“There it is.” He pointed. “Under that shrub with the white flowers.”
She bent and plucked the ball from beneath the blackthorn already blooming on this early March day. Noticing the torn seam and threadbare state of the old hide ball, she wished she had the money to buy him a new one.
“There you are, Mr. Barnes.” She tossed the ball easily over the gate.
He caught it in one hand. “Good throw!” he said. “Thanks.”
She ought to be a good throw. A good catch too. She had grown up with two older brothers, after all. Henry, as well as Richard, whom she had not seen since he and his wife sailed for India two years ago.
George turned and scampered across the yard to the poorhouse lane, where he rejoined a group of stringy boys awaiting him.
Mariah returned to the kitchen, wrinkling her nose at the smell of Dixon’s fish stew. A loaf of bread which had failed to rise properly sat on the sideboard. Miss Dixon had many sterling qualities. She was loyal, intelligent, hardworking, and forthright. But the woman simply could not cook a palatable meal. Which, Mariah supposed, was not surprising, considering she’d been hired into the Aubrey household years ago as nursery-governess, and not a cook. She had been Nanny Dixon to Mariah and Julia when the girls were young. The thought brought pain. How Mariah missed her sister.
She sighed and dipped a modest serving of stew into a chipped bowl. With effort, she sawed off a shingle of bread, then sat alone at the kitchen table. Briefly bowing her head, she said quietly, “For your provision of food and shelter, and Dixon, I am truly thankful.” She felt awkward and uncomfortable as she prayed, as if talking with an estranged friend – one she had wronged very badly.
Her six-fingered cat, Chaucer, came and curled around her ankles. The stray with the extra digit had earned his keep by catching many a gatehouse mouse over the fall and winter. But now that spring was in the air, he spent his time hunting out of doors and often left his small victims on her doorstep.
Mariah set her bowl, with the remaining morsels of stew, onto the floor at her feet. “There you are, you little beggar. Don’t tell Dixon, or neither of us shall hear the end of it.”
The silver and grey cat sniffed at the bowl, then walked away, leaving the scraps of fish and potato untouched.
Rising, Mariah donned her work apron and did the washing up. Then, not wanting any stray hairs to end up in the jam, she donned a white cap. She cut tissue, brushed oil and beaten egg whites onto each side of the thin paper, and then covered each pot with the oiled and egged papers.
Not everyone liked rhubarb, Mariah knew. It was viewed as primarily medicinal by many. Considering Dixon’s recent malady, Mariah thought it wise to preserve all they could from the patch that had sprung up beside the stable. She preferred strawberry or raspberry jam herself, but those fruits would not be in season until June and July respectively. Last week, Dixon had gone to the village market and purchased at discount a basket of past-peak imported oranges. These, plus several exorbitantly priced lemons, they had boiled with sugar into marmalade, pots of which stood proudly on their larder shelves.
The last jar covered, Mariah glanced up through the kitchen window and noticed how dark it already was, although the March days were becoming longer. A storm was brewing. Had Dixon taken an umbrella?
A crack of thunder rent the air, and Mariah jumped. She wiped her hands on her apron and stared out at the roiling sky, feeling her emotions roil in tandem.
Perhaps it was the approaching storm that made her give in. Or the fact that Dixon was out for the evening, leaving her alone in the gatehouse. There was no one to witness her weakness.
Or perhaps it was because her mood had sunk as low as Venus in the morning sky, as it sometimes did when the past revisited her, each memory like a sharp hailstone pinging, pecking against her brain.
How
could I have been so stupid? Foolish, foolish girl!
And doubts and despondency would rise like waves in the North Sea, threatening to crumble her stoic façade. Had she conjured up, imagined the whole affair? Surely not. Had he not given her every assurance of his love? Of their future together? Was he really as innocent of misleading her as he later insisted?
She needed, once more, to reassure herself their courtship had not been merely the fancy of a desperate young woman.
