Outcasts of River Falls (14 page)

Her hand still tingled where he’d touched her, but it was more than that. He had made her feel so, so....womanly. And he was gorgeous. In fact, he was fairytale handsome. Kathryn held her bucket out in front of her, imagining she was at the ball, waltzing with her Prince Charming while all those ugly stepsisters looked on enviously.

She now understood the Knights of the Round Table and their passion to find the Holy Grail. She’d found her grail. It walked and talked, came with brown hair and grey eyes and was called Mark!

Chapter 10

Clues
Answered and
Questions
Asked

When Kathryn arrived back at the cabin, she was surprised to see Claude Remy waiting. “Aunt Belle isn’t home,” she called as she walked up the path.

The afternoon sun shining on the big man’s hair made it gleam blue-black.

Unbidden, the clues JP had told her about the Highwayman sprang into her head.
“And astride his midnight steed, our ebony knight vanquishes his foe wrong-handed with his ivory hilted dagger.”

Since Claude Remy was away trapping much of the time, she’d never considered him as a candidate to be the famous Highwayman. Thinking about it now...didn’t that make him even more eligible? Madame Garnier had said,
“The Bandit de Grand Chemin.... He comes and goes; no one knows where he lives. Sometimes, he disappears for weeks at a time, then voila! Like magic, appears when he is needed most.”
Claude came and went at odd times as he had to check his trap lines. This gave him much more opportunity than some of her other suspects. For fun, she thought she would see how many of JP’s criteria old Claude chalked up.

With his long black hair and bushy beard, he certainly had the right coloration. In fact, even his dark skin could be considered as adding to the picture.

Clue number one:
ebony knight
. Check!

“Would you like a cup of tea?” she offered sweetly, trying to think of how to discover if he matched the rest of the list.

“Non.”
Claude’s gravelly voice was gruff and he was back in full trapper style with worn trousers, a much-patched cotton shirt with a felted wool vest on top and knee-high moccasins that laced up the front. The beautifully beaded coat was nowhere to be seen or, thankfully, smelled.

Kathryn peered about. “Did you walk here, Mr. Remy?”

His reaction told her he thought she’d lost her mind. “Fool, of course not. My horse, she is tied up.”

He tipped his chin in the direction of the trees where Kathryn saw a dark bay mare. The horse’s coat was a rich, deep brown, very,
very
deep brown indeed, which at night could appear black.

Clue number two:
midnight steed
. Check, again!

Next was how to discover if he was left-handed? As casually as possible, Kathryn stooped to pick up a rock and then moved closer to her suspect. With a quick flip of her wrist, she tossed the stone toward the unsuspecting woodsman. “Think fast!”

He caught it with neither his right nor his left hand. The rock simply bounced off his broad chest and fell to the dirt.

“Sacrebleu!”
he roared. “You idiot!”

“Oh, I’m so sorry. It slipped.” Kathryn tried to appear contrite.

He continued cursing, switching between English, French, Cree and Michif as he strode past her and up the veranda steps to the cabin door.

“Wait! You can’t go in there. I said my aunt was not at home.” Kathryn ran to catch up as Claude charged on oblivious to her shouts. Acting as though he owned the
place, he barged right in and deposited himself rather un
ceremoniously in a chair at the kitchen table.

Kathryn scurried after him. So much for finding out if he was
wrong-handed.
If she was clever, she could still discover if he owned that special knife. She’d noticed as he bulled by her that he had a scabbard hanging from his belt. Unfortunately, the knife hilt was hidden under his vest. All she needed was a peek.

Having eaten the few berries she’d picked, she de
posited her empty bucket in the dry sink, then went to the potato bin, pulled several out and set them onto the table next to where the trapper sat. “Aunt Belle should be home soon. Right now, I have to get these peeled for supper.” She pretended to search for something to peel with. “Oh, dear! I can’t seem to find my knife. Maybe I could borrow yours!” And with that, she lunged forward and yanked Claude’s vest up, exposing the knife protruding from the sheath.

It wasn’t ivory. The haft was made out of deer antler with an intricate design etched into it. The image was disturbing, a wolf’s head with demonic eyes that pierced straight through you. Kathryn flinched. Would antler be considered ivory to those trying to romanticize their hero?

“You are mad, girl!” Claude shrieked in what she thought was a rather high voice for such a big man. Jumping to his feet, he knocked over the chair. “Tell Belle I have da goods.” And with that, he fled the cabin.

The blade had been on his right side. Did that mean he was right-handed or left? Not having a lot of experience with trappers, let alone eight-inch hunting knives, she wasn’t sure. In all her books with knights carrying swords, they carried their blade on the opposite side so they could draw it and slash the pesky varlets a good one. If knives were the same, that did indeed mean Claude was left, or wrong, handed. Check!

At the beginning of today’s
Fishing-for-a-Highwayman,
Claude Remy hadn’t even been in the running for the Bandit du Grand Chemin. Now, she saw how that had been short-sighted on her part.

Her mind continued to tally the clues. There was one more she had not taken into account. Aunt Belle herself had supplied this piece of the puzzle when Claude had shown up with the dead deer.
“Wherever that hidden camp of yours is, you should think about finding the nearest barber before coming back to civilization.”

