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  DARBY’S ANGEL

  Marcy Stewart

  Chapter One

  She was the portrait come to life.

  Beneath the arch of whispering ash leaves, Simon Garrett stared at her, hollow-eyed, disbelieving. It was impossible. The brown-haired beauty in the painting had lived and died nearly two centuries before.

  He had spent too many days brooding in the library of Elena’s ancestral home, that was all; too much time tracing resemblances of his late wife and son in the wall of fading British images. What a waste of time it had been, for none of the stiff-faced reproductions captured a glimmer of Elena’s irrepressible spirit, of Tay’s sense of mischief—none, that is, save the one of the brother and sister, the twins. And now it seemed the woman of that portrait stood before him, trembling at his presence in this lonely wood, her grey eyes sweeping his wild appearance from head to foot with wonder and fear.

  Although he knew she must be a ghost born of his imagination and sorrow, he could not resist speaking the name he had seen inscribed in bronze beneath the portrait.

  “Darby? Darby Brightings?”

  “You speak rightly, sir,” she answered. There was a tremor in her voice. Her lips pressed together at the sound of it, and when she spoke again it was gone. “And what — who might you be, and why do you trespass in my wood?”

  His eyes widened. He had not expected this lovely delusion to answer him, and he felt afraid. This was beyond all sanity, all reason. Dell had warned him that his grief was spiralling out of control, and here was the evidence.

  But she seemed so real. Her voice hinted of a nature sweet yet self-assured; the blood rushed and fled beneath seamless skin that revealed her emotions as transparently as the mood rings he had seen in his childhood.

  She was waiting. The alarm he felt seemed to augment her own, or perhaps it was only his lengthening silence that increased her caution. She began to back away. Hallucination or not, he didn’t want her to leave; not before this mystery was solved. She must be flesh-and-blood. Perhaps she was the troubled one, she of the long dress and upswept hair, thinking to call herself Darby Brightings.

  “Wait,” he said, reaching his fingers toward her, meaning to touch her face or sleeve or arm, anything to convince himself she lived.

  “Do not dare to lay a hand upon me!” she declared immediately, taking another backward step. “I shall call my brother, and he will run you through with his sword!”

  He almost smiled at this archaic threat, and the burst of humor startled him more than its cause. He’d never thought to laugh again. How could he?

  The lightness drained away as quickly as it had come.

  “I won’t hurt you,” he said.

  But she was continuing to move backward, her gaze pinned to his face as if fearing he would attack her if she looked away.

  Intent on demonstrating his harmlessness, he spread his hands outward and stepped back between the ash trees, blinking, when a wave of dizziness swept over him.

  She vanished instantly. There was no noisy flight through the woods, no dash to hide behind a tree, not even the vapory dissolution one might expect at the disappearance of a ghost. She was simply ... gone. And had that been her scream he heard, or was it only the echo of his ruined heart?

  For many long minutes, he stared at the place she had been standing, allowing the horror to rise within him, almost enjoying it. It had been months since he felt anything. When he turned homeward at last, his steps were no longer aimless through the dense wood.

  * * *

  “Well, what think you of my new designs?” Alexander Brightings asked his sister impatiently. “You look to be dozing over them. Are they so dull?”

  Darby turned from the wall of windows that broke the daylight into little squares across her hands, the sheaf of papers she held, and onto the marble floor of the conservatory. She blinked away her contemplation of the ridge of woods behind the house and focused her gaze on the sketches.

  “They are only preliminary, of course,” he added, an anxious note creeping in. “I can refine them, make them more detailed if you think I should.”

  She paged slowly through the ink drawings, pausing now and then to look closer when something caught her interest. Her eyebrows lifted at one, her lips curled upward at another. Alexander, studying her face intently from his chair across the room, gradually relaxed and crossed one long leg over the other. A similar smile curved his mouth as he began to pluck pieces of lint from his pantaloons and flick them to the floor.

