Eight
Preparing to ride out the following afternoon, Gavin was not in the best of moods. Rose had declared she didn’t wish to come on the planned expedition. She’d walked away from him to go down to the kitchen and speak to a servant, and then she had disappeared onto the moors on foot so that he couldn’t try to persuade her. It was no good searching for her, even if he’d had the time. She could evade him. That had been established years ago. Rose would not be found if she didn’t want to be. He had to go without her. He had no choice in the matter.
He didn’t like having no choice. No one likes it, pointed out an acerbic voice in his head. Do you suppose Rose does?
She’d had her way, he retorted silently. She’d gone off.
Yes, to wander alone after she’d danced so joyously at the Milsomes’, responded the irritating voice.
That had been a wonderful sight to see, Gavin acknowledged as he rode down the lane from Yerndon. And an even better one to join in. He’d basked in the old glow she’d had when they were children, which returned again. Not gone but simply hidden. Given a chance, there it was—that shining spirit. Resplendent, as she ought to be.
But the curtain had come back down by this morning. At breakfast, Rose had gone back to her recent persona, self-possessed, a little distant. Not glowing. She’d always spoken her mind, Gavin thought. She wasn’t the least shy about that. But she kept the rest covert. It had made him wonder, suddenly, what parts of himself had been eclipsed in those years since they were youths. And why should they have a pall cast over them because of this endless dispute? It wasn’t fair.
Gavin met his two old friends, his sisters, and a small flock of their acquaintances at the Norths’ house. It was a lovely April morning with bright sun and only a few small clouds. Winds high above sent cloud shadows racing across the moors. At ground level, the air was calmer and the sunshine warm. The landscape raised Gavin’s spirits, as it always did. Whatever else was happening, a man could count on the moor.
He led the group along a braid of paths to the old site. Reaching it, they tethered the horses, and people began clambering up the hillock to the stone construction on top. Bella North had taken Edward’s arm and was laughing up at him.
The twins came up on either side of Gavin. “I think she’ll get him,” said Jillian. They had the long skirts of their riding habits looped over their arms, Janet in deep red and Jillian in dark blue. Gavin could usually tell them apart, though most people couldn’t. He didn’t know exactly how, a lifetime of living together perhaps. “Who will get who?” he asked.
“Edward Fleming,” replied Janet. “Bella has decided he will do.”
“Do?”
“Don’t pretend to be obtuse, Gavin. We know you aren’t.”
“Where is Miss Denholme?” asked Jillian.
“She decided not to come.”
The twins looked at each other, then back at him. “We assumed she would be here, continuing to make a spectacle of herself,” said Janet.
“Spectacle?” Gavin felt a stir of annoyance.
“Oh, it was obvious you enjoyed it,” said Jillian. “All the gentlemen did.”
“Sad to be so…blatant,” said Janet.
“To feel the need to be,” said Jillian.
Gavin set his jaw. “Are you going up the hill?” he asked. “Or do you prefer petty sniping down here?”
“Petty,” said Jillian.
“Sniping,” said Janet. “When did you become such a bore, Gavin?”
“Since he went off to visit with the nobility,” said Jillian. “I suppose he’s above our touch now.”
“Hobnobbing with a duke. The man you used to call a soft, sneering southerner.”
“An interloper and usurper,” said Janet.
“I hadn’t met him then,” said Gavin. “I know nothing about him.”
“Charmed, are you?” asked Jillian. “Most of the neighborhood seems to be.”
“But we expected better of you.”
“Did you?” Gavin gazed at them. They were repeating phrases they’d heard and expressing attitudes that had been drilled into them. He’d done the same once.
His sisters looked at him.
“Why don’t you get angry?” asked Janet. She sounded genuinely curious now, rather than just mocking.
“What has happened to you?” wondered Jillian in the same tone.
“Do you want me to rail at you?” Gavin looked from one twin to the other. They gazed back, narrow-eyed.
