Читать книгу The Widow Of Pale Harbour - Hester Fox - Страница 20

I know. I know. I know.

Sophronia’s footsteps clipped along in time to the words. They spun through her head, imprinting themselves on the back of her eyelids. How could anyone know? They could have their rumors and suspicions all they liked, but the people of Pale Harbor did not know the truth, or her version of the truth, at any rate. The note with the candles was meant to scare her, rattle her. Well, it had succeeded. The question was, why now? Suspicion had followed her about like a cloud threatening rain in the four years since Nathaniel had died, so why send her this now?

After Sophronia had ordered Garrett to dispose of the candles somewhere out of sight, she had paced about the house, as restless and on edge as a caged animal. By the time dawn had broken, some of her fear had faded, replaced by anger and indignation. How dare somehow violate her Safe space? How dare they threaten her with their cryptic messages?

When she couldn’t take the racing thoughts anymore, Sophronia had told Helen that she needed to go for a walk to clear her head. Helen had pressed her lips tight as if she wanted to caution her against it, but ultimately let her go without a fight.

It had been ages since Sophronia had taken a walk by herself without Helen insisting on trailing behind her like some sort of medieval lady-in-waiting. But Sophronia was only going up to the hill anyway.

The hill—which was really more of a gentle slope—was Safe because no one else ever went there, and Helen had told her that she’d designated it as the outer edge of the ring of protection. It rose up alongside Castle Carver, and while it was part of the parcel of Carver land, it was so ambling and expansive that it could hardly be considered private property. It was the farthest that Sophronia would ever go, and at the top she would still be able to see Castle Carver, safe and snug, tucked into the surrounding trees.

The leaves under her boots were satisfyingly crunchy, and it felt good to let her legs stretch out under her layers of petticoats. The September breeze was crisp and cool, holding the promise of colder winds to come. Soon, the candles and the reason for her walk in the first place faded from her mind.

She walked without a bonnet, relishing the wind in her hair. Nathaniel had disapproved of her walking, especially without all the gloves and hats and cloaks that kept her proper. Without them, she’d be no better than a common housemaid in the eyes of the townspeople, he’d said, and it was their job as the most prominent family to set the standard for polite living.

Oh, everyone had loved Nathaniel. He’d been tall and just aloof enough that people deferred to him, but had penetrating blue eyes that made one eager to please him, to win one of his rare smiles. He was distinguished and well dressed, and everything that a wealthy man should be. Sophronia alone was privy to the streak of cruelty that had made him a monster to live with.

Now that she was free of him, she could walk without any time spent fussing over her appearance. But her world had shrunk down since his death. The people of Pale Harbor had worshipped Nathaniel, the wealthy businessman who had donated generously to charity and had given their little town a cosmopolitan flare. The first time she had ventured out into town after his funeral, there had been hissing, spitting and even whispered threats. The cold looks, the eyes flared with hatred, had eventually driven her back to the house, where she took sanctuary. Helen had cossetted her, making spells and charms that she claimed would keep Sophronia safe. It was all right, though; she had no need of the world beyond the grounds of Castle Carver. For all the bad memories that those walls held, there were a thousand more outside.

But when she got to the top of the hill, Sophronia found that she was not alone. She stopped in her tracks, her heart freezing in her chest like a rabbit stumbling across a fox. A man stood with his back to her, hands in his pockets, staring off across the misty landscape.

Sweat sprang to her palms and her throat tightened. What if it was the writer of the note, come to attack her somewhere no one would hear her scream? She turned to run back the way she had come, but tripped on a branch, snapping it. The sound rang out in the hollow air, giving her away. Unable to regain her balance, she went sprawling face-first and landed hard on her hands.

The man’s head jerked around at the sound. This was it. Squeezing her eyes shut, Sophronia braced for an attack.

But nothing came.

When she opened her eyes again, she recognized the tall, hatless man striding toward her. Her pulse slowed, but only a little.

“Mrs. Carver,” the minister said, his surprise nearly equal to her own. His coat had been slung over one arm, but when he saw her on the ground, he dropped it and offered her his hand. As he leaned over her, she could see the concern creasing his brow. “Are you all right?”

She let out a long, unsteady breath, and her fear dissipated into embarrassment. Now he would think she was a flighty, clumsy mess of a woman, as well as an eccentric. For all that she was used to being disliked, for some reason it cut her to the core that this man might share in those opinions of her.

Her dress was heavy and cumbersome, but she wouldn’t accept his hand, not when she was so vulnerable. With considerable effort, she scrambled to her feet, nearly tripping on her hem.

He stood, hand still out as if he didn’t quite trust her to manage on her own. She teetered for a moment, swaying into him before regaining her balance. Before the breeze wound between them, she caught the faint scent of sandalwood and whiskey. It had been so long since she had been touched, at all, by anyone, never mind an astonishingly attractive man. She found herself wishing she could take his hand. “Quite all right,” she said briskly when she finally found her voice, taking a good step back.