  “This is your finest work to date,” she said. “John Flaxman himself could not have done better when he was working for Mr. Wedgwood.”

  “That’s going it too strong,” Alexander protested, but his face betrayed delight. “You saw his sculpture of Sir Joshua Reynolds at St. Paul’s. I haven’t one fraction of his talent.”

  “Perhaps not in sculpting, but I know of no one who surpasses you in design. I’ve never seen such striking interpretations of Greek myths. Our name will become as well-known as Wedgwood or Spode.”

  With an answering enthusiasm, he leaned forward, arms dangling over his legs, his grey eyes twinkling. “A single place setting shall be thought cheap at fifty pounds.”

  She joined in the old game, the game their father had begun with them as children. “Daughters will treasure their mother’s Brightingsware and add to their collection every generation.”

  He scowled abruptly and leaned back.

  “If only Uncle Richard would allow us to take the pottery into the nineteenth century. How can we hope to compete using old methods while a few miles away, Staffordshire employs tens of thousands using modern equipment? Had Father not purchased a steam engine before he died, we would still be grinding flint and pigments by hand.”

  “I know it well, but we shan’t have to endure our uncle much longer.”

  The young man brightened at this. “Yes, thank God.” He sprang to his feet and stood beside her. Darting a stealthy look toward the hall, he lowered his voice and added, “I think our esteemed relation is overdue a measure of justice, do you not?”

  She did not answer, did not appear to have heard him. Again, her gaze had drifted to the landscape beyond the window; his carefully-prepared artwork lowering as if forgotten.

  A twinge of annoyance crossing his brow, Alexander took the papers from her fingers, meeting no resistance. After replacing the sketches in his portfolio, he returned to her side and observed her with increasing worry. Her strong profile, so much a feminine version of his own, remained unmarked by anxiety or any other emotion, yet tension emanated from her like ripples of heat from an inferno.

  Slipping an arm around her waist, he forced a chuckle into his voice and said, “Oh, come now, old girl. It has been weeks since we plagued him last. You remember how good it felt, don’t you?”

  Although she continued to stare into the wood, her lips twitched. “You were inspired in your choice of blue.”

  Alexander laughed. “But it was your notion to paint the interior of his hat. His hair shone with indigo highlights for weeks. We make an incomparable pair, do we not?”

  She looked at him at last, a little sideways glance that sparkled with affection. “A pair of terrors, more like. We have been called so often enough.”

  “Only by those who do not matter.”

  Her eyebrows arched. “The servants and our relatives do not matter?”

  “I have spoken too hastily,” he conceded with a grin. “Of course the servants’ opinions matter.”

  “But not those of our relatives.”

  “You have said it, not I.”

  Darby’s smile remained in place, though her eyes grew serious. “Not even the opinion of our golden-haired cousin, then? She does not concern you?”

&n
bsp; Displaying sudden absorption in a butterfly seeking entrance through the glass, Alexander withdrew a step, his arm drifting away from his sister’s waist.

  “Lenora is not really our cousin,” he said carefully.

  “Oh, I see,” Darby said quietly, returning her attention to the window. “Poor Evelyn.”

  “Don’t be an idiot, twin. You are making too much of it. My affections are not engaged by anyone. I’m too young to be leg-shackled, don’t you think?”

  “I think you won’t be able to say that much longer. Not if Lenora has her way.”

  His eyes widened. “Oh, come now. Surely you don’t believe—”

  Without turning her head, she asked softly, “You think I’m wrong about the attractiveness of the heir to Brightings?”

  He regarded her in silence, his eyes stormy. Slowly the fire bled from his veins. In gentle tones he said, “You’re not yourself. What troubles you, Darby? For days you’ve acted strangely, taking long walks and looking out windows. Tell me.”

  She lowered her eyes. “There is nothing to tell, Alex.”

  Stepping closer, he patted her cheek lightly. “You’re lying, old girl. Don’t you know you can’t hide anything from me?”

