The Forest Lord (6 page)

Armstrong bounded up behind, juggling a pair of the lighter trunks. The two outdoor servants had gone to help the coachman unharness the horses. The driver's duty was done, and now he could leave Hartsmere in search of more lucrative employment.

"Mrs. Byrne,"
Eden said. "You said that there are few of you here now. Are there other servants within besides the cook?"

"Not many, my lady. It's been hard to keep good servants, or pay them. Besides Mrs. Beaton, we've the one man in the stables, Dalziel, and three others who see to what needs doing outside—Grubb, Hindle, and Starkie. For other needs, we hire by the day. No visitors here."

Eden
could well believe it. There was hardly a dale in Westmorland more isolated.

"And where is Mr. Brown?"

"He took very ill just a few days ago and went to stay with his sister in Penrith. We've no steward at the moment. But now that your ladyship is here…" She let the statement drift off into a question.

"I could not help but notice the state of the farms and villages as we entered the dale,"
Eden said. "Are matters truly as unfortunate as they appear?

The Irishwoman's face showed an instant of surprise. "Begging your pardon, my lady, but I didn't expect you to be so… so…"

"Frank? I shall be quite honest with you, Mrs. Byrne. I did not wish to come here, but circumstances required it. I seek your help in making improvements for the benefit of us all. May I trust you?"

"Aye, my lady," she said slowly.
"That you may."
Her eyes took on a real measure of warmth. "I'll help in any way I can."

"I fear there is a great deal amiss at Hartsmere."

Mrs. Byrne sighed. "We've had much misfortune, my lady. The people of the dale would have it—" She broke off with a frown. "But you've journeyed so far, and need your rest."

"Pray continue, Mrs. Byrne. What do they say in the dale?"

"That it's cursed. That long ago the masters of this land struck a bargain with one of the Fair Folk—the Sidhe, as we call them in
Ireland—to grant the dale good fortune. They were golden times, with neither want nor sorrow. But somehow the bargain was broken, and the Sidhe lord withdrew his favor. That was near five years ago, they say."

Five years. How was it that
Eden had never heard a breath of such tales until today, aside from Aunt Claudia's ghost stories? She had been more than six months in the dale that last time, not including the isolation of her confinement. Had she been deaf as well as blind?

Would she have been prepared if she had known?

"Who broke the bargain, Mrs. Byrne?" she asked.

The housekeeper dropped her gaze.
" 'Tis
only a tale, my lady."

A tale with the ring of an impossible truth.
A curse had indeed come upon this dale, brought by the very family who should have protected and preserved the land and its people.

"Do they say it was my father?" she demanded.

"Aye, my lady."

Eden
let her breath escape in a rush. "And what do they say of me?"

The older woman met her gaze. "It will keep. Take some rest, Lady Eden. We'll talk again."

Eden
agreed, but only because she had a task of her own to carry out. The housekeeper was admirably cautious but clearly knowledgeable for all her brief tenure at Hartsmere.
Eden had won a true ally with a few direct words and a willingness to trust.

The
ton
did not encourage such openness and faith in one's fellow man.
Eden had spent the past five years pretending to
herself
that trust was unnecessary. But she had little left to lose and much to learn if she was to survive at Hartsmere and prepare it for her son.

If necessary, she would make a personal friend of every servant and farmer in the dale, no matter how strenuously Aunt Claudia objected.

"Please continue about your business, Mrs. Byrne,"
Eden said. "I wish to walk a little before I sample Mrs. Beaton's cooking."

"It's late, my lady. I smell snow in the air."

"I won't be long." She turned away before Mrs. Byrne could protest further.

Her half boots, sturdy and plain, were well suited for the outdoors. In
London she'd seldom walked, but here she expected to do a great deal of it. This would be only the first of many excursions.

From this spot she could see the distant parsonage. Beside the curate's house lay a small grove of limes and the family cemetery, enclosed by a wrought iron fence. There her newborn son had been buried… except that it was not he who had been placed in the hallowed ground but something or someone else.
Eden had not witnessed the burial—her father and Aunt Claudia had kept her away—but she had wept.
Wept so long and hard that they had sent for the doctor.

Her vision blurred.
You are not there. You are coming home to me
. The grieving was over. But there was one other visit to make before she returned. She set off at a brisk walk to the rear of the house.

Behind Hartsmere rose the fell with its snow-shrouded mantle of woodland. Outside the park were pastures fenced with stone, and just beyond that stood a natural escarpment of rock over which the beck tumbled and whispered amid the ice and snow.

On the other side of the rocky wall lay the forest.
Eden stopped, struck with panic. How often
he
had wanted to take her there during his fraudulent courtship, tried to convince her that there was some redeeming quality to such a blighted wilderness.

But
he
was gone.
He
had fled back to whatever realm had spawned him. A chill caught her unaware, and she tugged at the collar of her cloak though it was already drawn tight up about her neck.

What will my son be
? She'd pushed away that thought every time it had entered her head.
Would he be… normal?
Or something other than human?

It didn't matter. He was her son, no matter what he was.

With every step, the escarpment loomed closer. Each time she paused to catch her breath, she urged herself on again. Climbing over the rocks would not be easy in this dress; once there'd been a rough wooden ladder, but it was gone now, like so much else.

