CHAPTER 18
Bibby, sitting on the bench on the other side of the table, had finished her milk and bread and now gave a giant yawn, showing her little pearly teeth, and rubbed her eyes.
“Goodness, you look sleepy!” said Cat. “Does she usually go to bed around this time?” she asked Guy. “It’s not even dark yet.”
“She’s been playing with her cousins all day, so she’s tired.”
“All right, munchkin,” said Cat, finding a cloth, dampening it, and wiping the baby’s fingers and mouth, “pumpkin time.”
Guy stood and started clearing the table, using the damp cloth to wipe it down, and busied himself about the hearth, cleaning dishes and putting them away.
Bibby was put into her night shift; then Cat wrapped her in a blanket and sat in the rocking chair with her. (It was still the most amazingly comfortable piece of furniture. Guy’s brother was a gifted carpenter, indeed.) The little girl fussed a bit.
“Oh, shushush,” said Cat. “How about this?” and she sang, “Twinkle, twinkle, little star…”, twinkling her fingers in front of the baby’s face and gently rocking the chair in time with the song.
Guy looked at her, surprised, and she was suddenly embarrassed. Ryan had said she sounded like a crow, and he had thought her library story time songs silly. (Ryan? Why had she ever put up with that self-absorbed idiot?)
“Sorry. I’ll stop.”
“No, no, don’t stop. You have a nice voice. And see, the babe likes it.”
Cat looked down to see the little girl sleepily wiggling her fingers, softly singing “Winka, winka…”
Cat smiled. What a darling. How could anyone not love her? She rocked, and sang, and Bibby’s little head leaned against her, the eyelids drooping lower and lower. One more song, Cat thought, and she’ll be asleep.
She leaned her own head back against the headrest of the chair, closed her eyes, and softly sang:
“Sleep, my child, and peace attend thee, all through the night;
Guardian angels God will lend thee, all through the night;
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping, hill and dale in slumber steeping;
Love alone its watch is keeping, all through the night.
While the moon her watch is keeping, all through the night;
While the weary world is sleeping, all through the night;
O’er thy spirit gently stealing, visions of delight revealing,
breathes a pure and holy feeling all through the night…”
She hummed the last few lines again, letting the final notes drop off into the silence.
The silence. She suddenly became aware of the complete stillness in the room, all sound suspended in tension.
Cat opened her eyes to find Guy staring at her, his face pale, the turquoise eyes wide in shock.
He swallowed convulsively, as if he were trying to find his voice.
“That song!” he said finally, in a hoarse whisper. “You sang it, that night! It was no dream!”
Cat stared back at him, her eyes widening in response as she took in what he said. He had been conscious. Oh my God.
“Did I… You sang—Bibby had woken—”
Cat nodded, almost involuntarily.
“You were sick, delirious!” she said. “You did not know what you were saying!”
“But I did say it. I remember.” Guy’s voice held an emotion Cat could not define; his eyes stood out hard against the unabated whiteness of his face. “And you—you answered.
“Didn’t you?” he suddenly demanded harshly. “I asked you to marry me, and you said yes!”
Cat blushed a fiery red all over her face.
“You did not know what you were saying!” she repeated, almost pleadingly, “I had to humour you!”
He abruptly turned his head away, raising his clenched fist to his pressed-together lips. Suddenly he turned on his heel, snatched a cloak from the hook on the back of the door, wrenched open the door, and limped out with long strides. Cat jumped as the door slammed shut.
“Guy! Wait!”
Bibby stirred in her arms, but she did not wake.
Now what? Histrionics again! Cat levered herself and the baby out of the rocking chair. Where could she put Bibby down? She had to go after Guy! No—she pulled herself back—she could not leave the baby, it was not safe—she remembered all too well Guy’s anger, and her shock, at his wife’s doing so—she would have to take her. Very well. Cat straightened her shoulders. Needs must, Uncle said. She wrapped the blanket more firmly around the little girl, jiggled her up in her arms to get a better grip, and stepped out into the gathering dusk.
“Guy!” Which way had he gone?
And there it was. An unmistakable, solid, clear direction: he had gone into the Wald. Catriona knew it as surely as if she could see and hear him limping ahead in front of her. He was going to the Arbour—to the special place that belonged to him and his brother, that was connected with the disappearance of his wife, and where Cat herself had arrived in this country.
There was still enough light to see the way, the path which Cat and Ouska had taken when they carried the wounded man to his cottage—was it really only two days ago? Bibby was heavy in Cat’s arms, sleeping soundly, as she was carried back to the same place where they had found each other. Cat moved quickly, driven by the inner voice that told her where Guy had gone, told her to hurry. She skirted the clay pit on her left, stepping very carefully; she had conceived a great respect for the big mud hole.
The buckets were still lying in the path. Or rather, one of them did, the other had tipped over and was mostly sunk into the pit by now. We will have to come back and fetch them tomorrow, Cat thought; Guy needs them. Then she caught herself up, startled. She was thinking as if she was a part of this place, as if she was going to be there the following day and the day after, as if—as if this was where she belonged. As if, two days ago, she had not been an ordinary North American, ex-librarian, ex-girlfriend of a stuck-up guy named Ryan, boring, ordinary, intimidated by the thought of booking a plane ticket to a tame city just because she had never been there before.
Hurry! the voice in her head commanded. Cat hurried. The soft leather moccasins on her feet hardly protected her from the roots and rocks on the path, but as if by a miracle, she neither stubbed her toe, trod on a sharp stone, nor got her feet tangled in her long skirt. She rounded the bend in the path beyond the clay pit and broke into something that was a near run, the sleeping baby bouncing up and down in her arms.
“Guy!” she called, “Guy!” Where was the man?
She just heard the noise over the sound of her own steps and hard breathing—a crashing and cracking, a breaking of branches—and then she was upon the archway to the little clearing, the Arbour. She had found Guy.
With a furious energy, he was ripping and tearing at the overhanging branches of the blue tree.