Air rushing through the open door stoked the flames higher, transforming the cottage into a furnace. The heat drove her back. Gabriel planted his feet and howled at the spitting, raging blaze. The noise deafened her. She put her hands to her ears and screamed back, at one with the chaos and the primitive synergy of fire and air and stone and earth. She could hear nothing but the bestial roaring of the flames, but she turned around, facing the blackness and the cold. Something prickled the hairs on the back of her neck. She saw a shape moving toward her in the murk. Death, she assumed. She braced herself, protecting her womb. She shrieked in mindless panic when she saw that it was not death but a man. Blood thundered in her brain, blinding her. She was fainting, the tide of blood rising too fast, too high. The figure closed in. Devon—it was Devon. She pitched forward and he caught her in his arms.
The Gift
Twenty-four
SHE WAS DRESSED IN rags, layers and layers of them, all reeking of peat. He laid her on the ground a safe distance from the fiery cottage while he shot a wary glance at the stiff-legged monster standing motionless six feet away. He said something low and calming, but the dog only stalked closer, eerily alert. “It’s all right, I’m a friend. I’m Lily’s friend.”
A lie, he thought. A cowardly, contemptible lie. Nevertheless, the sound of her name had an instantaneous effect: the dog sat back on its haunches and grinned at him.
Lily’s face, ruddy in the livid glow of the fire, was thinner, he saw, the edges sharper. Was she ill? He thought she’d only fainted, but now her stillness frightened him. He began to loosen her tattered clothes, still warm from the fire. And then he froze. Not breathing, hand hovering, he stared down at the soft mound of her belly under the last layer of rust-colored homespun. His mind collided with the possibility, staggered backward, confronted it again. He touched her. His fingers were stiff with tension; at first he felt nothing, no sensation at all. Then, slowly, his rigid hand relaxed. The truth seeped into him as gently as his stroking palm rubbed across her abdomen.
He closed his eyes and felt a fullness in his heart rising, expanding, so poignant and powerful he wanted to weep. “Lily,” he said, and she awoke. Her eyes were cloudy, her face uncomprehending. He whispered, “I’ve found you. Lily, I had stopped hoping.”
Something gathered behind her eyes. He waited for recognition—prayed for welcome; the possibility of redemption lit all the black corners of his soul. Then she opened her arms, and they embraced.
Her hair was wild, a mad-looking halo against the flames that still curled and hissed behind her. He buried his face in it and held her tighter, trembling. The salt on his lips was the taste of his own tears. “Darling,” he murmured, rocking her. “Thank God, thank God.” He wanted to see her face, but he couldn’t let go yet. “I looked for you everywhere. Everywhere. If I hadn’t seen the fire, I would never have found you. Lily, thank God.”
Finally he pulled away. “I went to Soames’s house first,” he told her, the words tumbling out. “He wouldn’t speak to me. But his wife caught up to me as I was leaving, and she said she’d seen you walk west, away from the town.” He remembered the way she’d scuttled up to him in the street like a crab, hanging onto his sleeve and hissing in a frightened whisper—“They threw her clothes in the street!”—and he shuddered, as he had then, unable to speak of it.
“I searched for weeks but I couldn’t find you, Lily. Then, a few days ago—I can’t remember how many—a little boy in Bovey Tracy told me he’d seen a lady with red hair. Last fall, he said. She went away with the witch who lives on the moor, whose dog is really a demon.”
Lily didn’t speak, and he couldn’t read her expression in the dimness. “Are you all right, darling? Are you well? The child—”
She pushed his hand away when he stretched it out toward her, and got to her feet with clumsy haste. He scrambled up, helping her. “Careful, love, you’re not—”
“Is Clay dead?”
Her voice startled him; he’d never heard that thin, emotionless tone. “No, no,” he said hurriedly, “he’s all right. He’s still weak, not himself, but the doctors say he’s going to get well.” She looked away, toward the fire. He searched her sharp profile uneasily. She seemed so strange. “Who lived here with you, Lily? Were you alone?” He glanced at the outlandish maze of frozen statues all around them, glimmering weirdly by the light of the fire. Her dog stood beside her like a sentinel, watchful and impassive, waiting. Sparks floated in lazy spirals, flickering out before they touched the icy ground. “Lily, are you all right?” He took a step toward her; she moved back in tandem.
