Love-in-a-Mist Page 5
“The hour!”
“It was two hours, an hour ago,” I said.
Mr. Dart looked hard at me. “You’re rather complacent, Mr. Greenwing!”
“He’s been running,” Hal said, “and that’s after his religious experience. Come now, have you come up with a cunning plan?”
I sat down on a rock beside them and stretched out my legs. “I don’t know about cunning, but yes, I have a prospect. I was informed at the inn that all the regulars were billeted at the village there, and no room for anyone else, and that there was no way we’d get safely over the pass now. The innkeeper recommended we go north and across the Crook again. You still might be able to hire a hack, Hal, as their stable was spared.”
“I do thank you for the thought!”
I ignored this sally. “The Post-rider arrived shortly after I did, so I gave him our letters. We talked about the house down there, which I think is our best option for the night, as I don’t fancy roughing it through a snowstorm, personally.”
“Does it have a reputation for hospitality?”
“A snob’s one. They call the owner Master Boring. Apparently his heir and some friends are staying for Winterturn.”
“That’ll be you, then,” Hal said in a voice that brooked no argument. “I’m not announcing myself down here to a party of backwoods toffs if I can avoid it! You’re local enough, at least, for it to make sense you’re here. You can say we were visiting the Count of Westmoor at the hunting lodge and journeyed so far just as we have done. That won’t be the nine-days wonder I would be.”
“I am apparently already reckoned an eccentric in local gossip,” I said, mostly resigned. “Very well. We should head on down, if we’re all ready? It’s a mile to the gates and the house, you can see, is set back.”
“And that storm isn’t retreating,” Mr. Dart added gloomily.
We set off again. I found myself walking beside Jullanar Maebh. “I always liked the idea of a walking tour,” she said, taking my arm to negotiate a steep part of the descent. “I’m not sure about the reality.”
“Did Hal speak of our tour this summer?”
“A little. You came up from Morrowlea, he said?”
“Yes, up the length of West Erlingale, through northern Chare, and up Lind to Fillering Pool, though we kept to the central plains rather than these hills.”
I kept talking, as she seemed to appreciate the distraction. My stories were a bit scattered, it was true, as I had been recovering from the illness brought on by an overabundance of wireweed and subsequent withdrawal from the drug. I could still regale her with Hal’s determination to look into every interesting garden we passed, and Marcan’s insistence that we take in all possible tombs, chapels, and historical sites, but only so long as they were no more than a mile’s detour from the nearest pub.
Marcan was going to be the kind of abbot or archbishop—the second son of the king of Lind was hardly going to remain some country vicar—of which legends were told. Hard-hunting, hard-drinking, and devout as the knight and the unicorn.
“And you?”
“I was heartbroken from the duplicitous Lark,” I admitted. “I would walk with them through the day, then when we’d found an inn for the night, often go for a run about the countryside.”
“No wonder you are so thin!”
“I prefer lean.”
“It’s true, you are too short to be a beanpole.”
“I do thank you, Miss Dart!”
She laughed, then sobered. “It’s so strange, being called that. I always was Miss Ingridsdottir at Tara, and Jullanar Maebh to my friends. We don’t always take the father’s name, at home, so no one thought it odd I went by my matronymic once they heard I was from the Outer Reaches. I never knew anything about my father except that he was from Fiellan somewhere and that I was something of a mistake.”
“An accident, perhaps, but no mistake,” I replied.
“You’re most gallant, sir.”
“I was there when your mother’s letter came by special messenger. There can be no doubt Master Dart was surprised, but also that he was pleased that you thought of him in your need.”
She blushed a little and ducked her head. “Thank you.”
I doffed my imaginary hat to her, and she giggled, which suited her, and at my wistful comment that I missed the fine tricorner I’d acquired in Fillering Pool, continued all the way to the iron gates with a discussion of the haberdasheries and other amenities of her soon-to-be new home in Ragnor Bella.
