Nine
On a blustery April day that promised a storm later, Rose walked on the moor and felt a precious sense of peace descend over her. No scolding note could reach her here. No chorus of parental blame marred the spreading landscape. She didn’t have to be embarrassed before the Terefords, tactful and kind as they were. She might continue wondering if she could have prevented the elopement. But it truly seemed that efforts to separate Ian and Lucy would have hastened matters rather than discouraged their flight. They’d succumbed to their emotions, seized life with both hands. Rose wondered how that might feel. The thought of running away had begun to seem more attractive, though impossible of course.
She rounded a turn in the path and discovered Gavin crouched behind a stand of gorse and gazing over the top of a rise. Rose knew there was a fox den on the other side, and so she wasn’t surprised when he signaled for silence. Quietly, she joined him and looked down on a trio of fox kits tumbling over each other with mock ferocity, their small russet bodies rounded and healthy. Their mother was keeping them well fed. There were plenty of mice to be caught out here.
The wind was in Rose’s face, so no human scent alerted the kits. They leaped and played with delightful abandon. Rose felt her shoulders relax and a smile start on her face. She looked at Gavin and saw the same expression. They didn’t need to speak to understand that they both loved this place and everything about it. This was a harmony they’d learned very early in life.
A hunting hawk passed overhead, riding the wind. Its predatory shadow sent the kits plunging into their den. “Well trained,” murmured Gavin.
“And instinct,” Rose replied.
He nodded.
Now there would have to be conversation, Rose thought. And she was so very tired of people talking at her. Or writing at her, which was similar but worse, offering no chance to correct silly assumptions. Gavin wouldn’t rail or complain, but what if he brought up the not-so-small matter of the kisses? Those regretted, yearned for, astonishing kisses! Even more fraught after recent events. What could they say? What might they do? “I’m going to walk,” she said and turned away.
To her great relief, and unexpected chagrin, he didn’t follow. Rose told herself that she’d been searching for solitude, was comforted by it. But it didn’t seem quite so soothing now. Do not be contradictory, she told herself. This is what you wanted. She walked, breathed, observed, and gradually regained her equilibrium.
The sound of rapid hoofbeats from a branching path ahead made her sigh and look for a place to melt into the bushes. But there was no good spot just here. So it was not to be Gavin but some stranger who interrupted her attempted idyll. Her luck was out.
Elizabeth Bront? appeared around a bend, riding one of the ponies they’d seen with the children before, kicking its sides to hurry it along. She waved frantically as she approached. “Oh please,” she called. “We’ve lost Emily.” She didn’t look precocious and studious today, but rather like a frightened little girl.
“On the moor?” asked Rose.
“Yes. Papa is away for a few days, and so we came out with a picnic.” Elizabeth seemed to realize how this sounded. She ducked her head.
Rose wasn’t surprised that their father’s absence had freed them to wander. “Come with me.” She led the pony back to where she’d left Gavin and found him a little way off, untying his tethered horse. “One of the Bront? children is lost,” she said.
“What happened?”
“We were going back to your fort,” the girl said. “Branwell wanted to play Roman defender. Maria said we might just… But then we saw a little waterfall. And when we went to look, there was another even prettier one farther on. And another! We followed the stream to a little pond. And then Branwell fell in trying to catch a frog. Which he had been forbidden to do. He is very naughty.”
Gavin thought he was just a lively boy, but he said, “What next?”
Elizabeth Bront? wrung her hands. “We had to pull Branwell out and try to dry him off. We didn’t notice for…quite a long time that Emily had disappeared.”
“Disappeared,” repeated Rose, as if she thought the child might have wandered into a fairy mound.
“Emily daydreams.” Elizabeth shook her head. “She doesn’t even hear you calling her sometimes. Papa thinks she does it on purpose to annoy him, but…”
“She’s only two years old,” Rose pointed out.
The girl nodded. “She loves the moor. She said she would like to live outdoors with the rabbits and badgers.”
“I hope she hasn’t found badgers,” murmured Rose.
Gavin agreed with a nod. Badgers were not friendly creatures. “We must go and find her.” He glanced at the sky. Clouds were massed in the east. There would be rain before too long.
