by Julia Ross
But how could she and Mr. Devoran uncover the identity of Daedalus, when one of their prime suspects was an elderly baron who locked himself away in his home and refused even a duke’s nephew?
Miss Pole bent to examine some meadow cranesbill growing beside the lake. “Oh, look, Mrs. Callaway!”
Sarah dragged her mind back to the present.
“That’s only a weed,” Miss Carey said. “We ought to confine ourselves to proper flowers.”
“But all plants are formed on similar principles,” Sarah said, “even when we call them weeds.”
“See! Those are the stamens,” Miss Pole said, pointing. “That’s the male part, with the pollen-producing anther at the top. Then here’s the female part, where the seeds will be produced.”
Miss Carey bit her lip and met her friend’s eye. Both girls burst into giggles.
Perhaps botany really was an unsuitable subject for young ladies!
Some other guests were approaching over the ornamental bridge. Sarah’s pupils ran off to join them. The ladies clustered together in their pretty summer dresses, sleeves billowing, parasols gleaming as if silk mushrooms had sprouted from the stone.
“Why didn’t you tell me,” his voice asked quietly in her ear, “that you have written a book?”
Sarah spun about and looked up. Guy Devoran was standing beside her, a quizzical smile on his lips. Her visceral response was immediate. Hot color flooded over her neck and face. Her heart leaped as if she were struck by summer lightning.
“Only an amateur botany guide for young ladies,” she said. “It was published over a year ago in a very limited edition.”
He smiled, and her pulse launched into mad, uneven new rhythms.
“So it made you neither famous nor rich?”
She laughed. “On the contrary, it died with very little fanfare. How did you ever hear of it?”
“Whiddon sent me a stiff note this morning, asking why he had not been informed before that you were staying here. Mrs. Sarah Callaway, botanical author, is obviously more famous than you think. He read your book and he wishes to meet you.”
“Lord Whiddon wants to meet me?”
He grinned. “We may go there this evening, if that would be convenient. We’re invited to partake of a light supper and spend the night. He lives with an elderly spinster sister, who’ll be our hostess and your chaperon. I can take you in the gig.”
LORD Whiddon’s watery gray eyes peered at Sarah through thick spectacles. Wisps of thinning white hair floated over his pink scalp. Everything about him seemed mean and pinched, except for his fabulous hothouse, where an immense collection of huge, showy cattleyas, waxy and sensual, flaunted their extravagant petals.
Sarah wandered past the orchids, her heart beating hard.
Baskets of Aerides odorata struggled to breathe, their perfume heavy in the moist air, their sprays of lemon-and-pink blooms clustered like butterflies.
Epidendrum conopseum added even more fragrance, though the blooms lurked shyly among the foliage like odd green insects.
Catasetum fimbriatum added both spice and color, the lips of the flowers frilled with light green around each spotted center.
Beyond the open doors, the garden faced south over a small sea inlet, trapping the sunlight.
She felt giddy, like a woman transported to some exotic wonderland, where the leaves might part at any moment to reveal Titania and Cobweb and Peaseblossom.
Guy Devoran, tall and elegant, gazed at the orchids with something close to reverence, as if they stood within the arched spaces of an ancient cathedral, rather than in the glasshouse of a reclusive and obsessive collector.
Yet as they examined flower after flower, he had subtly interrogated their host and his gardener, and achieved precisely nothing, as far as Sarah could tell. Lord Whiddon had shown them his flowers and briefly asked about her book, but otherwise barely been civil.
Mr. Hawk, his gardener—like his rival, Mr. Croft—was another blue-eyed, brown-haired Devonshire man, but he was as tight-lipped and morose as his master. Yes, he had been to London with Mr. Croft that spring, but he volunteered no more about his journey, except to agree that he had purchased several new specimens at Loddiges.
Lord Whiddon at last led the way inside the house, where his sister—tall, stick-thin, and querulous as a broody hen—waited to preside over their cold supper. Mr. Hawk tugged at his forelock and walked away, back to his potting sheds and hothouse stoves.