He gave her a look of lingering concern but only nodded. “I didn’t think that you—” He stopped himself, though Sophronia knew what he was going to say: I didn’t think that you ever left your house. Clearing his throat, he just said, “The path up was overgrown, and I didn’t think I’d see another soul.”

She pretended she didn’t notice. “It’s the highest point in Pale Harbor. In the summer, the blueberries will be ripe, and in the winter, when the trees are bare, you can see clear across to the old lighthouse beyond the harbor.”

“I should like to see that,” he said.

She gave a grim little laugh. “You say that now, but you’ve yet to experience a winter here. Bleak doesn’t begin to describe it.”

“And yet you brave it to come up here.”

“Well,” she said, bristling, feeling the need to defend her home, “there’s a beauty in the bleakness. If there wasn’t, the endless months of snow and gray would be enough to make one go mad. Besides, it’s part of my property.”

She wasn’t sure what perversion made her say that, other than she felt he should know that she did exert some control, that she was not a completely ridiculous person.

She waited for him to redden and stammer an apology, but he only leveled a curious look at her. “Is it now?”

“It is.”

He nodded without further comment, squinting out into the distance. The shadow on his jaw she had noticed the other day had lengthened into the beginnings of a beard. It became him. Parlors and manners and polite society didn’t suit him, and his broad frame looked much more at home here on the rocky hill than it had folded into a chair in her parlor. Unlike her, he was not trapped in a cage of his own construction. He came and went as he pleased, beholden to no one and nothing. An acute pang of envy ran through her.

The breeze was picking up, the sky darkening, and she began to wish she had brought a cloak after all. To change the subject, she asked, “And what brings you here? Gathering inspiration for a sermon?”

He reached into his pocket and held up a notebook, the pages blank. “Something like that.” Although he didn’t smile, there was just a hint of chagrin in his hazel eyes. “I thought a walk might get the words flowing.”

Should she warn him that he might write the most illuminating sermon and it would only fall on indifferent ears? The people of Pale Harbor were not exactly keen for outsiders to come to try to enlighten them. When Mrs. Whittier had come from Rochester and tried to start an abolitionist society, there had been such an uproar that she had been forced to abandon her plans and had eventually left town. The townspeople might fill the pews and listen with upturned faces, but their hearts and minds would not bend from the prejudices that shaped them. Sophronia hadn’t the heart to dash the minister’s naive hopes, though, and so she bit her tongue.

Pocketing the notebook, he gave a shrug, as if the sermon and the inspiration for it were suddenly unimportant. “And what brings you out here?”

“I was craving some fresh air,” she said, omitting the reason for it.

It would be so easy to let her guard down with a man like this. A man who looked at her with eyes as warm as cinnamon, a man who did not judge her or ask anything of her. But neither did he want to offer her anything, as it was becoming clear. He did not wish to engage with her about his church, and he certainly did not seem interested in sharing his thoughts.

“Well, I don’t want to frighten away any inspiration,” she finally said, turning to leave. She would go and calm her racing mind, seek her solitude elsewhere, and leave him to the privacy he so clearly craved.

“Wait.” His hand shot out and he caught her by the elbow. She froze.

“Please,” he said without removing his hand, “don’t leave on my account. I trespassed on your property. I should be the one to go.”

His hand was big and his grip strong, his fingers encircling her arm like a manacle. Panic sluiced through her, and suddenly it was Nathaniel clamping his hand around her in his bruising grip, berating her as if she were a contrary child. She let out an involuntary gasp, wrenching her arm away from him as hard as she could.

At her cry, he released her, dropping her arm like a hot coal. He took a hasty step back. Through her receding panic, she saw the alarm on his face.

Safe. Safe. You are Safe. Just breathe.

She hadn’t bothered with a corset today, and she was glad of it as she gulped down the cool, salty air like a tonic. “I...you’ll have to excuse me,” she said with a shaky laugh. But when she nervously looked up at him, there was no sign of humor or understanding in his expression, only intense scrutiny.

“No excuse necessary,” he said, his graveled voice dropping to a soft murmur. “I shouldn’t have taken the liberty.”

She bit her lip, burning under his level gaze.

“Would...would it be possible, do you think, for us to start over?” She didn’t want to be the woman whom he’d heard rumors about, nor the woman who had flown into a panic at an innocent gesture of goodwill. Most of all, she didn’t want to be pitied.

For a moment, it seemed like he would not answer. He dipped his head, rubbing at the back of his neck. When he looked up again and met her gaze, his face broke into a dazzling grin. It was glorious, lighting up his whole face and flooding her stomach with warmth. “God, yes.”