“Oh, will you please?” Elizabeth Bront? began to turn her pony. “I can take you to the others.”
Gavin mounted his horse. When Rose raised an imperative hand, he took it and pulled her up behind him. She put her arms around his waist and pressed close, and Gavin wondered how he was to think of anything but her as they rode.
Elizabeth headed back the way she’d come. Gavin followed, holding his larger mount to the pony’s pace. In the distance, thunder rumbled. He saw Elizabeth wince at the sound.
“Branwell is already soaked,” Rose murmured in his ear, sending a shiver of desire through Gavin. “We must get them to shelter.”
“Yes.”
Their guide had stopped at the branching of two paths. She turned back to them, her face twisted with terror. “I don’t remember which one it was. I’ve lost the way!”
“You said three waterfalls and then a pond,” replied Rose.
Elizabeth nodded, biting her lower lip.
“A small pond?”
The girl nodded again.
“That way,” said Rose, pointing at the left-hand path.
“How can you…”
“She knows,” said Gavin. “Go on.”
Clouds began to obscure the sun as they rode on.
They found three of the children twenty minutes later, huddled together beside the small pool that Rose had recognized from Elizabeth’s description. They looked vastly relieved to see help arrive. Branwell’s lips were blue with cold. Their other pony cropped grass nearby. Rose let go of Gavin with a reluctance that unsettled her and slipped off the horse. “So Emily hasn’t returned?”
“We did look for her,” said Charlotte. “I wanted to go farther, but Maria…”
“I didn’t wish to lose another of my sisters,” said the oldest Bront? sibling. She didn’t look so self-possessed today. “Papa will be very angry,” she added, near tears.
Thinking that concern would be more appropriate, Gavin dismounted. He lifted Elizabeth from her pony, set her down beside the others, stripped off his greatcoat, and wrapped it around all four children. “Keep Branwell in the middle to warm him,” he said before turning to Rose. “You could use my horse to go for help while I search.” She knew every path hereabouts.
Rose glanced at the sky. “The storm will hit before I could get back. And certainly before I could fetch anyone.”
Gavin scanned the horizon. She was right. And she was more likely to know where they could shelter the children out here.
“We both will look,” Rose said. “She can’t have gone too far. She’s so small. We should walk around this place in circles.”
He considered, then nodded. “I will go out fifty yards or so and move inward. You can start close by.”
Rose agreed. She left her specimen box next to the children, and then began to search.
The wind tore at Rose’s bonnet and cloak as she pushed through the heather. She gathered the folds of cloth close to keep them from catching on the brambles. Far-off rumbles of thunder and the heavy dampness of the air promised a tempest in a while. She moved as quickly as she could while peering under every bush and behind every stone. She feared to find Emily had fallen and hit her head. Otherwise the girl should have heard her family calling and responded by this time, no matter how dreamy she was. Except, if she was in the wrong direction, this wind would carry voices away. Perhaps Emily was forlornly calling for help into its teeth. Rose tried to move faster without overlooking any nook or cranny.
She found no small, crumpled body, only the familiar plants and small creatures of the moor. She made one circuit, and another. The wind grew stronger. On the third pass, when she scanned upward as well as down, a flutter of movement caught her eye. There, thirty feet up on top of a slender tor, was…something. Rose moved sideways, walked closer.
It was Emily. The tiny girl held her arms out like wings and faced the wind, which tossed her hair in wild tendrils. She looked far too close to the edge of the tor. How had she gotten up there? Rose didn’t call out for fear of startling the little girl and making her fall. Instead, she walked around the crag, searching for a way up.
The other side was less steep. A tumble of stone formed a rough sort of stair up the side. Very rough. Rose took off her cloak and placed it on a boulder, where she would easily find it again. She weighted it down with another stone so the wind would not take it. She pulled up her skirts and tied them in a knot to free her feet for climbing. And then she began.
It wasn’t easy. The wind had grown so strong that it almost seemed it might sweep her off the tor. Rocks turned under her sturdy shoes and threatened to trip her. Rose bent and used her hands to steady her steps. She kept her eyes on the path before her, resisting the temptation to peer up at Emily and make sure she was still all right. It was fortunate that she did, because three-quarters of the way up a whole slab of stone teetered under Rose. She had to lunge forward, grabbing a bush with both hands and jerking herself forward, to keep from being dumped into thin air. The slab fell back with a weighty thump. Rose rested a moment on the other side, shaking. After taking several deep breaths, she went on.
