Scandal's Reward (8 page)

The day after the last harvest had been brought in, the first storms of autumn raced up the Bristol Channel. Torrential rain beat at the Lion Court windows all week, keeping Catherine miserably trapped indoors.

Yet now the sun shone like a benediction overhead—and it was her free day.

She ought to feel nothing but pleasure in this outing, yet Catherine felt haunted, filled with disquiet. She wanted to stride away forever, walk off into the sky and leave all her concerns behind. Instead, she was walking sedately up onto Exmoor with her sister Amelia at her side.

Wild herbs and flowers scented a small breeze dancing over the moor.

The path was slick, almost dangerously so in places. Catherine glanced down at her walking boots. Like Amy’s, the hem of her plain muslin dress was heavy with mud.

“Oh, I’m so glad you told me, Cathy!” Amy seized her sister’s hand, forcing Catherine to look at her. “Dagonet destroyed those rabbit traps even though it earned him a beating every time? That was incredibly brave, don’t you think? Even if it can’t alter or excuse what he’s done since, it must cast a more favorable light on his character. You do agree, don’t you?”

“Yes, I suppose so,” Catherine said with a wry smile. “I’m trying to be scrupulously impartial, you see, so I thought I should set at least this part of the record straight.”

Amy had seemed uncomfortable ever since they’d left Fernbridge, but now her face lit up. “But it counts for
so
much when a man is kind to animals. I think that says something incredibly profound about his true nature. Surely you cannot believe him really cruel, after that?”

“I don’t know,” Catherine said. “Perhaps it only compounds the mystery, that such a boy would grow up to be such a rogue.”

“Perhaps we’ve judged too harshly all along, Cathy,” Amy said earnestly. “It’s so easy to blacken someone’s name.”

Catherine bit her lip. She could never tell Amy about the pool, or the night when she’d discovered him at Lion Court reading poetry. The pain in her heart was hers alone. If only his stark history could be so easily explained away!

“Yes, but Millicent Trumble died because of him, Amy. He doesn’t dispute it, and I myself witnessed him stealing the jewels from his own family.”

“We can know nothing of what truly happened, though, can we? I cannot believe him such a blackguard.”

“Whyever should you defend him, Amy? It can mean nothing to you.”

Amelia blushed and looked away. Her meeting with Dagonet had impressed her more than she could say. If he was David’s friend that was good enough for her. Besides, he really was so much more handsome even than David; it was no wonder that women lost their hearts over him. Indeed, she was glad she herself was already so much in love. The two girls strolled along in silence, each lost in her own thoughts, when two horsemen cantered unseen up onto the ridge behind them.

* * * *

“Pull up, Morris! ‘She walks in beauty, like the night / Of cloudless climes and starry skies; / And all that’s best of dark and bright / Meet in her aspect and her eyes;’ My friend, your beloved walks below.”

Captain Morris rode up beside Dagonet and looked down on the Hunter sisters. Amelia’s ringlets shone beneath her bonnet like bright metal in the sunshine.

“Don’t act the fool, Dagonet!” he said good-humoredly. “If you must quote the latest poets at every turn, at least choose something more appropriate. Amelia’s as blond as daylight.”

“Why so she is! If Byron is not apt for her, then how about Wordsworth?
‘But, O fair Creature! in the light / Of common day, so heavenly bright, / I bless Thee, Vision as thou art!’
Let me silently depart and you may ride down and greet the Vision and her sister, who—if you hadn’t noticed—is dark.”

Morris swung his riding crop and gave Dagonet’s mount a sound thwack across the rump. Laughing, Dagonet kept his seat easily as the gray bucked, then touching his own crop to his hat in salute, he rode away down the hill. Captain Morris trotted in the opposite direction to join the ladies. In a few minutes, dismounted and leading his horse, he strolled beside them up the moorland track.

Amelia was radiant in David’s company. Catherine was glad enough to walk ahead to allow them some privacy. She tried to concentrate on the bright moor and the lovely day, though she still felt a little shaken. Just because Dagonet had willingly suffer a beating for the sake of a rabbit? She shook her head. He may have been kind to animals, but he had not shown her much mercy.

Someone shouted. Catherine looked around. A boy was running toward her across the heath, waving his cap and yelling something unintelligible at the top of his lungs.

