Wonders of the Invisible World (11 page)

“One month, three weeks, four days and some odd hours. Surely that’s long enough.”

“Surely it must be,” she agreed, “in some countries. You would bring my father half a dozen cows and he would give you his blessing and me. If he were still alive.”

“If I had any cows. Perhaps I should offer some to Adrian.”

“Perhaps that would be proper.”

“How soon,” he begged, “is soon?”

“Not soon enough.” She held her breath, thinking, then looked at him helplessly. “Do you think two months might be considered within the pale of propriety?”

“Miss Slade, may I remind you that as an artist you are already beyond the pale?”

She laughed breathlessly, a sound he had heard only rarely during the past weeks.

“Then when two months have passed since the night we met you may ask me again, and I will answer with all my heart.”

“Well, then,” he said, clasping her fingers gently in both hands and smiling mistily down at them. “That’s settled. I’ll start collecting some shaggy northern cattle from the hills the moment we get there.”

The lake house, a great square four stories high, was built of stone as gray as the water. It stood alone near the edge of the water, its lawns and gardens surrounded on all sides by wild shrubs, gorse and heather, and juniper twisted by the winds. A stony hill rose behind it, hiding the village on the other side. The road that wound up and over the hill from the village to the house was an ancient thing; stones runneled with archaic letters and odd staring faces appeared out of the shrubbery now and then as though they watched all who journeyed along the road.

“What are those peculiar stones?” Winifred wondered. She was a paler version of Adrian and Emma, rather tall and bony without Emma’s grace, her hair more sandy than gold. But she shared their even temperament and fearless interest in unusual things.

“No one really knows,” Ned answered. “The locals have various tales about them: they mark graves, or once gave directions to travelers, or even that they’re doorposts into fairyland.”

“Really?” Coombe said. “How wonderful. I intend to see if they work. If I vanish, you’ll know where I’ve gone.”

“You’d better not,” Adrian told him. “You’re in charge of catching our fish.”

“My caretakers, Mr. and Mrs. Noakes, know a lot of local tales. Mrs. Noakes is housekeeper and cook; she can do uncanny things with a grouse. Mr. Noakes tends the gardens and keeps the house from falling down. Sometimes I think they’re as old as it is. They’re its household gods.”

The crowd, smelling hot bread and savory meat as soon as Noakes opened the door to the rattle of wagons, seemed willing to worship. Mrs. Noakes, round as an egg with a crown of gray braids, greeted them all calmly, unperturbed by the numbers. She dispatched them to various rooms, pointing directions with the wooden spoon in her hand. Noakes, a burly old man with eyebrows like moth wings, began hauling their baggage upstairs.

“You gave us short notice,” he remarked to Ned. “But Mrs. Noakes managed to air out the rooms and find beds for everyone. You came just in time for the strawberries in the garden. I’ve checked the boats; they’re both sound, and all the fishing gear is in order. Word is that the sky should clear up soon; all the signs are there, they say, though I couldn’t tell that myself.”

“You are a paragon, Noakes. I’m sorry we didn’t give you much time to prepare. We made up our minds very suddenly.”

His eyes, gray as the stone walls around them, crinkled with a smile. “It’s good for the house to be full, makes it feel young again.”

Inside, the house was as simple as its outer lines suggested. The whitewashed rooms were large and full of light; windows and doors were framed with solid oak; thresholds were worn and polished with age. The odd unframed oil or strip of embroidery hung here and there; beyond that, only the views of water and blooming heather and rocky hills adorned the rooms. The party spent some time exploring, watching the sunset out of different windows, exclaiming over the solitude, the colors, the potential for their brushes. A herd of wild ponies galloping through the gorse rendered them nearly incoherent.

Then the last piece of luggage found its place, the sun vanished, and they clattered down the stairs to supper.

Afterwards, they rearranged the vast drawing room, pulled chairs and couches and cushions taken from other rooms as close to the enormous fireplace as possible. They took turns reading out of ancient volumes they had discovered around the house: obscure poetry, a farmer’s journal, a collection of local folktales. Marwood Stokes, who had a fine and fruity voice, was reading about a pesky household hobgoblin whose tricks could drive people to leave their homes, and who would pack itself in among their possessions and follow them along to the next, when someone pounded at the door.