“It shows that you care,” said Jillian.
“Mama says that passionate souls who feel deeply cannot restrain their emotion,” added Janet.
Part of that was true, Gavin thought. And part of it wasn’t. One part gave his mother license to rage.
“Don’t tell me you’re becoming one of the muted people,” said Jillian.
“Like Rose Denholme,” added Janet.
“She isn’t muted,” said Gavin.
His sisters pounced.
“Isn’t she?”
“How do you know that?”
“What have you been getting up to at Yerndon?”
“And at the dance last night. That was just blatant.” The twins nodded at each other.
“Mamma thinks you’re a turncoat.”
“A craven traitor.”
“Or perhaps just a bumbler.”
“But you haven’t bumbled like this before.”
These labels stung. Gavin knew that his mother could be carried away by her rants, like an opera singer lost in an aria. Often, she didn’t even remember the details of what she’d said. Still, it was difficult to hear such phrases repeated. She and the twins were his family. “That’s nonsense,” he said, biting off the word.
“Shall we tell Mamma you said so?” asked Jillian. She grinned at Janet. The girls waited for his response with bright eyes, enjoying the battle.
Gavin confronted his temper toe-to-toe. He could give it free rein. The twins would join him in a shouting match. They had been angling for one. His friends up the hill had seen it before, the Keighleys in full voice. Like a pack of hounds baying, Gavin thought. A short laugh burst out of him at the picture that conveyed. “Please do,” he answered and walked off.
Rob waved at him from the top as he began to climb the rocks. He could feel his sisters’ stares on his back. If he stopped rising to their bait, would they stop dangling it before him? Another laugh escaped him as he envisioned a great fish snapping at the hook. He was a man, not a fish. He could resist.
From the depths of a thicket on another rise some distance away, Rose spied on the riding party. She’d never done such a thing before in her life. She avoided people on the moor. She never lurked and watched them.
She wasn’t certain why she was doing it now. But as she sat there, a wistful feeling came over her, and she realized she was there because of the dancing at the Milsomes’. She’d gotten a glimpse of another sort of life during the ball, one where people gathered in amity and enjoyed each other’s company. Now, here was another—the younger generation on the sort of outing that might take place anywhere in the country.
She could have been with them. But if she had gone, the mood would be different, the outing less carefree. The Denholme-against-Keighley tension would have shadowed things. Gavin’s sisters, not restrained by a crowd, would be ready to join battle. Their gibes would make some of the others uncomfortable, some perhaps slyly amused. Rose would be annoyed. Even more so than usual after the dance, she realized. So she didn’t regret her decision to stay away. Rather, she deplored the larger circumstances as she watched the antics of old friends and bare acquaintances as if they were another sort of moorland creature.
The group seemed to be having fun. She couldn’t hear their conversation, but Edward’s broad gestures clearly described their childhood campaigns. Bella North listened raptly. Gavin left his sisters and climbed up the hillock. Rob balanced on the highest boulder and waved a stick, much as young Branwell Bront? had on their earlier visit.
Jillian and Janet wandered the perimeter of the hill. They would have felt obliged to twit Rose if she’d been there. Yes, obliged. As if discord was their duty. The two families taught their offspring this, along with social forms and accepted conventions—be polite and respectful except to the “enemy.” From this distance, the situation seemed so ridiculous. Or from her new place outside her home, Rose saw. The arrival of the Terefords had brought perspective, showing what might have been.
The group stayed at the fort for nearly an hour, but the attractions of the place were less for adults than for imaginative children. Flirting could be done on horseback. And so they drifted down the hill to their mounts. As they rode slowly away, all their backs turned, Rose eased gently out of the thicket.
It was a slight movement, nothing to attract attention, but Gavin turned as if he sensed something. Rose saw him spot her. Or notice something curious at any rate. She’d been careless. Had she wanted him to see? Rose ducked over the lip of her hill and out of his line of sight.