“Good Heavens!” She called back to Amelia and Captain Morris. “It’s one of Westcott’s shepherd lads. Something must be wrong.”

Catherine picked up her skirts and raced to meet the boy.

His voice came in gasps. “Please, ma’am, there’s been a cave-in down at the Warrens and master’s best flock is all swallowed up.”

Her heart began to hammer. “Take a deep breath, Tommy,” she said, “and explain exactly what’s happened. Mr. Westcott’s sheep are in trouble?”

“Aye, ma’am! Right by the old minehead where our flock liked to shelter. The stream was all swelled up with rain and it cut down into an old mine shaft. Now the ground’s fallen in and taken our flock in with it. There’s a great pit of water, as used to be a meadow, but the sides are steep as steeples and slick as butter, so the sheep can’t get out. It’s the prize ram and ewes, ma’am. Drowned!”

“What has happened?” Captain Morris had hurried up behind her with Amelia on his arm.

“A disaster of the first magnitude! A mine shaft has collapsed at the Warrens and a flock of sheep is drowning in it. Captain, you must take your horse and do what you can. Tommy here will show you the way. Amy and I will follow as fast as we can.”

Morris exchanged one glance with Amelia, then leaped onto his horse and swung the boy up behind him. The ladies, running as best as they might in their long skirts across the rough grass and heather, raced after them. By the time they reached the ridge above the little valley known as the Warrens, Catherine was gasping for breath. Amelia, panting hard, clutched at her sister’s arm. An open crater yawned in the green valley below them.

“Oh, Cathy, I can’t run another step. I’ve the most dreadful stitch. You go on! Oh, what a horrid scene!”

Catherine took it all in with one horrified glance. A maze of abandoned tunnels lay beneath this part of the moor. The stone mine buildings had been boarded up long ago, but sheep often sheltered against their ruined walls. The little stream, which had once meandered peacefully past those ruins, had swelled to a torrent in the recent storms. That torrent had cut down through the roof of some underground chamber, making it collapse, then filled the pit to form a deep pool, the water’s surface ten or fifteen feet below the remaining meadow.

Today the stream had shrunk once again to a rivulet, but its water splashed down into the pool over sides that were gashes of rock and raw earth, as slick, as Tommy had said, as butter.

And among the clumps of grass and mud floating in the resulting morass, there struggled, bleating piteously, the heavy bodies of Farmer Westcott’s best flock.

“The first rockfall must have blocked the outlet,” Amy said. “Otherwise the water would have drained away, surely?”

As she spoke, a large chunk of earth gave way and slumped into the mass of drowning sheep. Amy gasped and put both hands over her mouth.

“Indeed,” Catherine said grimly. “And that blockage could fail at any moment if the walls keep collapsing like that. In which case, sheep, water, mud and stones will all be sucked down into the deep mine shafts below. We must do what we can to help.”

For the sheep had not been abandoned to their fate. Farmer Westcott in his homespun smock stood near the edge of the pit, his white hair bright in the sun. Tommy knelt beside him, peering over the edge. Two black-and-white dogs, ears pricked, quivered at their feet, yet lay still.

Captain Morris had already tied his horse to a tree a safe distance from the disaster.

A second horse, a gray Thoroughbred, stood idly cropping grass a hundred feet away.

Morris was now running toward the ruins. A gentleman, stripped to his shirtsleeves, stepped out to meet him. Catherine had no difficulty in recognizing the arrogant turn of the head, or the waves of dark hair. It was Devil Dagonet.

He called instructions to Westcott and Tommy, who hurried into the ruins to join him, the dogs at their heels. The two gentlemen, dragging one end of a length of thick rope, then ran out to the edge of the crater.

Catherine slithered on down the hill, leaving Amelia clutching her ribs on the ridge top. This was no time for foolish emotion. She must try to help.

Dagonet had already belayed the other end of the rope around a heavy timber, set fast in a solid block of masonry. Tommy and Farmer Westcott were jamming some loose boards across the broken walls to form a makeshift pen.

Catherine stopped, bent double, her breath gone. Dagonet and Morris had their backs to her, and Dagonet was stripping off his boots. No one seemed to have noticed her.

The drowning flock struggled and fought. Waves slapped against the muddy walls. Large bubbles gulped to the surface.