Ned, half-listening, heard Noakes’s footsteps on the flagstones, and then a brief exchange. Then the drawing room opened and there stood Bram Wilding, smiling genially upon them.

“Sorry I’m late.”

They all stared at him wordlessly. Then Adrian threw a cushion at him. “You weren’t invited, Wilding. Go away.”

“I know,” he said imperturbably. “I’ve got a room in the village. But I couldn’t let you have all the fun without me. Nor did I want my Boudicca out of sight, though I promise—” He held up his hand as Ned and Adrian protested vigorously and incomprehensibly at once. “I promise I won’t ask her to work as long as she is here.” He looked at her; she sat motionless in an old rocking chair, her face colorless and expressionless. “May I stay?” he asked her. “I only came to paint a landscape.”

She shifted slightly, let her hand slip beneath the chair arm to rest lightly on Ned’s shoulder, where he sat on a cushion beside her. “Here I am not Boudicca,” she said softly. “I am Emma Slade, whom you barely know. You are my brother Adrian’s friend; it is of no interest to me if you stay or go.”

“Oh, Adrian, let him stay,” Winifred, who hardly knew him, said kindly. “He has come so far. And country darkness is so—dark.”

Adrian cocked a brow at Bram. “If my sister says you go, you go. Is that agreed?”

Wilding bowed his head, added cheerfully, “I brought gifts of appeasement from the city. Bottles of brandy, baskets of fruit, and Valentine DeMorgan’s latest book of poetry, fresh from the press.”

They all exclaimed at that. “Produce it,” Coombe demanded. “Read and prove your worthiness.”

Mrs. Noakes put her head through the doorway. “Pardon me, Mr. Bonham, am I to make up another bed?”

“Mr. Wilding has a room in the village,” Ned said firmly.

“Oh, dear. Mr. Noakes misunderstood and sent the wagon on its way back to the village. Should he wait up, then, to take Mr. Wilding back?”

Ned sighed. “He’s liable to be waiting all night.” He hesitated a moment, then said tersely to Wilding, who was trying to look meek and penitent and not succeeding well at either, “You can stay tonight, if Mrs. Noakes can find you a bed.”

“There’s a narrow bed in an attic room,” Mrs. Noakes suggested doubtfully. “It leaks in the rain.”

“That sounds perfect.”

“You are too kind,” Wilding murmured.

“I,” Emma said, rising abruptly, “think I will say goodnight. I’m very tired. Come with me, Winifred?”

Her cousin joined her with a rather wistful glance back at the party and the fascinating newcomer. He smiled cordially at them, then stretched out on the carpet in front of the fire as the door closed behind them, and promptly began to read about a young woman wasting away from a broken heart as the violets He had given her withered before her eyes in their vase, a poem of such sweet and lugubrious melancholy that Wilding had most of the party weeping with laughter within a dozen lines. Adrian, sipping port and watching Wilding, did not find him amusing; nor did Ned.

But there was nothing to be done that night, and Emma, he reminded himself, might prefer to find her own ways of dealing with Wilding in the light of day.

Ned rose early, trying to be quiet as he gathered his sketchbook and watercolors and boots and took them all downstairs. As always, Mrs. Noakes was earlier; the sideboard was laden with hot tea and scones, boiled eggs, smoked salmon and sausages, and strawberries from the garden.

As Ned stood in his stockings, drinking scalding tea and eating a sausage with his fingers, the door opened and delighted him with the unexpected vision of Emma.

“I heard someone creep past my door, and looked to see who it was,” she said. “I hoped it might be you.”

She brought her sketchbook down as well, her pencil case and a broad, well-weathered hat. He happily poured her tea, brought it to her as she sat.

“I’m going down to the lake to see what I can make of the water and those rocky hills in the distance,” he said.

“Oh, good. I’ll come with you.”

