Silent on the Moor (34 page)

“And Gypsies,” Bellmont put in. He had been remarkably silent, but nothing had escaped his notice.

Driffield brushed this aside. “I always let them camp on my land. Bad luck not to, you know.”

He waved a courteous hand to Rosalie and John-the-Baptist who had maintained some distance from our visitors.

Driffield nodded toward the hole. “Bit of trouble?”

“Not at all,” Brisbane said coolly. “It is a mine, actually. We mean to open it again. So I am afraid I cannot sell the estate. My apologies, Lady Harriet,” he added with a nod in her direction.

“A mine will be excellent for the local folk,” she said. “Must keep the villagers employed.” Clearly the duke had raised her to take a keen interest in the lives of those dependent upon their goodwill. “Perhaps we can sort something
out and purchase the house itself, but lease the moor for purposes of hunting if we promise not to interfere with the operations of the mine?” she asked hopefully.

Brisbane smiled. “You have a fine head for business, Lady Harriet. And I am certain something can be arranged.”

“Excellent,” said the duke, clearly relieved that his imperious daughter was not to be thwarted. He seemed to see me for the first time and I was aware of the wide streaks of mud across my costume and my hair, dripping wet and hanging free of pins.

“Do forgive my appearance, your Grace,” I began, but Driffield merely waved a hand.

“Think nothing of it, good lady. I admire an athletic woman who is not afraid of a little dirt in the pursuit of sport.”

Bellmont choked a little, but I smiled graciously.

“Yes, I am terribly athletic,” I agreed.

I went to my brother and raised my face for a kiss.

He obliged me and I whispered into his ear. “Get down and shake hands with Brisbane. He is going to be your brother-in-law.”

He opened his mouth, then shut it abruptly, the little muscle in his jaw working furiously. “I suppose there is no point in trying to talk you out of this disaster?”

“None whatsoever.”

He paused a long moment, then asked, “Will he make you happy?”

Bellmont’s wide green eyes were anxious, and I put a hand to his face, smiling up at him. “Do I look happy?”

He studied my face, took in my entire figure from filthy
clothes to abominable hair. “I have never seen you more radiant,” he admitted. He kissed the top of my head and slid from the saddle.

He went to Brisbane and extended his hand. “I understand congratulations are in order, brother,” he said stiffly, and I knew precisely what that gesture had cost him.

Brisbane accepted his hand and I went to stand beside my betrothed.

“I only hope you know what you are getting into,” Bellmont said with a sigh.

“I am quite certain,” I told him tartly.

Bellmont lifted a brow. “I was talking to Brisbane.”

He shook his head and remounted, leading the way back to Grimsgrave.

T
here is little more to say; I married him. The words are familiar, but the simplicity of them holds the whole world within. We married on Midsummer Day, in the little church of St. Barnabas at Blessingstoke, with my father’s dearest friend, Uncle Fly, the vicar of Blessingstoke, to perform the ceremony. Most of my family were present, which meant the day was little short of Bedlam.

As it was my second marriage it ought to have been a quiet affair, but nothing to do with the Marches is ever quiet. My father smiled through his tears as he gave me away, and the little church was crowded with my relations and Brisbane’s Scottish uncle, the Duke of Aberdour, nearly ninety and almost totally deaf. He shouted through the service, demanding to know what we said until Brisbane roared at
him, “I just promised to endow her with all my worldly goods, now be quiet!” To which the duke replied, “I didn’t know you
had
any worldly goods,” and subsided into muttering for the rest of the ceremony.

In fact, Brisbane had rather a lot of worldly goods. The mine had apparently been closed when the Romans were driven out of the north, and never opened again until the weight of Mariah Young’s coffin and the sodden earth had broken it open. In death, she had given her son the means to live his life as he pleased, and it felt like a benediction from the grave. Brisbane had defiantly reburied her in the chapel graveyard at Grimsgrave, flouting church authority, but then Brisbane was never one to observe rules he does not respect. Rosalie promised to lay flowers when they journeyed past each summer, for she returned to the road with John-the-Baptist. I did not know if we would ever see them again, but I knew she would keep her promise to Brisbane.