That was merely one more excuse to turn back. She clenched her teeth and charged the wall like a knight hurling himself at the ramparts of a castle.

A streak of red, bright against the drab grays and browns of snow and dead grasses, flashed at the edge of her vision. She turned to see a fox, the only other living creature with
whom
she shared the pasture. It paused in its flight, one paw lifted, to regard her through button-bright eyes.

She smiled at the unexpected beauty of the creature and at a sudden welling of fellow feeling. Life did exist here, after all. It survived under even the harshest conditions.

"Be at ease," she said. "There is no one here to hunt you."

The fox cocked its head almost as if it understood her, flicked its brush, and executed a graceful spin to run directly toward the forest.
Eden found her courage on more solid footing with the fox playing vanguard. But once again her progress was interrupted by movement. This time it was human.

A boy.

At first
Eden thought it might be the same ragged child she had seen in the village, but he could not have run so far. His clothes were worn but not yet threadbare. As little as she knew of children, she guessed him to be five or six years old. His shock of unkempt hair was the rich brown of good English farmland.

Like the fox, the boy stopped to stare at her. He had been intent on following the fox's trail, after the fashion of little boys the world over.

A completely baseless hope seized her heart. "Good day!" she called.

The boy looked as if he might bolt after his quarry. She began walking toward him, speaking softly all the while.

"Are you a stranger here? I am. Well, not quite a stranger. I lived here once, you see.
A long time ago."

The boy bent his head warily but did not move. She could have sworn that he sniffed the air like any wild creature.

"My name is
Eden," she went on. "It's an odd sort of name, I know. My mother chose it for me."

"Mother?"

The boy's voice shot through her like an invisible bolt. It held the lilt of an accent she had heard a very short time ago.

"Yes," she said, drawing close.
"My mother, Lady Bradwell.
Where is your mother?"

She could smell him now—a clean, almost sweet scent that hinted of spring. His face was handsome even in unformed childhood, his eyes bright green in a freckled face.

Leaf-green eyes, like Cornelius Fleming's.

"Are you my
máthair?"
the boy asked.

Her heart stopped. "What is your name?"

He continued to look at her with a solemnity and directness that belied his age. "Donal."

"And where have you come from, Donal?"

He pointed west, toward the
Irish Sea.

"You do not live here?"

He shook his head, sending the earth-brown hair cascading over his eyes. "They sent me."

Eden
could not ask who. Something inexplicable was happening inside her, as if a great bell had tolled in the depths of her being. She fell to her knees in the mud and snow.

"Donal," she whispered, "did they send you here to be with your mother?"

He nodded.
"My real
máthair
."
He frowned, "Is it you?"

Yes
. The answer was there, solid and strong as the fells themselves. She held out her arms, answering in the only way she could.

Donal backed away.

"No. Donal, it is all right—" She lurched to her feet, but he was already running—away from her, toward the black fortress of the wood. He moved so fast that she knew she had no hope of catching him.

She stood where he had left her for a long time, a biting wind whipping her hair loose from its pins.

"Lady Eden?"

The gruff voice brought her back to herself. In the gathering dusk she could just make out the stubbled face of one of the two men who had been waiting when the carriage arrived. He tilted his head in a gesture of respect and hunched his burly shoulders.

"Beggin' yer pardon," he said. "Missus Byrne sent me up to fetch you. It's comin' on dark."

So it was. "What is your name?"
Eden asked.

"Hindle, my lady."

"Hindle, did you see a child run up toward the wood?
A little boy of five or six?"

He shuffled his feet, ill at ease.
"Nae."

Eden
felt an unfamiliar stirring of temper. When was the last time, before learning of her son, that she'd been truly angry? Nothing else had been as important as this.

"Was a boy brought here to Hartsmere recently?
From
Ireland, perhaps?"

"Missus Byrne knows more about such things, my lady. If you'll come—"

He was lying, or at least not telling the full truth. But it was too dark now to search by
herself
.

"I shall go to Mrs. Byrne," she said. Hindle offered a hand to steady her, but she swept past him and strode down the fell in reckless haste.

There was no more time to devise a clever explanation for the presence of her son, if her son he was. She must think clearly, because whatever she said now would affect the boy's future irrevocably, for good or ill.

Mrs. Byrne waited in the stone-paved hall. Her face relaxed when she saw
Eden.

"Wisht, Lady Eden, I was that worried—"

"What do you know about Donal?"

Shocked silence fell between them.
Eden read the answer in Mrs. Byrne's eyes. The housekeeper caught Hindle's gaze, and he slipped out the door, leaving her alone with
Eden.

"Why didn't you tell me?"
Eden demanded. "A child is out there in the darkness, all by himself, afraid of—of—" She caught her breath, alarmed to find herself on the verge of tears.

Unashamed, Mrs. Byrne gave her a sympathetic look. "I thought it best to wait, my lady. All unexpected, a man came yesterday from
Ireland with the lad. He said that the boy was to be delivered to Lady Eden, and then he disappeared. I didn't know what to make of it, for I'd heard nothing of this from you. I took the lad in and fed him, but he ran off in the night. I sent men after him, of course, but they couldn't get near him. He was like a wild thing."