by Laura London
“Very perceptive. He’s no companion for anyone your age, but I don’t have to tell you that, do I?”
“Certainly not!” said Lynden, slipping out of his hold and into her room. “I’m not stupid enough to become enamoured of a Crant!”
Chapter Nine
The southerly breezes carried a thaw that kissed the fellside with the craft of a coaxing lover and melted the snow, enticing its moisture into the silver air or luring it to swell the mountain becks until they overflowed their mossy banks and roared helplessly under the spinning weight of white water. The clouds had dropped to listen, floating in dense blue bunches around the fell peaks, where ice still glittered in the ebony shadows.
A golden eagle shrieked and wheeled in the gray sky, a swift amber spot against the clouds, while far below, two small figures toiled their way up the ancient peat trod that climbed the fellside from the shores of Grasmere Lake. The winter frost had lifted the trod’s surface and now its softening caused it to give and shiver underfoot. The wet squelch of the steps mingled with feminine voices, rising together through the active air.
“I can’t agree, Lyn,” said one voice. “I think his telling you that he didn’t believe in the peddler bespeaks a nature of good breeding and gentlemanly candidness. It’s our behavior that’s stealthy and… What was the other thing you said?”
“Trickish,” replied Lynden shortly. “Are you sure we are going right, Lorraine? We’re halfway to the tip peaks and there’s no sign yet of anything resembling a highwayman’s get-safe shack.”
“It was different by moonlight,” admitted Lorraine, tramping resolutely, if a trifle breathlessly, beside her sister. “But I did mark the way as carefully as I could in my mind. If only I could find that row of firs…”
The trod grew thinner and less distinct as it roped toward the high cliffs through a twisting complex of jagged ridges and desolate mountain passes. It maintained a curiously smooth and level course the meanwhile; even at its narrowest it was wide enough for a careful horseman to make his way up or down it at a walk. They were approaching a flooding brook, its deep rustling moan booming louder as the track ran a shallow upgrade, then made a sharp, right-angled jog.
The twins had arrived at a highland plateau, a dwarf crater trembling with the thundering bawl of a steep waterfall smashing its churning burden of thaw into a deep foaming tarn. The tarn drained violently into a chilly beck that glistened down the fellside like a strand of diamonds. A magnificent red stag had been drinking the sweet aerated brook water on the far side of the plateau, but he soon sensed the human presence and, trumpeting his disapproval, turned to ramble down a secret mountain trail.
“This way!” Lorraine cupped her palms and shouted to help her words reach Lynden over the water’s crash. “Follow me!”
At its narrowest reach, the beck was four feet wide, spanned haphazardly by five flat, slate-gray boulders submerged below a translucent film of frigid water. The footing was further complicated by dark patterns of slippery lichen inhabiting the stepping-stones, causing the girls to balance with care, attentive to the possibility that more than just the hems of their skirts might be dampened.
Some fifty feet beyond the beck was a tall plantation of silver firs, stretched across the plateau curve, dark green and white needles resting on a thick undergrowth of black thorn and hazel. Only at one point was the underbrush partially cleared and it was through this passage that Lorraine led her sister, both girls exclaiming as large, glassy drops of melted snow fell from the tips of needles and branches to pelt frigidly on the backs of their necks. After a few more steps they came out in a snug platter of open land, about a half acre surrounded by trees and backed and partially shaded by an escarpment that concealed the tiny hanging valley from above. Tall dried shards of purple moor grass provided a scratchy, rasping floor for the small plateau, and off to the west side of the clearing, a lone oak stood, several winter-withered russet leaves still clinging modestly to its naked branches. A bright green growth of holly wound up the trunk, the scarlet berries providing an audacious accent to the umber scene.
The mountain cabin where the highwayman had sheltered and dried Lorraine stood in the center of the cleared half acre. The rough-hewn walls of the squat, boxy little structure begged for a coat of whitewash; one shutter had come loose from its hook and swung gently in the southerly breeze.
Lynden gave a boyish whistle. “This is it? I’m nutty about it already! If only we’d had it in Yorkshire—wouldn’t it have been a capital place to sneak off and hold secret meetings!”