She wasn’t really surprised to hear hoofbeats behind her sometime later. A single animal, not a group. She had no doubt at all that it was Gavin on her trail. Rose rounded a head-high boulder and waited in its shadow. After a bit, Gavin rode into sight. He nearly went right past her motionless figure. Then at the last moment he saw her and pulled up. “I didn’t know if you would let me find you,” he said.
“I didn’t have to.” She could have slipped between the boulder and the gorse and taken a path his horse couldn’t negotiate.
“I know,” he said.
Because he acknowledged this, she stayed.
Gavin dismounted, looping the reins over his arm. “I will walk with you back to Yerndon.”
“Whether I like it or not?”
He went as still as she had been. “No. If you tell me to go away, of course I will.”
Rose held her specimen box against her chest like a shield. Not against Gavin precisely. More against the knowledge that she didn’t want to order him off.
His horse nudged his shoulder, wondering why they were standing about rather than returning to its comfortable stable.
“Where have the others gone?” Rose asked.
“Back to Rob’s.”
“Why didn’t you go too?”
“I saw you.”
His tone suggested that he could not have done anything else. Unsettled, Rose walked on along the path. He fell into step at her side, trailed by his horse.
“Why were you watching us?” he asked after a while.
Rose supposed she ought to be embarrassed, but she refused to be. “I wanted to see what a commonplace social outing might look like. As one would observe foreigners.”
“Foreigners? They were all well known to you. Rob and Edward wondered where you were.”
“And your sisters? Did they wonder?”
His silence told Rose all she needed to know.
Gavin seemed about to say something. Then he didn’t. Then he gestured at her specimen box. “Have you found anything interesting?”
“As always.”
“May I see?”
She opened it. Rose never minded showing her work. If people liked it, that was pleasant. If they didn’t, that showed their limitations. The point was creating a record of the life of the moor.
“Bog rosemary! That’s bloomed early.”
“It was in a sheltered crevice,” Rose replied.
He gave the box back to her. “You must have a whole shelf of pressed specimens by now.”
“More than one.”
“Can there be anything new for you to find?”
“There always seems to be,” Rose replied.
“Ah. Yes.”
Something reverent in his tone made Rose add, “I want to know every plant and animal on the moor. I want to walk it all my life.”
Gavin nodded. “Yes,” he said again, with such complete understanding that Rose went on.
“Until I am old and bent, with wild white hair tossed by the wind and needing to lean on a staff.”
“Gnarled and wrinkled and scaring the children,” Gavin suggested.
Rose smiled. “At first perhaps,” she said. “And then, for the ones who will listen, bewitching them with the tales I have to tell of the land they live on.”
“An ancient sage. Regaling them with reality, not fairy stories.”
“Oh, I think the things I collect are the fairies.”
Gavin stopped and looked down at her.
“People feel something magical, and so they imagine otherworldly beings. But what could be more magical than this?” Rose gestured at the landscape around them.
“I want to leave my bones here,” declared Gavin.
The sentiment, and the way he spoke it, were so exactly what Rose felt. She realized that he had tears in his eyes.
The sight was so surprising, so touching, that she was transfixed. He blinked, embarrassed perhaps. One tear escaped and ran down his cheek. Her hand came up of its own accord to catch it.
And then they flew together into an incendiary kiss, without either of them seeming to decide to do so. They were drawn together like lodestone and iron, like complementary halves of some native mystery. Rose’s specimen box slipped to the ground. Her fingers twined in the hair at the nape of his neck as she gave up her lips to him.
Gavin held her like a treasure, as she deserved to be held, even as his body went up in flames. His hands slipped beneath her cloak and ran up her sides. She shivered and pressed closer. They fitted perfectly, as if crafted to be together. The kiss went on, tender, passionate, complicated, like no other in his life before.
And then the softness went out of Rose. Her palms were on his chest, pushing him away. He stepped back, frustrated and bereft.