Finally, she reached the top, staggering a little as she came out into the main force of the wind on a small oval of grassy rock above the spreading moor. She walked over to Emily, knelt at her side, and put a careful arm around her. The child wasn’t quite as near the edge as it had seemed from below, but close enough.
“Isn’t it glorious!” Emily declared. She faced the coming storm, her arms extended, her expression entranced. Her bonnet dangled from its ribbons. Her hair was a tangled mess. She had no gloves. Rose took one of her hands. It was icy. But Emily looked ecstatic.
“A storm is coming,” Rose replied. “We must go down.” This isolated height would draw the lightning.
“I want to see it.” Thunder growled, and Emily smiled beatifically.
Rose wondered how she was to coax this fey child off the tor. It would be best to carry her. But could she manage that with the shifting stones? She didn’t think so.
She stood, keeping a hand on Emily’s shoulder, and turned in a careful circle. The greater height let her see Gavin in the distance. She began to wave her free arm. It was useless to call in this gale. After several moments, he noticed her and raised a hand. Rose beckoned urgently. At once, he moved toward them.
It didn’t take him long to reach the foot of the tor. He came up it with agile strength, and soon his head appeared at the edge of the crag, followed by the rest of him.
“We need to carry her down,” Rose nearly shouted over the wind.
Gavin nodded and lifted Emily as if she weighed nothing at all.
The little girl squirmed in his grasp. “I want to watch the storm,” she insisted.
“Not from up here,” Gavin replied. He looked at Rose, then quickly away. Her skirts were still tied up, Rose realized, and her mud-spattered stockings were visible to an utterly scandalous height.
Thunder rumbled, closer. A drop of rain spotted the stone at their feet. They needed to leave this height at once, Rose thought. And she couldn’t unknot her skirts until she’d descended. She made a shooing gesture at Gavin. He turned, holding the reluctant Emily, and started down.
As always, it was more difficult going down than ascending. It was harder to see where to place her feet. The wind blew loosened strands of hair across her eyes. Rose moved as quickly as care allowed. She avoided the teetering slab, but other rocks moved under her. Gavin faltered now and then too, but he kept a firm hold on Emily. A few drops of rain spattered Rose’s shoulders, a promise of torrents to come.
Rose was panting a little when she reached the bottom at last. She untied her skirts and retrieved her cloak, Gavin right behind her. And then they ran back toward the other children.
They burst out of the heather by the little pool side by side. The children jumped up, happy to see Emily restored. Maria held out her arms, and Gavin handed the younger sister over.
Maria dropped her as a bolt of lightning crashed to earth not five yards away, a lance of searing light and heat. A bush burst into flame.
Rose cried out and ducked. The children shrieked. The horses plunged and squealed, yanking at their reins. They’d been tied up to a stand of heather as there were no trees nearby. The slender branches broke under their panic, and the three animals raced away. “Damn it!” shouted Gavin.
Thunder clapped. The children screamed again. “Heigh-ho!” shouted Emily from beside the pool.
In the silence that followed the strike, Rose’s ears rang. The power of the storm was awe-inspiring and frightening.
“We must get to shelter,” said Gavin.
Rose was roused from her shock by the sight of a curtain of rain sweeping toward them from far across the moor.
“Where shall we go?” he asked, deferring to her knowledge of the place.
Rose turned in a circle, taking into account the direction of the wind and reviewing her internal map. “This way.” She herded the children before her and headed for a place she recalled from her walks.
The Bront?s were chilled and dazed, except for Emily who danced excitedly around the others. Branwell was shuddering with cold. Gavin finally picked him up and carried him. Rain spit at them intermittently. The wind nearly blew Gavin’s greatcoat out of Maria’s hands. He stopped to put it back on, then lifted Branwell again, pulling the garment around the boy. Rose took a cloth bag from Elizabeth and carried it along.