The Duke of Driffield settled matters quickly, paying a generous sum for the remains of Grimsgrave Hall and engaging Mrs. Butters and Minna and Godwin. Minna was training to be the housekeeper under Mrs. Butters’ tutelage. Mrs. Butters, who might have held the post herself, was content to remain in the kitchen, and Godwin was very nearly beside himself at the handsome flock of sheep the duke permitted him to purchase with an eye to re-establishing the livestock. Work had already begun at the house by the time Portia and I left, and a new lightness had come over the place. The first thing Lady Harriet had done was burn the tapestry of Allenbys, claiming it was ugly and full of moths. She might have been right. It seemed a little sad to
destroy the record of such a long and noble lineage, but I thought of all the pain and suffering that lineage had caused, the slow descent into madness, and I was glad for Lady Harriet. Even if ghosts walked at Grimsgrave, they would never stand against her sound common sense and practicality. When I last saw Grimsgrave, Lady Harriet was having the black pond in front of the house drained to make a flower garden.

Portia agreed to take Florence, as Puggy would not be separated from his little family. I still had Grim, and Brisbane had acquired Rook, the lurcher, who refused to travel with the Gypsies, but simply lay down in the road until Brisbane came to fetch him. I did not know how we were going to manage travelling with him, but he was surprisingly delicate in his habits, and I grew fond of him very quickly.

The wedding itself was arranged with tremendous speed and very little trouble. I simply let my sisters fuss over the details and spent every moment I could with Brisbane. They dressed me in a very suitable, elegant gown of heavy lavender silk, a nod to the mourning I no longer wore, and a wreath of lavender blossoms in my hair. I did not wear a veil, and by the time the dancing was finished, the lavender had broken to bits, twining in my hair only to fall out later in Brisbane’s hands, like so many pieces of confetti. Brisbane was dressed in beautiful black, with the purest white shirt and waistcoat, a picture of elegance in spite of his tumbled hair and the slight shadow at his jaw.

We stayed the night at my little house, the Rookery, with no one to wait upon us. I dismissed Morag for the night, and sent Aquinas up to my father’s home at Bellmont Abbey. We
were alone, finally, and I stared at the ring upon my left hand, a slender band of diamonds.

“I told you I didn’t need diamonds,” I chided him. “Plain silver would have been enough.”

“It is plain silver on the underside, and I had it engraved,” he told me. He slid it off my finger and rolled it in his fingers, catching the light.

A chain of letters had been incised inside, “‘HIIii116,’” I read aloud. “Another Shakespearean code, and a simple one.”

“You know what it means?” he asked, settling me onto his lap. I put one arm about his neck and held out my other hand for him to replace my ring.

“
Hamlet,
of course. ‘Doubt thou the stars are fire, doubt that the sun doth move, doubt truth to be a liar, but never doubt I love.’” I put my brow to his. “I have never doubted it, you know. Not really. But it is a lovely quote.”

He slanted me a wicked look. “Well, it was either that or
All’s Well That Ends Well,
Act One, scene one, line two hundred twenty-one.”

I furrowed my brow. “I do not remember that one.”

He slid an arm under my knees and rose effortlessly to his feet. “‘Get thee a good husband, and use him as he uses thee.’”

I was still laughing when he kicked the bedroom door closed behind us.

What followed was a revelation. It is astonishing that so simple a thing can change everything, but there it is. Before we went into that room, the world was as it has always been, but by the time I awoke, long afterward as dawn was just beginning to silver the shadows, my entire life had changed. I
stretched and yawned, sinuous and satisfied as a cat. It woke Brisbane who opened one eye and grinned at me sleepily.

“You have ruined that corset in your haste,” I told him severely. “That was French lace, you know,” I added, mourning the loss of the beautiful pale violet confection. I had ordered it from Paris at great cost and worn it precisely once.

“I’ll buy you another. Besides, it is nothing compared to my complaint. You snore,” he said thickly.

I hit him with my pillow, sending a shower of feathers into the air. One settled on his shoulder and I blew it off. “I do not. You must have been dreaming of another wife.”