“I’m cold,” she whispered, hugging herself.
Immediately he shrugged out of his heavy black cloak and draped it over her shoulders. “We’ll go home tomorrow,” he murmured, his cheek touching hers. She shuddered—from the cold, he thought.
The fire had dwindled. Within six feet of the cottage, the intense heat had thawed the ground in an ashen square. He led her to a clean place on the warm earth and helped her to sit down. He wanted to touch her again, but she was holding herself so stiffly he decided not to. “Talk to me, Lily. What’s happened to you? Tell me how you’ve lived all these months. Have you been here all alone?” She didn’t answer. “Lily.” She lay down on her side, facing away from him, curled into a tight ball, hands clutching each other under her chin.
She was tired—she might even be sick; of course she needed to rest. They would talk tomorrow. He leaned over her, trying to see her face. Shadows played on her pale cheeks and the sharp but still gentle line of her jaw. Minutes passed. Was she asleep? He shivered and sank down beside her, pulling her rounded back against his chest, seeking her warmth. His hand fell naturally across her swollen belly and he thought of the child. His child. He could not make out exactly what he was feeling beyond anxiety—for her, for the baby. But there was joy too, fragile, buried deep, a night creature frightened of the light. Out of habit, he distrusted it. But Lily was going to have his baby, and all at once he felt as if he were overflowing, as if he couldn’t contain himself. If this could really happen, if he could have Lily and the child…
He could think of nothing to give in return, no equivalent in his sterile existence to match such precious gifts. But Lily had absolved him of so much already. He was afraid to want anything, afraid to hope, but he couldn’t help himself. The last thing he’d have accused himself of was optimism, and yet he found that he was discounting all the dreadful possibilities that might lie ahead for them and was rejoicing instead in the miracle of this moment. For months his life had been a kind of oblivion, a nightmare storm of feeling so chaotic that there had been nothing outside it, nothing beyond himself. The nightmare was over now because he could protect her. She was here—here, in his arms. Her sweet profile softened the drab harshness of the moor. Her narrow shoulders grazed his chest in rhythm with her quiet breathing, and her smoky hair tickled his face. And tomorrow they were going home together.
He fell asleep. When he awoke, Lily was kneeling beside him, watching him. The dawn sky hovered low and menacing, a hostile shade of gray. He reached a hand out to touch her hip, but she leaned away.
“Will you do something for me?”
He sat up. “Yes. How do you feel, Lily?”
“I want you to move some stones.” She got to her feet and backed away from him. “You’ll need your horse.”
He rubbed his eyes and the stubble on his cheeks. Then he got up and followed her.
“There,” she said, pointing.
He hefted the second heavy stone from the donkey cart and carried it to the rock-piled tomb in the center of a circle of smaller stones. He dropped it in the spot she was indicating, straightened, and slapped the dust from his hands. Immediately she turned and walked off toward the blackened patch of earth that still smoldered and smoked in the distance. He set his teeth and followed.
Whose grave was it? What was special about these unwieldy granite boulders he’d had to haul from a fetid well ha
lf a mile away? Who had fashioned this mad array of birds and men and mermaids around the ruined cottage? Lily wouldn’t answer, and he’d finally given up asking.
She was waiting for him at the bottom of the hill. His black cloak hung to her ankles, making him think of a small, pregnant bat. He suppressed a start of eerie recognition when he noticed the statue she was standing next to. It was of a mother and child; the woman had Lily’s height and shape—former shape—and there was something in the posture and the calm, featureless face that made him certain she was the model for it. Staring at the cradled infant in the woman’s arms, he felt disconcerted, almost disoriented.
“Why did you look for me? Why did you come here?” she asked abruptly in a voice devoid of expression.
“Why?” He had waited so long to tell her. “Because I love you.”