“I’m not sure, Lynnie,” said Lorraine cautiously. “I believe this is a smuggler’s cabin, a place to store their goods until they can be sold. I’ve read about such places, and they’re much frequented by desperate felons.”
“As though we’d have let anything so paltry deter us! We could have kept them away with barking dogs or deadfalls and hauntings. Think of the stories we could start. Someone had stayed in the cottage overnight,” continued Lynden, making her voice low and spooky, “and his remains were found in the morning, seated in a corner chair, tattered flesh hanging from a bleached skeleton…”
“Rubbish,” said Lorraine, laughing. “There’s nothing so ghoulish. I have the prettiest thoughts here. It’s like the line from Spenser: ‘Into that forest farre they thence him led, where was their dwelling in a pleasant glade, with mountains round about environed.’ Shall we go knock on the door?”
They walked across the rustling grass, and Lynden rapped on the weathered door. It swung open quietly under her fist.
“Hello?” Lynden was answered only by the whisper of emptiness. She stepped inside. Lorraine followed her. They crossed the slate threshold, leaving behind the windswept, piny outdoors to enter an indoors scented pungently of smoke and damp wood. Light filtering through the thick glass window created a water-colored interior of gray and sepia shadows, and from a catch-bucket set in the corner came a light, steady plunk of dripping water. A tiny whistle of wind down the chimney stirred the pewter ashes in the fireplace.
“His things are still here,” observed Lorraine joyfully. “The books on the table, yes, and that old trunk! He must be near.”
A tall, slender shadow appeared in the square frame of light cast on the far wall by the open door.
“Very near,” the shadow agreed. “Won’t you come in?”
Undaunted by the lack of warmth in his tone, Lynden grabbed and then shook the highwayman’s unresponsive hand, asked him how did he do, and said, “I’ve come to thank you for saving Lorraine’s life. You can’t object to that.”
“Apparently not,” replied the highwayman sardonically. He smiled at Lorraine, his wide mouth curling attractively at the corners. “Though I thought you wouldn’t be able to find your way back here.”
Lynden noted the shy warmth in Lorraine’s answering smile. “Lorraine has an excellent sense of direction and knows where she’s going all the time. At least she used to,” Lynden added pointedly.
“It was nothing, really,” said Lorraine, looking flushed. “We only followed the trod, and whenever it forked, we chose the less rocky branch, the one smooth enough for a horse.”
“That was clever,” the highwayman said resignedly. He came in, swept the door shut with one hand, and glanced censoriously at the soaking, muddy hems of their capes and the splashes of damp on their shoulders. “It’s too bad you don’t seem able to make a trip out without soaking yourselves to the skin. Since you’re here, you might as well dry off before you start home. Sit down.”
He hung their cloaks from the pegs driven into the wall above the hearth, spread blankets for them to sit on, and started a fire. When the fire was burning strongly sending sparks up the chimney and heat into the room, he hung a good-sized soot-blackened pot from the hearth crane and pushed it over the fire.
“If that’s polecat,” Lynden said, “I’m not having any.”
“No, Lyn, smell. It’s smouch, tea mixed with dried leaves of the ash tr
ee. Don’t you recall, Peg made it for us once to drink.”
“Yes,” said Lynden. “It’s very economical. Only a few pence per pound, isn’t it? I remember it made me heartily grateful that I wasn’t poor!” Encouraged by the highwayman’s grin, she offered to work the bellows for him; the offer was civilly refused, so she said, “I’ve been thinking, sir, that perhaps you are a very famous highwayman? Like…” She scrutinized him for a moment. “Like Cutthroat Kelly. No? Or Gentleman George, who robs coaches with full dress toggery beneath his capes? Or the Galloping Ghost, who robs in the dark of the moon?”
“Certainly not,” objected the highwayman, evidently irritated at his involuntary placement in that company. “My name is Kyler, and I am not famous! In fact, I’ve only stopped two coaches in my life, and robbed neither of those. What’s more, I never intend to do it again.”
Lorraine curled her legs underneath her, arranging her skirts modestly. “One carriage was ours, I know, but the other…?”
