Merry loved the cliff-tops. There was no better place for thinking; the breeze blew all the clutter out of one’s head, and the view stretched forever, and there was something about the sea—the constant, rhythmic swell, the sharp salt-tang, the thud-crash of waves against the cliffs—that was both invigorating and calming.
This afternoon, Merry had a lot to think about. Sir Barnaby’s arrival, most especially. She strode along the cliffs to her favorite spot, where gray limestone thrust up out of the grass, weathered into fantastical shapes by centuries of wind and rain. Here was the patch of the grass where she liked to sit, the rock she liked to lean her back against, and the view she liked to gaze at, out over the sea.
Merry intended to bend her mind to the problem of Marcus and Sir Barnaby, but she found herself fishing her mother’s letter out of her pocket by habit. The corners were tattered and the creases almost worn through.
My darling Anne,
If you are reading this letter, it is because I am dead, and dead or not, there is something very important I must tell you. It is this: You have a Faerie godmother.
How absurd it sounds! I know I thought it a great joke, when your grandmother told me. However, as I have recently discovered, it is no joke, but the perfect truth.
On your twenty-fifth birthday, you will be visited by a Faerie. Treat her with utmost caution. She is a malicious creature who delights in doing harm. No one knows her true name, but among our family, she is known as Baletongue.
Baletongue will offer you a Faerie gift. Choose very carefully, my love. The wrong choice can lead to madness or death. I am enclosing a list of the gifts you may choose from. Your grandmother received it from her mother. Read the annotations thoroughly.
The list her mother referred to was safely locked in Merry’s escritoire. She could see it in her mind’s eye: the old parchment, the fading ink.
There were so many tempting choices—the one Charlotte had chosen, for example: metamorphosis. Who wouldn’t want to be able to turn into a bird and fly? But the gift she kept coming back to, time and time again, was Finding People and/or Objects. According to the annotations, two of her ancestresses had chosen it.
Merry narrowed her eyes and stared out at the white-capped sea. All she needed was to find one hoard of treasure, and she’d have enough money to buy a town house in Bath or London, or a pretty cottage in the country, or perhaps even both.
Is that the gift I want?
Five days left to decide, and she still didn’t know. Merry blew out her breath. She refolded the letter, placed it in her pocket, and bent her mind firmly to the problem of Marcus and Sir Barnaby.
It was a problem with two halves. One: Marcus. Two: Sir Barnaby.
She knew Marcus’s character, knew his values, knew how his mind worked. Sir Barnaby Ware was a mystery.
Therefore, I need to understand what’s going on inside his head.
Merry climbed to her feet and continued along the path, her stride purposeful. The rest of the afternoon laid itself out neatly in her head: she’d walk along the cliffs, then run Sir Barnaby to ground and offer to show him the walled gardens.
She could surely unravel the workings of Sir Barnaby’s mind in an hour spent among the espaliered trees and beds of vegetables. It was merely a matter of introducing the right topics and watching his reactions.
At this point, her plan underwent an abrupt change, for there, sitting on Charlotte’s cliff-top seat, was Sir Barnaby Ware. Alone.
Merry’s steps slowed. Sir Barnaby sat with his elbows on his knees, his posture so weary, so sad, that it hurt to look at him.
She felt an almost overwhelming urge to hug him tightly, as if he were a child and not a grown man. But hugs weren’t going to mend this problem.
“Hello!” Merry called, when she was a dozen yards away. The wind snatched her voice from her mouth and flung it ahead of her.
Sir Barnaby stood before she reached him. “Miss Merryweather,” he said courteously.
“What do you think? Isn’t it beautiful?” It was easy to let her enthusiasm spill over. She loved these cliffs.
Sir Barnaby’s answering smile was mechanical. “Very beautiful.”
“Did Marcus take you as far as Woodhuish House? No? Well, I’m heading that way. You must come with me!”
She saw reluctance in his infinitesimal hesitation and in the flicker of his eyelids. He wants to be alone. But Sir Barnaby was too polite to say so aloud. “It would be my pleasure,” he said.
They walked side by side along the riding officer’s path. Sir Barnaby made a good pretense of strolling—he commented on the wildflowers, the limestone cliffs, the seabirds—but it was obvious that most of his attention was turned inward.
If she was to gain any understanding of him, she needed to see the real Sir Barnaby, not this polite automaton walking alongside her.
“I wonder if you ever met my father, Sir Barnaby?” Merry said, watching his face closely. “He was a dancing master. Alexander Merryweather.”
She saw the blink of surprise, the slight blankness of his face as he processed the words, the dawning realization in his raised eyebrows. “You’re Alexander Merryweather’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
That had broken through his preoccupation. Sir Barnaby halted, and stared at her in astonishment. Merry stared back intently. The next few seconds would tell her about his sense of self-importance.