They made it just before the storm really let loose over their heads. It was not a real cave that Rose brought them to, but rather a large horizontal crevice that ran across a low cliff facing away from the wind. The opening was head height at the front, tapering down to nothing ten feet in. She set down the cloth bag and her specimen box and helped each child up over a two-foot lip of stone into the recess. It didn’t keep out all the wind, but it sheltered them from the torrent of rain that now began to pound over the moor.
Gavin set Branwell down. He’d had to bend his head to fit in the crevice. He removed his greatcoat and gave it back to Maria for the children to wrap around themselves. Then he gazed out at the pelting rain. “That will not end soon. We need a fire.”
“There is some wood at the end,” Rose said, pointing to the pile in a dim corner. “People use this place sometimes, so they leave it here. Shepherds and travelers. Do you have a flint and steel?”
“Yes, but no tinder,” he replied. “And that wood looks a bit damp.”
Elizabeth stepped forward and took a small notebook from her coat pocket. “You can use this for tinder.”
“Not your stories, Elizabeth!” exclaimed Charlotte.
“We can’t burn those,” said Gavin, touching Rose’s heart.
“I don’t mind,” Elizabeth replied. “It is for the greater good. The children are freezing.” She spoke as if she wasn’t a child herself, and visibly shivering with cold.
“It is your duty,” said Maria with a nod of approval.
“Yes,” said Elizabeth. She thrust the notebook at Rose.
Rose accepted it reluctantly. They really did need a fire. Branwell especially had to be warmed and his wet clothes dried. She opened the notebook to a page of tiny handwriting, not readable in the shadows of the crevice. She hesitated, then sighed and tore out the page. Ignoring a small wince from its owner, Rose began to tear the paper into thin strips. She gestured at the wood. Gavin went to fetch some.
Rose made a large, loose nest of paper toward the front of their shelter. Gavin set small sticks in a pyramid over it, and after several tries, he ignited the strips with his fire striker. The flames faltered, then caught and crackled with welcome heat. Gavin carefully fed larger pieces of wood to the fire.
“Sit between the fire and the back wall,” Rose said to the children. “The rock will reflect heat. Branwell must take off his wet clothes, and we will hang them on sticks to dry.”
The little boy drew his sodden garments closer.
“You can wear Sir Gavin’s coat,” Rose added. “Here, I will hold it up while you undress. Do you need one of your sisters to help you?”
“No,” Branwell declared.
“You can’t undo the buttons,” said Maria.
“Yes, I can!”
Rose extended the coat like a screen, and when Branwell had managed to shed his clothes, she wrapped it around him. Gavin had already pushed some branches into cracks in the rock beside the growing fire, and she hung the small garments there to dry. The rest of the children were only damp. The flames would dry them. Outside their shelter, the rain continued to pound. Rose folded her cloak into a long pad for them to sit on.
“What will happen to our ponies?” asked Charlotte, looking worried.
“They will return to their stable,” replied Rose. She realized that if Gavin’s horse did the same, it would go to his home, not Yerndon. That would perplex people.
Thunder cracked nearby. Elizabeth whimpered and cowered. “I am afraid of storms,” she said. “I know it is very foolish of me.”
“But they’re splendid,” said Emily.
“They’re terrible,” replied Elizabeth.
The other children looked back and forth between them as if trying to decide where they came down on this issue. Thunder rumbled again, and Elizabeth moaned.
“My grandfather told me a tale,” said Gavin, drawing all eyes.
He’d settled on the other side of the fire from Rose. Its light danced over the strong planes of his face. He’d removed his hat, and a lock of dark hair fell across his forehead. He looked strong and unworried and utterly dependable.
“He said thunder was the sound of giants playing tenpins,” Gavin continued.
“Up in the sky?” Emily half rose as if to go and look. Maria restrained her.
“Yes.” Thunder growled, and Gavin held up a hand. “There, you see. All knocked down. I expect that giant is winning.”
This didn’t explain the lightning, Rose noted. But she didn’t say so.
“Giants like in ‘Jack and the Beanstalk’?” asked Charlotte.
“He fell down and broke his head,” said Branwell with grisly satisfaction. He looked very small swathed in the folds of Gavin’s greatcoat.
“A different kind of giant,” said Gavin. “Jollier. Fond of games.”
