From Across the Ancient Waters (16 page)

“G–g–good-bye, Mr. Drummond,” she said as she started walking away. “You can find your way from here.”

“Where are you going all of a sudden?” said Percy.

“Home. L–L–Lady Florilyn will be angry with you if she sees you t–t–talking to me.”

“Don’t worry, Gwyneth.” Percy laughed. “We won’t worry about her. You may talk to me anytime.”

“But she d–d–doesn’t like me. I don’t want her to g–g–get angry with you. G–g–good-bye.”

“Thank you again, Gwyneth,” said Percy after her. “Where will I find you so that you can give me those riding lessons?”

“Ask for G–G–Grannie in the village,” replied Gwyneth. “She will t–t–tell you where to find me.”

“What horse should I bring when I come to you?”

“Any of them, M–M–Mr. Drummond. I know all the horses. I can t–t–teach you to ride any of them f–f–fast. Mr. Radnor will help you. He is my friend. He will keep our s–s–secret.”

As suddenly as she had appeared on the ridge in the wilderness, she ran from him and within seconds had disappeared from sight.

Percy did not see his cousin again until that evening. Her gloating turned to pique; she had walked back into the house in the huff of defeat. She was still filled with ire when dinnertime came.

Percy’s spirits, on the other hand, remained high as he took his chair at the table, a fact that enraged Florilyn all the more. She had deserted him miles from home for the express purpose of making him angry. But he seemed happier than ever!

She made several juvenile attempts to bait Percy into tattling on her. But they only succeeded in making her look foolish. None of the other three had an idea what she was talking about. In truth, he had spent such a delightful afternoon with Gwyneth Barrie that he was actually thankful for the fall off Red Rhud’s back. Florilyn’s antics were beginning to strike him as more humorous than spiteful.

“You seem cheerful tonight, Percy,” said his aunt as the meal progressed. “You must be enjoying the turn of warm weather.”

“Very much, Aunt Katherine. I had begun to wonder if summer would ever arrive.”

“Well, it seems it has. I am enjoying it as well.”

“How did you occupy yourself, Percy, my boy?” said the viscount.

“Florilyn and I went out for a ride, didn’t we, Florilyn—a
very
long ride.”

“Splendid! There, you see—I knew you two would hit it off if you just gave her the chance. Florilyn is a dashed good horsewoman, you know.”

“Yes, I have discovered that,” said Percy with a wry grin. “Certainly out of my league! I’m not near the horseman she is, that’s for sure.”

“Where did you go?”

“Actually, I’m not altogether sure, Uncle Roderick,” laughed Percy. “We headed off into the hills. I became so turned around I had no idea which way home was. I was completely lost! We were gone hours and hours. But luckily I wasn’t left out there
alone
. That would have been frightening. Can you imagine, being out in the hills and not knowing your way back … and with night coming on?” He cast Florilyn a glance and a wily wink.

The expression on her face indicated clearly enough that she was not appreciating his humor. She did
not
like the tables being turned. Now it was
her
turn to feel the smoke coming out her ears.

“But ‘all’s well that end’s well,’ isn’t that what old Bill Shakespeare says?” Percy added. “Here we all are, safe and sound. It was an extraordinary day. In fact, I can’t think when I’ve enjoyed myself more.”

“Excellent,” said the viscount, obviously delighted that the cousins were all hitting it off so well. “Your father and mother will be pleased that the country air is agreeing with you. You shall have to write them, Katherine,” he added to his wife at the end of the table, “and tell them that Percy is enjoying himself here with us.”

The Draper’s Shop

T
he fair weather continued. At last, it seemed, perhaps summer had decided to grace North Wales with its presence for an extended stay.

The next days would have been spectacular for riding in the hills. But Percy had had enough of horses’ backs for a while. He was eager to take Gwyneth up on her offer but needed to let his body recover from its bumps and bruises. By the morning following his adventure in the hills, his back was screaming from the fall. When he was ready to get on a horse again, he would sneak away from the manor alone.