Rose moved away from him. “That was a mad thing to do.” She shook her head as if to clear it. “Again.”
“Again,” said Gavin with a different emphasis. Couldn’t they do it again?
“Obviously not,” she replied, not pretending to misunderstand.
“Why?”
“Don’t pretend to be naive. With the way things stand between us?”
“Not us. Our families.”
“We are not separate from our families, Gavin.”
“Perhaps we could be. Maybe that’s the answer. You and I…”
Rose gazed at him from an intolerable distance.
“Together,” Gavin finished.
Her lovely lips turned down. “Like wars ended by the union of two noble houses?” she asked skeptically. “That seems rather grandiose. And impossible.”
“You are too pessimistic.”
“You have your head in the clouds. Would you take me home to your mother?” Rose asked. “She despises me.”
“Not that. She…”
“She does, Gavin. And my father would knock you down if he knew what we had just done.”
“He might try.”
“And what? You would fight him? As you did the duke?”
“I would best your father,” Gavin let slip. Which was a daft response, he knew.
“That would solve nothing whatsoever.” She bent to pick up her specimen box. A gust of wind ruffled her hair.
Gavin’s horse nudged him again. The wind tossed its mane. “There’s weather coming in.”
Rose nodded without looking at him.
They could agree on the forecast at least. How could they be so in harmony on the land and so divided in every other way, Gavin wondered.
A flicker of movement caught in the corner of his eye. Gavin turned and discovered that Phelps was standing on a rise some yards away, motionless, a shotgun cracked open over his arm. The man’s gaze was piercing even at this distance. Meeting it, Gavin was certain that Phelps had moved just now so that Gavin would spot him and realize that Phelps had seen everything, including the kiss. Every line of the man’s frame declared as much. What he thought about it—well, that was unknown.
When it was obvious that he’d been seen, Phelps ducked down and disappeared behind a clump of heather.
Rose looked back from farther along the path. “What is it?”
She hadn’t seen Phelps, which was unlike her. Usually she was aware of the least flicker of movement on the moor. She must be preoccupied by what had passed between them. Gavin was glad of that, since he was in a muddle of emotion himself. He wouldn’t have wanted to be in that state alone. He moved to her side, and they walked quickly along the ways they both knew well.
Phelps, Gavin was thinking. Technically, the man worked for him now, but he had been employed by the Keighleys for many years, and for much of that time he’d seen Gavin’s father or mother as the one in authority. He was all too likely to tell Mamma what he’d seen. In fact, Gavin only just now remembered that his mother had suggested bringing the man, as she assigned him Lucy Trent. Phelps might have been ordered to report to her. No, of course he had been. That was probably where he went when he disappeared for long periods. And though Phelps had no knowledge of what went on inside Yerndon, now he had some explosive news to impart.
If Phelps was on his way to Keighley Manor now, there was nothing Gavin could do. But somehow he thought he wasn’t. Gavin was in charge of the estate. Phelps wouldn’t want to antagonize him openly and perhaps risk his position. So why had he shown himself?
Gavin didn’t know what Phelps thought. The man was an enigmatic character, competent but not given to conversation. He might enjoy stirring up trouble. But he would most likely keep his mouth shut about this incident if Gavin commanded it. He would have to find out, as soon as he could find Phelps, which was often not an easy task.
“What is it?” Rose repeated.
He’d been silent too long. “I was just thinking.”
“That never does much good.”
He’d expected her to ask what he was thinking about. But Rose didn’t do the expected. “Why do you say so?”
“Actions change things, not thoughts.”
Gavin looked at her. Rose was marching straight ahead, her expression a bit grim. It was true. They had to do something, not just go round and round considering the difficulties of their situation. But what?
At dinner that evening Gavin sipped his wine and watched Rose tell her story of the day. She noticed things on the moor that he didn’t. And vice versa. That was what made life interesting, Gavin thought. There was no spice in simply having one’s observations and opinions echoed back. Why talk at all if that was the case?
