As well as abusive.
“Stop fussing,” I scolded. “I’ll give it a shot, but if she doesn’t want to talk to me, I’ll leave.”
My thoughts will be with you, my dear.
“Thanks,” I said, and closed the journal before Aunt Dimity could make me jumpier than I already was.
There was no denying that I was nervous about meeting Lizzie Black. Living alone year after year on an isolated farm could do strange things to a person. Lizzie might be a crazed survivalist by now, or a cackling, one-eyed hag—or an older, creepier version of Miss Archer. The awful possibilities were endless, but as I left the study, I reminded myself that whatever Lizzie Black had become, somewhere deep inside her was the girl who’d shown such kindness to Aunt Dimity.
Ten
I had a sneaking suspicion that Annelise would ask awkward questions if I told her I was going to see Lizzie Black, so I left a note telling her only that I wasn’t sure when I’d be back and that she shouldn’t hold dinner for me. If there was an emergency, I reasoned, she could always reach me by cell phone.
I left the note on the kitchen table for her to find, fished her spare set of car keys out of The Drawer, grabbed a dry rain jacket from the coatrack in the front hall, and, as an afterthought, pulled on a pair of Wellington boots. My wellies would fare better than my sneakers in a farmyard.
It was nearly four o’clock when I left the cottage, and the sun was sinking low on the horizon, but the rain had stopped, patches of blue sky were showing through the cloud cover, and there was still enough daylight left for me to locate the lane Aunt Dimity had described as “rather uninviting.” As it turned out, I had driven past it many times, because it had never occurred to me that anyone could drive up it. I’d assumed it was a cow path.
By the time I reached the farmyard at the end of Lizzie’s lane, I was convinced that I would have to replace the entire suspension system in Annelise’s car. Although the small, boxy Ford had survived the deep ruts and bone-jarring potholes that made the lane uninviting, it hadn’t done so happily. When I switched off the engine, the beleaguered chassis let out a groan that seemed to say, “I was designed for fuel economy, you fool, not off-road adventuring!”
The sight that met my eyes at the end of the lane, however, soon made me forget about the beginning and the middle. Hilltop Farm was nothing short of enchanting. The outbuildings were old
86 Nancy Atherton
and crooked and clustered companionably atop a modest hump of a hill, behind a small farmhouse decorated with living trees that had been trained and twisted to form arches over the front door and the small windows.
The buildings were made of the same honey-colored limestone as the low walls that encircled the vegetable garden—now banked with straw for the coming winter—and the sheep-dotted pastures beyond it. The late-afternoon sunlight gave a rosy glow to the golden stone, made the rain-washed fields sparkle, and gilded the rust-colored lichen on the farmhouse’s slate roof.
As I climbed out of the car, I felt as if I were leaving the twentyfirst century behind and entering an earlier, simpler age. I could hear the homely clucks of unseen chickens, the grunt of a pig, the distant baaing of sheep, and the rush of water dancing downhill in a nearby stream. Smoke curled from the farmhouse’s chimney, and its windows were lit from within by a soft radiance that suggested candles rather than lightbulbs. There were no telephone lines, power lines, generators, or satellite dishes to spoil the illusion of stepping back in time. I’d rarely seen a place more at peace with itself.
The peace, alas, was short-lived. The moment I closed the car door, the farmhouse’s front door opened and a woman stepped out.
She was short and stocky, with pale blue eyes, a round face as weathered as Leo’s, and a long braid of white hair wound over the top of her head, like a close-fitting halo. She wore a bulky brown wool sweater over durable canvas trousers, and she had old leather moccasins on her feet, as though she’d finished her farm chores and settled indoors for the evening.
She looked as if she might be somewhere in her mid-sixties, and though she wasn’t aiming a shotgun at me, her body language wasn’t entirely welcoming. Her shoulders were squared, her hands clenched into fists, and her glare was so potent that I could feel its heat clear across the farmyard.
Aunt Dimity: Vampire Hunter
87
“Who are you?” she shouted from the doorstep. “And what do you want?”
“I’m Lori Shepherd,” I called back, and since I knew that my name would mean nothing to her, I added, “I’m the American who lives in Dimity Westwood’s cottage.”