Blackmoore by Julianne Donaldson
Chapter 5
The Delafields’ old nurse, Mrs. Pettigrew, sat across from me in the carriage, humming under her breath and knitting at a breathtaking speed, the needles clacking together in time with the clomping of the horses’ hooves. I looked longingly out the window at Henry’s back. He was riding, of course. I knew he would—I knew he always rode to Blackmoore. And a small, grudging part of me had to admit that I was grateful that his old nurse had agreed to come along to act as chaperone. But after two full days of this swaying carriage and that humming and those clicking needles, my head felt ready to split open.
We had taken advantage of the long summer daylight hours to travel a good distance yesterday. After twelve hours in the carriage with Mrs. Pettigrew’s noise but no conversation to help pass the time, I had been looking forward to talking to Henry. But when we had stopped at the inn last night, Henry had not dismounted. He had only said that I would stay there, with the coachman and Mrs. Pettigrew, and he would go on to another inn down the road.
I had frowned at his retreating back and trudged inside the inn, where I did not enjoy my meal nor the room I shared with Mrs. Pettigrew. This morning, Henry was astride his horse and waiting for us outside the inn after breakfast. We were off with hardly a word spoken between us.
I had never truly appreciated either the restfulness of silence nor the entertainment of intelligent conversation as much as I did today. I sighed as I leaned my forehead against the window, wishing the rumble of the carriage wheels could drown out the clack and hum of Mrs. Pettigrew, wishing I had someone to talk to, wishing the long drive was already over. I shifted, trying to stretch my legs, without success. Mrs. Pettigrew glanced up from her knitting to smile briefly at me.
“It tries one’s patience, doesn’t it? The waiting. But it is well worth it.”
With her smile, I was reminded that Mrs. Pettigrew had accompanied the Delafield family on their trips to Blackmoore every summer. She had been such a part of the family that when the children grew up and George had inherited Delafield Manor, he kept Mrs. Pettigrew on to be nurse to his own children. Henry must have been very persuasive to convince George to let her come with us. She leaned forward to peer out the window.
“Ah. It seems Master Henry has chosen the scenic route. This will be a treat for you.”
“What is the scenic route?” I asked, eager to talk about anything after two days of humming.
“You’ll see soon enough.” She sat back and click-clack went her knitting needles, and the low drone of her humming filled my ears once again.
She could not know that “soon enough” had grown old years ago, that “at length” was sick and frail, that “finally” was a dying breath. Patience was not one of my virtues. Neither was endurance.
The humming took on a high, keening quality that reverberated inside the carriage and within the bones of my skull. I thought I would go mad with the sound. The horses slowed, and I looked out the window and saw that they were pulling us up an incline.
“You know, the horses are having a hard time with this hill,” I said, moving toward the door, “so I shall just get out and stretch my legs a little.”
Mrs. Pettigrew looked up, startled, as I opened the carriage door. “Oh, no! You will break a leg! Ask the driver to stop.”
The carriage was traveling no faster than I would on foot. “I will not break a leg, I assure you.” I jumped down lightly and swung the door shut behind me, breathing a sigh of relief to finally be free of that tuneless droning.
Henry had been riding ahead of us, but he looked back and turned his horse to me.
“Is something wrong?” he asked, drawing near.
I shot him a look of accusation. “Mrs. Pettigrew hums.”
He laughed as he dismounted, his smile bright in the sunshine. “The humming! I had forgotten about the humming!”
“How could you forget about the humming? It is embedded in the very matter of my brain!” I imitated the high, droning, tuneless sound I had been enduring the past day and a half.
He just grinned, with a devious look in his eyes that made me wonder if he really had forgotten the humming after all. Realizing I was making my headache worse, I stopped humming and rubbed my forehead for a moment. Henry drew near me, leading his horse by the reins.
“So ... you stayed at a different inn last night,” I said.
He nodded.
I squinted up at him. “Was that really necessary?”
He shrugged and looked uncomfortable. “I didn’t want to risk ... your reputation.”
“Ah.” I looked away, my face hot. The memory of my sister Eleanor hung in the silence between us. I would not mention her name, though, and I breathed a sigh of relief when, after a moment, I realized that Henry was not going to mention her either.
Gesturing at the land before us, Henry said, “There is something you will want to see at the top of that hill.”
“What is it?”
“The moors.” He said it as if the word itself was a gift, just as he had always talked about the moors—as if they were as important to his inheritance as the house or the living.
