Chapter Thirty-Two
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
TUESDAY
Dev gets out of his tiny car surprisingly quickly considering his size. He’s smiling as he comes around to open the passenger door for me. But then he pauses.
“You look skeptical. Everything okay?”
“Nope, all good.” That’s a lie. I’m wary of the matchbox car and disconcerted by the extremely good dream I had about Dev last night.
I remember only that we were naked and wrapped in a dark green velour blanket.
It was so embarrassingly lovey-dovey, it almost made me want to cancel our hike, but when I floated the idea at breakfast, Wyatt wouldn’t hear of it.
“He’s smoking hot and obviously likes you,” Wyatt had said. “Go forth and frolic.”
I can frolic. No biggie, I tell myself. Chill out. I’ll have a lovely day with Dev walking the Jane Eyre trail, climbing up to Stanage Edge, and seeing actual moors, which I’ve only read about in books. I hope they’re wind-swept and boggy and depressing in a kind of mesmerizing way.
Once we’re out of the village, Dev turns onto a two-lane highway and speeds up, going too fast for someone driving on the wrong side of the road. I crack the window for fresh air and pray I don’t get carsick. When we come to a fork in the road, Dev bears right, toward Hathersage.
“Tell me something about Stanage Edge,” I say. “Is it famous for anything other than being beautiful?”
“Robin Hood hid from the Sheriff of Nottingham there, in a place called Robin Hood’s Cave.”
“Funny coincidence, Robin Hood finding a cave named after himself.”
“Isn’t it though?”
I love the way Dev smiles at me.
“There’s a churchyard in Hathersage with an unusually long grave that’s said to contain the remains of Robin Hood’s gargantuan henchman, Little John.”
“He was real?”
“Probably not. But do you want to visit his grave anyway?”
I can’t wait to tell Amity about this.
Hathersage has many of the obligatory features of a charming English village: an old stone church with a tall steeple, an inn that looks like it probably has mutton on the menu, adorable shops, and inviting pubs.
There are also three large outdoor stores, which Dev tells me cater to the hikers, rock climbers, and hang gliders drawn to Stanage Edge.
“It’s got a thousand different climbing routes,” he says.
We park outside of a tearoom and walk down to a narrow lane that brings us to a stile.
We pass through and follow the footpath across a meadow.
Sheep watch us with their dull eyes as we climb the gentle slope.
I pick a golden buttercup and hold it under my chin as we walk, remembering how my mother used to do that to me.
She said if my chin glowed yellow, which it always did, it meant that I loved butter.
It was true, I adored butter. How did the flower know?
My mother said it was magic, and I believed her. I drop the buttercup.
The path flattens out and Dev says, “This may seem bizarre, but you wouldn’t want to run a little, would you?”
It’s an odd request, but I’m wearing sneakers and running might be just what I need to dispel some of my nervous energy.
“Actually, I would.”
I start at a quick pace, which I think surprises Dev, because it takes him a few seconds to catch up.
As the path climbs, we both go faster, hopping over stones and tree roots.
I haven’t run in a while, and it feels good to move like this, to get my heart working.
Dev passes me, letting out a little whoop when he jumps over a log in the path, which makes me laugh.
Moving like this, not for exercise but just for fun, makes me feel free.
“Race you to that tree,” I say, and speed up.
My thighs are burning as I pull even with Dev.
The path is too narrow for both of us. Dev takes the lead again, and I strain to catch up.
I get close, and I imagine grabbing his torso and tackling him, rolling down the hill together.
But he pulls away and is several lengths ahead of me.
I push hard, but my legs lag with heaviness and I’m gasping for air.
Dev reaches the tree first. He bends over, hands on his knees, breathing hard.
When I reach him, I collapse onto the grass on the side of the path.
“That was glorious, until it wasn’t,” I say.
“Agreed.”
“I’m not ready to get up,” I say.
“I’ll join you, then.”
We’re both on our backs on the grass, looking up at the enormous oak tree.
“I didn’t expect you’d want to run, let alone race,” he says.
“I’m feeling exceptionally free. I am off duty.
