Look For Me By Moonlight (8 page)

From the top of the cliff, I looked down uneasily, half expecting to see the dead girl's body awash in the surf. But the ocean was empty Waves rolled toward shore, their sleek, green backs streaked with seaweed. A gust of wind ran its cold fingers through my hair and I turned away. It was a sad and lonely place, made more so by Mrs. Bigelow's story.

I walked cautiously down the path to the beach. Soothed by the rumble of the surf and the cries of gulls, I hiked along the shore for miles, enjoying the solitude and the freedom to think my own thoughts—mainly about Vincent.

By the time I turned back, the sun had set, leaving a gash of red in the western sky. On the horizon, the sea merged with the dark clouds. The foam on the breaking waves glowed pink in the dull light.

Just ahead, a barely discernible figure emerged from the mist. I was alone. Night was falling fast. The moon was already visible, small and shrouded, giving little light. The murdered girl came to mind again, and I was afraid. I shouldn't have walked so far, shouldn't have stopped so often to pick up shells and stones, should have remembered how short winter days are and how soon it gets dark.

“Cynda, is that you?”

“Vincent!” Weak-kneed with relief, I hurried toward him.

“What are you doing out here all by yourself?” he asked. “It's almost dark, you should be home. Susan is looking for you.”

“She probably wants me to set the table,” I grumbled, “or keep Todd out of her hair.”

Vincent agreed. “She demands a great deal from you.”

I looked at him gratefully. Most adults would have taken up for Susan. “She's pregnant,” they would have said. “She has a right to expect help.” But Vincent saw things from my point of view. Susan was taking advantage of me.

We walked along in silence. The waves washed in and out, sucking at the sand. In the distance, well back from the cliffs, I could just make out the inn's candles.

“Do you ever wonder where the murdered girl's body was found?” Vincent asked suddenly.

I shivered and said nothing. The girl had been on my mind all afternoon. I didn't want to think about her anymore. What I wanted now was romance. Maybe even a kiss. . . .

I glanced at Vincent hopefully but he was gazing at the cliff tops and the sky beyond. Stars twinkled here and there, appearing one by one in rifts between the ragged clouds. “Some people believe evil lingers at the scene of a crime for years afterward,” he said slowly. “Perhaps forever.”

“Don't say any more, Vincent,” I whispered. “Please don't.”

“I'm sorry,” he said, coming closer. “I didn't mean to frighten you, Cynda.”

Vincent took my hand and we walked on. “As you come to know me better,” he said, “you'll discover I have a morbid streak which may not be to your liking.”

I stared up at him, thrilled by his nearness and the touch of his hand. “I can't imagine disliking anything about you, Vincent.”

His grip tightened. “You've just met me, Cynda. You have no idea what sort of man I am.” He was smiling, teasing me, his voice full of humor.

“That's true,” I said, trying to match his bantering tone. “I don't know where you were born, where you live, what sort of family you have. Why, I don't even know how old you are.”

“I'm older than you think,” Vincent said lightly.

“You can't be more than thirty.”

He laughed. “Give or take a few centuries.”

I laughed too, sharing the joke, and he gave my hand a squeeze.

We'd come to the path leading to the cliff top. Vincent stopped walking and studied my face in the dim light. “Much as I enjoy your company, I suggest you go home before someone comes looking for you. I wouldn't want your father to get the wrong idea about me.”

Something dark and rich in his voice made my face burn, not with embarrassment but with pleasure. “Let's walk a little farther,” I said. “I don't want to go back to the inn yet.”

“Believe me, I'd like to keep you with me.” Vincent spoke so softly I barely heard him as he slowly backed away.

“Where are you going?” I reached out to stop him but he was already several feet distant, merging with the dark sea and sky.

“I'll walk for a while,” he said, “and think of you, Cynda.” With that, he vanished into the sea mist.

I took a few hesitant steps after him but the wind was rising fast. Sand stung my face and eyes, and I turned onto the path, reluctant to let him go but warmed by his words.

 

When I opened the kitchen door several minutes later, Susan was waiting for me. “Where have you been, Cynda?”