The change from politeness to polite condescension was sometimes overt, sometimes almost imperceptible, but Sir Barnaby displayed none of the signs. He didn’t draw away from her. His chin didn’t lift; it lowered. And it wasn’t haughtiness in his eyes, but interest.
Not a snob.
“I never met him, but I heard of him, of course. He was legendary.” And then Sir Barnaby’s manner altered again. There was genuine sympathy in his eyes, in his voice. “I heard he died last year. I’m very sorry, Miss Merryweather.”
Merry nodded acknowledgment of his sympathy. “Thank you.”
She saw an unspoken question form on Sir Barnaby’s face, and then his expression became politely disinterested. He resumed strolling.
Merry matched her steps to his. What had he been about to ask? Why am I at Woodhuish Abbey? “After Father’s death, I went to live with friends of his, but then Charlotte and I became acquainted—our relationship is very distant, neither of us knew the other existed! And she kindly invited me to live with her.” Charlotte had been researching her ancestry, trying to find others who shared the same Faerie godmother—but that wasn’t a detail she could share with Sir Barnaby.
“Your mother’s family didn’t take you in?” he said neutrally. “Your grandfather’s Lord Littlewood, is he not?”
“My mother’s family doesn’t acknowledge my existence.”
Sir Barnaby uttered a faint snort. “The Littlewoods have always been very high in the instep. One would take Littlewood for a duke, the way he carries on.” And then he glanced sideways at her and gave a wry, self-deprecating smile. “Says a lowly baronet.”
Merry smiled back. I like this man. “At least they’re consistent. They never acknowledged Mother after her marriage. They’d have looked foolish, if they’d suddenly turned around and acknowledged me.”
“Heaven forbid that a Littlewood should ever look foolish,” Sir Barnaby said, dryly. The sea breeze blew the hair back from his brow. He had a very pleasant face, Merry decided. His features were harmoniously arranged, and more than that, his colors were harmonious—the red-brown hair, the hazel eyes, the light tan, the freckles. If autumn were personified, he would be Sir Barnaby.
There were laughter lines at his eyes and mouth, but she didn’t think Sir Barnaby had laughed in a long time. A resolution formed between one step and the next: I shall make him laugh today.
“The Bromptons’ ball promises to be well-attended,” Merry said. “I expect at least a dozen couples will stand up.”
The latent humor vanished from Sir Barnaby’s face. “I won’t be attending the ball.”
“You’re leaving tomorrow?”
Mixed emotions crossed Sir Barnaby’s face. She saw that he wanted to leave—and that he felt he couldn’t. “I haven’t yet decided.”
“Well, if you do stay, we shall stand up for the minuet and a country dance. Agreed?”
Sir Barnaby’s lips compressed. “I stopped dancing several years ago.”
His tone, his expression, told her that he’d stepped back into his self-imposed dungeon.
“Nonsense,” Merry said, cheerfully. “The minuet and a country dance. Agreed?” She halted and held out her hand to him.
Sir Barnaby halted, too. He looked at her, a frown pinching between his eyebrows, his lips pressed together, reluctance writ clear on his face.
Merry almost backed down—and then she remembered the Sir Barnaby she’d seen at Vauxhall, remembered his blatant joy in dancing. This was a man who needed to dance, whether he realized it or not. She kept her hand held out and an expectant smile on her face, and waited, counting the seconds in her head. Five, six, seven.
“The minuet and a country dance,” Sir Barnaby said, finally. “If I stay.”
They shook hands. “Agreed.”
Sir Barnaby repossessed his hand. He had the expression of a man girding himself for an ordeal: dismayed, and trying not to show it. Merry almost apologized. It hadn’t been polite of her to push—had been extremely impolite in fact.
The path climbed steeply for several minutes. By the time they reached the highest point on the cliffs, Sir Barnaby had mastered his dismay and acquired his blankly courteous look again. Merry ransacked the corners of her brain for a topic that would make him forget his problems and allow her to see the underlying man again.
“My father excelled as a dancing master, not because he was a superb dancer—which he was—but because of his ability to read people.”
Sir Barnaby glanced at her politely.
“You can learn a great deal about people by watching them for a few minutes. What do they look for when they first walk into a room? How do they interact with the other people there? Who do they acknowledge? Who do they ignore?”
Sir Barnaby’s expression was still only politely attentive.
“Father taught me how to judge a person’s character by observation. I often played the music for his lessons, you know. We’d make our own evaluations of the students’ personalities, and compare them after the lesson.”
A faint glimmer of interest showed in his eyes.