Seizing that one moment of privacy, Guy Devoran leaned close to whisper in Sarah’s ear. “Daedalus and Falcorne?”
She watched their host’s narrow shoulders as he scurried ahead of them, then glanced back at the retreating figure of the gardener. “They’re both unpleasant enough, certainly. Mr. Hawk rather gave me the shivers.”
“Yet, once again, what’s the motive?”
“Lord Whiddon has no wife,” she said.
“And wants none. He cannot have persecuted your cousin from any kind of desire for her. He has no interest in the fair sex. Furthermore, he cannot have met Rachel in society, because he takes no part in it.”
“Then could she have become accidentally involved in some rivalry over orchids? Lord Whiddon’s extremely possessive about his flowers.”
“A passion as great as any man’s for the lady who captivates him? If so, we may give him credit for that faithfulness, at least.”
He gave her a careful smile, as remote as the sun god’s, and ushered her into the house.
The supper was stilted and awkward. In spite of Guy Devoran’s attempts to offer polite conversation, Lord Whiddon fidgeted and answered in monosyllables. The sky was still light when his sister offered to show Sarah up to her room.
“You’ll forgive us, I’m sure, ma’am,” Mr. Devoran said with a bow. “But we cannot, after all, enjoy your kind hospitality tonight. Lady Overbridge has planned a breakfast with charades in her Dutch water garden in the morning. So we’re obliged to return to Buckleigh this evening, after all.”
Sarah gave him a quick glance. It was the first she had heard of any such breakfast.
Lord Whiddon remonstrated immediately, then insisted to the point of being rude. For the first time since they had arrived, he became animated, almost shouting. He had never been so insulted in his life. His sister would take it as the greatest affront. The roads were dangerous at night. Vagabonds and Gypsies were lurking in the area.
Mr. Devoran raised a brow. “Surely you do not suggest, sir,” he asked with icy softness, “that I am either remiss in manners, or incapable of protecting Mrs. Callaway?”
Lord Whiddon subsided into a red-faced silence. Within half an hour the gig was bowling back through the gathering dusk, the groom up behind, and Mr. Devoran at the reins.
Behind them, Whiddon’s dull gray house huddled in its valley, the splendor of his orchids hidden as if a blanket had been thrown over a fire.
“Why did you wish to leave so precipitately?” Sarah asked.
“Only because Whiddon was so anxious to have us stay.”
“I don’t really understand why he invited us at all,” she said. “It was not to talk about my book, certainly. He showed no real interest in my paltry literary efforts, and he already knows more about plants than I could ever hope to teach.”
The horse trotted up a long lane that seemed to lead straight toward heaven.
“I’m afraid Whiddon used your book only as an excuse to try to discover why I really wanted to see him.”
“He didn’t believe you wished simply to admire his orchids?”
“Even if he had thought so, he wouldn’t have cared. As you saw, his passion for his flowers is a private obsession, not something he normally shares with anyone. No, he had some other motive. He must have stewed about it for days.”
“You think he’s hiding something?”
“I’m sure of it. Yet I’m damned if I see how it could be related to our quest.”
Though the evening was balmy, Sarah shiver
ed.
Their road dipped up and down as they crossed the many brooks that ran from Dartmoor to the sea. In each little valley, humpbacked stone bridges, damp with moss, crossed running water. Birch woods clustered, whispering among the shaded rocks, before the road climbed again onto another ridge, where long shadows stretched across open fields.
In one of the broader valleys, they clattered through a small village. A handful of thatched houses straggled beside the stream, with an ancient inn hunched at one end. No one seemed to be about, though a dim light glimmered here and there from a window, and a snatch of song echoed from the inn.
They had trotted up from the village through a winding gorge to pass over the next rise, when Guy Devoran jerked hard on one rein. Sarah clutched at the rail to prevent herself from sliding into him as the gig lurched and one wheel dropped into the ditch. The horse stopped and blew nervously at the hedge.