And this”—I lift an arm up, toward the oak tree and its branches stretching out, the leaves and the blue beyond—“this is an excellent place to be on vacation. Do you know I haven’t had a real vacation in more than four years?
The last one was with my grandmother. We drove to Maine for a week.
We swam every day in frigid water, picked blueberries, and ate an obscene amount of chowder and clam strips. ”
“Four years?” Dev says. “I’ll never understand Americans.”
A bird swoops above, perches on a limb. Bobs its head this way and that and flies off. The oak branches form a canopy that shades us.
“How old do you think this tree is?” I say.
“I don’t know. Three hundred, four hundred years old?”
“Wow.”
“How old are you?” Dev says.
I turn to look at him.
“I’m thirty-four.”
“Fancy that, I’m thirty-four too,” he says.
We’re lying very close to each other. Not on a bed of moss, but still.
A gust of wind rustles the leaves above us.
I sit up. After a moment, Dev pops up and brushes off the back of his pants.
He puts out a hand to help me stand. We continue following the path, which winds through narrow tree trunks.
The silence is starting to feel awkward, but then Dev tells me he wasn’t keen on the murder-mystery week when he first heard about it.
“I didn’t see how it would be good for Willowthrop to promote itself as something fake, ye olde murder village,” he says. “But Germaine won me over. I’m all for saving the community pool. And it’s certainly bringing new business to my bar.”
He explains that Willowthrop, like country villages throughout England, experienced a real estate boom during the pandemic, with city people snapping up holiday properties at exorbitant prices.
It made the housing situation even worse; people who grew up in the village can’t afford to stay.
Now that people can travel anywhere again, the appeal of a local vacation in the Peak has dropped off.
But the housing is still unavailable. Many of the newly purchased properties in Willowthrop sit empty.
“If my mum didn’t have a house with a separate cottage, I probably wouldn’t be living here either.”
“You wouldn’t live in the house with her?” It looked big enough.
“I don’t know. I’m not sure I’m that good a son.”
Ahead of us is an old stone house, solid and grand, almost like a castle. It’s three stories high, with mullioned windows, several chimneys, and battlements around the top. Dev takes out his phone and reads aloud.
“This is North Lees Hall, which is said to be the inspiration for Thornfield Hall in Jane Eyre ,” Dev says.
“Said to be?” I tell him about the Rutland Arms Hotel and the Jane Austen myth and why the phrase makes me suspicious.
But looking up at the house, I can see it.
Jane Eyre standing right there on the second floor, looking as plain and simple as so many wrongly assumed her to be and gazing out the windows wishing for more than life as a neglected governess.
Dev turns back to his phone. “This might be more than just a legend. It says here that Charlotte Bronte visited her friend Ellen Nussey in Hathersage in 1845, during which she paid two or three visits to North Lees Hall. And this is interesting, ‘a persistent local legend’ has it that the first mistress of the hall, Agnes Ashurst, was confined to a padded room and died in a fire.”
“You’re telling me Mr. Rochester’s madwoman in the attic was inspired by a real person? No way!”
“Does it matter if it was?” Dev asks. “Either way, it’s a good story, right?”
“Of course it is,” I say. I’m tempted to commend Dev for having read Charlotte Bronte—back home, it’s the rare guy who wouldn’t mix up Jane Eyre and Jane Austen—but maybe this kind of thing is common knowledge in England.
The path brings us to a road, which we cross before picking up a new trail.
It twists and turns and slowly ascends. The rocks in and around the path give way to larger and larger boulders.
Soon I can see Stanage Edge in the distance—it’s not a mountain, as I’d imagined, but more like a ledge or a cliff made of piles and piles of enormous boulders.
We come upon some rock climbers, sitting on a flat rock having a snack, their ropes hanging from the ledge above them. One of them raises a hand.
“Oy, Dev. Taking the easy route up today?”
“No shame in it,” Dev says. “I’ll join you chaps tomorrow, yeah?”
“You didn’t say you were a climber,” I say, as we continue up the path.
“You didn’t ask.”
We keep climbing, and then I see what looks like a flock of prehistoric birds flying in the distance. Hang gliders. I count fifteen of them.
“Are you a glider too?” I ask.
“Nah, I like having my feet on the ground.”