“I went for a walk on the beach,” I said, avoiding her eyes. If she were anything like Mom, she'd guess I was hiding something.

“You were gone for more than an hour,” Susan said. “I was worried.”

She seemed willing to let the subject drop, so I apologized, but I couldn't help being annoyed. I didn't need Susan to play the part of my mother. She wasn't old enough to tell me what to do or what not to do.

Vincent returned while Todd and I were playing Candyland, but he slipped upstairs without saying more than hello.

Todd made a face at Vincent's back. “Did you see him when you were walking on the beach?”

I moved my playing piece slowly and deliberately along the game's curving path. “No,” I lied. “I didn't see Vincent.”

A few minutes later, Susan called me to the kitchen. “Can you take Vincent's tray to him? I've just started another batch of hollandaise sauce. It will curdle if I leave it.”

Unable to believe my good luck, I picked up the tray and climbed the stairs. The door opened before I'd even raised my hand to knock. “Come m,” Vincent said, “come in.”

As I passed him, my shoulder brushed his arm. I tried to hold the tray steady, but the carafe tipped, spilling red wine on the white napkin, like drops of blood on snow.

“Let me have that.” Vincent's fingers touched mine as he took the tray. He carried it to a small table near the fire and set it down carefully beside a stack of paper, a pen, a bottle of ink, and a pile of books, testimony to his day's work.

He lifted the lid covering his dinner plate and pierced the steak with his fork. When the juices ran out, he smiled. “Extra rare, just as I requested. Please give my compliments to the chef.”

Nervously I shifted my weight from one foot to the other, not sure if I should stay or leave. “Do you want anything else?” I asked, dunking he might like more pepper, a sauce, something I could fetch for him.

Vincent raised his head and gazed at me. His eyes lingered on my lips and then moved to my breasts. He said nothing. He didn't need to.

The air thickened with the smell of burning logs and melting candle wax, of steak and cloves. The only sounds were the crackle of the fire and the murmur of the wind. My heart pounded, jackhammering against my ribs like a wild thing.

Vincent smiled as if he heard every beat of my heart, but when I took a step closer, he shook his head. “You mustn't keep your family waiting.”

 

Vincent came down later for his glass of wine, and he and Dad got into a discussion of politics, a subject I knew little about. While they talked, Susan sewed and I leafed through an anthology of poetry. From time to time, I glanced at Vincent. More than once I caught him staring at me, his eyes dark with promises that made my heart beat faster.

The conversation went on and on, as relentless as the wind buffeting the inn. Occasionally Susan made a remark, but no one asked for my opinion. My eyelids grew heavy, and my head nodded; the words on the page jumbled, made no sense. When I woke up, the fire had burned low, Dad and Susan were asleep, and Vincent was sitting beside me, smiling as if my confusion amused him.

“I'm afraid my discourse on European economic problems put everyone to sleep,” he said apologetically.

Taking my poetry book, he turned the pages slowly as if he were looking for something. The paper rustled like silk. “The Highwayman,'” he said, stopping at last. Without taking his eyes from mine, he began to recite:

 

The wind was a torrent of darkness among the gusty trees,

The moon was a ghostly galleon tossed upon cloudy seas,

The road was a ribbon of moonlight over the purple moor,

And the highwayman came riding—

Riding—riding—

The highwayman came riding, up to the old inn-door.

 

Vincent paused. “How familiar it sounds. An old inn on a cold moonlit night, a lover seeking ‘the landlord's black-eyed daughter, Bess, the landlord's daughter, Plaiting a dark red love-knot into her long black hair.'”

Closing the book soundlessly, he threw his head back and sighed. “What a girl Bess was. Can you imagine loving a man enough to die for him?”

“Yes,” I whispered, staring at his face. “I'd do anything for the person I loved.”

“It's one thing to sit by the fire and speak of dying for love,” Vincent said, “but to do it, actually to die-No, Cynda, I don't think many girls would. Not willingly.”

He reached out to caress my cheek. His fingers were cool, his touch light, but his eyes were dark. “So pretty,” he whispered, “so sweet, so trusting—what a dear girl you are, Cynda. I fear I could fall in love with you.”

