“I must have been too focused on the porridge,” he said. I looked over at him then, and he was blushing by the weak light of the outer lantern. It bobbed along, making tricks of our faces and of the shadows. “I would have liked to see such a thing.”
Belief. It was a strange feeling. He believed me. Miss Henslow would have beaten me for fibbing. She always thought I was spinning wild tales, even when I was certain I saw or heard a thing. Maybe it happened too often for her liking. Maybe it seemed as though I was somehow different, gifted or cursed with the ability to note odd reflections in mirrors or footsteps in the attic at night. I often felt others cringe away from me, even just strangers, as if they sensed something about me not even I understood.
But to be believed? I decided to forget the owls. It was enough that this near stranger did not question the event.
“Where are you from?” I asked, now more than curious about this earnest young man with the startling eyes.
“Canterbury, but I should be in London now,” he said, sounding forlorn. It was his turn to look away and toward the window, those eyes less bright and more inscrutable. “Uncle thinks something went funny with my inheritance. It all went to my cousin, you see, when my guardian died. John Bremerton. He’s a proper lord, raised me, but just as a ward.” He leaned toward me and lowered his voice, casting a wary eye in his uncle’s direction. “Uncle George thinks I’m a Bremerton. A bastard one, but still . . .”
“So the money could be yours,” I finished. How intriguing. “Or part of it, at least. Some sort of entitlement.”
“Precisely. I loved my guardian. He was always kind, always fair, and the money doesn’t really mean all that much to me. The stipend he left me seemed quite generous, in fact.”
“Then why come all the way to Malton and beyond?”
“I suppose the answer is twofold. Uncle wants to visit the spring near Coldthistle for its curing properties. He has an old wound in his ankle that still bothers him. That, and he thinks my mother is working near here, and that she will have proof of my parentage.” He shrugged, and his shoulders sank with a burdensome weight. “Vast wealth does have a certain appeal.”
“A certain appeal?” I couldn’t keep the steel edge out of my voice. A certain appeal. Looking harder at this young man, I began to question my initial perception of him. Had his lovely golden hair and bright eyes stupefied me? Perhaps he was dull; dull and flippant.
He had the good grace to look shocked and then ashamed. Of course I had no business raising my voice to someone so obviously above my social rank, but it hardly mattered—once he was done staying at the boardinghouse, we would part ways, and I doubted very much the crone would mind if he told her of my impropriety. She knew what she was getting with me—a thief and a runaway.
“Heavens, I’m sure that sounded foolish,” he said. One could practically see his collar constricting and choking his voice. “I never wanted for much, and clearly that’s made me careless. Lord Bremerton would be furious. He did not raise a cur.”
Mollified for the moment, I folded my hands in my lap and glanced at his snoring uncle. He had the look of a man who had once been handsome, but age or hard drinking or a combination of the two had turned him soft and red around the edges. His hair was thinning. A perpetual rosiness splotched his cheeks and nose, a beak that reminded me distinctly of an aubergine.
There was an air about the man I did not like, and an urge to turn out his pockets and steal from him at the first available opportunity rose sharply, like a hunger pang. Even if I were alone, I would think better of it. Under his seat, behind his shins, I saw a number of sabers sheathed in fine leather scabbards. The men were prepared for robbers.
“Have I offended?” Rawleigh suddenly asked. “It would be too like me to do so. And this soon! I really should learn to shut my mouth sometimes. I have the greatest respect for servants. It’s a thankless position, truly; I wouldn’t last half a second!”
Stop talking.
“Please say I haven’t offended you,” he added with a sheepish half smile.
“You have, but you’re forgiven.” There was no point in coddling him. It was obvious to me someone else had done plenty of that already. “I never expect consideration. It’s the easiest way to avoid disappointment.”
“What a very sad way of looking at things . . .”
A soft, fluttering noise at the window drew my attention. “And yet it keeps me alive.” The glass was ice cold when I pressed my nose to it, watching, rapt, as a barn owl flew lower over the carriage, so low that it grazed the roof. “There! Did you see that?”
Lee scrambled to get closer, ducking his head to follow my pointed finger. “Astonishing! One of your fabled owls!”
It flew on ahead, but what was more, it glided toward a rising hill. Dawn broke apart the horizon, wide painter’s strokes of inky blue turning lighter by the moment. A tall, two-towered manor rose as if from the hill itself, a stark, black silhouette that grew only taller and more improbable as we neared it. No woods surrounded the manse; the birch and rowan stayed well back, as if reluctant to grow on the house’s grounds.
I had lost feeling in my nose, and the cold of the window spread through to my fingertips and toes. Coldthistle House. Aptly named. It looked thorny with warning, tall and spindly and precarious, and, with the sun at its back, not a building of stone and mortar but a place of pure shadow.
“Turn the carriage around,” I whispered. But my voice was lost and it was too late. We had started up the hill, and feeling returned to my fingers for an instant. I looked down and shivered; Lee had gone pale and perfectly still, and he clutched my hand in his as if in dread.
Chapter Six
Exhausted, I stumbled out of the carriage and onto the desolate grounds surrounding the manse. Even with Foster helping me down, I was unsteady, clumsy, unsure if perhaps the lack of sleep was responsible for the hard pit forming in my stomach.
“How cozy.” Lee had landed on much sturdier footing behind me, surveying the drive with a wobbly smile. “Or, hmm . . .”
I was struggling for words, too. Coldthistle reminded me, horribly enough, of Pitney House. My old school had been more like a dungeon than a place of learning. The pit in my gut widened, and I winced, feeling at once relieved to be away from there but also guilty for leaving behind one tolerable peer. Very well, friend. It was easier not to think of her as a person I liked, because now I was free of Pitney’s grasp and she remained.