She gave a short, violent exclamation, pivoted, and clapped her hands to her ears.
He was appalled. For a minute he couldn’t move. Then he stepped around her so that she had to look at him. She lowered her hands slowly, the thin wrists shaking; her eyes looked blind, or as if they were looking inward instead of out. He tried to speak calmly. “Listen to me, Lily. I know now that you never hurt Clay, never could have. I—”
“How do you know?”
“I just know.”
“How?”
His eyes sidled away. “I’ve come to my senses.”
“You’re lying.”
How could she know? “No, it’s the truth.”
“Clay remembered something.”
“No,” he said honestly, “I swear it, he can’t remember anything. I tell you I’ve come to my senses.”
“Liar.”
He flinched. “Will it help to tell you I’m sorry for what I did? I haven’t said it before because I knew it couldn’t—”
“Will you give me some money?”
“What?” She repeated the question—although he’d heard it perfectly the first time—in the same eerie, uninflected tone. “Why?” he asked gently.
“So that I can go away. So that I can live.”
A chill traveled up his spine, spread across his scalp. “Lily—darling—” He saw a shadow of revulsion darken her sharp-boned features, and the rest of the words stuck in his throat.
“Will you?” she prompted.
“No,” he said hoarsely.
“I didn’t think so.” She backed up when he stretched his hand toward her. “Don’t touch me. I have no choice but to go with you—if I don’t I’ll die.”
“Lily—”
“In three months I’ll come into an inheritance from my father. I’ll leave you then, and I’ll take the child with me. It’s not yours, it’s someone else’s.”
He believed her, and his body went ice-cold with panic. But a split second later he realized she was lying. Of course she was lying. “Whose is it?” he asked, humoring her.
“I’ll never tell you.”
He tried to smile. “You have to come with me, love, you have—”
“No choice. Yes, I know. But not for long—I’ll leave as soon as I can. My child deserves better than you. If you try to take him, I’ll kill you.” Finally her voice broke; he saw that her whole body was shaking. He made a movement that made her take another step back. She wrapped her arms around herself, shivering uncontrollably. “Your baby died, but you won’t have mine. You couldn’t keep your wife, and you won’t keep me. I despise you.”
He turned around, white-faced, incapable of looking at her any longer. It was as if he’d been flayed, as if his skin had been stripped from his body. What lunacy had made him think forgiveness was at hand? He went to retrieve his horse, limbs moving mechanically. In the east, the sun was a watery orb behind the surly sky. When he returned, Lily allowed him to put her up on his big stallion. Her body was limp, she looked exhausted; but her eyes burned with enmity.
He knew it would be faster to ride behind her on the horse, but he couldn’t bring himself to touch her again. So he took the horse’s reins and led him through the frosty warren of sculptures, silent wraiths, their icy stillness as damning as a curse. The dog—Gabriel, she’d called him—trotted ahead, leading the way. A few snowflakes drifted on the chill wind, graying the brown tussocks of sedge and peat and the gaunt curves of some ancient earth barrow. He shivered, conscious of the dark moor’s patient hostility, its low, snarling threat. He though of his optimistic hopes of the night before. They struck him as pitiful, the crazed delusions of a madman.
“Will she come and dine with us?” Clay asked as Devon trudged up the terrace steps toward the manor house from Cobb’s cottage where Lily had ensconced herself. Clay was wrapped in a blanket and slumped in a chair outside the open library doors.
“No.”
“Why not?”
Clay’s expression of sympathy set Devon’s teeth on edge. “She didn’t trouble to give a reason. What are you still doing out here? The sun set half an hour ago. If you catch cold, don’t expect me to feel sorry for you.” His voice was clipped, but his hands were gentle as he helped his brother to his feet and guided him into the library. As soon as Clay was seated on the sofa, Devon moved to the cabinet between the windows and took out a bottle of whiskey. He poured a drink and turned back, ready for Clay’s disapproval—as predictable these days as the calendar.
“Does that r-r-really help?” Clay asked in his halting way, gesturing toward the glass.
