Elisabeth Fairchild (17 page)

Oscar stopped to admire the neatly clipped garden. He bent to finger a thorny branch, rosebuds still tight and green on the bright new growth. “Did you know it really is a flower? The  touch-me-not? Looks like a tiny pansy in purple and yellow. A native to the lakes.”

“No. I did not know. Studying the local flora and fauna, Oscar?”

“They were growing by the wayside. We walked right past them. She pointed them out.”

“Penny?”

“Yes. Knew their significance, too. Didn’t say anything directly to the point, mind you, but she wore this slightly wounded look as she mentioned their name.”
“I see.” He wished he had been there.

“As to how she is . . .” Oscar drew a deep breath. “She’s missing the girl, right enough, and yourself, as well. Asked after you, and your nevvie, and sent you her prayers and best wishes. It did surprise me, though.”

“What?”

Oscar scratched at his chin.

“She seemed resigned to the child’s new situation, more so than I might have expected. She had, in fact, spoken to Val the day before I left, and seemed glad the lass had been sent away to school. She did not know which one.”

Alexander frowned. “What exactly did she say?”

Oscar gazed at the sky a moment, thinking, “She said, ‘Best for the child, given Val’s sensibilities, and wise of him to realize as much.”

“Delightfully ambiguous. Did she say anything else?”

“Asked if we were comin to Fiona’s wedding. Said Fiona had asked. I told her I did not think so, given that you might still be in mourning.”

Alexander frowned. “And her response?

 “Said the strangest thing, she did.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. Made me wonder as to her meaning. Said, ‘Better to come back for a wedding than to wait for another funeral.’“

“Who’s dying? For God’s sake, man, is she suicidal?”

“Miss Foster?” Oscar looked shocked. “The idea never crossed my mind.”

Penny stood above the abyss, looking down, considering her mother’s choice, wondering what it would feel like to step over the edge, no ground beneath her feet, the rocks below rushing up to meet her.

 The wind moaned, tugging at her hair, pushing her back from the edge.

The banns for Fiona’s wedding had been read in church the past three Sundays. Nails in her coffin, daggers in her heart, and she must smile as they were driven home. No such announcements figured in her future, no such happy buzz of gossip. What was she to do now with little hope of marriage, even less of children? Was her future consigned to sheep and stone fences and never ending contempt in the eyes of all who looked upon her without ever knowing what they saw? Would she begin to believe the image of herself reflected there?

She shivered, drew her shawl close. Above her a kestrel keened, wings dark against the sky. Had there been a moment in falling, that her mother felt free as this bird? What final straw had tipped the scales, driven her violent flight? What demons of doubt, fear and misery had whispered in her ears? Were they worse than the ones plaguing her daughter, as she considered a future without Felicity, without Cupid, her reputation misunderstood due to her own deliberate misdirection?

She had asked Cupid for a Valentine he could not deliver; to open the world’s eyes to who she really was. It was too much to ask of any man when she had spent years pulling the wool over them. She did not deserve the luxury of disappointment, and yet she was.

Hoofbeats behind her, and she turned, stepping away from the ravine, expecting her father once again, completely unprepared for Val. He looked rather the worse for wear astride his lathered bay, hair tousled, coat wrinkled,  purple shadows beneath bloodshot eyes.

“Penny, my lucky Penny, always turning up where I least expect to see you. On Wharton land, no less.” He  cocked his head to one side as he used to do when he was a youth, fair hair falling in troubled eyes, the bay restless beneath him. “You do not mean to jump, do you? I have heard this promontory has been used to such end.”

She wondered if he knew how much his words goaded her, but he was more likely drunk than malicious.

“Val.” She inclined her head. “How does your daughter fare?”
He brushed aside the question as if it were an annoying fly, and stilled the horse, stroking its sweated neck. “Do you not care how I fare, sweet Penny?” Sad, the set of his mouth. “Would you not ask after my health?”

“No need,” she said. “I see, plain enough, you are ill.”

