she lashed out.

  “So, you’re going to take up the cause for a common street swindler! Come now, Allison, it doesn’t become you.”

  “You think I am somehow obligated to take your side against him?” she snapped. “Because you are more of a man . . . of better blood. Is that it?”

  “Allison, Allison,” he tried to soothe. “Men from his, shall we say, ‘origins,’ never do amount to anything. He’s a deceiver . . . a swindler. I shouldn’t be surprised to learn he’s a thief. I ask you again, just what do you really know about him? And why is he here? That’s another question one might reasonably ask.” He gently placed a calming hand on Allison’s shoulder.

  She stood a moment longer, staring at the last place she had seen Logan, then, her anger at Fairgate subsiding, she shrugged off his touch, turned, and sat down on the bench next to the stable wall. What he said did make sense after all.

  “He didn’t exactly lie to us, Charles,” she said finally. “That is, no one really asked about his background. And some uncle of his, or great uncle, used to work here.”

  “How convenient,” said Fairgate sarcastically.

  Allison shot him a questioning glance as another defense of Logan rose to her lips. She apparently thought better of it, however, sighed, and fin
ally threw up her hands and said, “Oh, I don’t know what to think.”

  “Any man who withholds information about a prison record—” Charles knew very well that Logan’s few days in the custody of the court could not even broadly be termed a prison record, but he saw no reason to take particular pains to clarify this point—“well . . . such a man is practicing deception. There’s just nothing else you can call it. You ought to inform your parents immediately.”

  “You don’t know my parents,” said Allison. And even as she spoke a picture leaped into her mind of how her family would receive such information. She especially saw her grandmother in her mind. Lady Margaret had always taken such pains with the poor and downtrodden, the “grubby street waifs” of the world. When they heard that he was an ex-convict, what would that matter to her elders? Hadn’t Lord Duncan, the most revered man in all of Strathy, spent months in prison? No one here would turn Logan out, no matter what he had done.

  For the last seven or eight years of her life, Allison had taken great pains to do just the opposite of what the rest of her family might. She had resented their compassion and had tried to rise above what she considered their family weakness. Yet doing so had never brought Allison peace. It had, in fact, produced just the opposite reaction. With a dual personality, she looked with disdain on her mother and great-grandmother and their charitable attitudes, but at the same time, the deepest part of her nature felt guilty for not being more like them.

  Suddenly she had a chance to reach out to someone just like they would. And if she didn’t, she had no doubt that Logan would walk right out of Port Strathy. But she was not ready to lose him. She could admit that now. She didn’t want to lose the happiness she had felt with him for those brief moments on the road back from Culden. She had tried to hide from it, pretend it hadn’t happened. She had been horrible to him afterward. But with Charles standing here now, suddenly everything was coming clear. She had never felt that way around him—all the titles and numbers after his name meant nothing. Maybe Logan was just the nephew of a groom. But she had felt something! And she couldn’t just let it go. She had to find out what the feelings he had stirred in her meant.

  She jumped up and started back toward the stable door.

  “Where are you going?” asked Charles.

  “I’m going after him.”

  “To make him face the music?”

  “No. To apologize. You . . . you were very unkind to him, Charles.” The words had been difficult to say to someone so imposing as Charles Fairgate. She knew her change of heart would “get around.” But oddly, it felt rather liberating to stand up for something important.

  “You’ll never find him now,” said Charles, coming up next to her.

  “Just you watch me!”

  “Don’t be a fool, Allison.”

  They were inside the stable now and Allison was hurrying toward the stalls in back. The heavy clouds had returned overhead, and all at once a crack of thunder echoed outside.

  “You’ll not catch him,” said Fairgate, hastening after her. “He’s made a run for it. He probably has other warrants out for him.”

  “That’s cruel, Charles.”

  “Where are you going, Allison?” he asked as she rushed through the rear door of the workshop. Something had gone wrong with his plan and he was not liking it.

  “I’m going to saddle a horse and ride after him. He can’t have gone far.”

  “It’s starting to rain!”

  Allison had already grabbed a saddle and thrown it atop her favorite—the bay mare. Rain was certainly the least deterrent for her at this moment; she had, in fact, very pleasant memories of rain. She only hoped it was not too late to recapture some of them.

  She quickly tightened the saddle, opened the stall door, and led the horse out. She paused to throw a macintosh over her shoulders and jam a hat on her head. When she finally mounted, small droplets had begun to fall in earnest. But she welcomed the rain. The look in her face showed it clearly as she turned in the saddle toward Charles, who still stood inside, utterly baffled at the inexplicable change that had come over her.

  “Have a nice sail, Charles,” she called out, “and give my regrets to everyone in London!”

  Without awaiting an answer, she dug her heels into the horse’s flanks, galloped off, and was soon out of sight.

