Mists of Moorhead Manor

by Bancroft, Blair

  So others felt it too. I thanked him for his concern and promised I would be cautious. And then I turned straight toward the moor, following the directions I had wormed out of a reluctant Mrs. Linnell. It was a long ride, past the home farm, past the Ridgeways, where not a soul was visible. Then through a dip in the rolling hills, where the path followed a narrow stream that tumbled down a rocky course toward the sea and soon led me onto a seemingly endless plain dotted with heather, the last purple blooms still lingering. Tangled masses of gorse added several subdued shades of yellow and rose, forming a colorful backdrop for wandering ponies, side by side with grazing sheep. And I thought I caught a glimpse of two of Exmoor’s elusive red deer.

  I was so fascinated, in fact, by my first venture into the heart of the moor that I was almost distracted from my purpose. But finally I urged Bess up and over a slight rise and saw my goal—a granite tor that towered above all others. And discovered I was not alone. A man sat on his horse, his back to me, gazing up to the top of the granite monolith.

  Even at a distance, I recognized him. How could I not? Exmere on Zeus. By the time I had come within fifty yards, he heard me, turning to watch me approach, his face stormy with disapproval. Oh dear. Miserable man, did he think he was the only one who might have doubts about these deaths?

  A cool nod. “Miss Ballantyne.”

  I returned the gesture. “Lord Exmere.”

  “May I ask what brought you here?”

  “Exploring. I have not ventured so far onto the moor before.”

  “Nor should you,” he snapped without a trace of his customary amiable self. “It is not safe.”

  “I assure you, my lord, I am accustomed to ‘not safe’. I welcome something beyond the ordinary.”

  “Then you are a fool. Come, I will escort you back to the Manor.” He reached for my bridle.

  I quickly backed Bess away. “I wish to see this tor,” I declared, “and I intend to take the time to do just that. I assure you I know how to find my way back.”

  For several moments we glared at each other. And then with a courtly flip of his hand, all the more mocking for being delivered from horseback on the plains of Exmoor, he said, “By all means, take your time, Miss Ballantyne. Ride around the whole bloody tor. Climb to the top, if that’s your pleasure. I’ll even hold old Bess while you do it. And then”—he paused for emphasis—“I will escort you back to the house. And I am not going to apologize for my language as I’m sure you’ve heard far worse in the army.”

  I bit my lip, inwardly mourning the camaraderie of our last ride. Then turning Bess, I rode a slow circle around the giant hunk of rock jutting like a fat, blunted arrow from the nearly flat plain. It was, I saw, climbable from the back, though only by someone of agility, someone raised in this sometimes inimical countryside.

  When I returned to Exmere, I looked him in the eye and said, “I should dearly love to enjoy the view from the summit, but I fear my riding skirt would hinder my climb. Perhaps I shall ride astride the next time I come.”

  “There will be no next time,” he growled, swinging Zeus into an abrupt turn down the path toward home. Bess, evidently aware that Exmere’s orders outranked mine, obediently followed. For the rest of the long journey home, I was a mere passenger on a horse who probably would have followed Zeus right over the cliff, if that’s where Exmere had chosen to take her. By the time we arrived back at the stables, my temper was unabated. As the viscount lifted me from my horse, gripping my waist only long enough to set my feet firmly on the floor, my fingers white-knuckled around my riding crop. Robert, Lord Exmere, fair-weather friend.

  As I was stalking off, intent on leaving the stables as quickly as possible, he called out, “Miss Ballantyne, you should be aware that visitors are expected.” Visitors? That stopped me in my tracks. “Norvelle’s family—a long-standing invitation. Allegedly. My father says he wishes to provide more feminine company for my sister, but I suspect he may be matchmaking.” I thought I caught a slight grimace as he added, “There are two sisters of marriageable age. The entire Durrant family will be arriving, en masse, any day now. You should, perhaps, prepare my sister for the onslaught.”

  Shocked to the core, I sputtered, “My lord, she has barely resumed eating with the family, and you would subject her company?”

  “Not I, my father,” Exmere returned rather grimly. “I believe he expects you to manage the thing. That is what you do, is it not? Manage things.”

