Blackmoore by Julianne Donaldson
Chapter 38
Alice smuggled me out of Blackmoore and onto the moors, where her brother waited with a pony. He handed me a white sheet and directed me to wrap it around myself. “You will be Linger’s Ghost tonight, miss.” Alice smiled mischievously and admitted that Linger’s Ghost was something the smugglers used to keep people off the moors at night.
“You will not forget the letters?” I asked, full of nerves now that I was actually doing this. “The one to Mrs. Delafield, especially.”
I could not leave without warning Mrs. Delafield of my mother’s plan to entrap Henry using Maria. She was capable of anything, and she was especially motivated when it came to tormenting her one-time friend.
“Don’t worry, miss. I’ll deliver it to her first thing tomorrow morning. And the letters to your mother and sister and Miss Delafield, as well. It will all be taken care of, just as we planned.” She smiled reassuringly, and her brother helped me up onto the pony. I set my face to the north and the road to Whitby.
I traveled the moors with a full moon lighting the way, and I could not stop looking behind me to catch one more glimpse of Blackmoore on the cliff by the sea. My heart tore at me, begging me to go back, but I was free for the first time in my life, and my hope was stronger than ever. And finally, when the pony carried me over the rise of a hill, and Blackmoore disappeared for good, my heart gave way to grief and threatened to drag me back. But I could not go back to that cage of a life. So I left my heart behind with Blackmoore and Henry, and I traveled with only hope as a companion. The birds in the night sang of the sea and distant lands and a freedom I had never known. I cried and smiled at the same time, and the farther we traveled from my mother, the lighter I felt, until I stretched my arms out as if I would fly and felt my soul expand within me. For the first time in my life I felt that I was powerful.
It was late the next night when I arrived in London and knocked on my aunt’s door. When I found her in the drawing room, she sat up straight, a hand to her chest in a startled movement.
“Katherine? What on earth are you doing here? At this hour? How did you come here?”
“I ran away. I took the stage from Blackmoore. I am ready to go to India with you.”
She stood and walked to me with open arms and a smile. “I am so proud of you, my dear.”
I fell into her arms, sobbing.
She patted my back. “My dear child, what are these tears? You should be happy. You are taking charge of your life.”
I nodded. She was right. “I am happy. I am.” But I could not stop crying, and finally I said the one word I had not been able to banish from my thoughts. “Henry.”
She clucked her tongue. “Oh, no. You cannot tell me these tears are for a man?”
I nodded.
“My dear Katherine. No man is worth this magnitude of tears.”
I would have said the same thing myself a month ago. I would have said it to Maria, and I would have known it to be true. But it was not true in this case. For if there was ever a man in the world worth grieving over, it was Henry Delafield.