The proof was tucked away in the attic, at the bottom of her trunk, where Dixon was not apt to stumble upon it whilst tidying the rooms. Where Mariah would not be tempted to look too often, to while away her days, her life, on futile regrets. She had gone for months without venturing up the steep turret stairs and would have resisted longer had curiosity over her aunt’s chest not gotten the better of her one gloomy midwinter afternoon. She had gone up and attempted to peek inside – to no avail. Even then she had not looked into her own trunk, or reread her own letters. Most days she was strong enough without them.
Not today. Not tonight in an empty house – an old ramshackle gatehouse – far from home, far from family, with the wind howling and the rain lashing the windowpanes and her soul heaving with loneliness and loss.
She lit her brightest candle lamp, the stout, heavy one her aunt had given her, and carried it upstairs.
The flame guttered and swayed, casting flickering shadows on the narrow staircase rising from the passage outside Dixon’s bedchamber to the attic above. The old wooden stairs creaked beneath her slippered feet, and the attic door whined when she pushed it open. Inside, the wind shook the turret and whistled through the cracks around the solitary narrow window. Beyond it, lightning flashed, momentarily brightening the small musty room nearly filled by her and Dixon’s trunks, her aunt’s ornate chest, and a few odds and ends of broken furniture.
She pulled an old cloth from her apron pocket to wipe the floor, then sank to her knees before her own trunk and lifted the heavy lid. She slid aside a layer of crinkled paper and a tissue-wrapped parcel, which contained her grandmother’s lace shawl – too delicate to wear, too dear to part with. Beneath this were two bandboxes, stacked. In the first was a hat, as one would expect of a bandbox, a confection of flowers and ribbons and springtime, as youthful and flirtatious as she had once been. If she but opened the lid and peeked inside, she would be transported back to that day. The last day she had worn it. And likely ever would.
She set this box aside and lifted forth the second hat box, leaning back and settling it on her legs. She raised its lid and placed it next to her, as well as a thin children’s reader, which she’d kept as a reminder of happier days. And to disguise what lay beneath.
Her fingers no longer trembled as they once had when she lifted the ribbon-bound bundle of letters, but her heart still pounded. A sickly feeling descended upon her, as if she were a child having eaten too many sweets, and anticipating the stomachache and nausea ahead.
She slipped the first letter from the ribbon and unfolded it, emotions pumping. Would the reassurance she sought be there? Or had she tried too hard to read between the lines, to find the meaning she desired, when it simply wasn’t there? She picked up the candle lamp in one hand, while the letter fluttered in the other.
My dear girl,
How sorry I am to tell you that it is not within my power to
return in time for the Westons’ ball as I had hoped. My father insists
my European tour shall not be complete without a fortnight in Rome.
As he is paying for the trip, I feel duty bound to honor his wishes.
But soon we shall be together, and neither duty nor distance shall
keep us apart.
For now, the lock of your hair, and thoughts of you, bring both
peace and torment to my lonely heart. . . .
A sharp pounding shook the gatehouse, loud enough to be heard over the wind and rain. Mariah’s heart started. She dropped the letter, like a thief, caught. Who could be knocking? Dixon had the key.
She quickly folded the letter and stuck it with the rest of the bundle back inside the bandbox and, fingers belatedly trembling, returned everything into its hiding place and hurriedly shut the trunk.
Bang, bang, bang
.
Her heart leapt to her throat.
Who in the world would be out in this? Whoever it was could not bear good tidings.
Lord, let Dixon be well. Please, not a relapse
.
And let nothing
have happened to Henry. . . .
Bang, bang, bang
.
“All right! All right!”
Wiping her hands on her stained apron, Mariah huffed down the stairs and across the drawing room, carrying the candle lamp as she went. She hesitated before opening the front door. The Strongs and Mr. Phelps always came to the kitchen door. And Henry would not call so late. She hesitated all the more because she was alone and it was all but dark outside. Was it really wise to open her door to some unknown caller?
Another round of pounding roused her ire, and she unlocked and opened the door a few inches, saying as tartly as Dixon might, “You need not break the door.”