A weight lifted from her shoulders. His smile was infectious, and she found herself grinning back at him.

He stuck out his hand. “Gabriel Stone,” he said. “And you must be Mrs. Carver.”

With only a second of hesitation, she put her hand in his and shook it. This time, she did not shrink back from his touch, instead letting the warm strength of his grip envelope her. “A pleasure to make your acquaintance, Mr. Stone.”

It seemed silly to cling to such formal conventions when they were surrounded only by grass and open skies, but she couldn’t bring herself to ask him to call her by her given name. But oh, Lord, what would it look like spoken on those sensual lips of his?

“When I come up here I like to sit.” She pointed to a little depression in the ground that acted as a natural windbreak. “Will you join me?”

He followed her as she lowered herself to the grass, arranging her skirt and petticoats around her. In a surprisingly fluid motion, he sat down beside her, stretching out his long legs in front of him. How much more at home he seemed out here, what an easy grace he possessed when not confined by parlor walls and social orders. She envied him his ease. Where tea and polite conversation might be confining to him, to her they provided a scaffold of safety, a framework where expectations were clearly delineated. She knew where she stood, and she was Safe. But out here there were no rules, no expectations. It was both intoxicating and terrifying.

Reclining, they rested their heads on the natural pillow the earth provided and stared out over the choppy harbor. Gulls wheeled and cried, sending up the alarm for the coming rain. The familiar tableau was reassuring, but the vastness of it made room in her mind for all the bad thoughts to bubble up again.

“Someone left candles burning on my front path,” she blurted without taking her gaze from the diving gulls.

She heard his head turn on the brittle grass and felt his gaze on her. “Oh?”

Her cheeks flushed hot. Why was she telling him this? How did she know she could trust him? She had trouble reconciling this man as the minister he claimed to be, not when he seemed so unwilling to discuss his church or his philosophies. Sophronia did not trust easily, and there was something about the minister, no matter how ruggedly attractive he was, that didn’t make sense. Shouldn’t ministers be in the business of proselytizing? Shouldn’t he at the very least wish to discuss his views and ideas? He was proving a pleasant companion, but that did not make him her friend, her confidant.

She feigned casualness. “I suppose it was some mischief by local children.” She didn’t tell him about the accompanying note.

He took in a breath, as if he were about to say something else. But nothing came, and they lapsed back into silence.

She was just about to try asking him about the church again when he spoke.

“I’ve hired your friend, Fanny Gibbs.”

Sophronia pushed herself upright and looked at him, unable to keep from smiling. “You did! Oh, I’m so glad to hear that.”

He squinted one eye open and looked up at her. “You aren’t worried I’ve stolen her away from you?”

“Worried? Goodness, no. The girl is a treasure and I know she needs the work, though she won’t let me give her a dime of charity. Has she made you one of her sweet cheese buns yet?”

His lips curved up in the hint of a smile as he reached into his pocket. “Fresh from the oven this morning. Shall we?”

She’d left in such a fluster, she’d forgotten that she hadn’t eaten a bite of the meal Helen had prepared, and her stomach grumbled an unhappy reminder.

Breaking off a piece, he handed it to her and she inhaled the warm aroma of yeast and sweet cheese. It melted in her mouth, and she closed her eyes, savoring it.

When she opened her eyes again, he was regarding her with naked curiosity. “Yes?”

He hesitated. “It’s nothing.”

She expected that he wanted to ask her something about Fanny, something innocuous about where she had found such a treasure of a girl. “Oh, go on,” she said with good humor. “I can see the question practically tripping off your lips.”

“Not a question,” he said. “Only I think I begin to see why the town thinks you’re a witch.”

Sophronia’s heart seemed to stop. Wetting her suddenly dry lips with her tongue, she tried to make her voice come out light and carefree. “Oh?” Instead, it cracked.

“Mmm. You live in a castle on a hill with an old maid for company. You’re rarely, if ever, seen. And it seems you pay no mind to all the stories about you.”

Here she had thought they were sharing a pleasant view and a lighthearted conversation, and all he could think of was the petty gossip of the town. He had said he wanted to start over, yet he still seemed to be fixated on first impressions. Was her judgment with men still really so poor? When he had sat in her parlor with her, she had found it so easy to laugh about the rumors because he had seemed so different from what she had been expecting.

His graveled voice held a note of amusement, but there was nothing amusing about the suffocating life she led. Why had she thought she could share this special place with a stranger? Why had she thought he was different?

Abruptly, she sat up and brushed the dead grass from her skirts. “Indeed,” she said, her words clipped. “I do hope I’ve provided you with more fuel for the gossip mill. If you will excuse me, I promised to help Helen in the garden this afternoon and it looks like rain. Good day, Mr. Stone.”