He spent a couple of days recuperating, mostly indoors. During that time, he finished the book his aunt had suggested he read. One of the stories in particular had moved him in a way he could not explain. He finished it and felt tears rising in his eyes. He had to put the book down until he recovered himself, wondering what on earth had come over him. Unaccountably, for he had never done such a thing in his life, when he was done he immediately began to read the story over a second time.

On the third day, feeling better, he decided to walk to the village and acquaint himself a little more with his summer’s surroundings. It was surely no Glasgow, but he was curious to feel the pulse of life in the place.

As he made his way down the entry from the house and thence along the road through the sloping plateau toward Llanfryniog, he stooped now and then to pluck a few wildflowers from the roadside. He smiled at the reminder of Gwyneth Barrie’s endearing habit of greeting strangers. If he saw her today, he would return her kindness from three days ago with a bouquet of his own making!

He reached the village, by now clutching a good handful of wild daisies, bluebells, and assorted bits of color and walking with a jaunty step. He passed several villagers who nodded and smiled as they passed, though with the unspoken question in their minds—who was he? Percy returned their smiles. After so long in the city, the simplicity of their guileless country faces touched him with honest sincerity.

In the normal course of human relationships, it is to those older, wiser, more knowledgeable, more experienced to whom one looks with respect and honor as befit their years. Percy had never had what in any sense could be called a
mentor
in the things of life, mainly because thus far he had eschewed the mentor God had intended for him. Yet something very strange had slowly begun to infect him—that was the subtle influence of one
younger
than himself, and one in his view a mere child at that! The thing was absurd on the face of it, impractical, laughable, unheard of.

And yet … he could not deny that the forceful pressure of Gwyneth Barrie’s outlook on life and the world had come to exercise a hold on him. She was like no one he had ever met—a mountain-nymph, a fairy-child, a tiny cherub of mystery who roamed fields and hills and ubiquitously turned up in the most unexpected places and said the most unusual things. Yet a fairy-angel with such a sensible streak to her whimsical nature that she asserted with perfect calm and confidence that she could teach him to ride a horse like the wind!

Percy broke out in a peal of laughter at the reminder of Gwyneth’s offer. Two or three women glanced toward him from across the street. Young men who walked along laughing to themselves were best avoided. They hurried by, casting him skeptical glances.

Since his walk out of the hills with little Gwyneth, then with the haunting, tear-luring story he had read coming on the heels of it, everything began to
look
different—nature and the faces of humanity most of all. In some inexplicable way, Percy found himself seeing all about him through Gwyneth’s fearless, trusting, unassuming pale blue eyes. He found himself wondering what
Gwyneth
would say to this, what
Gwyneth
would think of that, whether she would laugh at something he said or make one of her otherworldly comments that jolted new regions of awareness awake in him.

Percy had walked down to Llanfryniog on this day with neither specific purpose nor destination in mind, thinking simply to explore the town, perhaps walk to the harbor and along the shore. He was not yet a great friend of the sea as are most who live on the borders where water meets land in the daily dance of its tides. But he was
beginning
to love it because he knew from how she gazed across it that Gwyneth loved the sea. Seeing it through her eyes, what could he do but love it? And thus, almost without his realizing it, the sea subtly began to woo him with its hypnotic allure.

He passed several shops as he made his way casually along, looking absently into their windows. As he came to the draper’s, he paused. A handsome buggy and single horse stood in the street tied to the rail next to it. In the window a display of brightly colored spools of ribbon caught Percy’s eye. He looked down at the clump of flowers in his hand. He was seized with an idea, broke into a smile at the thought, and went into the shop.

The bell above the door rang as he entered. The shopkeeper was engaged across the room with a woman whose back was to him. Beside her, a girl about his own age turned at the tinkling bell. The smile, not yet faded from Percy’s lips, met her glance. She thought it meant for her and returned it.

Percy came into the shop, saw a girl smiling at him—and a very pretty one at that—and walked toward her. “Hello,” he said pleasantly, mistaking her look. “Are you one of the shopkeepers?”

“Oh, no,” she said, laughing lightly. “I’m here with my mother.”

“Oh, sorry.”