A hidden camp! Every hero needed a sanctuary. Didn’t Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men have a secret hideout in Sherwood Forest?

As Kathryn watched the angry hunter ride away, she decided today had been a very interesting one indeed.

When Aunt Belle came home,
Kathryn was sitting at the kitchen table reading, the potatoes in a pot on the stove. She’d prepared a large number of the vegetables as the silly things shrank at an astounding rate while she’d hacked away in her attempt to peel them.

“Mr. Remy dropped by earlier.” She’d go into detail if asked, but would rather avoid explaining the testing session. “He said to tell you he
had the goods.”
It was then that she wondered what goods could her aunt have ordered from the unmannered man. She was still appalled at how he’d marched right into the cabin without knocking, as though he did it every day.

“Don’t worry about Claude. He’ll be back.” Her aunt placed a pie on the table, then went to the cupboard and retrieved an apron. “Did you have any luck with your berry picking?”

Kathryn thought of the disastrous foray and the a
ttack of the dragon talon bushes. “Not much.” Then she
re
membered her time with Mark. “It was a lovely day anyway.”

“Yes, I thought it might be a little early in the season. I’ve been craving fresh raspberries and was hoping there’d be enough for a couple of tarts. Fortunately, we can save our disappointment for another day. Madame Rousseau paid for my services with this delicious rhubarb pie. A very good deal,
n’est-ce pas?”
She arched a brow. “In fact, what do you say to a cup of tea and a big piece right now, Katydid? Who says we have to wait until after supper for dessert!”

Kathryn laughed. “You’ll get no argument from me, Madame!”

As she watched her aunt preparing the tea, her thoughts drifted back to the afternoon’s encounter with her Sir Galahad, Mark. She still planned on returning to Toronto as soon as possible, but he was so wonderful and for the time she had left here, she wouldn’t mind a little wonderful.

Fetching plates from the china cabinet, Kathryn sliced two large pieces of the pie while her aunt poured.

As they ate the unexpected treat, Kathryn felt the long day’s activities catching up with her and she yawned. “An interrupted sleep always leaves me exhausted the next day. I never feel rested. Do you find that same problem?”

Her aunt watched the tea leaves swirling in the bottom of her cup.

“And that trick you used with the lantern so the bear wouldn’t find you was clever. You should have told me about it too. I sometimes have to make a midnight dash and it would have been good to know.”

Her aunt meticulously forked up the last crumbs of her pie.

Kathryn continued. “Last night.... You went to the outhouse using that strange red lantern...”

“Hmm. A red lantern would be strange indeed.” Aunt Belle dismissed it with a light laugh. “Maybe you were dreaming, Katydid.”

Kathryn paused. Dreaming?
Dreaming!
Had she been dreaming when she’d glimpsed the lantern’s light? That was all it had been, a glimpse. She had been half asleep and she did have an extraordinary headache when she’d retired. It could have triggered the red dream. “Well, it seemed very real to me...”

“Dreams can be that way, dear.”

Then, without another word, Aunt Belle stood, gathered their dishes and went to the sink, leaving Kathryn in some doubt as to what she had seen. There
had
been times
when her imagination had...well, caused her to leap to un
fortunate conclusions. Once, she had accused a student of sneaking out to meet a boy, sure that they were planning to elope to Budapest because the girl was in a family way. The young lady in question had merely been cadging
an illicit cigarette. Kathryn had ended up in Mother Su
perior’s office, and no one had sat with her at meals for a month.

Chapter 11

Pirate
Treasure from
a
Bandit

All through the next day, Kathryn’s mind circulated among three thoughts: her encounter with Mark, the possibility of Claude Remy being the Highwayman, and the mystery of the red lantern.

“Katy, would you be a dear and take these to Kokum’s with my compliments?”

Kathryn had been busily washing dishes, but turned at the sound of her aunt’s voice and recoiled. Her aunt held out two dead fish, their glassy eyes staring balefully at the afterworld.

She shuddered. “You want me to take those all the way to Madam Ducharme’s? How am I to do that?” The idea of touching the fish was positively repulsive.

Her aunt shook the fish, causing the light to bounce off their iridescent scales. “These two are past biting and in this heat, the sooner they’re delivered the better.”

Kathryn frantically cast about, then spied her salvation. Grabbing the wash basin, she ran to the door and flung the soapy water into the bushes. Returning, she held out the empty dish.

Her aunt placed the fish in the large bowl, then went to a bucket and ladled cold water over them. “That should help keep the little fellows fresh. Now go, and don’t forget to bring the basin back, you silly girl.”

Kathryn started on the long trip to deliver her cargo. As she carefully made her way down the rough road, the afternoon sun gilded the dust motes swirling in the languid heat. It was a long walk to Madame Ducharme’s shanty and the stones poked at her tender feet through the thin soles of her shoes. She would have to find something more serviceable if she was condemned to stay here much longer. She must be something to behold, the dishpan thrust out in front of her as though it held a royal feast and not two smelly dead things.