It was a full half-mile from the gate to the house, and by the time the building finally hove into sight, it was starting to snow. They were big, wet flakes, whirling in slow spirals back up towards the clouds. I looked up at said clouds warily. They did not betoken a quick snowfall in the least. Even as I watched, the clouds entirely obscured the mountains. A flash of lighting in their depths was echoed by a double retort from the surrounding hills.
Jullanar Maebh cringed against me. I grasped at her arm again in astonishment, for she was no fainting maiden. She blushed, but clung close. “I abhor thunder,” she said in a low, embarrassed voice. “I do apologize, sir.”
I myself had contracted a stubborn fear of small enclosed spaces only a month ago. I hoped very much her dislike of lightning came from a more ordinary source than my amnesiac escapade, which—since it had been some form of a mystical and magical preparation for a perverse rite to do with the Dark Kings, preventing the fulfilment of which was most of the reason I had been returned to life—I was just as glad not to recall in the slightest.
We were all quickly soaked by the wet snow, and no doubt equally quickly chilled. We three gentlemen endeavoured not to show any discomfort before the lady, and the lady was so fearfully attentive to the horizontal crackles of lighting and ever-encroaching thunder that she made no mention of anything else, merely bent her head so the ostrich plumes of her hat draggled down over her copper hair.
We were sheltered from the worst of the wind by the overgrown woodland of the entrance park. Large trees, oaks with rattling dry leaves, stood at gracious spacing, their venerable lines blurred by choking brushy undergrowth as much as the snow. It couldn’t have been much past noon, but as the clouds advanced overhead the temperature dropped precipitously and the light dimmed to a strange pale grey, shadowless except when the lightning flickered.
A russet flash caught my attention, and I turned my head just in time to see a fine fox go trotting past us. It turned its head as it passed and met my eyes with what seemed an uncannily knowing expression before leaping gracefully out of sight.
I bit my lip and turned back to the weedy gravel drive, just then noticing that at some point in the past few hundred yards one set of the ruts had disappeared. The outgoing set, from the direction of the hoof prints, had come straight down the drive, but not the incoming.
The curiosity was blown from my thoughts as we exited the woods to cross the lawns before the house. From the ridge, in the sunlight, it had seemed a pleasant, grassy mead, a fine setting for a jewel of a house. With the wind now bearing much smaller and harder snow-pellets before it at a stiff horizontal angle, I was much less enamoured of the open space. The house itself was a dim blur ahead; but it had a light burning in a window near the front door.
Hal reached it first, alongside a great crack of thunder that seemed to come from directly atop us. Jullanar Maebh sagged against me, and Mr. Dart hastened up to support her with his good arm. We got to the door just as Hal had made a fist to bang on the heavy timbers.
“No surety they’ll hear the bell,” he said, indicating a long pull that was swaying against the house. We huddled under the portico, which was in a classic style I didn’t feel up to determining just that second, the wind howling meaningfully at our backs. There was certainly no way we would have survived a mountain crossing in this. I wasn’t too sanguine of our chances, wet and unprepared as we were, in the woods. Even Hal’s magic—or Mr. Dart’s—would be hard pressed to keep a fire going in this wind.
Thankfully, the door opened, and we all stumbled through it before the door-keeper could make a noise of question or protest.
“I thank you, sir,” I said, only to be elbowed by Mr. Dart. I caught my breath and refrained from glaring at him, then brushed off the wet flakes of snow from my shoulders as best I could. The man in front of us regarded us with a wary, jaundiced eye. Hal slammed the door shut behind us, cutting off most of the wind.
The building rang with unquiet silence. Jullanar Maebh turned her head into Mr. Dart’s shoulder, and Hal stood a half-step behind me, face calm. I took another breath. We had decided I would do the talking.
The butler, or so I presumed he was—from his garb and demeanour he was clearly an ancient retainer of the tyrannical kind—stared at me with a curiously speculative expression I did not quite like.
Not that there was much choice of refuge, alas.
“We were travelling from the hunting lodge of the King of Lind to Finoury’s Inn,” I said by way of establishing our credentials. “Our vehicle caught a pothole and broke an axle. We left the driver to round up the horses and continued on afoot. I went ahead to see if I could bespeak a carriage at the inn, but when I arrived discovered the building was on fire.”
