They could not imagine the strangling sense I felt when I imagined them
exploring the coast and the moors and the great old house with its secret passageways while I stared at the same stone walls and the same old hedgerows I had known all my life.
“But it is just a house, Kitty,” Sylvia said, looking at me as if I had lost my mind.
I shook my head. “It is not just a house.” Because it wasn’t. Not to me.
To Sylvia, Blackmoore was simply her grandfather’s estate, a place for her family’s annual summer holiday. But for me, it represented the opening of a lifelong cage. It stood in my imagination as an escape from everything that was the same and unendingly monotonous about my life at home.
“Then what is it?” Henry asked, his grey eyes more serious than I usually saw them. He watched me as if my answer meant something important.
“It is adventure,” I stated, and the word tasted like freedom. “I have never even left the county I was born in. I’ve never seen the ocean or the moors.
And every summer, you two leave me for this great house perched on a cliff overlooking the ocean with the moors at its back. And you tease me—” I gave Henry a pointed look, and he grinned back unapologetically. “You tease me with rumors of ghosts on the moors and secret passageways and smugglers and refuse to tell me if any of it is actually true.” I sighed and muttered, “I would give anything to go to Blackmoore.”
“Anything?” Henry asked with a doubtful look. “I think you are
exaggerating.”
“I am not exaggerating, Henry! I swear to you that I would give anything to go!”
“Such as . . . ?”
I tried to think of a suitable example, so they would understand the force 10
of my feelings. I looked down. Not my fingers. One needed all one’s fingers to excel at the pianoforte. A toe? Perhaps a little one?
“I would give a little toe to see Blackmoore,” I declared.
Sylvia blanched. Henry’s eyes lit up with interest.
“A little toe?” he asked. “Not a large one?”
I chewed on my lower lip. “No, I think large toes are crucial for balance.
A little toe. Perhaps my smallest one.”
Henry leaned forward, mischief lighting up his eyes. “And how would you
go about severing a little toe?”
“Henry!” Sylvia interjected.
He held up a hand, quieting her, and challenged me with a look.
I swallowed. “I would . . . I would ask Cook to cut it off.”
Sylvia looked horrified. “Blood? In the kitchen? No, Kitty. It would not do.”
I tried to think bravely of the idea. “It would not be so bad. Surely there is an occasional bit of blood in the kitchen, now and then, from raw meat or . . .”
Sylvia cupped her hands over both ears, shaking her head. “Say no more,
I beg of you.”
Henry could hardly keep his grin in check, although he appeared to be
trying. “And what would you do with that little toe, Kitty? Hm? Is there some market for toes in exchange for trips to Blackmoore?”
My frustration quickly boiled over into anger. I picked up the pillow at my side and threw it at him. He batted it away with infuriating ease. “I do not know if there is such a market, Henry Delafield. Perhaps you could tell me, since you will one day own Blackmoore. Hm?” I imitated his maddening half-smile. “Is there a market for little toes?” I bent over and started to unlace my boot. “Because I will cut it off right now, and pay you for my trip there, and I don’t care if your cook does object to blood in the kitchen.”
My trembling fingers could do nothing with the laces that had somehow
become knots. I tugged at them without success, my face hot, my eyes clouded with the threat of tears. I blinked hard, squinting at the tangle of laces, when 11
J u l i a n n e D o n a l D s o n
suddenly Henry was climbing over Sylvia, pushing her aside, and sitting beside me. He grabbed my hands, pulling them away from my boots.
“Kitty,” he said in a low voice. “Stop. Stop.” I fought his grip but only halfheartedly. “I am sorry,” he whispered, leaning his head close to mine. “I should not have teased you about Blackmoore. I know how you feel about it.”
His words had the same effect on me as water thrown on a fire. I pulled
my hands away from his grip and covered my face with them, breathing in
deeply. I had over-reacted again. It was a great weakness of mine. It was a great weakness of all Worthington women. And now, pulled from the heat of my anger, I was embarrassed. But no less sad. No less bereft. No less frustrated.
For a moment, I felt Henry rest a hand on the back of my bent head, lightly.
“Come, Kitty. Let us have no blood today,” he said, his tone light and
cajoling. “Instead, let us plan what you are going to do while we’re away. You should plan some great adventure so that you will have something exciting to share with us upon our return.”
I dropped my hands and glared at him. “You know as well as I do that
there is no adventure to be had here. If there was, we would have already found it! At any rate, it is no fun to have an adventure by oneself.” I crossed my arms over my chest, sullen and resentful. “But my question is, Why? Why has your mother never allowed me to go?”
Henry and Sylvia stayed silent, even though I looked at them, pointedly
waiting for an answer. An ugly suspicion crept into my mind with the heavy, weighted steps of jealousy. It whispered to my mind—a question so abhorrent that my mouth turned down, as if I had bitten into something sour.
“Is Miss St. Claire going to be at Blackmoore again?”
The reluctance in Henry’s expression answered my question. Sylvia shot
me a look full of pity.
My suspicion—my jealousy—laughed with glee and wriggled itself into a
more comfortable position, as if it planned to stay for a very long visit. My lip curled as I imagined Henry and Sylvia spending a month at Blackmoore with Miss St. Claire, of all people.
12
“So your mother has no objection to inviting guests. She simply objects to me.”
“It is nothing personal, Kitty. You know she intends Miss St. Claire for Henry—”
“Sylvia!” Henry shot his sister a look of warning.
Sylvia’s mouth fell open. “What? That is no secret! We have all known that for ages.”
Nothing more was said for a long, awkward moment. I looked at the
yellow fabric of the settee, thinking only of how much I resented this Miss St.
Claire, whom I had never even met.
Henry turned to me, so suddenly that I started and looked at him with
surprise. His grey eyes looked like steel, and in a flash I saw something in him I had never noticed before—an indomitable will. “One day I will take you to Blackmoore, Kitty. I promise.” He grasped my hand again, squeezing it hard.
“I give you my word.”
I clamped my lips shut, keeping back my doubting words. Mrs. Delafield
always had her way. Always. If she did not want me there, I would never go.
But finally, because he would not stop squeezing my hand and because it was starting to hurt, I squeezed his hand in return. “Very well,” I whispered, giving up the fight and smiling a little for his sake.
The next month passed so slowly I thought I would go mad. During that
long summer month, lazy with idleness, with sameness, with incessant nothingness, whenever I thought of the Delafields at Blackmoore with Miss St.
Claire, I gritted my teeth and cursed under my breath.
Finally, at long last, on a day just like any other, I heard from a servant that the Delafields had returned. I ran down the stairs, grabbing the banister to round the corner at the first floor, and jumped the final three steps before I noticed that the front door stood open.
Jameson, our butler, was bending over and blocking my view of the door.
When I stopped still in surprise, a voice called out, “If that is you, Kitty, cover your eyes!”
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My heart raced at the sound of Henry’s voice. I bent down, trying to see around Jameson’s back.