He took the pillow and put it under his head, leaving me nowhere to rest mine except his chest. I nestled there, one hand toying with the crisp, dark hair that spread toward his belly. Another interlude,
vastly
more interesting than those on the moor, took place and the sun was fully up by the time we had concluded our exchange of affections.

“We haven’t even talked about the wedding trip yet,” I said, yawning broadly.

Brisbane quirked a brow at me in a gesture I knew so well. “If that was where your thoughts were, remind me to apply myself more thoroughly next time,” he said with a touch of asperity.

“Oh, no. I only thought of it after, I assure you. If you apply yourself more thoroughly I don’t think I will be fit to leave this bed,” I consoled.

He nodded. “That is better. As to the wedding trip, I have had Monk on the Continent, scouting suitable destinations. He seems to think Venice would be lovely, or perhaps a villa in Greece?”

I stared at him. “Monk has been looking for a house? For us?”

“Of course. You don’t think I would marry you and drag you off to someplace, sight unseen? I trust him implicitly. He always thinks to inquire about things like hygienic arrangements,” Brisbane said, raising a brow significantly. “I gave him a list of places I compiled months ago and sent him off to look them over.”

“I cannot believe you have been thinking about this marriage,
planning
this marriage for months.”

He put a hand through my hair, twisting it around his fingers. “I have been planning it since that first interview in your study at Grey House, a few weeks after Edward’s death. You were all wide eyes and tart tongue, and you insisted to me Edward could not have been murdered.”

“You are joking,” I said, tickling his chin with a lock of my hair.

He shook his head, wrapping his arms about me and pulling me closer still. “I seem to recall you are the one always telling me to respect the sight,” he said, only slightly mocking.

“You had a vision? About me?” He did not answer at first, and I began to nip at him with my fingers until he replied.

“Ow, yes, stop that, you vicious little beast. I had a vision of you, the first time I stepped into Grey House, the night Edward died. That was why I kept staring at you while he lay on the bed, convulsing between us. I had seen you standing before me, your hand in mine. I could not hear what was said between us, but there was a sense of belonging to you, as if I had always known you somehow, and you had been waiting for me. It came as rather a nasty shock to realise you were already married.”

“Why were you so cold to me then? I thought you quite hated me.”

“I hated what was happening to you,” he said, brushing a bit of hair out of my eyes. “I knew you would suffer when he died. Besides, I never quite thought of myself as the marrying sort.”

I stared at him, comprehension dawning. “You were afraid of me.”

“Quite terrified,” he said, smiling. He kissed my palm then, and I settled back against him.

“I cannot imagine that,” I told him. “You, so coolly disdainful and dismissive. Terrified of me as I stood trembling in front of you, thinking you were the most alarming man I had ever met. I cannot believe you have ever been afraid of anything.”

“It was a rather novel experience, I assure you,” he said, tracing a path along the small of my back. I thought of the journey that had brought us together, the earl’s daughter and the country-bred Gypsy lad, and I marvelled at the workings of fate. So many little turnings along the way, and if either of us had taken a different path, we would never have found one another.

“Tell me,” I commanded. “Tell me about your adventures. I know you have been to China, to Egypt. I want to know it all. Tell me about the Orient first. Is it very exotic?”

Without warning, Brisbane, my partner and now my husband, rolled me smoothly onto my back and put his lips to my ear. “Later,” he said, applying himself enthusiastically to the conjugal arts.

“But I want to know about China,” I said, laughing as he did something rather new and thoroughly enjoyable.

He drew back, looked at me with those mesmerising witch-black eyes. He put a firm finger across my lips. “That is a tale for another time.”

From Grimsgave Hall, Yorkshire

Dearest Aunt Hermia,

How silly you are! I cannot imagine why Portia has embellished her letter so, but I can promise you things here in Yorkshire are not nearly so dire as she imagines. I think her quarrels with Jane have left her peevish. I do not know what you hear on that score, but I beg you to invite Jane to tea and speak firmly to her. Goodness knows I do not approve meddling in the lives of others, but something simply must be done about the pair of them.