I paused there, as the butler stirred. “Aye,” he said at last. “We’ve had the Post-rider here and back again already.”
The butler was a tall man, cadaverously thin, with striking deep-set dark eyes. His hair was all white, though his protuberant eyebrows were black, and his skin was paler than mine, yellowed like old parchment. He seemed as if he should have retired long since; his breath rattled in his lungs.
“I went back to my friends,” I went on nervously, “and we continued along, hoping that we might prevail upon your hospitality, until we were caught by the storm just by your gates.”
I gestured vaguely at the rest of my party, but they were silent, half-dazed with the relative quiet after the howling gale outside, I suspected. My own extremities were tingling as they warmed up, and I dearly wished to find a fire.
“Aye,” the butler said again, in a slow, ponderous manner. His eyes measured every inch of my Fiellanese winter-weight suit and the garments worn by the others. They were muddied and torn and wet, but all, I hoped, of sufficient quality to show that we were Quality, so to speak. It irked me that we should have had little hospitality otherwise, but now was not the moment for a democratic revolution.
Alas.
“And what names shall I give to the Master?” he enquired.
I tried not to sigh in relief. We might yet be relegated to the kitchens, or the stable-loft, but we were not being summarily ejected into the first winter storm of the season. Another crack of thunder made Jullanar cry out and cringe back to the door. Hal and Mr. Dart were attending her assiduously so I kept my focus on the butler.
“I am Jemis Greenwing of St-Noire,” I said, bowing slightly. “My friends here are Mr. Dart of Dartington, also in South Fiellan, his cousin Miss Dart, and Mr. Leaveringham of Ronderell, whom I met at Morrowlea.”
My friends ignored my introductions, which was odd, even with Jullanar Maebh visibly wilting as the excitement from the rush to reach the door faded, but when I looked back to the butler after gesturing at them his deep-set eyes were fixed on me.
“St-Noire, eh,” the butler said slowly, with a strange expression. I watched him nervously, ready, as always, to defend my father’s honour if he latched onto the far more famous Greenwing. After my sojourn in the Far Country it was a much less painful matter than it had been before, but I couldn’t say I wasn’t yet wearied of the need to keep defending what had been a terrible mistake.
“It’s not far over the mountains to the Coombe here,” he said after another pause. He was fingering a handsome greenstone brooch he wore on his breast. It was an excellent piece for even a superior servant. “The old Marchioness is not unknown in this house. She lives yet?”
“She did a week ago,” I replied. Jullanar Maebh took that moment to sneeze, which seemed to shake the butler out of his stupor even as Hal took her arm in support and Mr. Dart fished in his pocket for a dry handkerchief.
“Come, come,” the butler said to me. “I’ll call the maid to show you to rooms. The Master’s nephew and niece are visiting with some friends, and there’s plenty in storage from earlier days, so I daresay we can find you some dry clothes.”
His gaze wandered up and down me again, taking in the rents and tears and numerous stains., new and old. I was sure some were of the faery islet beyond the world. “If you have none coming along behind you?”
“I’ve left word of our proposed direction, but the falarode couldn’t take the road we’d determined to follow,” I replied, I hoped suavely.
“Got your grandmother’s flair, have you?” he said, with a hacking cough that put me disquietingly in mind of the former physicker of Ragnor Bella, Dominus Gleason. Or rather, the priest of the Dark Kings who had been pretending to be Dominus Gleason for seven years. I shivered, grateful that I was still near-dripping wet and therefore of ready excuse for any apparent vapours.
I realized I should have taken offence at his familiarity, but was too late to do so with any poise. “Miss Dart is in sore need of dry clothes,” I said instead, meaningfully.
“Aye,” he said, and rang a handbell that stood on a table beside the door with sudden vigour. Hal jumped and stared at me; I looked back on him in confusion. He shook his head and smiled crookedly, then turned back to Mr. Dart, who said something to him in a low voice I couldn’t hear over the butler’s croak. “Bessie! Guests!”
