Tomorrow's Treasure (11 page)

Maybe he didn't mean to harm her after all. “I—I must go now. I'm late. My aunt will be worried.”

“Your aunt? Is her name Grace Havering?”

Evy nodded, thinking he was not ugly like the gargoyles guarding the gates of Rookswood estate. He was handsome, with light blue eyes and golden hair. His skin was browned by the sun, and his voice sounded strangely different. Accented, somehow. His clothes spoke of wealth, there was something like a diamond pin in his lapel, and a ring on his tanned hand sparkled with white stones.

“Do you like living with the vicar and his wife?”

She nodded. He looked rather sad, she thought. She felt self-conscious at the way he studied her hair and face … the way he frowned at her scuffed shoes and mended school clothes.

“I must go, sir. It gets dark early in the autumn. I promised Mrs. Croft I'd help with the bread.”

“Mrs. Croft?”

“She's the cook and housekeeper. She works at the vicarage.”

He nodded, and a little smile lifted his lips. “Do you like helping bake bread?”

“Sometimes—if it's sweet bread. Then I can lick the bowl and spoon.”

He laughed, and Evy smiled. There was something strong about him and he seemed to like her, even if he did not appear to like her clothes and shoes.

“I will let you go in a minute, then I will walk you back to the road. Tell me, Evy, do you ever visit Rookswood?”

“Rookswood? Oh no, sir.” How did he know her name?

“Would you like to?”

She started. Why would he ask such a question?

“Right now—with you?”

“No, not with me. With the squire's children, Arcilla and Rogan.”

Such a thing was impossible! And yet … something about this man convinced Evy he could manage the impossible. She shook her head. “Miss Arcilla does not approve of me, and Squire's two sons, Master Parnell and Master Rogan, think girls are a nuisance. They call me the rectory girl.”

His mouth curved again. “I see.”

She thought he did. “I'd rather visit there with you,” she said impulsively, surprising even herself.

“Would you?” There was a look on his face that she took for sadness. “That might be nice. But you see, I am going away today.”

“To London?”

“No, not to London.” He looked up toward a riding trail, and Evy looked there too as she heard the beat of hooves.

“I must go.”

Disappointment flooded her, though she could not imagine why. “Good-bye … Will I see you again?”

“Good-bye, Evy.”

He walked away into the darkened trees as the hoofbeats drew nearer. Soon he had disappeared altogether, and Evy stood looking after him.

In the distance she saw a horse coming closer on the riding trail. Its rider was low in the saddle, and the sound of hooves reverberated among the thick trees. The rider must have noticed her from the corner of his eye as he swept past, for he slowed down a short distance later. The majestic black horse, rippling with muscle, reared up on its hind legs. The rider, seemingly unaffected by such a display, managed the reins and turned the animal around. He rode back to where Evy stood, then calmed the horse by patting its sweating neck and talking to it as though it understood everything he said.

Evy recognized the rider as the squire's younger son, Rogan Chantry. Though she had never spoken with him, she had often seen him riding around the village, his Austrian trainer at his side. She also saw him attending Sunday morning services at the vicarage church with the rest of the squire's family and with a new aunt who had recently come to Rookswood from South Africa.

Rogan looked to be around Derwent's age, but he seemed more mature than the curates son. Evy thought this was due to Rogan's exposure to a wide range of experiences that Derwent, coming from a poor family, did not have. Rogan had the best tutors. His private tutor at. Rookswood came with recommendations fit for royalty. Of course, Rogan had little interaction with the village boys, though he did have friends—the sons and daughters of lords and earls, who came from London to visit him.

Evy stood in the knee-high vines and grasses growing beside the riding trail, eying the splendid horse, remembering how Derwent said Rogan Chantry's first love was racing and jumping.

“Are you all right?”

She swallowed at his low question. “Y-yes.”

He wore a dark blue riding jacket and breeches of expensive design. He was quite a handsome boy, with glossy black hair below a cocky cap, and his eyes were a rich chocolate brown with eyelashes as long as a girls. Those eyes seemed as electric as the coming storm, full of boundless, challenging energy. He was conceited and arrogant too—or so Evy had been warned by Mrs. Croft.