“It helps.” He peered down at the amber liquid, inhaling the harsh fumes, and took a swallow. A reflexive shudder shook him and his eyes watered. No, it didn’t help. But he was used to it and there was nothing else.
“Look what Mac—MacLeaf gave me, Dev.”
“What is it?”
“A horse. He carved it himself. It’s Tamar, see? Galen says since I can’t ride him, at least I can loo—look at him.”
Devon managed a smile. MacLeaf had been back for a month now. He’d found work in a tin mine near Liskeard after Devon had driven him away from Darkstone. Apologizing to him had been painful and awkward, but he’d done it, and MacLeaf was glad to be working around horses again.
Clay was leaning back on the sofa with his eyes closed. Devon frowned. “How do you feel? Are you ill?”
“No, I’m fine. A little tire—tired.”
“You stayed outside too long. Come on, I’ll take you up.”
Clay waved Devon away. “How far along is Lily’s, um … Lily’s”—the word finally came to him—“pregnancy?”
Devon set his glass down carefully. “I don’t know. She won’t tell me.” And nothing closed her away from him faster than a reference—subtle, direct, oblique, aggressive, it didn’t matter—to the child she was carrying. To save himself, he’d finally stopped, weeks ago, asking her any questions about it at all. But she was too thin; he worried about her incessantly.
“It’s hard for you,” Clay said softly. “But in a way, you know …” He trailed off, not at a loss for words this time, Devon knew, but in an effort to spare his feelings.
“It’s what I deserve?” he supplied caustically. Clay smiled gently and lifted a shoulder. “Thank you for that insight. But you’ll appreciate that it’s occurred to me once or twice before now, and I’m sick to death of it.”
“Right. But I still don’t under… stand how you could’ve thought, even for a … sec … second, that Lily would sh-shoot me, it’s—”
“Damn it!” Devon cursed with quiet ferocity. “There was a note, Clay, it was under your hand. Her trunk was full of money. I thought you were dying—I didn’t think, I acted. Oh, hell.” He closed his eyes and leaned back against the window. Those were excuses, not reasons, and he’d tormented himself with the magnitude of his stupidity a hundred times.
“Mother’s coming—did I tell you?”
He finished his drink and looked up. “Yes.”
“Oh—sorry. What day was it again?”
“Friday.”
“That’s right. Alice is c-c-coming … too, isn
’t she?”
“Yes.”
“That’s good.”
Clay’s smile provoked him to smile back. “Yes, that’s good. Then someone else will have the nuisance of taking care of you.”
Clay grinned lopsidedly. “I’d much r-r-rather Alice nursed me than you. She’s prettier and she doesn’t growl at… me.” His expression sobered slowly. “Dev?”
“Here.”
“Do you want me … to talk to Lily? Try to, I mean?”
He laughed, but he wasn’t amused. “What would you say?”
“I don’t know. Maybe it would c-c-c …”
“Come to you?”
“Come to me. Something brilliant, something el—eloquent.”
“I appreciate that. But I don’t think so.”
“Well, it can’t hurt, can it? Just to try.”
Perhaps not, but Devon thought it would be like forcing medicine down a dead man’s throat; it wouldn’t hurt, but it wouldn’t help, either.
“I’ll talk to her,” Clay decided, rubbing his hands together.
Twenty-five
“HOW CAN EE STAND that heat, Lily? Here it is April, an’ you huddled up t’ them coals like some witch over ’er kettle.” Lowdy unfurled a clean sheet over the mattress and began to tuck it in around the edges. “Galen d’ say they’m takin’ more wood here than to all o’ Darkstone since ee’ve come t’ live in Mr. Cobb’s cottage. Ee did ought t’ get out more, is what. Ought t’ be out walkin’, not settin’. In the day, too, ‘stead o’ at night so nobody can look at you.” She threw a sidelong glance at Lily, who made no answer and didn’t look up from her sewing. “Gettin’ peculiar, is what,” she muttered under her breath as she spread the wool coverlet over the sheet and fluffed up the pillow. “Passin’ peculiar. An’ too skinny by half.”