“Ill and suffering,” he agreed. “Half sober, you see. I would try to stop downing the demon drink, as you did recommend. It is a hell I am cast into. Never has my throat felt so parched, my memory so muddled. I ride that I might not reach always for the bottle. But, tell me, Penny. What brings you here, my dear, alone on the deserted fells, not so much as your dog for company?”

“My mother brings me,” sh admitted.

His eyes gleamed. Bluer than robin’s eggs she had once thought them. “A bit of wildness, is it?” He leaned forward in the saddle, leather creaking. “Hunting Gypsies are you, my dear?”

She laughed, which made him sit back,  fair brows rising.

“Not gypsies. Answers.”.

“Are they to be found here?” he asked wistfully, head turning to regard with bleak expression the emptiness of the fells.

She shook her head, and wrapped her arms about herself. “My mother may have, but I find only questions, Val.”

 “What sort of questions?”

She shrugged off her own hands, and forced herself to look him directly in the eyes as she walked past the nose of his horse. “I wonder how she could have abandoned me to another’s care.”

He frowned.

She kept walking, stopping for no more than a moment to fling a question back over her shoulder. “How does your daughter, Val?”

He spurred the bay alongside her just long enough to mutter irritably,  “Such a question serves naught, my dear Penny, but to renew my thirst.”

He was hard on the horse, she thought, too hard, in spurring the bay away from her.

The post coach, and its attendant cloud of dust, broke through the trees, rounded the bend, and passed Penny Foster, on her pony, on the road that skirted the pale Medieval castle of Appleby. She did not look up as they bowled by. Her shoulders wore a dejected slump, even the pony’s head hung low, the reins held slack, but she was alive, by God, and a vision of loveliness to Alexander. He came very close to throwing himself out of the coach to set off in pursuit.

“Steady, lad,” Oscar recognized his intent , stopping him with a touch. “She cannot get far.”

And when the coach at last came to proper halt at the King’s Head, Oscar flung open the door and urged, “After her now. I shall see to our bags.”

Alexander shared with his friend a brief look of deepest knowing and appreciation, before he plunged into sunshine, setting off toward the castle. Her pony was no longer to be seen on the road, but a pile of fresh dung lured him through the trees, up the slight rise that led through the gatehouse archway. Before him stretched an ivy draped wall. To his left loomed the castle, to his right the taller, boxier keep. He might never have found her had the gatekeeper not come down the set of stairs behind him in that instant and politely asked his business.

“A young lady came this way . . .” he began.

“Is it Penny Foster do you mean?”

Alexander nodded.

“Ah, yes.” The gatekeeper smiled, and rocked on his heels. “Come to see our Lady Anne.”

“Yes.” He remembered how she had once muttered the name. “Lady Anne. Where might I find her?”

The old man led the way, coat tails flapping, leaving him at the doorway to the echoing Great Hall, at the far end of which she stood, her back to him, examining a triptych with unwavering concentration. She could not help but hear his approach. His footsteps echoed, and yet she did not turn until he was almost upon her, and then the bonneted head swiveled, and she caught her breath in a gasp.

“You! You have returned!”

She stood stunned,  afraid her imagination ran away with her, afraid he would disappear. But, no, the grief trapped in his eyes, and the back armband on his sleeve were all too real.

“I was so very sorry to hear of your loss,” she said.

He spoke at the same time, as if to drown out her condolences. “Who is this Lady Anne, that you would visit her often?”

They fell silent simultaneously before he said, very quietly, “I appreciate your concern.” Sadness hung uneasily in eyes suddenly bright with moisture.

“Lady Anne once lived here.” She turned to the triptych, allowing both of them time to recover. She pointed to the first panel, of an attractive dark-haired girl, stiffly formal in fan collar and fine dress, musical instruments at her feet, books on the wall behind her. “Here she is as at fifteen. Her father had just died. He is in the center panel with her mother, and two brothers who came before her and died as children.”