“You might have caused me to crash into those bushes.” he stated, his words and tone proving Mrs. Croft right. “I could have been thrown or worse—my horse injured. Never walk on a riding trail, little girl!”

What a lordly young buck! Stung, Evy momentarily ignored the manners so meticulously taught her by her aunt and uncle. “I was not even close to the trail, but
you
were riding too fast!”

He chose to ignore her jibe. “Are you with that silly red-haired boy you play with?” He glanced around, as though searching the wood.

“Derwent is not silly.”

“Yes, he is. As silly as a Billy goat nibbling happy weed. You had better leave my woods. There is a thrashing storm overhead about to break.”

“You do not own Grimston Wood. So I shall come here as often as I like.”

Rogan gave her a rather surprised second glance. “The Chantrys own most everything around here … including the woods.”

She should be afraid of him. Certainly she should think twice about challenging him. And yet … all Evy felt at the moment was exhilaration. She might not be a squire's daughter, but she had as much right to be in these woods as anyone of noble birth. “You do
not
own everything. You do not own the rectory, nor my cat, nor me.”

“I'm sure I do not want your old cat.”

“It is not old.”

“I'm sure you are not worth much either.”

She jutted her chin out at that. “Oh yes I am. My parents were very important.”

He considered that boastful challenge for a moment. “Pray tell, then, who were they?”

“Dr. and Mrs. Clyde Varley from South Africa.”

“Were they in diamonds?”

“No …”

A smile touched his mouth. “Then I daresay they were not important.”

She stamped her foot. “Yes, they were! They were
martyrs.
Killed in the Zulu War of 1879.”

He flicked the riding reins across his palm. “I shall find out about that. I have ways to discover things of importance. Where did they die?”

That stopped her for a moment. “I—I do not know.”

“No matter. I'll learn all there is to know about your parents and see if you are only boasting.”

“In the meantime I shall walk here anytime I please.”

A smile suddenly altered the young man's expression, and Evy stared. So this was why Alice Tisdale, the daughter of the village doctor, tittered about
swooning
over Rogan Chantry.

“Walk here anytime you please, and be ready to meet a bear—a big black one.”

“Bears? Here?” She scoffed but couldn't help a glance behind her. The action was not lost on Rogan.

“Why do you think I was riding so fast? It must have weighed five hundred pounds and had big white teeth. If I were you, I'd think twice before I came here alone.”

Just then, a voice shouted plaintively from the trees closer to the road: “Miss Evy? Are you there?”

“I'm over here, Derwent.”

He came through the trees and stopped when he saw Rogan astride the handsome black horse. Derwent's eyes widened, and he had the awestruck expression of one who had come in contact with royalty. He touched three fingers to his forelock.

“Afternoon, Master Rogan. Fancy meeting you here, sir.”

Evy could have cuffed Derwent for fawning over the knave before them.

Derwent ambled toward them, a bag of kindling on his back. He was tall for his age, and looked gaunt in his patched breeches. His crop
of russet hair was untidy from the wind, and in the nippy air, his rather long nose, salted with freckles, had taken on a rosy color. He was ogling Rogan's majestic horse and paying scant attention to where he stepped. His thick boot must have caught under a root, for he took a tumble, the bag of wood weighing him down in the moldy damp leaves.

Rogan laughed, and Evy shot him a glare before rushing to lift the bag from her friend. “Are you hurt, Derwent?”

“Ooh … I skinned my palms.”

“Poor Derwent.” She dragged the wood free, casting a glance at Rogan. The knave was simply sitting atop his beast, watching. Heaven knew it would tax him unduly to come help her!

Evy knelt beside Derwent. “You are always stumbling,” she said sadly. “Mrs. Croft says you may need spectacles. Can you stand?”

“His feet are too big is all,” Rogan observed with amusement. “Why do you baby him? I do not like girls who bleat like sheep.”

Evy shot Rogan another glare. “I do not care
what
manner of girls you like, Master Rogan. If you were a gallant boy, you would have climbed down from your fine horse to help me get that heavy wood off him.”