He saw her eyes flit toward the bouquet in his hand. “For a friend,” he said. “I came in to get a piece of ribbon to tie it with.”

“A friend … a
girl
?”

“How did you guess?” Percy said, laughing.

Now Percy Drummond, when he was not being surly to his father or mother, and though the lines of his countenance were still in the process of developing, was an extraordinarily good-looking young man. His features yet remained a little delicate, even, it might be said, bordering on the feminine. His face did not yet require the razor. A thick clump of light brown hair fell over a low forehead, on this day mostly obscuring the remaining evidence of Courtenay Westbrooke’s whip and fist, though the bruise on his cheek was still prominent. His nose and lips and jaw were unremarkable but well-formed, not yet showing the pronounced angles that manhood would bring. In spite of the visible bruise, and in a way perhaps almost enhanced by it, the overall effect, accentuated by a winsome smile, was more than moderately attractive to a young woman of fifteen.

Rhawn Lorimer was exactly such a girl, herself prettier than she had a right to be. The fact that she knew every boy or girl for ten miles around but did not recognize Percy made him all the more interesting in her eyes. And that he was carrying a bouquet for some
other
girl immediately set the wheels of her inquisitive brain spinning about who the lucky recipient might be.

Before she had the chance to coax more information out of him, a tactic at which she was singularly skilled, her mother moved down the counter, occupied in the examination of something she had just been handed, and the shopkeeper behind it addressed an interrogative expression to Percy.

“Hello,” said Percy buoyantly. “I saw some ribbon in your window. I would like to get some. How do you sell it?”

“By the foot,” replied the woman. “It is over here,” she said, leading Percy across the shop. “There are a number of colors. It is a penny a foot.”

“Oh, I see. All right, then … I think I will take, let me see—” Percy dug in his pocket to see what coins he had. His father hadn’t left him much money, but he certainly had enough for a few lengths of ribbon. “I think I would like three feet each of the red, the yellow, and the blue. And would you please cut off six inches from the red. I’ll use it right away.”

The woman went to find her scissors.

The magistrate’s daughter approached Percy again. “That will be a lot of ribbon for such a little bouquet,” she said.

“Oh … that,” said Percy. “I decided to get some extra. The girl I am buying it for will love it.”

“She must be a lucky girl.”

“Actually, I think I am the lucky one!” Percy laughed.

Unknown to either Percy Drummond or Rhawn Lorimer, Courtenay Westbrooke was riding—calmly and on a different horse than the flighty thoroughbred—through Llanfryniog just about the moment the shopkeeper had spoken to Percy. He was on his way back from Burrenchobay Hall and had taken the long way through the village to check at the post office for his father. For several days the viscount had been impatiently expecting a telegraph from his factor, whom he had sent to London. Courtenay saw the carriage, recognized it, reigned in, tied his horse beside it, and went into the shop.

He came through the door just in time to hear the fading echo of Percy’s laugh and to see the answering smile, which he took for one of fascination, on Rhawn Lorimer’s face.

Courtenay strode forward but did not look toward the latter in greeting. A thundercloud gathered on his brow.

Percy saw him and turned away. But it was too late. Courtenay grabbed his shoulder from behind and spun him around.

“Hi, Courtenay,” said Percy, trying to sound friendly. He had no idea what had caused the angry expression on his cousin’s face.

“I thought I told you to stay away from what’s mine!” said Courtenay heatedly.

“Uh … yes,” said Percy in a confused tone. “You made that quite clear. I haven’t touched your horse. I haven’t so much as looked at it.”

“I don’t mean that. You stay away from my girl.”

“Your … girl?”

“That’s what I said. I don’t want you looking at her any more than I do my horse.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Percy saw the horrified look of mingled chagrin and indignation on the girl’s face where she stood staring at Courtenay. Immediately he divined the truth. Irritated afresh at Courtenay’s bluster and presumption, his calm demeanor left him. “You’re not actually telling me that you are comparing
this
beautiful young lady to your horse?” he said, feigning innocence but with obvious sarcasm in his words. “She deserves better than that, Courtenay. I think you owe her an apology.”