Kyler grimaced. “… had three schoolboys and a governess, who promptly had the vapors and refused to exercise the slightest restraint over her charges. They swarmed out of the carriage, shied my mare, asked dozens of ridiculous questions. Each demanded to discharge the pistol, and it was blasted hard to reload three times in the dark, let me tell you! One of the brats nearly put a hole through my hat! Then, in order to assuage their disappointment when I ran out of ammunition, the little demons made me take each one in front of me for a gallop on the mare before they could be gotten rid of.”
Lynden giggled. “It must have been very funny. What were you before you tried being a highwayman?”
“A smuggler.”
“Now that’s real adventure,” exclaimed Lynden with a note of envy in her voice. “Is that how you knew about the secret cottage, because smugglers use it? Lorraine thought so! Were the friends that helped you hold up our coach smugglers, as well? Yes? What were you before you became a smuggler?”
“A soldier.”
“Before that?”
“A schoolboy. You ask a lot of questions, don’t you?”
“I wouldn’t have to if you’d volunteer something about yourself,” said Lynden, showing him her dimples.
Kyler ladled out two cups of smouch and handed one to each sister. “Be careful, it’s very hot,” he admonished, filling a chipped cup for himself. “All right, let me see. I’m twenty-two years old; no, twenty-three last month. I was raised in Ireland by my stepparents, Tom and Grania Miller. My stepfather died when I was twelve; my stepmother, when I was seventeen. I served HRH for three years in the infantry, was discharged honorably and broke. Unemployment being what it was, and the connections you make in the army not being particularly relevant to legitimate employment…” He shrugged. “Maybe if my parents had apprenticed me in trade instead of insisting on sending me to school, things might have worked out differently.”
“Could you not have gone to your real father for help?” asked Lorraine before she could stop herself.
The highwayman took a long sip of the smouch before speaking again. “My real father is dead. I believe,” he said without expression. There was quiet for a moment, broken only by the hollow drip of water in the bucket and the muted roar of the waterfall.
“I have a theory,” said Lynden slowly. “But it is—well, do you promise you won’t be offended if I tell you?”
“No.”
Lynden put her finger in her cup and brought it to her mouth, sucking it absentmindedly. “No? But I must tell you, anyway. You wear an eye patch, do you not? To conceal that your eyes are colored differently? Because I don’t doubt that such a marked coloring would make you very conspicuous in your profession; that would be a handicap. But I must say you handle it clumsily, because I recall when you stopped our coach your right eye was patched; now your left one is. And I see from the way that you’re glaring at me that you think it would be more polite not to have mentioned it, but, really, someone ought to tell you.”
“I’m honored,” he snapped, “to receive your observations.” He tilted his head to take a large swallow of smouch.
“If you didn’t like that, you’ll like less what I’m going to say now,” predicted Lynden. “I think you’re Lord Crant’s natural son.”
Kyler set the tin cup down so fiercely that hot smouch slopped over the side and ran down his hand. “Damn.” He plunged his scalded hand into the water bucket. “You’re lucky you’re not a man, Lady Melbrooke, or I’d horsewhip you down the mountain.”
Lorraine brought a scrap of cotton cloth from the table and gently patted Kyler’s hand dry. “It was my idea, not Lynden’s,” Lorraine said quietly. “You are so like Lord Crant, you see, in the way that only a brother could be, or a son.”
Some of the hard anger lessened as the highwayman looked into Lorraine’s honest brown eyes. He turned to gaze out the window, the silver light etching the flowing pattern of his cheekbones. “Or a nephew,” he said, almost to himself. “But it can’t be, it’s too incredible.”
Lorraine went to the window beside him, the light lending an aura of blue fire to the rich black waves of her hair. “There is a story, then,” she said softly. “Perhaps it isn’t something you tell people in the general way of things, but you might tell us. I should like very much to listen, if you would be willing to talk about it.”
With a slight smile, he reached up to touch her cheek, and then led her back to the fire. He sat down between the twins, crossing his legs, and stared into the flames as he spoke.
