Worlds Unseen - Rachel Starr Thomson (beach books .txt) 📗

obstacle when it came to soliciting money. And there was a stiff little packet addressed to the yellow house at the end of the street.

Mrs. Cook sipped her tea slowly and looked out the kitchen window at the cold drizzle. It would be a miserable walk to the yellow house to deliver the misdirected letter, but it was better than sitting around doing nothing. She finished her tea, stood up, and took the packet from the bottom of the pile.

She pulled on her dull blue cloak and boots and opened the front door. The hinge squealed loudly as the door opened on a grey, puddled street. Mrs. Cook made a face at the weather as she stepped ponderously down the three front steps. She reached the bottom and looked up the street. Her heart caught for a moment and refused to beat.

A very tall man was walking through the rain toward her, carrying a girl in his arms. His step was purposeful and strong, and Mrs. Cook knew that she had seen him walking just that way before. She knew his stride, his form, his way of holding his head up.

But it was impossible.

He stopped three feet away from her. His blue eyes, set in a face older and more lined than she remembered, spoke a thousand words. He bowed his head slightly, every inch a gentleman. He had always been a gentleman. His sideburns were grey, though the hair that curled under his ears was still dark blond.

She tore her eyes away from his face and looked at the girl. She was pale, her eyes closed. Mrs. Cook might have thought her dead except that she could see her breathing. The girl’s dress was black with a tartan skirt of red, white, and black-she came from the Northern Highlands. Her arms were twisted behind her.

Lord Robert’s voice, low and urgent, broke through the rainy stillness. “We need your help, Eva. I’m not welcome here, I know. But look at this girl and tell me you can turn us away.”

She wanted to tell him to get away, to turn back down the street and disappear in the rain and never come back. But in spite of herself, her eyes went back to the girl’s face. There was something there that pleaded silently for help, and something else… something that shook Mrs. Cook with the force of old longing suddenly revived. She realized with a start that the girl’s hands were chained.

Mrs. Cook took a step back, and then turned from the pair in the street and climbed the steps to her house. She pushed the door open, and stood frozen for a moment in the doorway. Leaning on the door frame wearily, she turned her face back to the laird.

“Come in,” she said.

Lord Robert stooped as he awkwardly maneuvered through the door. He moved straight to the couch by the fire and laid the girl down gently. Mrs. Cook stood in the kitchen doorway and watched as the laird sank down onto his knees beside the couch and leaned wearily against it. He closed his eyes for a moment before looking up at his hostess.

“Thank you,” he said.

She nodded and then gestured toward the girl. “Who…?”

“Her name is Virginia Ramsey,” he said. “She is the granddaughter of a tenant farmer on my land.” He sighed deeply, and his eyes went back to the figure on the couch. “She fainted some miles back,” he said. “Of weariness, I suppose. We’ve been three days on the road, walking and riding and walking again.” His voice trailed off. “I won’t lie to you, Evie… it’s Mrs. Cook now, isn’t it? That’s what the postmaster told me.” He saw her slight nod of acknowledgment and asked, “Is Mr. Cook at home?”

“He’s passed on,” Mrs. Cook said. “Some fifteen years ago.”

Lord Robert nodded. “I’m sorry to hear it. He was a good man?”

“Very,” Mrs. Cook said. There was a note of rebuke in her voice. He heard it and understood. It had been a long time since she had thought of Lord Robert Sinclair as a good man.

“You were beginning to tell me something,” she prompted.

“There are High Police after us,” he said. “Your hospitality to us is kind, but not advantageous to you. We’ll move on again if you wish. Only let us stay until Virginia has some strength back.”

“Those irons?” Mrs. Cook asked, gesturing at the chains.

Lord Robert’s face flushed with anger. “The gentility of the High Police,” he said. “How anyone could think it necessary to chain a blind girl… I tried to get them off, but they’re fine pieces of iron. I could do nothing without attracting attention. There were High Police all over the roads. I couldn’t risk taking her to a locksmith.”

“There’s a locksmith five blocks from here,” Mrs. Cook said. “He’s a good man. He won’t be into the shop till noon today, but you can fetch him then.”

Lord Robert said, “It may not be wise for me to show my face. I already fear what asking for you at the post might have done.”

“Of course,” Mrs. Cook said, flustered. “I’ll go after him myself, then.”

Her face paled slightly as Lord Robert’s words sank in. Was her past involvement with the laird to be her undoing now? It had already taken Maggie away from her.

“Why did you come here?” she asked, suddenly angry.

“I didn’t know where else to turn,” he said. “I found myself in Londren and realized I couldn’t run forever. My society ‘friends’ would have turned me in to the police.”

His weary blue eyes looked straight into hers, catching her off guard. “I was despairing, and your name came to me like an arrow. I went to the postmaster and asked after you, and the man knew you personally. Well enough to know that you were the Eva Brown I asked for. I know you do not think kindly of me, but in heaven’s name, Eva, I didn’t know where else to go.”

