behind and entering the motorway, which we stayed on for an hour or more. We might have been anywhere in England. Everything seemed the same from one moment to the next, an unending stream of uniformity from the vehicles to the buildings. Metal and glass… concrete and glass… all stripped of color, scale, and shape. Everything moving at the same automated speed. Where were the famous dales, the mysterious, beckoning moors? Did the Yorkshire I had imagined exist anymore? Or had it been paved over and roofed in for a shopping center?
“I’ve changed my mind.” Ariel spoke from behind my head. “I will have a toffee, Mrs. Malloy.”
“Aren’t you the kind little miss?” An irritable rustling of paper bag. “Didn’t anyone ever tell you the word
“Maybe Betty attempted to clamp down on her behavior.” Ben spoke in a low aside to me, but Ariel must have heard. She sucked in an infuriated breath.
“Ellie, can we
“That’s enough.” I almost yanked my head off in turning around to face her. “I understand you’re on edge-”
“I’m not. I’m perfectly calm.”
“That’s neither here nor there.”
“You just said-”
“What my wife is attempting to explain, Ariel, is that we are fast losing sympathy for you,” Ben informed her, “whatever your grievances.”
I settled back in my seat, staring rigidly at the windshield. More silence. We were exiting the motorway to a view of hills as rough-hewn as the stone walls bordering the fields surrounding the outline of a farmhouse that might have been Wuthering-not Withering-Heights. Way off to our right spread a shadowy stretch of what I hoped might be moorland. But I couldn’t enjoy this introduction to the county of gothic glory. Had Ben and I spoken too sharply to the girl? How precarious was her state of mind? Would Tom and Betty prove especially difficult if we returned her blank-eyed and silent?
“I don’t know why I have to come off sounding bratty, at the very times when I really want to be nice so people will like me,” Ariel remarked plaintively. “Like last night, Ellie, when I knew I needed to win you and Mrs. Malloy over. I could hear myself talking and it didn’t sound right, but there just didn’t seem anything I could do about it.”
“Got one of them multiple personalities?” Mrs. M asked eagerly.
“I suppose I’m perverse.”
“Probably.” Ben laughed, and I felt myself relax.
“Our own worst enemies, that’s what we all are sometimes.” Mrs. Malloy sounded ready to enlarge on this theme. But Ariel announced that we were now within a few miles of Milton Moor.
“And we haven’t stopped for lunch.” I looked at my watch to see that it was nearly noon. “Should we look out for somewhere?”
“It’s all right. That toffee did the trick. I’m not starving anymore. Why put off the evil hour? Of course, it’ll be bread and water for me.” Ariel sounded almost cheerful. It was Mrs. Malloy who betrayed uneasiness.
“I wonder if Melody will think I’ve aged some.”
It seemed likely after a span of forty years, but I crossed my fingers and said probably not. Ben nosed the car onto a sharply steep road with buff-colored houses, grimed with smoke, butting up against the pavement. All very prim and properly Victorian, with lace curtains screening the windows and pots of stiff-looking maroon and purple flowers on the steps. It was truly like stepping back in time. Finally my heart thrilled. A woman opened her door and whacked a mat against the wall. A cat leaped out of a tree and a little boy of about three came pumping along on his tricycle. A woman with orange hair came out of a house with a BED AND BREAKFAST sign on the gatepost. I noted a couple of side streets with shops and other businesses. Then we were again looking out on more open country, bordered by the dry-stone walls and punctuated by solitary trees and outcroppings of rock. Some cultivation, but mostly a sea of coarse wavering grass. We passed a man with shaggy black hair streaked with white, striding alongside a similarly colored sheepdog, both of them completely at one with the landscape. Elemental. Timeless.
“Who said a moor is merely a lawn in need of mowing?” Ben inquired.
“I don’t know.” I was a little peeved that he’d broken the mood.
“You made that up yourself, Ben.” Ariel actually giggled, like a real child.