He studied the panels intently. “She was young to bear such losses.”

“Yes,” she said. “I have always thought we were kindred spirits.”

He cocked his head, regarding her with some of the same sadness he had exhibited for his personal loss. “Your mother left you as an infant, didn’t she?”

“She died,” she whispered, unable to look at him.

He made no sudden movement or exclamation to evidence his surprise, no, it was his stillness she noticed from the corner of her eye.

“I had heard . . . ”

“Gypsies?” She laughed harshly, the noise echoing--too loud. She cut the sound short, and dared to look at him. “Poor gypsies. Too long have they been falsely accused.” She sighed, and looked once more at the portrait, nervous fingers pleating the fabric of her skirt. “No. She killed herself.”

He opened his mouth, as if to say something.

She stopped him by speaking first. “And so I adopted Lady Anne as surrogate mother. She did great things, our Lady Anne: building almshouses, raising chapels and churches from the ashes of destruction and neglect, extensively renovating five castles, Appleby’s among them, and all after she reached the age of sixty.”

Killed herself.
The words still resounded in the silences between them.

She tapped the third panel. “That was when she finally came into the inheritance that had been denied her since her father’s death.”

She dared another look at him. He appeared to be  extremely interested in the familiar portrait, of the still attractive if much older Anne, dark hair falling in waves across a full white collar, a pup at her knee, the books at her back in disarray, well-thumbed.

She could not keep her eyes from his profile, the dark bristling hair she so longed to touch,  the lengthy black lashes that flickered as he turned to look at her with as much interest as he had regarded the painting.

“She sounds a fine model.” His gaze searched hers, as if he would know everything, as if he might read the answers to the questions of a lifetime in her eyes.

She agreed, a little shaken, unsure she wanted any man to read her so intently. She drew strength from Lady Anne. “Well read. Clever with history and the classics. She outlived two husbands and three children.”

“Sounds like a lonely sort of life.”
She had no answer for that.

“A woman of stamina.” He filled the gap.

“Exactly. A woman who squeezed all that she could out of the troubled life given her.”

Unlike her mother in every way, she thouht.

It would seem her read her mind. “Your mother . . .”

She regarded the scuffed toes of her shoes. “I know virtually nothing of her,  other than that she suffered the melancholy, and did not care to hear me cry.”

His turn for silence. The words hung there between them, seemingly brutal and uncaring.

“Your father . . .” he said at last.

She sighed and went to one of the tall windows, and stared out over the bowling green. “He does not speak of her. And I do not ask.”

 He followed, his approach quiet and gentle, the light from the window full on his face, no chance his hiding his sympathy for her. He smelled of bay leaf, and the road dust powdering his hat and hair. She could see in that moment what he would look like as an older man. She wondered if she would still have the privilege of knowing him then.

“Had you special need of Lady Anne today?” he asked.

“Yes.” She licked her lips and stepped away from the painting, and tucked her hand into the crook of his elbow, both comforted and aroused by such physical contact. “I was missing Felicity today, more than usual. And . . . and. . . ”

He gave her hand a gloved pat, and still she felt the tingle of his touch. “What? You can tell me anything you know. I am your Cupid.”
She bit down upon her lips before blurting, “Why did you return?”

“The wedding,” he said.

She stared at him blankly a moment, lips parted, hope rising, before it all fell into place, deflating her. “Oh! Of course, Fiona will be pleased.”

Chapter Twenty

The day of Fiona’s wedding dawned clear and bright, perfect weather for a happy union, perfect cloudless skies for the outdoor celebration that would follow the ceremony. Penny stepped into the dim, echoing confines of St. Lawrence’s,  smile at the ready, with every expectation that the next three days were going to be difficult, if not unbearable.  She was glad for Fiona, of course. One could not look upon a smile that beamed so brightly without some gladness, and yet, the moment she looked away, sadness possessed her heart. How removed she felt from these proceedings--how distant. As Eve must have felt, so long ago. Poor Eve.