Gripped with new excitement, I flashed him a grin and hurried to the top of the hill, Henry leading his horse and trailing behind me. A hearty wind blew my skirts, tangling them around my legs as I reached the top of the hill. I stopped at the crest and looked at a bleak valley of wasteland.
Dark heather covered the ground like a bruise. The laurel-green and gold of the grass and the occasional yellow flower did little to brighten the scene. Not a tree lived here—only some twisted, stunted cousin of a tree that grew no taller than the horses. In all, it was a muted, somber scene, and I could see no beauty in it.
“This is the moors,” I said, my voice flat with disbelief.
Henry stood beside me, watching my face as I looked at the landscape before me. Not a blade of green grass soothed the eye here. There was nothing remotely close to civilization in this wilderness.
“Yes. This is the moors,” Henry said.
“But ... it is ugly,” I said, my voice distraught even to my own ears. “It is so very ugly, Henry.”
He laughed.
“No, truly, it is. You told me it was beautiful.”
“It is beautiful. To me.” I looked at him without comprehension. He gestured to the scene before us. “Can you not find even one spark of beauty here?”
I looked from him to the land, wondering for a moment if he had spent the last ten years lying to me or teasing me. But there was no deception in his eyes. There was only fondness and an excitement I could not understand. But I would try, for his sake. I walked a few steps away and bent down to feel the plants I was crunching beneath my boots. I wanted to know this land as beautiful, the way Henry did. The heather was an ugly, dark, brownish-purple color, like a ripe bruise. But these yellow flowers were bright as sunshine. Not bright like daffodils but deep yellow orange, like a drop of sun. I reached down to pluck a blossom and instead stabbed myself on a long, sharp thorn growing right beside its petals.
“Ow!” I sucked the drop of blood from my finger.
“I should have warned you. There is nothing soft here in the moors. Do not let the flowers deceive you. They are designed to withstand anything—even a flower-picking young lady.”
My finger throbbed. “I suppose that’s admirable—to be so hardy,” I muttered, grasping for anything to admire in this land. A gust of wind suddenly tore across the moors, pulling my bonnet from my head and spinning it into the sky.
Henry plucked it from the air as if it had been thrown to him, and moving in front of me, he put the bonnet back on my head. Holding it by the ribbons, he leaned down, and there was a spark of something in his granite eyes that was new. Some life, some light, was new there. The moors had awakened in him something I had never seen before. He tied the ribbon under my chin, his fingers brushing my neck, my collarbones. Heat rushed to my cheeks, and I held myself perfectly still.
His gaze lifted from the ribbon to my face, and he said in a quiet voice, “I think the most profound beauty is found in what our hearts love. And I love this, Kate, more than I love anything else. It is beyond beautiful to me. It is home. It is ...” He paused, and squinted a little, as if looking into the sun, but his gaze stayed steady on me. “It is the sight I want to see every day, for the rest of my life.”
I was taken aback. I had known that Henry loved Blackmoore. I had known all along that he would inherit this land, this estate, this life. But seeing him here, seeing him own it, seeing him proclaim it his own home, struck me deeply.
In a flash of memory, I was hiding in a dim room in Delafield Manor with the smell of peonies so sharp and sweet I could taste it. And I felt once again, just as I had that night a year and a half ago, both deeply sorrowful and deeply lost.
I spun around, pulling the ribbon of my bonnet out of Henry’s grasp, and pretended to study the view before me. But with my back to him, I reached up and rubbed my nose hard and breathed in sharply, telling myself to get control of my emotions. I felt Henry stand behind me, silent and waiting—waiting for me to love this place as he did.
“I think it may grow on me,” I said, fighting hard to keep my voice steady. I breathed in again, willing my heart to slow. Clouds the color of granite streaked across the sky, pushed toward us by the unrelenting wind. I retied the bow of my bonnet ribbon taut, pulling it hard, making myself proper again. I would not give way to the pull of this wilderness. Looking toward the road, I saw the carriage stopped and waiting for us.
“Come,” I said. “Let us go see your Blackmoore.” I was happy to climb back inside the small, stuffy carriage. I was even happy to hear the mindless drone of Mrs. Pettigrew. This was proper. This was a place of rightness. Not that wild scene outside—not that wild land nor that dark-haired boy with the grey eyes who loved it more than he loved anything else.