“Alas,” Guy said calmly. “We’ve come to grief. We may have damaged the axle, and our horse has certainly sprained a tendon.” He glanced back at the groom. “Take the gig back to Stonecombe, Tom. Spend the night at the inn. Mrs. Callaway and I will walk back to Buckleigh.” He tossed the man a small purse. “Make up any tale that you like—except that you’ll not mention us to anyone. Is that clear?”
Tom stared for a moment, his forehead creased in a puzzled frown, then he thrust the money into a pocket, touched his hat, and nodded. “Yes, sir.”
Mr. Devoran grinned at him and leaped down. “Good man! We’ll rescue you in the morning.”
He seized Sarah by the waist and swung her to the ground.
“I hope your footwear will allow you to stroll along a footpath?” he asked. “It’s less than a mile to Buckleigh over the cliffs.”
“Yes, of course! I never travel in shoes I can’t walk in.”
“Sensible Mrs. Callaway,” he said with a wry smile.
Sarah glanced away, her heart thudding.
The groom took the reins and turned the gig back toward the village. The horse, obviously not lame, trotted away.
Guy Devoran ran up a set of stone steps half-hidden in the bank. They led to a stile in an opening in the hedge. He reached down with one hand and smiled with real gaiety.
“Come!” he said. “We must hurry, before it gets dark.”
“But why are we walking?”
“To investigate a theory and to show you something.”
Shadows fell darkly from the hedge, but he was silhouetted above her against a luminescent sky, bright with the promise of sunset. A deep excitement thrummed through her blood.
“Should I be worried?” she asked.
“Not at all! It’s a bit of a climb, but I believe that you’ll like it.”
“Then it’s a mystery?”
“Better than that—the fulfillment of a myth.”
There was really no other choice. The gig was gone. It would be absurd to stand in the mud and complain, and dangerous to stalk away alone, only to get lost in a network of country lanes.
Sarah tied the strings of her bonnet more firmly beneath her chin and smiled up at him.
“A nice, stomping walk before bed with something magical on the way? Yes, I’d like that!”
Guy helped her over the stile onto a path that angled up through a patch of dark woodland. He did not dare to offer her his hand again, though the occasional root made the path tricky. Yet Sarah strode confidently at his side, almost as if nothing at all lay between them.
The woods thinned. They walked out onto the short turf of the headland, and the footpath split. A stone wall with its wind-stunted hedge loomed up on their right; a field full of sheep sloped away to the left.
The right-hand path led down through a gap in the wall to the inlet that divided the Buckleigh estates from the manorial lands that ran with the village of Stonecombe. Their path ran beside the wall, straight along the top of the ridge toward the cliffs.
Guy led Sarah across the close-mown turf to a gate in the corner, which took them into an empty field, where long grass rippled in the warm breeze off the ocean.
Sarah was glowing from the exertion, her cheeks flushed, her eyes sparkling, yet she walked out like a boy, her strides vigorous and eager. Guy strode beside her and silently cursed fate. She was remarkable. She was lovely. She was forbidden.
He helped her over another stile, but this time only by allowing her to set her hand on his steadying forearm. Desire for her thrilled and demanded. He was determined never to give in to it again.
The sun dropped behind a low bank of cloud. Fat sheep lay in shadowed huddles. The air held an eerie stillness as if holding its breath in the face of the oncoming night.
When they reached the next stile, Sarah was panting.
“We can stop here,” he said.
She climbed up unaided to sit on the top of the stile facing him, then tugged off her bonnet to smooth the slightly damp hair from her forehead, dangling her hat by its ribbons from the other hand.
In the field behind her, where the sheep had been moved out earlier that spring, their path wove drunkenly on toward the cliffs: a swath of springy, short turf, stunted by the trampling of feet, with the longer grass rippling beside it.
Guy leaned both forearms on the rail next to Sarah, trying to ignore the lion roaring in his heart. A little wind blew darkly off the sea to blow wayward strands of hair about her cheeks. Beneath her green cloak, her skirts shimmered: some cream-colored muslin with tiny sprigs of red petals and green leaves. Even in the dim light, her fingers were elegant and enticing, fascinating and lovely, entangled in the ribbons.