Derwent gaped at her as though she had sassed the king. Rogan, too, seemed at a loss. Then his lips thinned and he tapped his heels into the horse's side. It sprang forward and raced in the direction of the road.

“Ought you to have spoken like that to him, d'ye think, Miss Evy? The Chantrys are important folk in Grimston Way.”

“A Chantry or not, he is arrogant and conceited. He's been nourished with exceptional manners, you can count on it, so he ought to use them on everyone, not just the sons and daughters of the aristocracy. I'm as good as any of them!”

At this passionate outburst, Derwent gawked at her. “Sure you are. But, well, Master Rogan's a son of the squire, whereas you and me—”

She jumped to her feet. “He treats us like
servants.
I'm not a servant's child. His father did not know the great missionary David Livingstone like my father did. You know how they were both great doctors. Missionaries,” she repeated with emphasis.

Derwent ran his long, restless fingers through his russet hair. “I daresay you may be right, Miss Evy. Dr. Livingstone was a great explorer. I would like to go to Africa and explore the dark regions. I might likely find diamonds too.”

“Are you able to walk?” She squinted upward, but the trees were thick, and the dark sky was blotted out. “It's soon to pour.”

Derwent took a few steps and tested his ankles. “Good as can be. We best dash for it. Say—what happened to those leaves for Mrs. Havering?”

For some reason, Evy did not tell him about the stranger she had met. “The wind blew them all away.”

She hurried through Grimston Wood, and Derwent struggled to keep up, loaded as he was with his bag of kindling.

Evy called over her shoulder: “As for being an explorer … Curate Brown will be unhappy if he thinks you're not going to follow his steps in life.”

“Aye.”

“You are to be a curate just like he. Sons always follow in their father's steps.” She paused to let him rest a moment and catch his breath. “Your future waits here in Grimston Way.”

“Aye, and yours, too, I'm thinking.”

Evy thought of the gentleman who had spoken to her. Who could he have been? Had he been staying at Rookswood?

More lightning streaked across the darkening sky, prodding them onward.

Thick fir trees hugged the side of the road as they emerged from the woods. She could look up the road and glimpse the big stone gates leading onto Rookswood, so named because of the many black rooks that nested in the nearby wood and made such a fuss in the spring with their cawing.

Rookswood, prominent on the hill overlooking the village of Grimston Way, was even more mysterious and interesting to her now that the stranger had spoken to her and asked her if she wished to visit. Somehow the mere question gave her the exciting sensation of being
connected to that huge gray-stone mansion and its forbidden halls. At least, she secretly liked to imagine such things, even though she was not likely ever to be invited there.

Cold splashes of rain from the roiling dark sky splashed on Evy's face, shaking her from her daydreaming. She turned away from the mansion and started down the road toward the rectory.

Derwent switched the heavy load to his other shoulder and followed behind. “Your folks were saints all right, Miss Evy, and important ones too, dying the way they did in Zululand years ago, but most folks in Grimston Way agree that no one is as important as Squire and his family.”

It was rather a blow for her to hear that it was not her martyred parents who filled the good villagers with admiration, but the local squire, Sir Lyle. Well, she knew far better. No matter how she might hold the squire in respect as master of the village, the ofttimes arrogant Chantrys could not compare with Dr. Clyde and Junia Varley.

“I do not believe you, Derwent Brown! Why, my parents' photograph hangs in the rectory hall. Aunt Grace says I look just like my mum.” She threw him a glance. “I do not see Squire's photograph there.”

“She said that? I don't see it, myself. If you don't mind my saying so, your hair is—er, prettier. Goldenlike. Your mum's is black, like your aunt's.”

Evy stopped on the road and turned to face him.

“So? My hair will turn darker when I get older. What are you trying to say, Derwent Brown?”

His eyes widened. “Say? Why, nothing Miss Evy. Nothing at all. Just that I think you're prettier—but I wasn't suggesting—” He stopped, red filling his freckled cheeks.

The rain splashed cold and startling against her face. The gusts of wind whipped at her hooded cape as a nameless fear suddenly whipped at her heart. Evy turned and ran down the road toward the village green.