The whole party at Clairvon Abbey met at breakfast the following morning. Little was said as the four filled their plates and poured out tea or coffee. Rosalind looked white and strained, and Philip sullen. Miranda said nothing. This left conversation up to Alan Creighton, and he chatted manfully about the chances of rain and the fineness of Cook’s kippers. There was general relief when Philip rose and abruptly asked whether Alan would care for a ride and a look at some cottages on the far side of the estate. Alan agreed, and the men went out.
In the silence that followed, Miranda gathered her courage. “Rosalind?” she said.
“What?”
Her sister’s white face and unhappy expression wrung Miranda’s heart. “I am so sorry! I should never have said those things to you, and I will never do so again. Please forgive me!”
Rosalind, who had spent a restless, unhappy night, and who was as miserable as Miranda over their breach, did so gladly. She had also been thinking. “I must tell you something about my ‘illness,’” she added. “It is not really that. I…I am increasing. That is all.”
“In…? Oh!”
“Mama says one is often sick, at first. But it will pass off in a few weeks.” Rosalind had determined to be quite matter-of-fact about this revelation, but she found she was talking rapidly and nervously. She slowed down. “It is a nuisance, of course. The illness, I mean. But nothing to worry over.”
“No. I mean, well, congratulations! Are you…you must be very happy.” Miranda felt young and awkward. No one had ever confided such a thing to her before. Or discussed it in her presence. Though she had always felt that to be stupid and insulting, she was nevertheless at a loss.
“Yes.” For the first time this morning, Rosalind smiled. “Very.” The conversation brought back her flood of happiness when she had first known about the baby. “It will be around Christmas. We are starting to clear out the old nursery.”
“Christmas! Too bad,” exclaimed Miranda. “How lowering, to have a birthday just then, and get only one set of presents.”
Rosalind laughed. “We shall try to make it up to him, or her.”
“Well, you should,” agreed Miranda.
“So now will you stop worrying about me?” asked her sister. “And not mind if I am a little ill or cannot ride with you?”
“Of course! I am so sorry for being such a…”
“How could you know? Shall we go to the morning room? I have some sewing, and I’m sure you have a book.”
“I’m just finishing The Black Abbot. I could read aloud,” offered Miranda.
“I don’t know whether I can tolerate more of the abbot. Is he torturing anyone just now?”
“Oh, no. That is all over with. They are chasing him through the catacombs, and they must catch him soon, for there are only twenty pages left.”
Her sister laughed again. “Well, I must hear that.”
“I’ll get it,” said Miranda, and ran upstairs to her room.
They spent the morning together in perfect amity and enjoyed a light luncheon of cold meat and fruit. But in the afternoon, when Rosalind went up to lie down, Miranda fetched her map and a candle and headed for the basements. These were the major unexplored territories left in the house, and she was determined to go through them at the earliest opportunity.
The door to the lower regions was just outside the kitchen, and she crept along the uncarpeted corridor listening intently. She particularly wished to avoid Forbes.
“Shall I peel these potatoes, then?” she heard Alice say. Cook answered with something that sounded to Miranda like, “Ayo-ich.” Placing her feet carefully and silently, she reached the cellar door. The knob squeaked when she eased it open, and she froze for an instant, then stepped quickly through and shut it behind her. There was no sound of pursuit.
It was very dark. Her one small candle let her see three or four dusty wooden stairs and nothing else. Silence spread around her. Miranda folded up her map and put it in the pocket of her gown. She would not be able to mark it in this gloom; she would have to memorize the turns and write them in when she was back in her room. For a wistful moment, she wished she was back there now. Then she shook herself and stepped down.
The stairs ended in a large brick-walled room filled with boxes and barrels. When she lifted the lid on one of the latter, she found flour. Through an archway to the left was the root cellar. Miranda held her candle high and examined the apples, potatoes, and carrots reposing in the cool earth there. Back in the other direction, she discovered the wine cellar, racks and racks of dusty bottles marching off into the gloom. She spent only a minute there, for this was Forbes’s domain, and who could tell when he might come down to get the wine for dinner?