  There was no possible answer. Thoroughly deflated, with tears stinging my eyes, I left the stables with as much dignity as I could muster, hastened up the stairs, and threw myself on my bed, where I indulged in a thoroughly humiliating bout of tears. Nor could I admit to any reason for why I felt so devastated. Unless . . .

  Two women had died, and Exmere had suspicions, as I did, that their deaths were not accidents. Nor were they suicides. And for that reason Exmere feared for me. Which made him testy. He had not truly taken me in dislike.

  A glorious daydream that needed to be quashed before it could blossom into harmful fantasy.

  A distant gong sounded, announcing it was time to dress for dinner. I stripped off my riding garments, washed as best I could, and joined Lady Vanessa in her sitting room just in time to follow the procession as David carried her down two flights of stairs, a footman following with her wheeled chair, myself bringing up the rear.

  Conversation at table was a little more lively that night—I made an effort to participate even though I felt a highly juvenile urge to sit there and sulk. All went well until Lord Hycliffe’s expansive announcement of the arrival of guests—Lord Norvelle’s parents, the Marquess and Marchioness of Rothbury, and his younger sisters, Lady Daphne and Lady Jocelyn.

  I caught Exmere’s sharp glance in my direction. Dear heavens, I’d hoped to have time to prepare Vanessa for the concept of guests.

  She gasped. “No, no, no, Papa. I cannot sit down with guests!”

  “Nonsense. You have known them for years. You will enjoy showing them how much your health has improved since Miss Ballantyne joined us.”

  I waited for the explosion, but Vanessa, ignoring the apple tart on her plate, merely ducked her head and folded her hands in her lap. “Excuse me,” I said, and went to her, pulling her chair from the table and wheeling her away. “Shall we go into the drawing room?” I asked quietly, but David was already there, replacing my hands on the back of her chair, leaning down to whisper in her ear.

  “Upstairs,” she declared. “This instant.”

  When we were all gathered in her sitting room—Vanessa, David, Maud, and I—I sat in a chair directly opposite her, took a deep breath, and said, “Vanessa, we have come to a cross-roads. You can hide in your rooms for the length of the guests’ visit, or you can be the daughter of the house, as you were meant to be. I have spent a good deal of time thinking about how we might accomplish this, and tomorrow morning I would like to explain some of the things I have in mind. But I cannot wave some magic wand and make it so. You have to help. You have to want to help. You have to go beyond telling yourself you hate being an invalid. You have to know that you are tired of hiding, tired of letting the world whirl around you instead of your becoming part of it. You have to have the courage to try. And fail. And try again. You have to be willing to thumb your nose at all those who see you only as an invalid, those who expect nothing from you. So far, they are winning. And it’s time you did something about it.”

  “But what?” she wailed, clearly unconvinced by my rhetoric.

  “Are the Wetheringtons cowards?” I taunted. “A family of fortune but no courage? For shame!” I stood up, gazing down at her as I added, “Think about it. Take the night to contemplate what life could be like if you did not play the invalid to the hilt, reacting like a child of three when you do not get your own way. Abominable, my lady. Simply abominable. It’s time to grow up and be counted.”

  And how’s that for managing, my lord Exmere?

  I sailed out, more than
little afraid of the chaos my tirade might cause. Another bout of hysterics? Demands for my immediate dismissal?

  As I looked back on the past two weeks, I realized with a heavy heart that the only moments I would care to repeat were that precious afternoon when I rode to the village with Robert, heir to Moorhead Manor. An idyll not likely to be repeated while he was entertaining two elegant young ladies. Not likely to be repeated at all if his father caught him fraternizing with the help.

  The following morning I donned a dark blue woolen gown that had served me well on the Peninsula—some of the more charming young officers even declaring that it matched my eyes. It was nicely cut yet serviceable, nearly indestructible. The perfect garment for a young woman who wished to make a good appearance without looking like a butterfly in the midst of a flock of hawks. I twisted my hair into a chignon and pinned it tight. Frowning at the results, I gave in to a moment of vanity, tweaking one amber wisp out to fall in front of each ear. Another look in the pier glass, and there I was, the very model of a proper companion.