She made a graceful gesture. The Rose who sat at the Terefords’ opulent dining table was not the Rose who moved unerringly across the landscape, the intrepid one he’d recognized from their youth. This present Rose was more circumscribed, controlled. Yet neither was she the young woman he’d seen when some neighborhood encounter threatened a family confrontation. That Rose drew back like a wary wild creature, willing itself unseen. He’d overlooked her at times, Gavin acknowledged, but often it was because she wished it. She had a number of ways to disappear.
But this Rose tonight was newer. She was assured, interesting, warmly responsive, a Rose drawn out by the Terefords’ welcoming household. Modeled on the duchess? Or merely encouraged into existence? She spoke and moved with an air of amused exploration, as if she was surprised at herself. An individual was myriad, Gavin realized. He was himself, he supposed. It was true that he felt like a different man at this relaxed table. Not the Gavin he’d worn—worn out?—in a familiar rut. An idea began to form in his brain, feeling very important. One should search for people who could bring out every part of oneself, he thought. Who could encompass them all. And one should be such a person as well.
Rose looked at him just then, as if she had somehow divined his thought. He was startled by the shock of recognition that stirred him as he met her blue eyes. Such depths of emotion lay in that gaze. He could look at her forever and not plumb it all. He didn’t notice the duke and duchess exchanging an amused, understanding glance. Nor was he conscious of the time that passed in silence. He simply gazed at Rose until a very unusual interruption broke their intense contact.
The duke’s valet came into the dining room, which was startling because this chamber was not part of the man’s domain. He kept to their host’s bedroom and dressing area and seemed to specialize in being utterly unobtrusive. But here he was, interrupting a meal, clearing his throat to speak. Gavin wasn’t sure he’d ever heard the valet’s voice up to now. “I’m sorry to disturb you, Your Grace,” he said. “But something has…occurred. And I have been delegated to tell you.”
“That sounds ominous,” replied Tereford with a smile.
The other man didn’t smile back. Gavin had never seen him do that. In this case, he looked more solemn than ever.
“Unfortunate, certainly, Your Grace.” The valet cleared his throat again. “It seems that the footman Ian and the housemaid Lucy have eloped.”
“What?” exclaimed Rose.
The valet glanced at her, then at Gavin before adding, “There is a note. It wasn’t noticed immediately because it was placed under Lucy Trent’s pillow. And some of the household were…given the impression that Lucy had gone to the village market under orders from Cook. When it became clear that no such orders had been given, the missive was discovered.” He came over to the duke and held out a sheet of paper.
Tereford took it, read. “This seems a farrago of nonsense. What does it mean, ‘Our forbidden love will not be denied’? Who forbade them?” He looked at the duchess, who shrugged and shook her head. “Hobbs?”
“Beyond the rules of proper behavior and their station, I have no idea, Your Grace,” said the valet with a complete lack of expression.
The duchess extended her hand. He gave her the note. “Two households divided.” She frowned.
“I think Lucy saw the two of them as Romeo and Juliet,” said Rose. “Because she worked for the Keighleys and Ian for the Denholmes. My maid mentioned something. I spoke to Ian about taking care.” She looked worried. “Oh, I hope that didn’t set them off.”
“They can’t have gone off to poison themselves,” said the duke, half rising from his chair.
“Good lord,” said Gavin. He remembered the scene he’d observed at their old fort, where Lucy had declaimed a speech he’d recognized as semi-Shakespearean.
“No, I think they have gone to Gretna Green,” said the duchess. She pointed at the note and read, “‘We have fled to a place where the laws will let us be eternally united.’ How far away is the border?”
“A hundred miles to Gretna,” said Gavin.
Tereford sank back into his chair.
“How would they get there?” asked Rose.
“They must have found horses somewhere,” said the duke.
“None of ours, Your Grace,” the valet put in. “I inquired before I came in.”
