Moonlight Mist by Laura London

Author:Laura London [Laura London]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Headline
Published: 2014-03-13T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eleven

The castle stood above them, up the smooth glacis that was lost under shaggy bushes, gray rocks, and wild beds of withered ferns. The turrets rose from either corner of the castle like horns pointing to the sky. The sun glinted from the iron crossbar of an arched Gothic window, making it a winking eye in the stony expanse of the curtain. The gate was a dark, yawning mouth, and the lowered drawbridge stretched across the moat like a protruding tongue.

It was a cold, windy day, blessed by a cloudless, ultramarine sky. The watery leavings of yesterday’s rains were being picked up and carried off in the gust, leaving only a minor, crystalline dampness on the sharp edges of the dry saw grass. At the foot of the hill, Lorraine and Lynden had set up easels bedecked with sketch pads, that, along with watercolors, brushes, and mixing pots, had been laboriously pushed, from Fern Court through the still muddy lanes, in the pit of a rusty wheelbarrow.

Warmly clad in her new astrakhan-edged, high-waisted redingote, Lynden, hands on hips, took two steps back to survey her own painting.

“You know,” she said with a considering air, “this wouldn’t be half bad if the wind hadn’t nipped up the page and made the colors bleed. What do you think?”

Lorraine, frowning in concentration, had been daubing at her own paper, but stopped to give Lynden’s effort a fair study. “I think it looks like, um, an inverted sewing thimble in tarnished silver sitting on a liver-brown pillow.”

Lynden grinned, pulling a face. “At least it’s got shape, which is more, least complimentary of sisters, than I can say for yours, which looks like a smashed orange on a mound of potato peels. When Lord Crant appears, I think we had better emphasize our interest in the castle from a historical standpoint, not an artistic one.”

“That has the virtue of being the truth, at least. But as for Lord Crant appearing, I only wish he would hurry up about it because my blue paint pot is freezing over,” said Lorraine, stabbing energetically at the offending receptacle with the pointed end of her brush.

“Set it away from the shady side of your easel, Raine,” advised Lynden. “And Lord Crant’s got to come out before long. What sort of gentleman would leave two ladies painting indefinitely in the March wind without inviting them inside for a warming drink?”

“Lord Crant’s sort of gentleman! Furthermore, if half we hear of him is true, the warming drink he’d invite us in to would be poisoned. Lynden, we’ve been here for a quarter hour at least. Have you thought of this. What if he isn’t home?”

“Of course he’s home. This is the wild north, where is there to go? Besides, there’s a flag aloft the left turret. It’s his, I suspect, and that means he’s in residence. We know for certain that he isn’t visiting Fern Court today, with Melbrooke ridden into Penrith.”

Lorraine paused in the act of making a bright yellow sun and glanced at her sister.

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