“First I’d better tell you that it’s more than possible that none of this is true. I was away at Dublin University when my stepmother died of the flux, and it happened so quickly that by the time the news got to me that she was ill, she was gone. She left the priest a letter for me… God knows, the letter sounds clear enough, and yet it’s hard to know. She had some fever and pain, too, so I don’t know what state she was in when she wrote it. But let me show it to you, and you can read it and judge for yourself.”
He uncoiled himself from the blanket, and from between the leaves of a large, heavy book on the table, took three flat yellowed pieces of parchment, handing them to Lorraine, who moved closer to the fire and peered at the precise, thick handwriting.
“Kyler, my dearest boy,” Lorraine read. “If I am right to tell you this, I do not know, but Truth is God’s balm, and His sword, and you have been my joy and comfort these seventeen years so I cannot now carry these shadows with me into my next life but must leave them with you here to do with as you will. You know, dear one, that Tom and I adopted you and that your own parents are dead. But never have I told you the true circumstances of that adoption or those deaths. You might have questioned me earlier, I know, but for your own sweetness which saw that curiosity would give me pain. Should Death reach me before you do, I hereby now—I hereby now…” Lorraine’s voice faltered, and a blur in her brown eyes became a sparkle; a tear fell on the soft cheek. She handed the letter to her sister. “You read it, Lynnie, I can’t see it,” she said huskily.
Lynden looked at Kyler. “ ’Tis very melancholy! Let me see… yes. It says,… before you do, I hereby now confide your Story.
“I grew up in England, a Vicar’s only daughter, not as I have told you in the Sunny South, but among the bleak mountains of Westmorland, where I met and married Tom Miller, a gardener for the Castle of Crant. We lived there twenty years, watching the seasons pass and the sons of the castle grow to manhood. The elder, Charles, was a cheerful Godly boy and the younger, Percy, jealous, restless, and dwelling in the shameful, secret temples of Sodom and Gomorrah.”
“Percy! That’s Lord Crant, isn’t it?” whispered Lorraine. Kyler nodded and Lynden continued reading.
“The Holy Dove bore Charles’s spirit to the Abode of the Blessed while Charles was in Italy on his Tour; the family heard the news many weeks later and the boy’s father, the old marquis, was struck ill with grief.
“It was near to eight months later, my dear
Kyler, that your mother came to Crant. She arrived past sunset and afoot. Young Master Percy brought her to our cottage, bidding us to care for her for she was a lady and near her time to give birth. Master Percy told us to speak of it to no one and left.
“The lady told us her story in those next few days, how she was the daughter of an Irish miniaturist; reared in Naples and sadly orphaned. She supported herself painting enameled snuffboxes with the eye of their owner; Charles commissioned one and thus they met. They were married within weeks, Kyler, and how I wish that you could have heard her speak of their tenderness and joy in each other. For each, it was as though they had found another part of themselves, before lost and aching. So pitifully, cruelly soon, though, came the fatal sailing accident, and Charles vanished, boat and body, beneath the waves in the wind. She was distraught for some months, cared for by Sisters in a nursing hospice. It was when she learned of her blessed condition that she found again the will to live and bring happily to life this precious token of her Perfect Love.
“She was surprised and worried to have received no word from Charles’s family following his death. Charles had written to his father, the marquis, immediately on his marriage, appraising his family of the Happy Union; she could only believe that the letter had been lost before it reached England. Moreover, she had no money and visited Charles’s bank in Naples only to find his account there closed.”
“Oh, poor, poor lady,” said Lorraine, seeking refuge in her handkerchief.
Lynden continued: “Grows worse, Rainey, listen. I will not sadden you, dearest Kyler, with the struggles this poor lady endured on her penniless journey to Crant Castle. Only believe that she arrived sick, wretched, and weak. Yet how content she was, and how eagerly she awaited your birth, my son and hers. Surely now, she thought, her tribulations would be over. Master Percy had received her so kindly, she said, and with such affection, and called her his dear sister. But the old marquis was so weak—his heart, Master Percy had avowed to her—that it would be better to wait a few days and then break this happy news to him in a gentle fashion—the shock, so Master Percy told her. Trusting and innocent, your mother had given Percy her papers of identification, her letters of character and introduction, even her marriage license, so that Percy might prove her claim to the marquis.”