Larkrigg Fell (52 page)

‘Galloways?’

‘Aberdeen Angus Cross.’

She could see his interest, and smiled. ‘Our paperwork is all in order and you’d have no trouble getting a loan or mortgage for the stock and equipment. We’ll even be computerised before long, so we can check feed quantities and stock breeding more carefully. We could work together, make the change-over painless. Tam and I would like to continue working on a part-time basis, without the responsibility.’ She raised a querying eyebrow, wiping away the rain as it dripped from her hat, seeing he was sorely tempted. But then the obstinate line of his jaw tightened and she sighed again. ‘Are you always this stubborn?’

Andrew had the grace to give a shamefaced grin. ‘So I’m told.’

‘Have you considered Beth in all of this? It would make her happy to live at Broombank. She loves the place.’ Which, to her surprise and distress made the jaw set even tighter. She drew in a deep breath. ‘Cut your own nose off to spite your face, you would. Look, I’m cold, wet, and hungry for my breakfast. We’ll leave it for now, till this other little matter is sorted. You take the first shift up at Larkrigg this evening, and I’ll do the dawn watch. But don’t think I’ve given up.’

‘Do you ever?’

‘Not that I’ve noticed.’ Meg’s smile vanished. ‘Nor will I give up worrying over the loss of fifty good ewes. In this at least, we can be partners. Right?’

‘Partners it is,’ Andrew said, and they shook hands on the deal.

It was Ellen who proved to Beth that Pietro was the sheep rustler. She brought her from the workshop at Broombank and led her past Allenbeck, across the humped bridge and through the lower reaches of Brockbarrow Wood. Here she showed her a bridle path, little used and overgrown but wide enough for a vehicle to pass through. ‘It leads right over the tops up to the Hall. And see here, tyre tracks, plain as plain.’

Even so Beth fought it. If Pietro were a thief it would only distress Sarah all the more. ‘This means nothing. Except that a vehicle has driven over this track. We don’t know what vehicle, or why?’

‘I do.’ Ellen fixed her with a fierce glare. ‘I told you. I watch, and listen. Most folks never take the time these days. Sat all night behind this bridge, I did.’

‘Oh, Ellen, you’ll catch pneumonia.’

‘I’ll catch a thief. Saw him with my own eyes just before dawn, sitting beside the driver. A right cove he was an’ all. Didn’t see me, of course.’ She tapped one side of her nose. ‘Never let your quarry catch your scent. But I heard them laughing and saying summat about the fun they’d have again tonight.’

Beth’s heart sank, unwilling to believe the worst. However much Pietro might hate her family, however idiosyncratic his appetites, that didn’t mean they could blame him for every single thing that went wrong. Besides, Sarah loved him.

Ellen was issuing instructions in her blunt, no nonsense manner. ‘Get Meg, or better still Tam and Andrew, to wait here tonight and they’ll have him. See if I’m not right.’

Unable to deny the truth any longer, Beth agreed.

They waited for hours. Midnight came and went and still nothing happened. Tam, Andrew, and Beth, who had insisted on coming with them since she felt partly responsible. She’d left Sarah to take care of the children. Meg was taking a well earned rest, although she’d agreed to join them at dawn.

Beth was having difficulty staying awake and several times Andrew urged her to go home and get some sleep.

‘Maybe I will. Ellen was probably wrong.’

‘Ellen is never wrong. Not about things like this. If she says she saw Pietro in a lorry, then she saw him.’

‘Then I shall stay. I want to ask him why.’

Tam reached out a hand and stroked her hair. ‘Go and sit beneath the bridge, me darlin’, out of the breeze, and try and get a bit of shut-eye. We’ll wake you if the divil comes, then you can help us spit in his eye.’

Beth pulled up her coat collar and tried to do just that, managing to find a patch of turf against a dry-stone wall that was both dry and springy. But somehow she couldn’t relax. She felt as if there were two bright lights behind her eyes, making them feel all hot and sore. And Pietro’s face kept looming up at her out of the brightness. Somewhere in the background Sarah was crying, and all her senses were filled with a terrible sensation of doom.