“That seems to happen a lot lately,” Mrs. Cook muttered bitterly. “Dan Seaton slept in this very house just over a week ago.”

Excitement suddenly animated the laird’s face. “He came here?” he asked. “Where is he now?”

“He’s dead,” Mrs. Cook said. “Died in that room behind you.”

The unexpected news checked Lord Robert’s enthusiasm, if only for a moment. “Did he bring anything with him?”

Mrs. Cook sat down in the high-backed chair near the fire. “He did. A scroll, all written up in some ancient tongue.”

The laird rose to his feet. “Do you have it?” he asked.

Mrs. Cook pulled herself up on her own feet, her height dwarfed by the laird. “No,” she said sharply. “I don’t deal in mysteries anymore, Lord Robert. I haven’t done so for forty years. The thing is far from here now, where its curse can’t touch me.”

Lord Robert sank back down to the floor, but he was quiet only for a moment. Then he said abruptly, “Can you truly have turned your back on everything we lived for? Did the scroll do nothing to you when you saw it? My housekeeper said it was very old. Think what it might have contained!”

“I don’t care to know,” Mrs. Cook said.

“Daniel came to me with the scroll,” Lord Robert said, “and the fool of a woman who keeps my house turned him away. Do you know what I did when I heard of it? I went back to our old council room. Do you remember the journal Huss began to translate in the last days? It’s still there! Don’t you remember, Eva, how the lore of old days just seemed to come to us, as though it wanted us to find it? And now it is coming to us again, calling us again!”

“Let it call,” Mrs. Cook said. “It shall have no answer from me.”

Lord Robert did not seem to hear her, but went on. “And it’s not only the scroll. Do you see this girl, Eva? Do you sense the way the air changes when she comes near? She is Gifted.”

“As Evelyn was Gifted?” Mrs. Cook said. Her eyes flashed with anger. “Evelyn, who destroyed us all?”

“Our own foolishness destroyed us,” Lord Robert said. “Not Evelyn.”

“No?” Mrs. Cook said. “Do you still defend her? After everything that happened, can you still be so blind? We tried to reach into another world, and that world would have taken our very souls if we’d let it. As Evelyn let it.”

With those words she turned and stalked into the kitchen, leaving the laird alone with Virginia..

An hour later, when Mrs. Cook could bring herself to leave the laird of Angslie unsupervised in her house, she went after the locksmith. He was a man of average height, with copper hair, a hooked nose, and a very discreet tongue. His name was Benjamin Warne.

He took in the scene without a word and set to work at Virginia’s shackles. They were off in the space of thirty minutes, and he held the iron chains up with disdain.

“If I were you,” he said to Lord Robert, “I should take these out and bury them somewhere away from here. If I’m not mistaken, there are High Police inquiring for you all over the city.”

A quick glance passed between Lord Robert and Mrs. Cook. It did not go unnoticed by Benjamin Warne. Lord Robert reached into his waistcoat pocket and pulled out sufficient funds to pay for the locksmith’s service, and extra to keep his tongue.

Warne waved the money away. “No,” he said. “I’ll not accept money for a job compassion would have bound me to do. Take care of the girl; her skin is badly torn. And don’t fear for my silence… that cannot be bought, but my words will not bring chains on her again, or on you.”

They thanked him profusely. When he was gone, they heard a sound in the sitting room. Virginia was awake.

Lord Robert rushed to her as Mrs. Cook fetched water to bathe Virginia’s wrists. When she returned, she knelt down and gently began to clean the wounds. As the locksmith had said, the skin had torn deeply and painfully, and the iron soot had worked its way into the raw flesh. Virginia winced with pain as Mrs. Cook worked, but said nothing.

When dry blood had turned the water to rust, Mrs. Cook sent Lord Robert upstairs in search of a balm. Before he returned, Virginia spoke.

“I don’t know who you are,” she said, “but your hands are very gentle. Thank you.”

Something about the simplicity of the thanks and the way that Virginia’s eyes stared into nothing when she spoke brought Mrs. Cook to tears.

“No, dear,” she said. “No, no, there’s nothing to thank me for.”

Virginia’s hands reached hesitantly for Mrs. Cook, and the elderly woman allowed the young one’s fingers to trace the lines and wrinkles of her face. The fingers met with tears, and Virginia smiled tenderly.

“Is it for me you are crying?” she asked. “Or for something else?”

Mrs. Cook nodded and took the searching hands in her own. “For you, dear,” she said.

They heard the laird’s feet pounding down the stairs, and Lord Robert appeared with a small bottle. Mrs. Cook took it and started to apply the ointment to the wounds. Virginia bit her lip and worked to hold back tears of her own. In moments, the stinging cream began to work its healing magic and the pain ceased. Mrs. Cook wrapped Virginia’s wrists in bandages and then touched the young woman’s cheek kindly.

“Finished,” she announced.

Mrs. Cook had never had children of her own, but her motherly instincts had not suffered for lack of use. She ordered Lord