Beyond these domestic areas, the stone floor deteriorated and became treacherously uneven, but there was at least a bit more light, from small barred windows set high in the walls. She found a huge echoing room supported by brick pillars and containing only a few moldy trunks. Opening one, she discovered a miscellany of broken crockery, worn-out tinware, and straw which looked very like a nest. She closed it again quickly.
Further on was another room, identical except that it was empty and had large damp spots on the floor and walls. After this, the walls were hewn stone, the same stone as the sea cliffs, and the cellars were exceedingly damp. Miranda began to have high hopes of finding a secret passageway down to the sea, used by pirates in times past. Perhaps one of Philip’s ancestors had been a pirate? But the rooms merely went on and on, getting smaller and meaner without any sign of a hidden door. Miranda wandered here and there for almost two hours without finding anything more interesting than an ancient ax, crusted with dirt and rust, leaning in the corner of a cell-like chamber under, she thought, the west wing.
At last, discouraged and rather dusty, she gave up and started back the way she had come. She had made careful note of every turn she took and retraced them faithfully to the large room with the trunks. It was there that she began to hear the voices.
They were deep—men’s voices—and low, as if they didn’t wish to be overheard. Miranda crept forward to the doorway and listened. They were coming from the left, the wine cellar.
She snuffed her candle, darted into the storeroom, and crouched behind two barrels just outside the entrance to the wine cellar. The first thing she heard was Forbes, saying, “I told you never to come here.”
“I come where I like,” replied a gravelly, brutal voice. The mere sound of it made Miranda shiver. “I ain’t no lord’s lackey.” She stifled a gasp. Imagine saying such a thing to Forbes.
But he replied only, “What do you want?”
“A word, no more.”
“Say it then.”
There was a pause, and a shuffling sound. Miranda longed to go and peer around the doorway, but she didn’t dare.
“What’s this, then?” said the stranger’s voice. “Some o’ his lordship’s fancy wine. Red, eh?”
“A claret,” answered Forbes, in a tone that would have made Miranda cringe before him.
“Aye. I’ve had such in France. More than you have, eh, old man?”
“No doubt. Perhaps you could give me the message? I may be missed upstairs.”
“Oh, right, his lordship may be needin’ you to fill his glass or hand him ’is handkerchief.” His mocking tone changed. “How can you stand it, man? Come away and join us. Your nephew’s made more money than you do in a year in this place.”
“I’m too old to change my habits,” answered Forbes, in a tired, controlled voice that made Miranda ashamed of her suspicions about him. “Please just give me the message.”
There was the sound of someone spitting. “All right, then, old fool. Harley says, if those two new ones keep snooping, something bad will happen.”
“I have no way of stopping guests in this house from going where they please,” protested Forbes.
“You better find a way.”
“I’ve tried with the girl. She won’t listen. And his lordship’s cousin is a former army officer. I am sure he…”
“Officer?” was the sharp exclamation. “What regiment?”
“The tenth cavalry.”
“Ah. None o’ ours, then. But we know what to do about an officer.”
“You’d be mad to…”
“Never mind what we’d be. You just keep after that girl and keep your mug shut. You know what’ll happen if you don’t.” The ugly threat in his voice made Miranda crouch still lower, and that was fortunate, for in the next moment, the two men came out and walked toward the stairs. When they were past, Miranda ventured a look. Forbes held a branch of candles, and by their light she could see his narrow, upright figure flanked by one almost as tall and far broader. The stranger wore a ragged uniform with the insignia torn off, and a battered tricorne. His hands were huge, even larger than Forbes’s.
Just before the light disappeared above, Miranda hurried to the stairs, but she waited at the foot, in darkness, for some time before groping her way up. She had no wish to meet Forbes’s companion in the upper corridor! At last, judging they must be gone, she slowly ascended. At the top, she paused, listened, then slipped out, only to come face to face with Mrs. MacCrory, the cook.
The older woman asked an unintelligible question.
Miranda, whose heart was pounding with the fright of meeting her, stammered, “I was just…I went to look at the cellar. I…just to see, you know, what it is like. Such an…old house.”