Why would he steal from them? What fun did he mean to have tonight? Questions that tormented but for which she had no answers.

She must have dropped off, for she woke with a jerk, as if a hand had touched her, yet she was still alone and the wind had turned even colder. Beth shivered, one glance in the direction of the bridle path telling her that Andrew and Tam too had finally succumbed to sleep. She could see their two heads nodding, and hear Tam’s soft snores.

She smiled and stretched her cramped limbs. How long had she slept? It must have been hours for she could see the glow of dawn in the sky. Beth loved the dawn, that first pink flush of a new day. She looked up into the sky and smiled. Did a rose sky mean that it would be a beautiful day? What was the old saying? Red sky at night, shepherd’s delight, red sky in the morning ... She stopped, her sleep drugged eyes finally clarifying exactly what it was she saw. Not the pink flush of dawn at all, but an ominous glow which could mean only one thing. Larkrigg Hall was on fire.

Chapter Twenty-Nine

Flames clawed like blood red fingers at a black velvet sky, poking through the gash of burst windows and finishing in a shower of sparks that filled the air like fire crackers. Everywhere was the pungent stink of smoke, black ash choking mouths and noses, filling lungs with a lethal swiftness.

‘Keep back, Beth. Keep back. It’s done for.’ Tam and Andrew had tried beating at the flames but the heat had driven them away, black-faced, coughing and exhausted. The fire engine had arrived as quickly as it could, but the distance from Kendal was great and they were too late to save the house. Larkrigg Hall was a ball of fire, a furnace of baking heat, and from it fell the burnt ashes of Beth’s dreams.

Yet that was the last thing on her mind right now.

‘Thank God I asked Sarah to stay with the children tonight. And that Meg is sleeping.’

Andrew slid his arms about his weeping wife and silently held her close.

She tried not to picture what had once been her lovely kitchen, the tiled walls cracking in the heat, the scrubbed pine table ablaze. In her mind’s eye she saw the elegant little drawing room, where they’d so enjoyed pasta suppers, reduced to a pile of blackened timbers. All that work, all that money spent on restoring it, for this. Andrew stroked her face and let her cry into his shoulder.

Yet inside of him burned a fierce fire of his own.

Was she crying for the loss of Larkrigg Hall? Or was her anguish the fear that Pietro was still in there, burned to a crisp. They’d searched for him, for as long as it was safe to do so, almost sacrificing their own safety. He’d had to drag Beth out screaming with distress that they couldn’t just leave him to burn, for all he was a calculating thief.

Now her sobs had calmed and she slapped at her eyes with the palms of her hands. ‘It was never a happy house. Meg was right. I shan’t miss it as much as I think.’ She gave a small hiccup of distress. ‘But it’s still so terribly sad.’

‘Yes,’ he said, pushing back a damp curl of hair from her cheek. ‘It is. But no one is hurt. It could have been much worse.’

Beth sighed and rested her head against his shoulder. It was a good shoulder to rest on, solid and strong. ‘If Pietro isn’t in the house then, where is he?’

It was as if an electric current had shot through her body. Beth was out of his arms in a second, smoke sore eyes wide and frightened. She said only one word. ‘Meg,’ before turning and setting off at a run down the fell towards Broombank as if indeed her own heels were on fire.

Pietro was sitting in the rocking chair by the wide inglenook fireplace where the women of the house would sit and knit. Above his head ran the huge beam from where hams had once hung to catch the oak scented smoke from the fire. The embrasure now held a solid fuel range but a griddle iron still swung from a ratten crook in the comer although no one baked oat-cakes on it these days. It was there for show in this dearly loved home, a touch of nostalgia for times long gone.

‘Three hundred years Broombank has stood on this spot,’ Pietro said as she walked towards him. ‘A family house. My family, by rights.’

‘Not any more,’ Beth quietly pulled up a stool so she could sit before him. Tam and Andrew were checking all the barns and outbuildings, to make sure no one had set a fire in any of them. She’d had to battle with Andrew to let her come in here alone to talk to Pietro, but she’d won in the end. She could only hope this decision would not put her marriage, or her life, at risk. ‘Those days are over, Pietro. Long gone. You can’t resurrect the past.’