“Caught out!” He grinned and I simmered down. It was good that the two of them seemed to be coming to terms. Now all we needed was a little harmony on meeting Tom and Betty.
“We’re here. Time to face the music!” Mrs. Malloy tapped on her window. “Look! It says it on the brass plate on that brick wall: Cragstone House. And there’s the roof and the chimneys towering up to the sky. Well, I never!” She continued her raptures as we drove in through the gateposts. “There’s a cottage off to the side, but much bigger than the one Freddy lives in back at Merlin’s Court. This one could house a family of six without anyone bumping walls.” She had rolled down her window and stuck out her head, risking getting scratched by the shrubbery lining the drive, which gave way on either side to flower beds in a park setting.
“Oh, you’re talking about the Dower House! It’s rather nice inside. Lady Fiona still owns it and a couple of acres of land.”
“Is that where she’s living?” I asked.
“No, she’s temporarily in residence at a hotel. Mr. Gallagher’s old nanny is at the Dower House with her great niece, Val. Their last name is-”
She didn’t get to finish. Ben had parked the Land Rover facing a flight of steps that would have seated a full orchestra. The moment called for a rousing flourish of Mozart. The handsomely carved front door opened to reveal a man and a woman descending to meet us. The stiffness of their gait suggested that they were either made out of fiberboard or were rigidly controlling their emotions. I decided the latter was more likely; Ben and I got out of the vehicle as if ordered to do so by two police officers. Mrs. Malloy and Ariel followed. I didn’t turn to see if they had their hands up.
The couple had reached the bottom step. Tom wasn’t much of a surprise. I had pictured him as being of medium height and stocky build, with pale, slightly protuberant blue eyes and a weak mouth. And there he stood. The reality was completed by the brown tweed sports jacket and elderly cords he was wearing, perhaps in ineffectual hope of looking like a landed squire, of the kind that lived for his trout fishing and pheasant shooting and had only given up smoking a pipe when it became politically expedient to do so. Betty was another matter. I had got her all wrong. She was neither an ethereal blonde trailing organza nor a raven-haired beauty wearing spiffy riding togs. She was a diminutive redhead in a too-large pale blue suit, with a nose that had been pinched out of plastic. Her eyes were clear green glass.
“Ariel!” Her voice was a spurt of ice-cold water. “Get over here.”
“Oh, Betty darling!” I was staggered to hear the girl reply. Indeed, I clutched at Ben’s arm and was glad of the additional support of Mrs. Malloy’s sturdy presence behind me. “Daddy!” A breeze, absent until now, fanned my cheeks and fluttered my skirts. It was caused by Ariel’s sobbing breath. She raced around me, hands extended, spectacles askew, and limp hair flying. “Please, please don’t be cross. I’ve got the loveliest surprise planned.”
Tom’s smile had the look of a false mustache that could be taken off and hurriedly slipped into his pocket if it didn’t meet with his wife’s approval.
“Get indoors this minute, Ariel!” Betty’s rigidity suggested an outraged Barbie doll. So far she had not deigned to glance at Mrs. Malloy, Ben, or me. Neither, for that matter, had Tom.
“Oh, but not before I tell you about the surprise!” Ariel flung herself at her stepmother. “This morning I had the brilliant idea to phone a-”
“I’m not interested. You’ve caused no end of an upset at a time when your father and I have other things to worry about. Tell her, Tom.”
The recipient of a jab from an undoubtedly sharp elbow cleared his throat. “You shouldn’t have done it, Ariel. We’ve been worried sick about you, and I’m sure you’ve put Cousin Ben and his wife to a lot of bother.” He finally looked our way. “Whatever made you take off like that?”
“And why to them?” Betty’s tone said it all.
“I couldn’t think of anyone else. Ellie had been kind, sending those books to me.” This was uttered in a broken little voice. “We don’t have many relatives and none that we ever see, now that Grandma Hopkins is dead. I’ve been so mixed up and miserable. Everything changed after the lottery. People talking about us. Moving to this house.