The estate of which Brisbane has taken possession is called Grimsgrave Hall, and the name, I confess, is rather apt. It lies at the edge of the moor, where I am told there is very good hunting for grouse, although at present it is rather empty and well,
moorish.
It is an old house, although not nearly as old as Bellmont Abbey—17
^th
century, I should think and in its day it must have been a handsome place. (Really, Portia ought not to have used the phrase “godforsaken pile”. It could be quite nice with a bit of fixing up.) True, one of the wings has crumbled to ruin, but I suppose that could happen to anyone. There is a pretty little pond in front of the house, and despite what Portia says, I do not believe it is stocked with the bodies of depressed housemaids who have drowned themselves. It is a bit weedy to be sure, and gives off a rank smell when the wind is blowing, which as we are on a moor is rather constant. But, as I say, we have no cause to believe it is the site of serial suicides, although that would explain why the staff are so few in number. The rooms are quite modest, we are told, since the old wing fell down, and the Hall can be kept clean with very few pairs of hands. Of course, it could use a few more hands, as the beds are a little damp, if I am to be honest, and one has to exercise caution in sitting lest great clouds of dust or colonies of spiders be disturbed. Accommodations on the whole are acceptable, if rather medieval. Portia and I are sharing, and the bedroom is furnished with a chamber pot. I shall draw a veil upon that delicate subject and leave the rest to your imagination.

The occupants of the house were a bit of a surprise, although perhaps not the “catastrophic disaster” to which Portia refers. The previous owner, a very civil elderly person called Lady Allenby, is still in residence with her daughters, Hilda—who I must own is rather nasty and says as little to us as she possibly can, preferring to occupy herself with her poultry—and Ailith, who is a little too pretty for comfort. (Did Portia really call her “angelic”? I must speak to Portia about her standards.) In any event, they are rather comfortably ensconced, at least until Brisbane fits a cottage for their use, and we do not look for them to leave for some time. The house is equipped with a very excellent cook-housekeeper, the rightly-named Mrs. Butters. She is a bustling, energetic sort of person with a very light hand for pastry. I will endeavour to secure her recipe for Scottish shortbread, as it is much crisper than Cook’s and just the thing on a brisk afternoon with a cup of tea. There is a scullery maid called Jetty, but she is a bit simple—as scullery maids so often are—and has little sense and limited conversation. She occasionally shrieks for no reason and throws her apron over her head, but Mrs. Butters does not seem to be alarmed by this, so we have learned to continue eating our meals and ignore her. (Yes, dearest. We take our meals in the kitchen. I did say “medieval”, did I not?)

Valerius has taken it upon himself to look into the drains of the little village nearby. I cannot think it a very nice hobby, however, it keeps him happy and occupied, and with Valerius one can hardly ask for more.

I am a little alarmed about Florence. She has grown quite stout, although the trip to Yorkshire seems to have upset her. She merely picks at her food and keeps looking at me reproachfully. I suppose I ought to consign her to your care when I travel, but I thought the moorland air would be good for her. As usual, Grim has been a hardy and stalwart companion, and I have got quite accustomed to carrying him along. I only hesitate to take him on sea voyages. You know what birds are.

As for Brisbane himself, he is proving impossible as usual. I hardly know what to think, for one minute he is pleased
—demonstrably pleased—
to see me; the next he is quarrelsome and peevish. Perhaps you are right and he is dyspeptic. It would certainly explain a lot…

I must dash. Miss Ailith has taken me to meet an acquaintance of hers, a Gypsy woman who lives in a cottage upon the moor, and I have promised to call upon her today. She reminds me of you a little, dearest, although I cannot think why. Perhaps it is because when one is with her, there is the oddest sense that all one’s troubles are really not so terrible and that all will come right in the end. As you can tell from that bit of sentimentality, I miss you dreadfully. Do give my regards to the other ladies at the meeting of the advisory board of the Refuge for Fallen Women and give Father a kiss and Bellmont a pinch from me.

With fondest affection, I am your loving niece—

Julia