‘Exactly what I decided,’ he agreed, in his most reasonable tone. ‘But three hundred years is a long time and if we, the Lawson family can’t have it, then why should you? More to the point, why should Meg? So I’ve decided to destroy it.’

‘I won’t let you.’

He looked at her and laughed, then getting up placed the rocking chair on top of the pitched pine table. ‘How will you stop me, little one?’

‘I don’t know, but I will.’ Beth was amazed how calm her voice sounded when inside she trembled. She watched as he piled other items on to the table. A sewing box, two dining chairs, a foot stool. Then he set about screwing up pieces of newspapers, stuffing them in all the gaps between, as if building a bonfire. Which was exactly what he was doing. ‘Where is Meg?’ Quietly asked, her breath held like a ball of iron in her throat. The question only made him laugh all the more.

‘Gone to the devil for all I care.’ His eyes glittered in the light from the lamp. ‘I disposed of Larkrigg Hall. Did you see it?’

‘I saw it.’ She drew every ounce of strength into her next question. ‘Did Meg see it? Meg wasn’t inside it, was she?’

He didn’t seem to be listening to her, yet he gazed with an aching sadness into her face. ‘It is the very great pity that you would not marry me, little one. We could have had Larkrigg Hall, and Broombank too. We would have been rich, you and I, and I would have restored my family’s inheritance.’

Beth was not to be diverted. ‘Was Meg here, at Broombank, when you arrived?’

He shook his head, seeming to lose patience with her questions and almost shouted his reply. ‘Meg stole Broombank from my family.’

Beth was on her feet in a second, facing him with equal fury. ‘I won’t have you say that. Meg never stole anything from anyone in her life.’

For a second she thought he might hit her as his eyes lit with shock at her spirited response. Then the upper lip curled, as it had so often done in the past, she realised. Only she’d never really noticed. ‘You would be bound to take her side.’

‘I take no side. Meg took on Broombank and paid for it fair and square. From all accounts Jack was a wastrel with no interest in the farm and entirely unfaithful and disloyal to her. He deserved to lose his inheritance.’

‘You dare to attack my family?’

‘I dare. I’ll certainly not stand silent while you attack mine.’ Grey eyes met blue in blazing defiance. They were so close she could trace every feature, every fine line of his perfect face. A face she had once loved and now loathed for the pain he had caused. Pietro was the first to break the hold, the cynical smile twisting the lips she had once kissed.

‘But now, at last,’ he said. ‘I take the revenge. The bellavendetta, the quiet vendetta which bubbles and simmers for years and then boils over. Poof!’ He smacked his hands together, laughing. ‘You will miss your precious Larkrigg, I think? Meg will miss Broombank. So I beat you both.’ His delight was rather like that of a naughty child who had deprived someone of a special treat.

‘If you wanted a fine home you should have provided it for yourself and not attempted to steal it from others, or attack them out of greed or cruel vengeance. I’ve seen Ellen’s animals battle against man’s greed and destruction of their environment. I’ve seen them attacked for no reason, when they were only defending their territory or loved ones. But they never give up striving to find the haven of peace which is their right, and neither will I. I found mine, Pietro, with Andrew. If you did not find yours, perhaps it is because you did not deserve to.

‘Larkrigg Hall is my home no longer and I’m glad. I’ve no wish to return to it. I’m not a sweet, dreamy child any longer, Pietro. I’m a woman.’ She stood up and walked to the fire, holding out her hands to warm them by the blazing logs which crackled in the iron grate, while she considered her next words. She was aware that he paid her little heed, all the while continuing to add items of furniture to the growing pile, still stuffing newspaper between. At any moment he might put a match to it. It made her shiver.

‘In any case, Meg no longer owns Broombank.’ It was a gamble, but a risk Beth felt she must take. He turned to glare at her and for the first time she saw a hint of confusion in those brilliant eyes.

‘You lie.’

‘No. It is mine now. Mine and Andrew’s.’

His whole body jerked and the glare from those ice blue eyes almost cut through her. ‘Yours?’

‘Yes. Meg wishes to retire, so has offered it to me and I have accepted.’