Morris caught Dagonet by the arm. “For God’s sake, sir! The whole thing could cave in at any moment. You risk your life for a bunch of dumb sheep.”

Dagonet wrapped the end of the rope around one hand.

“Not simply sheep, Captain. What you see there is all of a man’s livelihood and his accumulated wealth. Westcott took the blue ribbon in Minehead with that noble ram you see mired in the slough. Anyway, he was good to me as a boy.”

Morris hung onto his arm. “Then let me go in with you! Two men can halve the time and the danger.”

“Your life is too valuable to someone else to risk, my friend,” Dagonet replied with a tilt of his head to where Amelia was now struggling down the hill toward them. “It’s no longer yours to gamble with. Mine has no such value, alas; least of all to me. Besides, think how happy it would make George if I should lose it!”

With that, in one neat movement he had shaken off the restraining hand and dropped over the edge into the pit. As soon as he hit the swirling water, he made a dive for the closest animal. The sheep, their fleeces sodden, lashed out with panicked hooves and dangerously curled spikes. Undeterred, Dagonet made a loop in his rope and cast it about the horns of the nearest ewe.

“Haul!” he cried.

Morris was already at the rope. The farmer and the boy caught it behind him. With a resounding plop, they pulled the first sheep free and dragged it up over the rim. Once it was safely at the top, Morris released it and threw the rope back down to Dagonet, swimming below. Confused, the ewe ran about helplessly before obeying the call of her fellows, bellowing beneath her. She tottered for an instant on the brink, then attempted to plunge back into the pit to rejoin the flock.

Flinging herself full length on the turf, Catherine caught the sheep by the hind leg. It kicked out violently, threatening to pull her into the pool. She yanked with all her strength, spinning the ewe away from the edge. No one could let go of the rope, but Westcott whistled. A black-and-white blur dashed at the ewe’s heels, instantly herding the recalcitrant animal into the makeshift pen in the ruin. Both dogs then lay on guard. Though the lone sheep cried piteously, it could not escape.

Amelia ran up to join Catherine at the edge of the crater. Dagonet was barely recognizable for the mud that covered him as he swam. Several fighting sheep struck at him with their horns or feet, attempting to drown their rescuer in their desperation, but sheep after sheep was caught and rescued. Between animals, he was laughing.

“I can’t bear it!” Amelia’s eyes filled with tears. “The pit may collapse at any minute. Mr. de Dagonet is a gentleman, not a farmer. How can he risk himself like this?”

Her only reply was a sonorous quotation. “O fortunatos nimium sua si bona norint agricolas!”

Amelia’s Latin was not quite up to that. She turned to her sister.

“Oh, most happy husbandmen,” translated Catherine feverishly as she fought with another ewe, “if only they knew their own blessings!” She wiped her forehead with the back of one hand. “Amy, go and help the dogs! You don’t need to watch this.” Then she laughed. “How can he think of such ridiculous things?”

“That’s the lad!” Farmer Westcott shouted down into the water. “It’s a good life, right enough!”

The mood changed, the danger was forgotten, and they all worked away with renewed vigor. Only now that the group of saved sheep was large enough to form a little flock of their own were they remaining meekly in the ruins and not attempting to return to their deaths. Amelia had dutifully returned there to stand guard over the crude barrier in the walls, so she had dirtied her hands but little else. Catherine, from grappling with each sheep until a dog could get at its heels, felt desperately breathless and bedraggled. She was liberally splattered with grime, and the front of her muslin was wet with mud.

Dagonet, however, seemed to have an inexhaustible supply of both breath and apt quotations, which Morris and Catherine occasionally returned. Farmer Westcott, not understanding a word of the gentlefolk’s Latin and even less of their French, worked happily on, and the boy, who had been grimly biting his lip, had instead begun to laugh as he worked, just from the merriment of their tone.

It was almost over. Most of the ewes had been rescued, so the dogs needed no more help. While the men and the boy hauled at the rope, Catherine and Amelia were at last able to take a breath and just watch.

Dagonet was wrestling with the prize ram when disaster struck. A huge chunk of turf, carrying soil and rock, broke loose from the edge. There was a roar like the crash of a wave on a headland. The remaining ewes, the prize ram, and Charles de Dagonet, all disappeared into the soup of mud and plants as the shaft beneath broke open to swallow them. The merry mood evaporated instantly.