  39

  The Healing Rain

  Allison found Logan tramping across a wet stretch of moorland about a quarter of a mile behind Stonewycke.

  He turned when he heard the horse making its way through the shrubbery. She pulled up beside him and slid gracefully off the bay. He continued to walk. Allison grabbed the reins and jogged to catch up. “Logan . . . please!” she called after him.

  “You still don’t know enough to get in out of the rain,” he said, still walking, staring straight ahead.

  “I don’t care about the rain!” she answered passionately. “I wanted to apologize. It was just awful what Charles said to you.”

  Logan stopped. That was the last thing he had expected her to say. Of course, how could he have any idea what to expect from her? He had all but concluded that everything which had happened two days ago was a mirage, when suddenly it seemed possible their blossoming friendship had meant something to her after all.

  But until this very moment it had not occurred to him how Allison would conflict with his designs. Logan had always maintained a hard and fast rule—one he had learned from Skittles: Never hustle a friend. He might lie, cheat, and steal from anyone else. But with his friends—of which, to be sure, there were few—he had always been open and honest.

  Were these people his friends? Was Allison his friend?

  The latter question hardly needed an answer. The sincere expression on her face was more convicting in his soul than any reasonings he could have made with himself. She had never been honest with anyone, not even herself. And yet her face said that she wanted to change that—with him. She was trying to be forthright. How could he lie to her anymore?

  His thoughts had taken the merest seconds. Now he turned abruptly and faced her.

  “Allison, everything he said about me was true.”

  “I’m sure you would have told us if we had asked.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “It doesn’t matter. I don’t want to know what you would have done. And no one in my family will care, either. That’s all in the past, anyway. I know just what my great-grandmother would say—that none of us are perfect, least of all me. And besides, none of them need know what Fairgate accused you of. I’ll not tell.”

  “Why?”

  “There’s no reason. And besides, who’s Charles Fairgate that I should believe him over you?”

  “He’s someone who knew me many years ago.”

  “I don’t care. That was then, now is now.”

  “I’m not sure I understand,” said Logan, still reeling from this sudden turnaround.

  Allison paused a moment, and when she spoke again there was a quiet seriousness in her tone. “I haven’t behaved in a way I’m proud of these last couple of days.”

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “I do worry about it. Sometimes the person I am isn’t very nice. And . . . I’m sorry. Logan, I do want to be your friend.”

  “Thank you. You don’t know how much that means to me. But there’s still so much you don’t understand.”

  “What does it matter? Don’t spoil it, Logan Macintyre, or I might run out of sweetness for you yet. A girl can be only so nice in one day.” She laughed, and he joined her.

  Then Allison swung back up upon the bay. “Now!” she called down to him. “Get up here with me, and let’s go for a ride!”

  “But it’s raining,” he protested with another laugh.

  “That never stopped us before.”

  He laughed, reached up and took her offered hand, and swung up behind her. He hadn’t forgotten his earlier decision to be honest with her. But why spoil the moment with
confessions and revelations? They could wait for a more opportune time.

  Allison led the mare eastward, away from the flooded low country. The rocky ground rose steadily until they reached the Fenwick Harbor road which, had they followed it, would have led them to Aberdeen. They rode north instead, toward the sea. As they trotted along, the wind increased in force and the droplets of rain became larger and larger. A ragged flash of lightning lit the afternoon sky, followed almost the same instant by a crack of thunder.

  “That was close by!” shouted Allison. “Right over on the coast, I’d say.”

  It was not much longer until they reached the Port Strathy road, with Ramsey Head directly to their right off the shoreline, shrouded in mist and clouds. Allison could not hold back a shudder at the granite promontory that would always be associated with evil doings.

  “It might not be a bad idea to think of turning toward Stonewycke,” said Logan. “If we wait much longer we’ll get soaked again.”

  “I don’t mind if you don’t,” said Allison cheerily. “But you’re probably right.”

  They rode on past the Head. There had been a time, even during Lady Margaret’s childhood, when the place had been used for pleasant afternoon walks and picnics, despite its ancient history as a hideout for smugglers and shipwreckers. But since then, it had reverted to its former ways in the minds of the local inhabitants. The caves surrounding it were well known to house occasional drunks and derelicts who were unconcerned about the dark legends of the place. And every Halloween, a report would begin to circulate of a body popping up among the jagged and treacherous sea rocks.

  “Cold?” asked Logan, concerned over Allison’s sudden silence.

  “No, it’s just this place, I suppose.”

  “What about it?”

  Allison tried to relieve her nervousness by relating a portion of the history of the place. For the first time he discovered that the murderer who had killed himself had been involved in the events of Lord and Lady Duncan’s early history, news that on first hearing struck him as incredulous.