The Moor - Laurie R. King [37]
"However, that is not for tonight, and probably not the most efficient use of resources to do it ourselves. Gould can muster a troop of Irregulars for us, men who know the ground."
Immensely relieved, I swung my heavy knapsack back onto my shoulders, tightened my slack bootlaces to protect my toes against the downhill journey, and lightheartedly followed my husband down from Gibbet Hill.
SEVEN
Towards evening I was startled to see a most extraordinary object approach me—a man in a draggled, dingy, and disconsolate condition, hardly able to crawl along.
—A Book of Dartmoor
Darkness overtook us on the road back towards Lew Trenchard. As I stumbled in Holmes' wake, barely conscious of the vegetation and the people and the rich odours of dung and grass and rotting leaves, I reflected that I had been wet, bedraggled, and exhausted before—generally in Holmes' company—and after two years of marriage to the man I had come to accept this as a common state of affairs. I should have been somewhat happier about it if only he, too, might show the same results, but Holmes had always possessed the extraordinary ability to avoid grime. Given two puddles, identical on the surface, Holmes would invariably choose the one with the shallow, neatly gravelled bottom, whereas I, just as invariably, would put my foot into the other and be in muck past the ankle. Or go over a wall fleeing from a herd of horned Scottish cows and land respectively on green turf and churned-up mud.
So it was that we approached Lew House, with me limping and slurping in my boots while beside me walked my partner and husband, his only dishevelment after three days of moor-crawling the day's light stubble on his jaw and a high-tide mark of mud around the lower half of his otherwise clean boots. He looked as if he were returning from a gentle day's shooting; I seemed to have spent the day wrestling a herd of escaped pigs through a bog.
The smell of wood smoke grew stronger as we came up the drive to Lew House, and I could see lights pouring from the windows, making the cold mausoleum seem almost warm and beckoning. Considering the late hour, in fact, the house seemed fairly blazing with lights. Nice of Baring-Gould to make the effort, I thought, and was aware of a faint feeling of warmth towards the man. Only when we were actually within the porch and I heard the voices within did I realise my mistake, and by then it was too late to bolt for the servants' entrance.
Again, our host himself opened the door. This time, at his back and peering curiously around the cleric's high shoulder, stood another man, a wide, swarthy face topped with thick, greying, heavily pomaded hair. The man's liquid brown eyes blinked at the sight of us, and shifted from their initial astonishment to a politely, if inadequately, concealed amusement.
"Miss Russell," our host said, "you look a bit the worse for wear. Shall I ask Mrs Elliott—"
"No thank you," I said, stung into asperity by the amusement in his voice that matched that of the stranger's eyes. "It is predominantly external." I sat on the bench and tugged at my bootlaces, praying fervently that they would not knot on me. I was saved from this small but final humiliation when the ties slid loose, allowing me to prise the boots from my feet. The sodden condition of the stockings I should simply ignore, along with the rest of my state. Pretend you've just come from the hairdresser's, Russell, I commanded myself. Imagine you've arrived at the home of a poor relation whose misbehaviours you have come to chastise. Put your chin up and cut them off without a farthing.
When my coat and hat had been peeled away and joined the sodden gloves on the bench, I turned towards the door and put my chin up and my hand out.
"Good evening, Mr Baring-Gould. I trust you are keeping