  Except for the meek and mild. Those were attributes I did not have.

  I marched across the hall, rapped once on Lady Vanessa’s sitting room door, and went straight in. Although three people occupied the room, it was so silent I could hear the hiss of the coals in the fire. Lady Vanessa was in her favorite place by the window, her easel in front of her, but her hands were clutched in her lap, her face set with the rigidity of a stubborn mule. David Tremaine stood nearby, his stance equally as stubborn, while Maud Scruggs gathered up the remains of Vanessa’s breakfast and set it on top of a small table near the door for one of the housemaids to pick up.

  “Miss Scruggs, Mr. Tremaine,” I said, “I would like to speak with Lady Vanessa in private. If you would be so kind . . .” I waved my hand toward the door into the corridor.

  David stared at me a moment before nodding his agreement. “Come, Miss Scruggs,” he said and herded her toward the door as easily as a dog herding sheep. Remarkable. I wondered if I would ever understand him. Was he a faithful lover, the ultimate loyal servant, or a strange, even secretive, young man whose motives might forever remain obscure?

  I picked up the easel, set it aside, and drew a side chair into place directly in front of Vanessa. I expected a scowl; instead, her surprise that I had dared send her minions from the room seemed outweighed by curiosity. Sticking to the plan that had kept me up half the night, I began with the least controversial of the changes I wished to make. “Now that you are dining with the family each night, it occurred to me that you really need a maid, someone to keep your clothing in order and fashion your hair into the latest styles. So few ladies have hair of such a lovely pale blonde, it really should be shown to best advantage.”

  There might have been a moment when she was flattered, but it was fleeting. The blue eyes turned stormy as she said, “With company here, I shall not be dining with the family.”

  “That is the whole point,” I countered, struggling not to put too much steel into my tone. “You need a maid in order to present the proper appearance of a daughter of the house helping Lady Emmaline entertain guests.”

  She gaped at me. “Help entertain,” she echoed faintly.

  “Why not? You have a brain, a good education. You have a mouth that can talk . . . and smile. You must have recollections of house parties in the past—the excursions, the various entertainments to keep guests busy. It is not, you know, necessary for you to participate in every activity, only to devise a list of activities and make them available to your guests.”

  “My guests . . .?”

  “Your guests.”

  Her blue eyes widened—for a moment I thought I’d succeeded and then, “No, no, never! They will laugh at me.”

  “They wouldn’t dare! Exmere, Huntley, and Kenrick would eat them alive.”

  She chortled, actually chortled. I was still sitting there, my mouth slightly agape when she clapped her hands and said, “I’ll do it! I should dearly love to see Exmere take Lady Daphne to task!”

  “Excellent,” I declared. “I shall ask Mrs. Linnell to find someone suitable to be your maid. Hopefully, it will not be necessary to send all the way to London.”

  Lady Vanessa eyed me with the shrewd intelligence I suspected she possessed but had so seldom seen. “But you did not send David and Maud from the room in order to discuss my acquiring a maid.”

  “No,” I admitted, “I did not.”

  Chapter Ten

  “Well,” Vanessa challenged, her blue eyes suddenly almost as shrewd and steely as her father’s, “out with it.”

  And in that moment I knew, and a whole new world opened before me. I steepled my fingers before my face to hide my expression as my mind whirred, struggling to shift direction to an entirely new path. “Why do you do it,” I asked at last, “when hysterics only make him more determined to go his own way?”

  She gave me the strangest smile. “Ah, but he always feels so guilty afterward.”

  I shook my head. “Surely you must know how much men dislike such fits. In the end you will lose him.”

  She had the grace to look down to where her fingers were clutched in her lap. “It is not as if I ever had a prayer of winning him,” she murmured.