Cook put her hands on her ample hips and regarded Miranda with fond astonishment. She said something else, shaking her head. Alice, the kitchenmaid, peered around the kitchen door. “She says you’re an odd little thing,” translated Alice. “What have you been doing? You’re all over dust.”
“I was…looking at the cellar.”
“Looking at it? Whatever for?”
“Just to explore.” Some of Miranda’s confidence was coming back, now that it seemed certain Forbes and his visitor were gone.
“I hate going down there,” said Alice with a shiver. “There’s rats.”
Miranda thought that she would rather have encountered a rat than the man with Forbes. “I didn’t see any,” she replied.
Mrs. MacCrory took her arm and, nodding and smiling, urged her into the kitchen. Alice backed away in front of them. “We’ve been making scones for tea,” she confided. “It’s nearly time.”
The sight, and smell, of the mound of steaming scones on the kitchen table made Miranda realize that she was ravenous. “Oh, could I have one now?” she asked. Cook smiled more broadly and gave her one. Miranda bit down. The pastry was hot and flaky and filled with raisins. It seemed to her the most delicious thing she had ever tasted in her life. She finished it in four bites and gazed longingly at the platter. Laughing and making another mysterious remark, Cook passed a second. “She says she loves to watch a girl enjoy her food the way you do,” said Alice.
“And so do I,” added a male voice from the doorway. “Is this a private party, or may I join in?”
“Alan,” cried Miranda through a mouthful of scone. “I must speak to you at once.”
“Not until I’ve had one of these,” he said, taking two scones and grinning at Mrs. MacCrory.
“We’re just taking in the tea,” objected Alice.
“I promise you I shall do it justice,” said Alan. “Mrs. MacCrory makes the best scones in the north, and that means the best scones anywhere, of course.”
“Alan,” said Miranda.
“Ready.”
They went out together, and Miranda led him to the empty morning room. “I must tell you what I heard,” she began, and poured out the whole story.
When she was done, Creighton’s buoyant mood had dissipated. He looked grimly thoughtful. “This is too much,” he concluded. “I must speak to Philip.”
“Philip!” Miranda was outraged.
“This is no longer a joke,” he replied.
“It never was a joke. You cannot tell Philip. He may be behind…whatever it is.”
“You don’t truly believe that?”
“Well…he may be. Think how unpleasant he is, and how he is always snapping. He didn’t want me here, either. I heard him say so to Rosalind.”
“None of this means he is involved. He might well not want you looking about if he feared something illegal was afoot.”
Miranda thought about this.
“And if Forbes is being threatened, it seems likely Philip is as well.”
“Ye-es,” answered Miranda slowly.
“We cannot let this go on. I must see him.” He turned to leave, and Miranda followed close on his heels. “You stay here,” he told her. “Or go and find your sister.”
“No. I’m coming with you.”
Alan shook his head. “This is not a game now, Miranda. It is serious business.”
“I know that.”
“You must keep out of it after this. Philip and I will…”
“When it was a ‘game’ I was welcome to play? But now that you see it isn’t, I must stay clear?” Miranda’s eyes had begun to snap.
“You must see that you cannot…”
“I see that I have found out nearly everything we know, and now you are pushing me out. I won’t go!”
They faced one another for a long moment, eye to eye. Alan was surprised to find that he couldn’t daunt her. He had faced down any number of belligerent soldiers, but Miranda Dennison stood firm. “Pluck up to the backbone, aren’t you?” he finally admitted. “But that is only because you have no conception of the sort of men involved. I cannot allow you to come.”
“Allow? You have no authority over me!”
He smiled a little, charmed by her pugnacity. “Perhaps not. But if I ask Philip to speak to me privately, I think he will.” She started to reply, but he forestalled her. “And I think if you attempt to convince him otherwise, he will agree with me.”
Miranda wanted to deny this, but she couldn’t. She and Philip were not exactly good friends. He would undoubtedly side with his cousin. “You can’t do this!” she said, half furious, half pleading.
“I am sorry, but…”
“You aren’t! You aren’t the least sorry. You are happy to have a mere girl out of your way. It is always so! But you may find you are wrong, in the end!” And picking up her skirts, she swept out of the room, followed, unknowingly, by Alan Creighton’s deeply appreciative gaze.