She froze. Her pulse pounded in her ears as loudly as the knocking had been. Her mind shouted,
Danger!
A man stood in cocked hat and greatcoat. Tall, imposing, grim. A stranger. A strange man at her door at night? She fought the urge to slam and lock the door. How she wished Dixon would return.
She lifted the lamp higher to see his face. Saw a grimace of pain there . . . a gash on his cheek. She opened the door a few inches more.
“Yes?” she asked, her voice sounding too timid. She drew her shoulders back, determined not to show fear. He need not know she was alone.
He grimaced again, from pain and perhaps to clear the rain from his eyes. “Is your master at home?”
She hesitated as reactions – annoyance, offense, alarm – wrestled for preeminence. He presumed she was a servant. Casting a swift glance down at herself, she realized there was little else he could think. She was wearing a mobcap, a dingy puce frock she wore to help Dixon with messy chores, and a soiled apron besides.
But as much as she wanted to sharply retort that she had no master and wasn’t a servant, she was too fearful of letting him know there was no man in the house, or anyone else for that matter.
“What do you need?” she asked instead.
“My horse has thrown me. He is running loose in the meadow beyond that copse there, and I cannot catch him. I am afraid he will injure himself.”
Mariah nodded. A call for help. She had never been able to resist one.
“One moment.”
She did not invite him inside to wait. Rather, she quickly closed the door and pulled on an oilcloth coat from the wall pegs beside it. She ran to the kitchen and stuffed several items into her pockets. Then, pausing to light a tin-and-glass lantern, she jogged back to the front door. She let herself out and brushed past him before he could voice the protest already forming on his frowning face. His hat, drawn down low against the rain, obscured his features. He appeared to be about thirty years old, but beyond that, she formed no distinct impression.
Lantern high, she hurried though the pouring rain toward the copse. How she wished she had her own horse with her. But even had her father allowed it, she could never have afforded the mare’s upkeep.
Glancing over her shoulder, she noticed that the man hobbled after her with a jerky limp.
He muttered, “Heaven knows where he’s got to by now.”
He was right. A horse spooked by lightning could run headlong and be halfway across the county by now. Or could fall into some unseen burrow and break his leg. They needed to hurry.
“Do you live nearby?” she asked, wondering if the horse might have taken himself back to the warm security of his stable once divested of its rider. Just because the man was a stranger to
her
did not mean he did not live in the area. She rarely ventured beyond the walled estate and, except when Dixon was ill, avoided going into the village altogether.
“No. I was on my way to Bourton when the, er, mishap occurred.”
Pushing through the narrow copse of trees, Mariah spotted the white horse at the edge of the meadow, one rein apparently ensnared by low branches or brambles. Before she could thank providence for their good fortune, thunder shot the sky. The spooked creature reared up, pulling the rein loose, and bolted across the open meadow, then stopped again a short distance away.
“Follow me,” she said quietly. She crept forward, hand outstretched, palm up. The white horse swung its head toward them, hesitated, but did not flee. They were able to draw within twenty feet or so of the frightened animal.
“Call to him gently,” she urged.
He hesitated. “What do I say?”
“Just call his name.”
When he said nothing, she glanced at him. The man looked surprisingly nervous. Was he actually afraid of his own horse?
“I don’t recall his name,” he said, sheepish. “I have only just acquired him.”
Sighing, Mariah handed him the lantern and approached the horse gingerly, reaching into her pocket as she walked.
He called after her in a loud whisper, “Have you brought a rope?”
“No, have you?” she shot back. It was his horse after all.
She had brought two things far better. Sugar cubes and a carrot. With slow steps, soothing words, and the lure of an extended carrot, the horse allowed her near. She deftly took hold of one loose rein while his whiskered muzzle shuddered and sniffed the carrot. She let him eat the tip before taking the second rein and allowing him to perceive he had been caught. If anything, the horse seemed relieved to be captive once more. Realizing it might be difficult for him to eat the whole carrot with his bit in place, she offered him a sugar cube as reward instead.