  Harsh though it was, I spoke the first words that came into my mind. “You cannot think anything but utter devotion keeps such a man at your side.” When she remained silent, seemingly lost in her own thoughts, I took a moment to allow the larger picture to filter through my mind. However prosperous Moorhead Manor’s home farm, the blunt fact remained that David Tremaine was the son of a tenant farmer and Vanessa the daughter of an earl. They were as separated by custom as earth and the moon. Only Vanessa’s status as an invalid allowed them to be together. And it seemed she had fallen into the trap of using hysterics in an effort to control him, increasing the intensity of the episodes to no avail . . .

  Or . . . was it possible? I swallowed, almost shuddering as a fresh wave of thought swept through the preconceptions instilled in me by the earl and the other residents of Moorhead Manor. Was it possible it was all a hum, that Vanessa, with effort, could walk again, if only she did not believe mobility would mean the end of David Tremaine in her life?

  Surely not. The mists must be infecting my brain. And yet she had as much as admitted that her hysterics were manufactured, a deliberate ploy.

  “It must be frightfully exhausting,” I offered carefully. “You cannot really want to work yourself into an illness. Particularly when it can only make people think you are falling into madness.”

  Slowly, her head still down, she nodded. A modicum of progress, thank the Lord!

  Unfortunately, the revelation that Vanessa had far more inner strength than I thought did not excuse me from the initial purpose of my request for privacy. It did, however, make me feel less fearful as I delivered the tragic news of her friend’s death.

  “But why?” she asked through her tears. “Nell was looking forward to a visit to Bath followed by her London come-out. She never would have . . .” Her voice trailed off into a sob.

  “I am told another girl, a Mary Perkins, was found dead at the base of a tor last spring. I cannot help but wonder if . . .” I gulped, amazed at my temerity. “Is it possible there is a madman preying on young woman?”

  Vanessa’s shoulders went rigid, her head came up, a sob cut off as if sliced by a knife. “You are speaking of murder?” she whispered.

  Suddenly embarrassed, I shook my head. “I suppose I am being foolish, yet everyone agrees that Nell would not take her life, nor would she walk near the cliffs as she did not like the sea.”

  “I will speak to Rob,” Vanessa declared. “He must do something about this.”

  Interesting, I thought, that she would turn to her brother rather than her father in this time of need. I could not help but wonder how a London fribble was considered a person of more substance than the master of Moorhead Manor. Equally astonishing was the fact I had never seen Vanes
sa so animated as she was at the moment. It was as if the urge to solve the mystery of Nell’s death, combined with her acceptance that she had carried her invalidism too far, had created a seminal moment. A new day was dawning.

  Maud Scruggs tapped on the door then stuck her head around the edge. Both Vanessa and I waved her away. I thought I heard a slight huff as she closed the door. We spent another hour discussing the changes that must be made in Vanessa’s routine, including the most difficult of all, the shift inside her head. And when we were finally ready, we called David and Maud back into the room and, together, told them the news.

  Maud sputtered, but David’s frown of concern gradually lightened to approval. And in the end—recognizing Vanessa’s inner transformation, he positively glowed. If he understood this might be the beginning of the end of their relationship, he gave no sign of it. An air of subdued excitement and anticipation enveloped us all as we sat down to lunch. Hope had come to sick room.

  The mists rolled in early that afternoon, or perhaps the clouds became so heavy they drooped all the way to the ground. Whatever nature’s reason, I could not resist the challenge of venturing forth when I could scarce see my hand before my face. Not wishing to encounter Allard’s protests, I sneaked down the servants’ stairs and put my finger to my lips when Cook and her helper saw me passing through the kitchen. My lips turned up in a mischievous smile as I paused long enough to light a small lantern before exiting the house by the door into the kitchen garden. When Cook sent her helper flying after me, looking anxious, I assured her I would go no farther than the gardens.

  I quickly discovered that except for casting a glow on my feet, the lantern was useless, though it might possibly serve as a beacon for rescuers if I managed to lose myself. I knew I was passing the herb garden, still green in our relatively mild coastal climate, but even the pungent scents of mint, dill, basil, oregano, and other garden herbs s were dampened by the great grayish-white blanket. I could, however, see and feel the pebbled path under my feet, and eventually I found my way to the gate that led into the walled formal gardens on the sheltered east side of the house.