She gazed out the window, seeking distraction in the landscape. Hartsmere itself had come into view, still half a mile distant. It lay nestled at the foot of a fell, almost at the end of the valley where the beck came tumbling over the rocks and made its way to the tiny lake—the mere of Hartsmere’s name.
Behind the house, halfway up the fell, rose the thick patch of wood that spread like a menacing cloud over the land. Eden had been to Hartsmere only a few times in her life, yet she had feared that forest for as long as she could remember. It was almost as if it contained all the despair and loneliness she had known in this place.
She wrenched her thoughts from the past and turned her attention to the house itself. Well she remembered its cold stone halls hung with threadbare tapestries, fires constantly burning to take off the damp chill at all times of the year except high summer.
As if infected by the same pall that had settled over the dale, Hartsmere’s gray stones and chimneys leaned upon one another like ancient ruins near crumbling. Eden knew that her vision was only illusion, but the great Elizabethan pile was anything but welcoming.
And did you expect a welcome? she asked herself and laughed under her breath. You, who cursed this place and vowed never to return ?
“You find something amusing?” Claudia asked. “Pray, share it with me. I would be most grateful.”
“I was only thinking that the house is in perfect keeping with our carriage and what little we have left to us. You know that I am a terrible housekeeper, dreadful with servants, and if you do not keep the household accounts, I do not know where we shall be by summer.”
Claudia shook her head with a faint smile. “You do yourself an injustice, Niece. But of course I will help you—however long we remain.”
Her aunt had not given up on the idea of leaving Hartsmere as soon as the mourning period was over and Eden was free to accept Rushborough’s attentions. The matter of Eden’s son had hardly come up between them since the discussion two months ago. It was as if Claudia had forgotten.
She had not forgotten. Eden was certain of that. But for the past five years, Eden had lived as if tomorrow did not exist. Until she found her son, she intended to continue living by that philosophy.
The berline made its creaking way down the winding road and into the dale. The beck was a mere trickle, and ice covered the lake. The frozen reeds, usually a haven for water birds, looked as sharp and uninviting as lances.
Now the village of Birkdale came into view. The cottages, like those on the small fell farms, appeared tumbledown and in need of new roofing. For the first time, Eden caught a glimpse of the inhabitants of the dale: a child in ragged clothing and an old man limping down the sodden lane with the help of a gnarled branch.
Eden prepared to signal the coachman, thinking to stop and speak to the child. No sooner had she made the decision than the boy—or was it a girl?—vanished, she could not tell where. No curious faces poked out of the cottage doorways.
Troubled, Eden stared at the village until the road passed around a low hill. That child had not looked well fed, and certainly not well clothed. Six years ago, when she had reluctantly come for the winter at her father’s request, Birkdale had seemed a happy village, its inhabitants less burdened by poverty than many of the dalesmen in Westmorland.
With a sinking feeling, she realized that the solicitor had not exaggerated. The dale had prospered… until everything had passed into Spencer’s keeping as part of her marriage settlement.
She closed her eyes, trying to remember how it had been at the beginning of the events that had changed her life. Pictures rose in her mind: of days that seemed sunnier than anywhere else in the country, of endless flocks of handsome Herdwicks, of boisterous shepherds and farmers enjoying a hearty feast after days of hard autumn labor.