Blackmoore(15)

Dark heather covered the ground like a bruise. The laurel-green and gold of the grass and the occasional yellow flower did little to brighten the scene. Not a tree lived here—only some twisted, stunted cousin of a tree that grew no taller than the horses. In all, it was a muted, somber scene, and I could see no beauty in it.

“This is the moors,” I said, my voice flat with disbelief.

Henry stood beside me, watching my face as I looked at the landscape before me. Not a blade of green grass soothed the eye here. There was nothing remotely close to civilization in this wilderness.

“Yes. This is the moors,” Henry said.

“But . . . it is ugly,” I said, my voice distraught even to my own ears.

“It is so very ugly, Henry.”

He laughed.

“No, truly, it is. You told me it was beautiful.”

“It is beautiful. To me.” I looked at him without comprehension. He gestured to the scene before us. “Can you not find even one spark of beauty here?”

I looked from him to the land, wondering for a moment if he had spent the last ten years lying to me or teasing me. But there was no decep-tion in his eyes. There was only fondness and an excitement I could not understand. But I would try, for his sake. I walked a few steps away and bent down to feel the plants I was crunching beneath my boots. I wanted to know this land as beautiful, the way Henry did. The heather was an ugly, dark, brownish purple color, like a ripe bruise. But these yellow flowers were bright as sunshine. Not bright like daffodils but deep yellow-orange, like a drop of sun. I reached down to pluck a blossom and instead stabbed myself on a long, sharp thorn growing right beside its petals.

“Ow!” I sucked the drop of blood from my finger.

42



“I should have warned you. There is nothing soft here in the moors.

Do not let the flowers deceive you. They are designed to withstand anything—even a flower-picking young lady.”

My finger throbbed. “I suppose that’s admirable—to be so hardy,” I muttered, grasping for anything to admire in this land. A gust of wind suddenly tore across the moors, pulling my bonnet from my head and spinning it into the sky.

Henry plucked it from the air as if it had been thrown to him, and moving in front of me, he put the bonnet back on my head. Holding it by the ribbons, he leaned down, and there was a spark of something in his granite eyes that was new. Some life, some light, was new there. The moors had awakened in him something I had never seen before. He tied the ribbon under my chin, his fingers brushing my neck, my collarbones.

Heat rushed to my cheeks, and I held myself perfectly still.

His gaze lifted from the ribbon to my face, and he said in a quiet voice, “I think the most profound beauty is found in what our hearts love. And I love this, Kate, more than I love anything else. It is beyond beautiful to me. It is home. It is . . .” he paused, and squinted a little, as if looking into the sun, but his gaze stayed steady on me, “it is the sight I want to see every day, for the rest of my life.”

I was taken aback. I had known that Henry loved Blackmoore. I had known all along that he would inherit this land, this estate, this life. But seeing him here, seeing him own it, seeing him proclaim it his own home, struck me deeply.

In a flash of memory, I was hiding in a dim room in Delafield Manor with the smell of peonies so sharp and sweet I could taste it. And I felt once again, just as I had that night a year and a half ago, both deeply sor-rowful and deeply lost.

I spun around, pulling the ribbon of my bonnet out of Henry’s grasp, and pretended to study the view before me. But with my back to him, I reached up and rubbed my nose hard and breathed in sharply, telling 43



J u l i a n n e D o n a l D s o n

myself to get control of my emotions. I felt Henry stand behind me, silent and waiting—waiting for me to love this place as he did.

“I think it may grow on me,” I said, fighting hard to keep my voice steady. I breathed in again, willing my heart to slow. Clouds the color of granite streaked across the sky, pushed toward us by the unrelenting wind.

I retied the bow of my bonnet ribbon taut, pulling it hard, making myself proper again. I would not give way to the pull of this wilderness. Looking toward the road, I saw the carriage stopped and waiting for us.

“Come,” I said. “Let us go see your Blackmoore.” I was happy to climb back inside the small, stuffy carriage. I was even happy to hear the mind-less drone of Mrs. Pettigrew. This was proper. This was a place of rightness.

Not that wild scene outside—not that wild land nor that dark-haired boy with the grey eyes who loved it more than he loved anything else.

44







Chapter 6


I sat back and watched the moors swallow us whole until there was no groomed green grass to break up the barrenness of this wasteland. And then, before I was prepared for it, the carriage turned south and the ocean suddenly became a part of the world.

Mrs. Pettigrew, with a glance out the window, remarked, “We’re on the Whitby road. It won’t be long now.” I scooted over to the window on the left side of the carriage and watched the undulating coastline.

The water looked grey-blue in the afternoon light and wide enough to swallow everything I knew about life. The sharp angles of birds in flight dropped and lifted and dropped again above the water. I knew nothing about birds that lived near the ocean. I would have something new to ask Henry about.