While we waited for Bessie to appear, and the butler stared at me with what I was determined not to read as a predatory light in his eyes (at least not until I had further acquaintance), I looked around the entry hall. It was all apiece with the butler: dusty, old, a little odd.
More than a little odd, to be honest.
The butler said, in a slow, drawn-out sentence, that the hall was reckoned a fine example of High Court Linder architecture, and we should take particular note of the carved panelling as we were escorted upstairs.
There was no possible way for us to see the carved panelling. Everything but the narrowest possible track was full of stuff.
Perhaps five feet in from the front door was a wall of papers and boxes and chests and objects, all covered in dust. A narrow track led into the dim depths between the piles, which reached above our heads. The only illumination came from glazed lights set into the ceiling, which must have been an impressive effect during ordinary daylight, when the glass was clean, and when the hall below was not so comprehensively filled. At the moment it merely emitted flashes of lightning that came through a coating of snow.
A musty, unpleasant smell filled the space, like an unaired cellar. My mind supplied unwelcome thoughts of rats and mice and other vermin. I felt yet another pang of sympathy for Jullanar Maebh. At least the thunder was not so loud indoors.
A thin middle-aged woman of faded prettiness emerged out of the gloom. “Oh!” she said on seeing us, and curtsied in confusion to me. I eyed the butler sidelong but he was merely observing us without expression. Bessie—oddly informal for someone who was surely the housekeeper, given her age, the quality of her garments, and the chatelaine of keys at her waist—went on, “I thought you meant our other guests, sorr.”
She had the same burr of an accent as Clara over at the Hunting Lodge. No doubt locals could distinguish them—probably the ridge demarcated two ancient parishes, though I hadn’t seen a church this direction (hidden, no doubt, with the rest of the village near Finoury’s Inn)—but my ear was not so fine.
“We have new guests, Bessie,” the butler said, with a surprising air of amused condescension. “The new Viscount St-Noire and his friends.”
His accent, I noticed in comparison to hers, was much more refined and well-educated, hardly dissimilar from our Circle Schools-shaped ones. He sounded most like Marcan, naturally, being from Lind.
Well, it was not so long ago I would have looked on becoming a rural lord’s butler as being higher than my likely fate, Morrowlea education or no.
“I see, sorr,” Bessie said, looking askance at the water dripping off me. Hal and Mr. Dart were still crowded by the door, apparently trying to soothe Jullanar Maebh out of her unwanted panic. “Are they staying with us?”
“Through this storm, certainly. See to their rooms, give them baths and fires and clothes, borrowed if you must, out of storage if you can,” the butler said. “I will see if the Master will receive them. He’s a great eccentric,” he added to me, with evident pride. “He may choose to stay secluded and rest.”
With that he left us, edging sideways into the wall of stuff without any apparent embarrassment.
“I wish he would rest,” Bessie muttered, almost inaudibly. She picked up a candle-lantern on the table next to the handbell, and stepped forward to attract my friends’ attention. “Welcome to the house, sorrs, m’lady. You met with an accident, it seems?”
Mr. Dart and Hal perked up as the light fell on them. Mr. Dart said, “Yes, and lost all our belongings, I’m afraid.”
“We’ll see you to rights,” she said comfortingly, and indicated we should follow her into the maze.
We edged along behind her. Bessie gave no indication that anything was amiss or unusual about the place. She looked back to see that we were following from time to time, smiling with an indulgent air at us.
“It is so good to see young people about the place,” she said as we turned a corner and discovered a pile of tarnished brass and silver candelabras, many of them still with globs of melted wax on them. “You will enjoy meeting our other guests, I am sure. The Master’s heirs and their companions. They have recently arrived for the Winterturn holidays.”
“How pleasant that must be for you,” Mr. Dart said weakly. He was closest to the housekeeper, myself next in line. I was watching how he kept his face resolutely forward. Mr. Dart heard the voices of the inanimate at times, and there were many, many objects.