  Evading his eyes, she turned from the window and strolled away, pausing at a collection of potted plants gathered near the window but placed out of the direct rays of the sun.

  Fingering a fern frond absently, she inquired in an off-hand voice, “Have you seen any strangers hereabouts, Alex? Recently, I mean?”

  “No,” he answered, joining her, standing so closely she had to look at him. “Have you? Is this what is wrong? Has someone troubled you? I shall kill him.”

  She laughed suddenly, but her eyes were bright and her cheeks scarlet. “Oh, Alex, did anyone hear you they would think a hot-headed child was speaking. Of course I haven’t seen anyone. Everyone knows there are no strangers at Brightings!”

  * * *

  Simon returned to the wood every day for a week, always searching for her but too afraid to admit it to himself. That he didn’t see her again confirmed his fears; she had been a figment of his imagination. Of course, he had known it all along. Ghosts did not exist.

  But no, unless he was totally insane, he had seen her, and she seemed so alive! If only he could see her once more, help her. Maybe she was earthbound, waiting for someone to release her soul. Perhaps she needed to understand how it was she died. He could tell her that, now that he’d read the family history. Where was she?

  He must be mad. Had he really come to believe in ghosts?

  Well, why not? Apparitions were easier to explain than the evil which had befallen his family. Evil in the guise of love.

  He had told no one of his sighting, though he did ask the housekeeper a few questions that made her view him in alarm. The cheery, middle-aged lady half-spooked him with her answers.

  “Be careful, Mr. Garrett,” she warned. “Be careful of them woods. My family’s lived here for centuries, and the old name for that forest is Witchwood. People have wandered in there never to return. There are legends that the wood swallows the desolate in heart. It happened to a great-uncle of mine. After his love married another, he entered the trees and was never seen again.”

  “That seems easily explained. He probably killed himself, if you’ll forgive me for saying so.”

  “My father’s uncles searched the entire wood and never found his bones.”

  “Well, then,” he said, exasperated, “he walked out the other side when no one was looking.”

  “Yes.” She nodded wisely. “But what was on the other side?”

  He snorted. “Mrs. Greene, you should have been a screenwriter.”

  But despite his amusement, he continued to hear her words as he searched. The wood swallows the desolate in heart. If that was the requirement, he must look very appetizing to every oak, beech and ash tree springing from this ancient earth.

  Ash trees ... Hadn’t he walked between a pair of ash trees when he saw Darby? Childhood rituals sprang to his mind. Step on a crack, break your mother’s back. It’s all right to lie if you cross your fingers behind your back. Put your tooth beneath the pillow and the tooth fairy will come. Everything magical had to be done in a certain way or the spell wouldn’t work. Maybe he should find those trees and walk through them again.

  He laughed at himself and walked on. But his eyes moved restlessly, scanning the treetops. He wasn’t looking for anything in particular, of course; but he wanted to find those ash trees, just to see if he could.

  It was a beautiful wood; haunting, really. Little undergrowth marred the soil, almost as if the earth had been swept clean of the tangled vines and rotting logs he expected. Were English forests as refined as their people were reputed to be? Didn’t their woods grow as thick and wild as American ones?

  As he neared the heart of the forest, the little noises of birds chattering, branches rustling and his Reeboks crackling over fallen leaves and pine needles grew quieter, as though muted. He remembered that preternatural hush from his other excursions, but today the silence seemed fraught with meaning. Where were those ash trees?

  And then he saw them, two widely-spaced towers whose upper branches interlocked as if one reached to embrace the other. Without hesitation, he plunged beneath the arch.

  For a moment he felt disoriented, the ground sliding beneath him as if his shoes had suddenly sprouted wheels. When the world righted itself, he felt a surge of hope. Hadn’t he experienced this strange imbalance seconds before he sighted her?

  “Darby?” he called tentatively.