Leaning closer, he brushed my lips with his. Before I had a chance to speak or move, he got to his feet and crossed the room as silently as Ebony. He'd no sooner settled himself in his chair than Dad and Susan woke up and smiled sheepishly at each other.

Susan looked at the clock. “Goodness, it's not quite ten. I don't know why I'm so sleepy.”

“You've had a long day,” Vincent said sympathetically. “While Jeff and I indulge ourselves with our writing, you cook and care for everyone. I don't know how you do so much—and do it so magnificently.”

Obviously flattered, Susan shrugged and said it was nothing, anyone could do what she did, but Vincent insisted she was a marvel. He praised the inn's decor, the beautiful objects in the living room, her sewing projects. I would have been jealous had he not smiled at me occasionally as if we shared a joke at Susan's expense.

When Vincent finally ran out of compliments, Dad suggested a game of Scrabble. We cleared a space on a small table near the fire and crowded around the board. I was so close to Vincent our knees touched, our shoulders bumped, our fingers brushed against each other's. It was impossible for me to concentrate on the game. After two rounds, I was clearly losing, but I didn't care. Being near Vincent was all I wanted.

When the clock struck eleven, Susan yawned and stretched. “I don't know about the rest of you, but I'm too tired to spell my own name.”

She rose to leave but Dad stopped her. “Look, Susie. We've made a sentence.” Pointing at the words zigzagging across the board, he read aloud, “Ill come to thee by moonlight.”

Except for “moonlight,” the words were parts of other, longer words—a syllable here, a letter there, snaking from one square to another; up, down, and across, a secret message for us to find.

“Ill come to thee.” Susan crossed her arms protectively and shuddered. “It sounds like a curse.”

I stared at the board, “The Highwayman” fresh in my mind. “It should be
I'll,
not
ill,
” I whispered. “Don't you see? There's no apostrophe in Scrabble. It says ‘I'll come to thee by moonlight.'”

I stole a glance at Vincent, and he nodded approvingly.

“Yes, of course,” Dad said. “‘The Highwayman'—‘Look for me by moonlight, Watch for me by moonlight,
I'll
come to thee by moonlight.'”

Susan looked at me. “How did you do it, Cynda?”

“I didn't,” I said. “I'm not that clever.”

Dad turned to Vincent. “It must be your handiwork, Vince.”

Vincent smiled mysteriously. “Maybe, maybe not.”

Dad stroked his beard and frowned. “Surely you're not saying this happened by chance.”

“Of course not. Nothing happens by chance.” Vincent seemed to find our bewilderment humorous. “Perhaps it's a message from your resident ghost.”

Susan shivered and drew closer to Dad. Putting his arm around her, he said, “When I'm not so sleepy, you can tell me how you did it, Vince.”

Vincent followed them upstairs, chuckling at something Dad said. In the light of the dying fire, I studied the message on the Scrabble board. With trembling fingers, I picked up the wooden tiles and dropped them one by one into the box. “Ill” or “I'll”—a curse or a promise?

An hour or so later, Vincent stepped out of the shadows and into the moonlight. I'd been waiting at the window, watching and listening, certain he'd meant the message on the Scrabble board for me. I'd heard his footsteps on the floor above me, I'd heard him tiptoe down the stairs, I'd heard the back door open and close softly. Now he walked toward me, tall and lean in his long, dark coat, as graceful as a line of poetry slanting across the blank snow.

Ebony crouched beside me. The moment I opened the window, he leaped out and vanished like a black arrow shot into the night.

“Come back,” I called softly, fearing he'd freeze.

“Let him go,” Vincent said. “Hunters must have their sport as well as their comfort.”

He smiled and rested his hands on the windowsill. His fingers were long and thin, his nails neatly clipped, well cared for. Beside his, my hands were clumsy, my nails chewed and uneven.

“I've come to you by moonlight, Cynda.”

“Yes,” I whispered. “I've looked for you, watched for you.”

We gazed at each other silently. From the woods, the owl called. Once, twice, three times. The spooky sound made me shudder but Vincent turned his head and listened as if the owl spoke to him and him alone.