CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I'm standing with my back against the stable wall, watching my horse run from me. In my right hand is the manure rake, in my left was a bucket. I dropped the bucket when he came thundering out, kicking back at the wall, his eyes wild and rolling, biting the air. He reared, hooves swinging close enough that I felt their wind, but before I could bring the rake up he dropped down and turned, kicking out as he passed me, tossing and screaming, all the way out into the pasture. Now he's galloping fast to the far field, ears back, and I am catching my breath.
Why is it that in this moment, even though he kicked, I am proud of Easy? I've been conning him all this time, that's why. He knew better. The match trick was mercenary. I've been playing against his better judgement, but he and I both know I was never meant to ride him. To do so took from each of us a significant concession, but it seems in the end Easy is the honest one. Something must've happened, some last straw; I think I know what.
He's glaring at me from the far end of the pasture, head lowered, blowing. I salute him before picking up the bucket and turning through the stable door.
.
A shadow falls over the garden pump as I'm washing off my boots.
"Mornin'."
I stand up. Seamus has his hands in his pockets and is chewing a straw. I suppose it's because we've been avoiding one another's company of late but at this moment, I see him with new clarity: all the parts of him, his truculence, his complexity, the crimp on the bridge of his broken nose, the heaviness of his shoulders. His capacity for taking risk. His deliberate equanimity. All of it as if for the first time. I think of the ship's captain in the book. I imagine the fur he found, wet with seafoam, lying on a rock. I remember how the sea looks in the morning, the coastline last time I saw it, the patches of translucent green glowing between the white crust of waves. I look into his eyes.
"Good morning," I reply.
He looks over my shoulder into the pasture, brow lifted, an affectation of innocence.
"That man who came by yesterday," he says. Simply a statement. As though he's not digging for information. As though he's merely making conversation.
I wait. He shifts from one foot to the other and mutters, with careful nonchalance, "Didn't know you had any family. If that was family."
I stand up straighter. Stare at him. I'd noticed him in the field watching me embrace Julian; I am sure he saw our emotion, and I'm equally sure he is wondering how he can fit what he saw into his plan for blackmail. Probably he assumes Julian doesn't know what I am.
"Or just a friend of yours."
I clear my throat. "You've already tried Rosalind?"
To my satisfaction, a mottled red shoots up his throat and settles itself across his face. Yes, he has, and she wouldn't answer him, and I know why: this morning, after the back door closed behind him, I went down to the kitchen and found her there.
"Rosalind. May I ask something?" She hadn't turned when I knocked, probably thinking it was only Seamus again.
She spun round, wiped her hands on her apron. A white smudge of flour coated her chin, making her look kittenish. "My lord."
I sat down at the kitchen table, so as not to be looming over her, and lowered my voice.
"I'm sorry for this. But I would like you to explain something, if you will." Her pupils dilated but she nodded.
"It's all right," I said, softening my voice as much as it can. "I'm not angry. But I do want you to please tell me the truth, and I need you to understand that nothing bad will come of it if you do."
Her lips parted, paled. I understood, and couldn't fault her. Although she hid it well, I knew she had always been a bit afraid of me.
"What do you do when you need something from the cellar?"
Her face smoothed over with confusion. "Well...I light the lantern, and... I go down the steps..." She paused, at a loss.
"Yes, of course. But before all of that. You borrow the key from Miss Hastings?"
Her expression changed. She'd caught up with me. I watched a flicker of guilt cross her face like a shadow.
"Not always, my lord. Not because- well, just as so I don't go bother Missus if I can help it." I didn't blame her; I've learned not to unduly pester Agnes either. "Most times I just take t'other key out the drawer in the tool-chest."
I knew it. The only way he could've worked it is with an overlooked second key. It made perfect sense. The wine is stored in the cellar. Jepson, for all his admirable qualities, would never have told me there were two keys; most likely all those bottles are empty now. How Rosalind came to find it didn't worry me. What did was what I asked next.
"Has Mr. Tulloch asked you for that key, recently?"
She flushed.
"It's all right. But I must know. Rosalind..." I hesitated. "I need a promise from you. It's rather important. Can you promise me that if Mr. Tulloch asks you questions that pertain to me, you will not answer him? If he needs to know, he can ask me them himself. You can tell him just that."
She nodded, opened her mouth, shut it. I waited while she wrestled between allegiances. Seamus, the charmer. Finally, the hand that feeds won out.
"My lord," she said, with a certain amount of helplessness, "yes, I promise, but he's already asked a great many questions."
I had to laugh. "I'll bet he has. It's all right. He and I are friends. But that is why he must ask me, instead of you, from now on."
"I'm so sorry." Her voice dropped. I watched her face melt into a caricature of embarrassment, a Greek tragedy mask. There's a degree of mortification only young women seem to be capable of, and I laughed again in spite of myself.
"Don't be sorry. I trust you, Rosalind, and I'm grateful you are here, and I want you to think nothing else of this. Only, don't let him bully you, will you?"
But before I left a question occurred to me and I turned back to her in the doorway.
"What reason did Mr. Tulloch give for needing the key?"
She looked at me, eyes wide, head tilted. "The cellar wanted airing out, he said."
.
And that is why he's flushing. This morning he asked her who Julian was, for whatever private plan he's hatching, and she snubbed him, and now he's experiencing the indignity of his machinations being found out. To his credit, he doesn't try to bluster. He grimaces at me, abashed, something between a wince and a smirk, and makes to turn away.
"My younger brother." I say, very clearly, to his back. "I have two, and a mother. My father died of a cough, and his brother, the last Lord Harthome, shot himself in the grass above Sea Cliff before I was born. It's he whose portrait hangs in the library, and him from whom I inherited the title." I pause. "I have no wife, as you know."
He is staring at me.
"And yours? Your family?" I finish.
A sudden vacuity enters his eyes. I've seen it there before. He shakes his head once- a swift, emphatic negation- and turns away again, his teeth on his lip.
I go back to the house.
.
I suppose the letter was up there all day. Possibly even since the night before. The last person to enter the house by the front door was Julian, and God only knows what Julian pays attention to.
The only reason I am seeing it now is due to one of those odd moods that sometimes come at dusk, where I feel compelled to walk along the perimeter of my small world, just to ensure no one has intruded on it. It's an impulse, or rather, it's instinct. One of the few I let myself indulge in. It does no harm, and sometimes it's useful, as now.
Probably I am made paranoid by my own recent escape. And probably, in the back of my mind, I knew this was going to happen, have expected it. Probably that is why I've ended my walk here at the front of the house, to see if any villagers have left a hex mark on my door.
It's hanging by a corner, stuffed into the crack of the lintel above the door, as unassuming and as worrisome as a wasps' nest. A nondescript rectangle. Across it, penciled in wobbly block print, reads HARTHOME, PRIVATE. I pull on it and the corner stays in the crack, ripping the cheap paper.
It's very simple, just a few lines. Large clumsy letters. Whoever wrote it disguised their hand, presumably by writing with their left, and this gives it a deceptive childishness.
YOU ARE KNOWN
REMOVE YOURSELF OR WE WILL ACT FOR OUR OWN SAFETY
I didn't hear her footsteps but here is Agnes at my side, moving in to take the letter from my hand. I close my fist around it. She stares up at me.
"Is it... Has it happened?"
"Yes," I answer, "but don't worry." I shove the crumpled letter in my pocket. "Don't worry." I can't look at her; I know what I would see in her eyes. This is not her first time.