Blackmoore by Julianne Donaldson
Chapter 24
Two and a Half Years Before
I was spending more and more time in the library at Delafield Manor. I now had a stack of my own books on one side of the table, and when I was not reading, I was debating with Henry. He had a tutor all morning, and so he had plenty of time to learn more than I did. It took most of my afternoons to feel even halfway caught up with the progress he was making. My own mother cared little for my education, just as she cared little that I spent most of my day away from home.
Sylvia was content to lie in front of the fire and dangle a piece of yarn for the kitten to play with. When I needed a break from my more rigorous studies of philosophy and science, I always turned back to the illustrated book on birds. My greatest frustration, though, was being unable to hear their calls for myself. Surely I had heard them—everyone hears birdsong. But I wanted to know them individually, to be able to identify them and connect each bird with its song.
“Have you ever heard the call of a woodlark?” I asked Henry.
He looked up from his notes. He was writing a paper comparing the Greek myths of Icarus and Phaeton, a subject we had discussed at length the previous afternoon. “I can’t say that I have,” he said, casting his gaze on my open book.
I sighed.
“What?”
I shrugged. “I would just like to be able to hear some of these calls.”
“Our gamekeeper is a great birder. I could ask him about it.”
“Would you?” I looked up, finding Henry’s eyes right on me. He looked at me in silence for a moment, and I remembered, just as if it was happening again, how he had pulled me to safety—how strong he was when he had lifted me onto his horse—how he had called me Kate when I asked him to.
“Yes,” he said quietly, a little smile curving up one side of his mouth. “I would do that for you, Kate.”
He looked down then, with a smile tugging at his lips. He pressed it away, and a line creased his cheek, near his mouth. I stared at that crease, feeling something melt inside of me.
It was full dark when the pebble hit my window. I jerked awake, then immediately cursed myself for oversleeping. I was not even dressed yet. Scrambling out of bed, I lurched toward the window and threw it open.
Leaning my head and shoulders out, I looked down and spied Henry standing near the rose bushes beneath my window. “I need to dress,” I whisper-called. “Wait just a moment.”
“Be quick about it. Carson said this is the perfect time.”
I had my clothes already stuffed under my pillow. And not for the first time, I was grateful I did not share a room with any of my sisters. I hurried to pull on my dress, two pairs of my thickest stockings, and my boots. The laces were tricky in the dark, but I wasn’t going to risk lighting a candle and being caught. I was ready in record time. Henry was pacing impatiently under the window, and when I was halfway out he softly called out, “Just jump and I’ll catch you.”
“I can do this,” I hissed, searching for my customary footholds in the lattice. I felt clumsy. After a few fumbling steps down the lattice, I felt Henry grip my ankle.
“I have you,” he said, and knowing he could catch me if I needed him, I hurried down the rest of the way until he grabbed me by my waist and pulled me away from the wall, setting me down on my feet. He gave me not a second to catch my breath but grabbed my hand and started running for the woods.
I ran too, looking over my shoulder to check for any lights in the house—for any sign that I had been heard and was about to be discovered. But the windows stayed black, and the full moon lit our way. I grinned and faced the woods, and the clearing, and the birds that awaited.
Carson was an old man. As old as the land, it seemed. He waited in the clearing, and when we crashed through the last of the trees, panting and laughing with the thrill of our adventure, he shushed us as if we were naughty children.
I had known him as long as I had known all the servants at Delafield Manor. It had been a second home to me, and the people there were like a second family. Carson, a man of very few words, always tipped his hat to me and always had a shy smile for me.
I sidled up next to him and said, “Thank you for doing this.”
He nodded briefly, a curt acknowledgment of my words.
“Your arthritis is not bothering you this morning, is it?”
“No, Miss Katherine.” His voice was low and gruff.
Henry moved closer to us, his warmth blanketing that side of my body from the chill of the morning. “Have you heard them yet, Carson?”
“How can a soul hear a thing a’tall, with you two blathering on the way you are?” he muttered.
I covered my mouth to stifle a laugh and felt Henry’s shoulders shaking silently beside me.