If he had wished it, he could have jumped her down off each stile with both hands at her waist, caught her against his chest and kissed her again.
If he had wished—
He clenched his fists and stepped back, just as the sinking sun broke dazzling through a break in the clouds. Yellow and gilt and green, color raced back over the landscape. Flames flared in Sarah’s hair, a halo of copper and chestnut about her bright face.
Guy grinned at her and pointed to the path behind her, where it stretched ahead toward the cliffs. She spun about to look over her shoulder.
“Oh!” she said. “Oh!”
A bright ribbon of white against the longer grass, the path—and only the path—glimmered like snow.
Sarah dropped her bonnet, spun about, and clambered down from the stile. Lifting her skirts in both hands, she raced away up the white track toward the sea.
Guy reached down to retrieve her bonnet, sprang over the stile, and ran after her.
She spun about to face him as he caught up, her eyes brilliant, strands of red hair whipping about her face. Color burnished her cheeks, almost as if she saw the lion gazing from his eyes.
“It’s Olwen’s path!” she exclaimed.
He stood arrested as she crumpled down onto the short turf to brush one palm over the masses of daisies that bloomed at her feet. Her face and eyes were glowing, lovely.
“Perhaps,” he said. “I can think of more prosaic explanations for why the flowers grow only on the path, but the effect is still remarkable.”
She plucked a flower and held it up, as if she beheld a miracle. “Oh, perhaps the rest of the daisies are hidden by the longer grass, or perhaps they can grow only where the turf has been beaten down by so many feet, but I shall always choose to believe that the goddess walked here, and white flowers sprang up in every footprint.”
Regret suddenly lanced through him. He had no idea why. It seemed mad.
“I thought you’d like it,” he said. “Though the petals are already starting to close up. We should go.”
“And so Olwen’s white track will disappear into the mysteries of the night.” Sarah stood up and brushed off her hands. “Where does this path go?”
“It’s one of many that leads down to the beach.”
“How do you know all of this?”
“Because I’ve already had several days to explore. That village we just pass
ed through—Stonecombe—is owned now by an absentee landlord, but it’s part of a manor that’s existed since the Conquest.”
“The Conquest? You mean the Norman Conquest? William the Conqueror?”
“I don’t think England’s been successfully invaded since then,” he replied dryly, “unless I was sleeping and missed it.”
Her laugh was so genuinely merry and carefree that his heart catapulted into his throat.
How easy to catch her by the waist! How easy to tumble with her onto the warm turf! How easy to make love to her, up here on this cliff top, only a hand’s breadth from heaven!
Instead, with a bow, he held out her bonnet. She nodded and took it.
A handful of seagulls broke crying up over the cliff to toss out over the water, as if they would fly straight into the setting sun.
Her skirts flared as she turned to gaze out across the Channel.
“May we go down there?” she asked. “I’ve never been to a wild beach.”
He knew it was a mistake, for he would be forced to take her hand. Yet he could not deny the longing in her voice. A wild beach.
“The cliff path is both steep and treacherous,” he said. “And it’s getting dark. Will you allow me to help you?”
She tied the bonnet ribbons loosely, so her hat hung on her back. “Yes, of course.”
Guy held out his hand and she took it.
The cliff path was damp, slippery where the rock broke through the turf. The lion circled, roaring its awareness of her small, gloved hand, her neat waist, her grace and suppleness as Guy guided her step-by-step down to the beach.
Yet he hated to rob her of such a simple pleasure as this, and they were safe for the moment. Nothing dangerous was likely to happen until well after dark.
As soon as they reached Stonecombe Cove, the breeze stopped as if shut off with a tap. Black rocks jutted up like small castles from the white sand. A stream from the valley behind them spread into a delta of tiny rivulets. Far out on the horizon, a fiery sun was sinking into the sea, sending its last long rays up across the clouds. The stream flared into a river of gold and fire, entangled with the lapping waves like skeins of her hair.