“Yes.”

“We could take a boat,” she suggested eagerly. “Row out onto the water and draw. Shall we?” She rose, began filling the pockets of her painting smock with scones, strawberries wrapped in a napkin, and a couple of eggs. “Let’s go now before anyone else is up; the sun is rising and it’s so beautiful out there now.”

“All right,” he said, managing to gulp tea and put his boots on at the same time. Like children trying to be quiet, they only succeeded in dropping things and snorting with laughter as they made their way out of the house into the morning.

A low mist still hung over the lake, obscuring the water, but the clouds were fraying above their heads, and sunlight broke through from behind the hills, illumining the jagged slopes. Raindrops sparkled on every tree branch and grass blade. The air smelled of strawberries and bracken. Ned took deep, exuberant breaths of it as they made their way across the lawn toward the water. In the boathouse, someone moved. Noakes, Ned saw, as the old man raised a hand; he had probably brought the fishing gear down.

Emma came to a sudden stop, gripping Ned. “I saw something,” she breathed.

“That’s just Noakes.”

“No, something in the mist—something white moving across the water.”

“A wild swan, maybe.”

“Maybe.” She started moving again, her long strides free and confident, he saw, when she was in the open. Sunlight touched her hair, turned it into an aura of gold around her face, and his breath caught. Entranced, he stood still, watching her move across the morning. Missing him, she turned, laughing, walking backwards and beckoning him on.

Then her face changed, became guarded, inexpressive; he guessed at what she had seen behind him and sighed.

He turned. Wilding, his own steps lithe and quick, was gaining on them. He, too, had a sketchbook under his arm, a pencil case in his pocket.

“Good morning,” he called cheerfully.

“It was,” Ned muttered. Emma had already started on her way again, firmly ignoring the interloper. She went down the path to the boathouse, causing Wilding to ask promptly when he caught up with Ned, “Are you rowing out? What a splendid idea.” He clapped Ned lightly, irritatingly on the shoulder, his eyes following Emma. “Thanks for the bed, by the way. Creaky thing; my feet hung over the end. But amusing.” He had continued his brisk walk before he finished talking, leaving Ned in his wake. “I just need a word with Miss Slade—”

“Wilding!” Ned protested, hurrying after him. “She came here to rest.”

“I know,” Wilding called soothingly over his shoulder. “I know. Miss Slade!”

She didn’t answer. She had nearly reached the lake, where the mist, beginning to burn off, revealed reeds near the boathouse, a strip of water, and a flock of baby ducks paddling after their mother. Ned, flushed and angry, caught up with Wilding, nearly plowing into him as Wilding stopped abruptly.

“Look at that,” he said breathlessly.

Nick, seeing for the moment only Wilding’s excellently tailored back, stepped aside and looked over his shoulder.

A horse as white as the mist stood on the shoreline. Emma had seen it, too; she walked toward it slowly, one hand outstretched. Ned heard her speaking to it, half-laughing, half-crooning, and remembered the country girl she was, raised among all kinds of creatures and not likely to be afraid of a wild pony.

It looked quite a bit bigger than the local hill ponies; Ned wondered if it had escaped from someone’s pasture. It stood very still, watching Emma come, mist snorting out of its nostrils. It looked like a hunter, Ned guessed, realizing how big it was as Emma, his rangy goddess, moved closer to it.

“It’s perfect,” Wilding whispered.

“What?”

“I wanted a horse just like that to put behind Boudicca.”

“Good. You’ve found it. You paint it while Miss Slade and I go rowing.”

“No, I need her—” He started walking again, calling, “Miss Slade!”

She shook her head as though at a midge. The horse nuzzled her fingers; she stepped closer, running her hands along its mane. Wilding, hurrying so quickly he was nearly running, cried her name again.

“Miss Slade!”

She glanced at him finally, her face set and colorless. Then someone else shouted—Noakes, who never raised his voice. She gripped the thick mane, pulled herself up as she must have done countless times as a child, riding the placid farm horses bareback, with an eye-catching flash of knee above her boot before she settled her skirts.