“Do they live on clouds?” asked Emily.
“Ah, yes I expect they do.” Gavin glanced at Rose. His smile warmed her as much as the fire.
“I would like to live on a cloud,” the little girl added. “How can I get up there?”
“You would have to fly,” said Charlotte. “But you can’t.”
“Unless you found a huge bird you could ride on,” said Elizabeth.
“There was an old Greek horse with wings,” put in Branwell. “Papa told me. Pegasus.”
“That was just a story,” said Maria. “It wasn’t real.”
“Papa showed me a picture!”
“I could climb up,” Emily replied. “If I found something very tall.”
Rose raised her eyebrows at Gavin. They’d already pulled Emily off a tor. She didn’t need encouragement to scale other heights. “You wouldn’t want to do that,” he said in response.
“Why not?”
“Well, uh, it’s their home, you see. And they don’t like visitors. You don’t just walk into people’s houses, do you? Without an invitation.”
“But they would like me!”
“No, they wouldn’t,” said Branwell.
“Yes, they would!”
“Wouldn’t. They’d step on you like a mouse and crunch your bones.” The little boy gnashed his teeth.
Emily gave him a large-eyed stare.
“Stop it,” said Maria. “You are staying at home with us, of course, Emily. Papa would not allow you to go.”
This seemed to settle the matter. It helped that the thunder was receding in the distance.
The rain had slackened a bit, no longer quite a torrent. If they’d had the horses, they might have plodded through it, Rose thought. But the children couldn’t walk such a distance wet and cold. It would make them ill. They would have to wait a little and see. They were fairly comfortable for now, away from the main force of the wind and warmed by the fire. She peered at the woodpile in the corner. They would run out if they tried to spend the night here. Which they couldn’t do for many reasons, though she supposed it wouldn’t be a dreadful scandal because the children were with them.
“I’m thirsty,” said Branwell. He struggled to his feet, holding the folds of the greatcoat around him. “I’m going to stick my head out and drink some rain.”
Emily sprang up as well. “Me too.”
“No—” Rose began.
“Need for that,” finished Gavin. “I’ll fill my hat.” He upended it and stuck it out into the rain.
This roused delighted laughter. Emily, Charlotte, and Branwell went to watch the hat fill. It took some time, but after a while everyone got a drink. Gavin left his hat outside for future needs.
“I suppose it will be ruined,” Rose murmured to him.
He shrugged. “It’s a hat. Not on a par with the child’s lost stories.”
She gazed at him, wondering what had become of the man who did nothing but argue and blame.
“May we have our picnic?” Maria asked. She spoke as if she wasn’t sure they would be given permission.
“Picnic?” asked Rose.
Maria pointed to the cloth bag Rose had carried into the crevice.
Rose pulled it over and untied the strings. Inside she found a loaf of bread, a wedge of cheese, napkins, and five wizened apples. “Splendid,” she said. She took the food out and laid it on one of the napkins. Feeling one more item in the bag, she brought it out. There were five oatmeal raisin cookies wrapped in another napkin.
Charlotte stared at Maria. “You brought sweets?” she asked in astonishment.
“Hurrah!” exclaimed Branwell.
Gavin picked up the bread and began to cut it with his pocketknife. As he handed out slices to the children, joking about their unevenness, Rose marveled again at the difference in him. She could not have imagined this scene just a month ago.
Sitting by the fire munching was comforting, almost as if this was a picnic in truth. The steady rain was like a murmuring curtain before their shelter, shutting out the world.
“We must calculate how to divide five apples and five cookies into seven portions,” Maria declared after a while.
“Not mathematics,” groaned Charlotte.
“Every occurrence is an opportunity for learning,” Maria replied with the air of one repeating an axiom.
Branwell glowered. Emily stared out at the rain as if she hadn’t even heard. Charlotte sighed deeply. “We could cut them all in half,” Charlotte said.
“How many pieces would that give us?” Maria asked her.
“Um, ten.” Charlotte frowned. “That’s three left over.”
“I would eat those,” offered Branwell.
“That would not be fair,” said Maria.
Rose started to say that she did not require any, but she happened to meet Gavin’s gaze just then and was caught by the twinkling fascination she saw there.
