THE OLD POACHER approaches steadily, his strange bright eyes on mine. He carries a crook before him, and I can’t tell whether he means it to threaten or to imply that he’s harmless. I feel like a fool for tossing my branch aside.
I stand slowly, certain that a sudden move will bring him bearing down on me, crook or no. Stella hides behind my legs, and I decide to be brave on her behalf. “I know who you are, Mr. McAllister. What right do you have to walk on my land?” My voice is shrill in my ears.
He laughs, a hard bark. “Well, well, the little lady of Walthingham. You call this your land, do you?”
I bristle, my fist tight around the paintbrush. “It’s mine by law. I am the lady of Walthingham Hall, and you’ll explain your presence on my grounds at once.”
“Or what, you’ll set your dog on me?” He laughs again, his eyes spinning toward Stella in a way that makes me wonder if he’s drunk. “It’s no good deed you’re doing, keeping that runt alive. Poor little thing, she’s good for naught but drowning.”
The brutal twinkle in his eyes when he says the word “drowning” makes me dizzy. He must know the coroner marked that as George’s official cause of death—and now here he is, sniffing around the last place I know George to have been alive. I jab the paintbrush into the air before me. “Perhaps I’m not the only heir of Walthingham Hall to have met you here on this hill. Perhaps you have come back not to dishonor yourself with theft but to hide the proof of what you’ve done!” My voice shakes, unsure. But McAllister barely seems to hear my words, looking at the brush in my hand with a small frown.
“What are you holding there?”
I move the brush behind my back, defensive. “Did you not hear me? Have you nothing to say for yourself?”
Again he ignores my words. “Is that all you’ve armed yourself with, out here in these woods? You think there’s nothing here that can harm you but the crows?”
“What are you talking about? What do you know about these woods?”
Leaning heavily on his stick, he moves closer. His gait is slow and dragging, and some of the fear goes out of me. “I was gamekeeper here since my own father died, when you weren’t even born. It was I who taught your father to fish. I know more of these woods and what they hold than you can imagine. And I know that you’re a silly chit meddling in affairs you don’t understand.” He moves closer to me, and my body goes rigid under the force of his gaze. “You’ll be better off going home to your velvets and your balls. This is no place for girls like you.”
Stella has edged out from behind me and is sniffing submissively at his feet. He nudges her hard, making her yelp. “Or for a beast like this.”
He turns and begins limping away as I scoop Stella into my arms.
“Wait!” I cry. “I want to talk to you!”
He looks back once, his eyes sharp on mine, then slips through a break in the trees.
After standing a moment in the chill sunlight on the rise, I roll the canvas and stuff it inside my coat, then scoop up Stella and set a brisk pace down the hill, following my own tracks. I hug Stella so tightly to my chest that she lets out a strangled whimper, but I can’t seem to loosen my grip. Foolishly, I fear that the opening in the trees will never come, that I will be lost again in these malevolent woods. But the ground soon clears, and sunlight sifts through a thinning cover of branches. The wind carries the crackling scent of fire, and I see a smoke trail curling over the trees—John and Henry must be burning brush. I’m angry afresh at this reminder of the hunt.
When I step back out onto Walthingham’s lawn, hunched miserably over the paintbrush and my poor dog, the two men are standing between the house and me. Their heads are tucked close into their chests, and they haven’t yet noticed my arrival. Lingering at the edge of the woods, I can see the dark look on Henry’s face; John’s is turned away from me. I stop short when Henry stabs a finger into the footman’s broad chest, speaking fierce words I cannot hear. At last he throws up his hands, turns heel, and stalks off toward the front of the house. I wonder if John is speaking on my behalf, against the hunt, but realize that no footman would dare contradict the wishes of the house in that way. John, then, must have done something wrong.
I think I’ll wait until he’s disappeared to walk across open ground, but Stella wriggles in my arms and lets out a yap. John turns sharply, then, spying me, rushes toward us.
He won’t meet my eyes as he pulls off his coat and wraps it around my shoulders, atop my own heavy cloak. “Lady Katherine, you should not be walking these woods. The cold alone is dangerous.”
“Please,” I protest. “I’m warm enough without it, and you’ll freeze.”
“No, you’re shivering,” he says, his expression lightening. “I won’t have you carried off by a chill before I’ve got my reading lessons in.”
Ducking my head, I allow him to mistake my state of misery for a chill, and for a moment neither of us speaks. My hands are warm beneath my cloak, clutching the paintbrush safely to my chest, but something stops me from telling him what I’ve found. Instead I gesture toward Henry’s retreating back. “You were discussing something with my cousin. I hope nothing is wrong?”
He makes a dismissive gesture. “I don’t think this shoot should take place,” he says. For a moment my heart leaps, but he continues. “The grounds are unsafe after the snowfall—and the weather is warming; soon it will be nothing but slush.”
If he catches my disappointed look, he does not say. “I should not keep you out here in conversation. I think the doctor would prefer you be abed.”
“I would be, but my dog ran off, and I was bound to follow.”
“Not much of a lady, that one,” he says. “Or so I’ve been told.”
I can’t meet his keen, smiling eyes. Firmly I return his coat, still keeping one hand out of view. “I’m not very cold anymore, truly. I’ll go inside to warm up.”
Then I imagine Grace and Mrs. Whiting, buzzing about the house making plans, clearing away every sign that ours was ever a house in mourning, and think again. “Perhaps you can help me, John—do you think you can get me into my rooms unseen? My cousins will worry if they knew I was following after Stella again.”
He touches two fingers to his head in mock salute. “As you wish, Lady Katherine. I daresay I know the secret ways of Walthingham better than any American girl.”
Before I can decide whether that’s more cheek than I should allow, he’s started away, and I have no choice but to follow.
It isn’t until we’re creeping up the servants’ stairs that I realize the canvas is no longer tucked inside my cloak. I must have dropped it somewhere in the woods. For a moment I consider rushing back out to find it. But with John at my side and Grace prowling about below, I know that I can’t. My freedom here is curtailed. I curse myself for losing one-half of my evidence—and the last painting that George will ever make.