“No, they wouldn’t have been allowed to take them.” Tereford looked at his wife. “Shall I go after them?”
“They are not your servants,” said Rose. “And their behavior is not your fault.” She looked at Gavin. “We brought them here.”
“And our families put the idea of enmity into their heads.”
She nodded.
“So do you think I should try to haul them back?” Gavin couldn’t muster much enthusiasm for the task. Why shouldn’t they marry if they wished it? Also, they had several hours head start.
“Lucy will be disgraced,” said Rose. She grimaced. “More than Ian will.”
There was that, Gavin acknowledged.
“Once she’s married much will be forgiven,” said the duchess. “It’s the way of these things.”
“Perhaps,” said Rose. She looked uncertain.
“If they wish to be together, should we separate them because of a feud in which they have no part?” asked Gavin.
The words seemed to echo in the room, or perhaps just inside his head. No, Rose was staring as if he’d shouted. “It is the way they have done it,” she replied.
“I suppose they thought they had no other choice.”
“Running away?” Rose’s voice trembled. “Leaving everything behind? Causing a scandal.”
It was as if the others in the room had dropped away. Gavin was conscious only of her. “Daring to act?” he asked. “Reaching for what they want? They can return afterward.”
“Not the same,” Rose murmured, very low.
Gavin admitted it with a nod. Still he added, “I say let them go.” Once again he felt that the phrase trembled in the air. “And see what help we can be afterward.”
“Help,” Rose echoed.
He nodded again.
She looked away, said nothing more.
“We are decided then?” asked the duke. “We will not mount a pursuit?”
Gavin suppressed a start. Of course he hadn’t forgotten their hosts were present.
Tereford looked around the table, gathered agreement. “Thank you, Hobbs.”
The valet went out, looking disgruntled. But he generally did.
The denizens of Yerndon imagined this settled the matter. But they found, in the next few days, that they were dead wrong about that.
When news of the “star-crossed” elopement spread into the neighborhood, as it very rapidly did, the gossip was lively. But their two families absolutely erupted. A parade of messengers brought scribbled notes across the moor, a new one arriving almost before one read the previous missive. Anyone looking at them would have concluded that young Ian and Lucy had committed high treason, Gavin thought. He was berated and belittled since, for reasons his mother could not fathom, he had missed clear signs of betrayal and perfidy unfolding right under his nose. His mother actually wrote the word perfidy. Without the slightest sense of the ridiculous, it seemed. On the contrary, she appeared to relish the opportunity for an all-out tirade. To accuse him of blind idiocy, really it was too much!
From things Rose let fall, and her distressed looks, he suspected she was hearing the same sort of thing from her parents. They avoided discussing the family communications. Indeed, Gavin avoided everyone for a while after one arrived, taking the time to master his annoyance.
Their neighbors plunged into the vortex of chatter with the air of enthusiastic playgoers. Truth and even the vestige of plausibility flew out the window. The whole situation seemed worse rather than better since he and Rose had embarked on this visit. Things were getting out of hand.
Their noble hosts kindly said nothing about the blizzard of paper showering the house.
As the furor refused to die down, Gavin became conscious of a desire not to return to his childhood home. Which belonged to him now! Never? Surely not never. But no time soon. It was uncomfortable to feel that way.
The sensation was heightened by the fact that he had not been able to corner Phelps for a frank discussion of what the man had seen. He did know that Phelps hadn’t reported it, because he was certain that the upheaval would have been immeasurably worse if the matter in question had been him kissing Rose, rather than Ian and Lucy eloping. If the former news got out… Gavin winced at the scenes that rose in his mind. A carriage arriving to haul Rose away. With shouting. Possibly firearms. His mother and sisters railing at him, hanging on his sleeves in a torrent of words. Fists shaken. Absurd, insulting accusations flying.
The pictures made him…angry. Hotly, stubbornly angry. And for once in his life, his temper did not seem an unreasonable response.