“If we divide each apple and each cookie into thirds, we will have fifteen pieces of fruit and of sweets,” said Elizabeth. “Each of us may eat two of both. The single piece left over…”
“Should go to you for your successful calculations,” said Maria. She looked at her sisters and brother and received nods of approval. Except from Emily, who was easing one finger out into the rain, pulling it back and licking it, and then repeating the process.
The proposed dissections were accordingly done by Gavin, closely supervised by Charlotte and Branwell. Maria doled out the servings, and everyone ate their dessert. They had another round of drinks from Gavin’s hat as well.
Branwell’s clothes dried out, and he resumed them behind the greatcoat screen. Maria had to assist him this time. Putting on was more challenging than taking off. The oldest Bront? child was looking anxious about the situation, and she seemed more so when Elizabeth bent to whisper to her a bit later. They frowned at each other, looked around the shelter, looked at the rain, and grimaced. Rose was about to ask what was wrong when Gavin stood up. “I believe we need to extend our domain,” he said. “My coat will be required again.”
The children had all been wrapped in it once more. They shifted and handed it over. Gavin walked along the crevice to the far end. He had already moved all the wood to a spot nearer the fire. Now he bent to pick up a handful of the small stones that littered the floor here. He pushed the collar of his coat into a narrow crack in the ceiling and wedged it tight with pebbles. Extending this process to the shoulders and lapels, he created a barrier, the greatcoat hanging like a curtain across the end of the space. “This will be our privy,” he said, pulling it back, gesturing at the other side, letting it fall, and smiling as if nothing could be more commonplace.
Elizabeth burst into tears.
For the rest of her life, Rose would count that moment as the one when she knew she was in love with Gavin Keighley. Her view of him had been changing, true. He had revealed unsuspected depths and facets. His kisses had made her dizzy with desire. But this act of considerate tenderness, done without anyone asking, conquered her.
He came back to the fire, and Elizabeth slipped off to be the first to take advantage of the new arrangement. The hiss of the rain covered any sounds from their improvised facilities. “How did you know?” Rose murmured.
“I am nearly ten years older than my sisters,” Gavin said. “I have some idea of how to care for children.”
And others as well, Rose noted. Care was what he did, though she hadn’t seen it properly for years. Their families’ dispute had distorted her perceptions and all their interactions. Rose sat quite still, grappling with a whirl of emotion. Why had she listened to all that spite when she’d been acquainted with him as a child? She’d known he wasn’t some cardboard demon. She should have objected! Despite the battles that would have filled her home if she had. But one took on opinions from parents. Until the time came to decide for oneself. Perhaps it should have been sooner, but at least it had finally arrived.
The other children made use of the rustic privy in turn, then settled back on top of Rose’s cloak. They looked quite contented. Charlotte began to create a tiny cairn with pebbles.
Gavin came to sit beside Rose. “We’re running low on wood,” he said quietly.
Rose nodded.
“And the rain doesn’t seem likely to stop.”
“No.” The violent storm had passed, but the rain remained steady and heavy. The day was dark and would soon descend into night.
“How far do you make it to Yerndon?” Gavin asked. “Or some other nearer house?”
“With the way we rode, five miles to Yerndon. And no one nearer than that. Unless perhaps a shepherd’s hut.”
Gavin nodded agreement. “I thought so too. A shepherd would have no mounts for the children.”
“No.”
“I could walk to Yerndon in an hour or so.”
Rose supposed she ought to urge him to go, but she had to tell the truth. “Not in this.” She gestured at the rain. “It would be difficult to find your way. We are off the pathways. And it would be even harder to get back here in the dark.”
“Yes.”
“The Terefords may send out searchers eventually. Phelps might find us. He knows the moors.”
Gavin gave Rose an odd look.
“But the duchess is so sensible,” Rose added. “She may just assume we took shelter somewhere.”
“They must be looking for the children,” Gavin said.
“I’m sure they’re growing frantic. But Haworth is even farther off. We rode away from there.”
Gavin looked out at the rain. “I will leave at first light and fetch help.”
Rose nodded. It was the sensible plan. The weather might have cleared by then. And so they would spend the night in this place together.