“It took me several years to master the trick. Father always saw so much more than I did. It was rather frustrating, for all that it was fascinating.” She paused. Say something, Sir Barnaby.
“I can imagine it would be,” Sir Barnaby said, and his expression told her that he was trying to imagine it.
“Father would tailor his lessons to suit his students; different methods work for different people. If he thought it would help someone, he’d have me partner them—but he was always extremely careful who he selected for me. And if he thought a student might become ill-mannered, he’d send me away before the lesson even started.” She paused again. “Do you think the ill-mannered students were noblemen’s sons, or tradesmen’s sons?”
Sir Barnaby’s eyebrows twitched faintly upwards. He thought for a moment, and then said. “Noblemen’s sons.”
Merry gave him an approving nod. “The tradesmen’s sons were always courteous.”
“And the gentlemen’s sons?”
“On the whole, very civil. Although once we had a new student, a baronet’s son, and Father sent me away within seconds of his entering the room. I gather he would have been quite uncivil, if I’d stayed.”
Sir Barnaby’s eyebrows lifted again. “Who was he?”
“You might know him. He’d be about your age. Sir Humphrey Filton.”
“Filton?” Emotions flickered across Sir Barnaby’s face. Shock was predominant. He halted on the path. “Good God, I should hope your father sent you away!”
“Why?”
“Filton was . . . is . . .” Sir Barnaby acquired a faintly stuffed look. She’d seen it before on men’s faces. It meant that the conversation had taken a turn that was unsuitable for female ears.
“I am an adult,” Merry reminded him. “I doubt that anything you say will shock me.”
Sir Barnaby eyed her for a moment, and then said bluntly, “Filton was expelled from school for assaulting one of the maids. And then he was sent down from Oxford for doing the same thing.”
“Oh.” Merry mentally replaced assaulting with raping.
“I’ve seen Filton sober, and I’ve seen him drunk. He says the foulest things about women. He’s . . .” Sir Barnaby frowned, selecting his words. “He’s dangerous. He should be locked up.”
“He’s not?”
“His family has kept him out of the courts. They’re extremely wealthy, and he’s the only son.”
They resumed walking. The wind tugged at Merry’s bonnet. She gripped the brim firmly, and glanced at Sir Barnaby. Their conversation had taken a more serious turn than she’d intended, but it had effectively diverted him from his own problems. His attention was focused outwards.
“He’ll go too far one day, Filton. He’ll kill some poor woman—and hang for it. But it shouldn’t have to come to that! He should have been stopped years ago. Money shouldn’t be able to circumvent justice!”
He sounded so like Marcus that Merry almost blinked. “Are you active in politics, too?”
“Me? No.” Sir Barnaby’s face lost its animation. He looked away from her. After a moment, he said, “Marcus says he’s giving up politics.”
“Marcus will never give up politics. His sense of social justice is too strong.”
“The slave trade act has passed—”
“Abolishing slavery isn’t his only interest. Get him talking about the slums.”
Sir Barnaby glanced at her.
“He’s extremely passionate on the subject. It’ll be his next crusade.”
“Crusade?” Sir Barnaby’s lips twitched briefly. “Yes, Marcus is a crusader.” His expression was unguarded for an instant. She saw how much he respected Marcus, saw how deep his affection went—and then the shutters drew across his face again.
You are his current crusade, Sir Barnaby. Have you realized that?
She didn’t think he had.
The path swung right, following the curve of the cliff. The wind was strong enough to make Merry’s eyes water. Ahead was the long slope down to the cove. She glanced at Sir Barnaby. She’d learned a lot about him in the last ten minutes—his character, his values—but she hadn’t come close to making him laugh.
Merry halted at the top of the slope. “When it’s this windy, I usually run down here,” she confessed.
Sir Barnaby’s eyebrows rose. “Run?”
“It feels like flying.” Merry spread her arms and leaned into the wind. “See?”
Sir Barnaby hesitated a few seconds, and then spread his arms. He had the expression of a man humoring a child—dubious, half-embarrassed.
“It’s best when the wind’s even stronger,” Merry told him. “But this will do. Come on. It’s fun.”
She ran down the slope, her arms outstretched. The wind caught her with each stride and made her briefly buoyant. Laughter bubbled in her chest. Maybe I should choose levitation as my Faerie gift. Being able to fly—truly fly—would be incredible beyond anything.
Halfway down, Sir Barnaby passed her at a gallop, arms spread like wings, coattails flapping. Merry reached the bottom several seconds after him. He swung round to face her, his face alight with laughter.
Merry’s pulse tripped over itself and sped up. She stared at Sir Barnaby, at his wind-tousled hair and laughing hazel eyes.
This is a man I could fall in love with.