  Silence met his ears. Feeling increasingly foolish, he cried her name again and again.

  The forest remained stubbornly quiet, mocking him with moist, dark smells that hinted of growing things, of unrestricted life burrowing beneath the earth and scurrying among the leaves. No room here for ghostly dead things, it said.

  He breathed in disappointment. She wasn’t here. Of course she wasn’t. Had he really expected her to be?

  He should go home, fly back to Los Angeles and plunge into work. That was what Dell wanted him to do, and he’d asked as a friend, not an agent, wasn’t that what he’d said? Dell’s concern had nothing to do with Mel Luther wanting him for his next film.

  Right.

  He shrugged his shoulders and turned back, avoiding the ash trees as he would a besotted fan. His old sorrow, for days held at bay because of the mystery which had now proved to be nothing, again branded horrible images into his brain.

  Tasting bitterness, he retraced his steps for a long time, the puzzling configuration of trees hardly capturing his notice. No matter how often he walked here, nothing ever became familiar. He could almost begin to think himself lost were it not for the gradual thinning of the trees.

  When he cleared the forest, he stopped, paralyzed.

  Before him lay Brightings, but it was not the Brightings he had inherited from Elena’s estate.

  The west wing was completely gone, as though removed with a scalpel; yet the surgery had left no scars. What remained of the house looked cleaner; the stones shone brighter with no traces of rust around the outside spigots— there were no spigots—and the grounds were different, with orderly rows of flowers and shrubs set in squares, and a high hedge in front.

  Could someone in the neighborhood have built a newer, more compact version of Brightings? But, other than the differences in the garden, the layout of the road and forest looked the same.

  As he watched, a boy emerged from the back of the house carrying a pail of something which he dumped into a pile of dirt and leaves. He raked the foul-looking mess into a heap, drew a bucket of water from the well—from the well?—rinsed the pail, and returned inside, whistling all the while.

  Simon stood on the edge of the forest, alarm clanging within. The boy had been wearing kneepants, stockings, a peasant blouse of some sort, a vest to match the pants, and shoes with buckles.

  The house and the child were not alone in
their wrongness. In the time he had been standing here—five minutes at least—not one car had passed on the highway at the end of the long drive. And, unless his eyes deceived him, the highway was no longer paved.

  How could the road not be paved? Where was this place?

  What is on the other side? Mrs. Greene had asked him.

  This was crazy. He should go down there and ask to use the phone. He would call Mrs. Greene and demand she pick him up, because he was lost.

  But he did not move for a long while, not until he saw Darby Brightings riding toward him from the vast park behind the house. She appeared to be headed toward the garages—stables?—and her path would take her directly past him.

  Stomach lurching, he turned from the inexplicable scene, leaned his back against an oak tree and bent over, bracing his hands on his knees. He had not really expected to see her again, and certainly not like this, painted into her background, not his.

  Life as he knew it was over. He’d end his days in an asylum.

  “That is not Darby Brightings,” he panted, repeating it like a mantra, covering his ears to shut out the sound of hoofbeats approaching. “Not. Not. Not Darby Brightings.”

  “But it is,” came that clear voice he remembered, though it wavered with an emotion similar to his own. “Have I not told you before? And you have returned, I see.”

  He lowered his hands slowly, pushed away from the tree, and turned around. His heart beat like a jackhammer, pumping all the way into his eyes, making the woman seated sidesaddle on the beautiful grey horse appear to jump up and down. Well, he’d wanted to find her and there she was, wearing a black velvet riding habit, not more than ten feet away from where he stood, and he couldn’t think of anything to say. His senses were overloading. If he were a computer, smoke would be pouring from his microchips.

  While he continued to regard her with silent awe, she spoke again. “Perhaps now you will answer the question I asked then. Who, or ... what ... are you?”

  “To tell you the truth,” he said finally, his voice cracking like a boy’s, “right now I’m not sure what I am.”