“This way.” Carson nodded his head toward the woods on the other side of the clearing—the Delafield side. When he finally stopped his slow creeping through the trees, the sky was beginning to change, imperceptibly, from night to morning. A lightening was taking place all around us, and when we crouched down and sat, surrounded by bushes, the ground was wet with dew. I sat between Henry and Carson and close to them both, letting them warm me as the wet grass seeped through both layers of my skirts. Carson lifted one finger, warning us with a look to keep quiet, and then cupped his hand to hisear.
Henry flashed me a smile full of excitement and anticipation. I gripped my hands together tightly and leaned toward the clearing. We were just on the edge of the clearing, where we could see and hear the birds both in the woods and in the clearing. Here was our best chance, according to Carson, of hearing a woodlark.
Birdsong started softly, but as the sky lightened, and the birds emerged from their roosts to forage for breakfast, it was all around us. Every time we heard a different song, Carson would whisper, “Blackbird,” or “Swallow,” or “Thrush.” And still we waited, until the sky was golden and peach and the lightest of blues all at once, and I held my breath and hoped. I hoped for a woodlark, more than anything.
And then, a new sound, and I felt Carson go still beside me. I looked at Henry, with wide eyes, as the air was filled with a high, haunting song. A piercing, downward spiral of notes that ended in melancholy before beginning again and again.
“There he is,” Carson whispered. “Woodlark.”
I closed my eyes and breathed in deeply and let the birdsong fill my soul with melancholy and heartache and beauty. And when it ended, I pressed a hand to my chest, making sure my heart was still in one piece, before opening my eyes. I had to blink away tears, and I turned my head to see Henry, to make sure he had heard it too.
Henry was watching me, and I saw in his eyes the same thing I felt in my own heart. I saw the heartache and the beauty.
He leaned toward me, and his breath brushed my neck, sending a shiver down my spine as he whispered in my ear, “What do you think of your birdsong?”
I paused, feeling my heart swell with so much emotion I wondered how I would be able to contain it all. “It was ...” I shook my head. “It was the most hauntingly beautiful thing I have ever heard.”
His gaze swept over my face, his eyes looking like a reflection of my heart, all dammed emotion threatening to overflow. “Yes,” he said, his voice low, only for my ears. “Hauntingly beautiful.” He reached up and brushed away the hair that had fallen over my eyes, with a gentle touch and a familiarity that awakened me and startled me. “That is exactly what I was thinking.”
My breath came brokenly, and my heart was beating much too fast. In fact, in that still moment, with the sun pouring gold into the air and Henry’s hair still rumpled from sleep, his freckles still showing in that dusting across his cheeks, his eyes that charcoal grey, and his gaze settling on me with an unexplained weight—with the stubble on his jaw and the curve of his mouth and the breadth of his shoulders—I caught my breath, realizing that there was just as much poignant beauty in the face before me as there had been in the birdsong.
In an instant, everything changed. I felt more than just the melting I had felt with Henry before. I felt a sudden flame—a burning—and I was immediately consumed by it. My face turned hot, and I looked away from him, but not before I saw a little smile twitch Henry’s lips. I found Carson watching me.
“Well, Miss Katherine?”
I cleared my throat. “It was beautiful. Thank you,” I added, moving to stand. My legs had gone numb, and I wobbled on my feet until Henry stood beside me and gripped my elbow. “Stamp your feet. It will help.”
Blushing, I kept my face down, as if I needed to focus all of my attention on my tingling feet. “I should be getting home. Before I am missed.”
“I’ll walk you there,” Henry said, but I moved away from him and flashed him a bright smile, covering up my pounding heart and my shaking legs.
“No!” The word came out sharper than I intended. I did not feel quite myself. In fact, I did not feel at all myself. My heart was on fire, and I was terrified that it showed in my face. “No, thank you. I’ll be fine. Thank you again, Carson. Thank you, Henry.” And then I hurried away, as fast as my trembling legs could carry me, but I did not go home. I hid behind a tree just outside the rim of my garden, and I pressed a hand to my chest and wondered what had happened to my heart.