Part 9 (2/2)

”Making fun of what other people are thinking doesn't actually const.i.tute 'an interest,' Mamie,” Rose said.

Mamie tossed the letter down. ”Let's go back,” she said. ”I'm not going to be kept from the house by my brother and his tedious admiration.”

Rose got up and dressed while Mamie tried to think of a plan to discourage Ru. ”You could propose marriage-that ought to sober him up.”

”I could start scratching myself all the time, so he thinks I'm infested.”

”Or you could clear your throat every thirty seconds, like Miss Toop at the Academy.”

”I could make a three-p.r.o.nged attack, clearing my throat, scratching, and proposing,” Rose said.

”Or you could just attack his three p.r.o.ngs!”

”Mamie!”

Shrieks of laughter.

That night, in the early hours of the morning, Rose woke and lay listening. She heard a disturbed bird twittering in a tree near her window. Perhaps its calls had hooked her out of sleep, or perhaps she'd been roused by the same thing that made the bird cry in alarm. She felt that something remarkable had happened only a moment before. The curtains in Rose's room were thick, the room black, and the birdcalls were bright in the darkness.

She got out of bed and shuffled to the window, slid the curtains open, and squinted into brilliant moonlight.

Outside, all the colors of day were present under a smoky filter. It was late, and a dewfall had softened and silvered the gra.s.s.

Rose decided to go out. She left her room and crept down the stairs. She went out by the French doors in the dining room. They were locked, but the key was in the lock.

She set off down the flagstone steps of the terrace, then veered away through the orchard and headed for the best path to the sea, the bed of the narrow-gauge railway that ran from the sh.o.r.e to the house.

The Doran summerhouse was on a slope at the back of the Inlet. It was grand and solid, built of blond sandstone, its roof tiled with slate. It had been a big project, in a remote spot, and had presented its builders with some challenges. Labor wasn't a problem, for the hill had been terraced and the foundations laid by convict workers. The difficulty was in getting the materials from the sh.o.r.e to the site across the boggy paddocks of the former farm. The farm already had a rough road that ran, plumb straight, from the sh.o.r.e to the foot of the hill, along an avenue of mature plane trees. Cas Doran's solution to the transportation problem was to have a narrow-gauge railway built along the road. A small engine ran on the line. In many trips, over many months, the engine hauled stone and timber, marble and parquet flooring, roof tiles, window gla.s.s, and finally furniture.

When Rose had first arrived at the Awa Inlet, the train she was on made a special stop at the end of the trestle bridge that crossed the mouth of the Sva River. Rose then got into a small boat and was rowed up a broad tidal channel, through the reedbeds, to the Doran jetty. There she was greeted by the sight of a butler sitting in the cab of a little engine. A footman stowed her bags in the single truck the engine was pulling. Then she climbed into the engine behind its driver and rode up to the house.

The engine had been stoked up several times during her visit-to pick up Ru's guests and their luggage, and to carry supplies: baskets of fruit and vegetables; sides of pork and beef; cages of live chickens; blocks of ice; and hampers of dry goods, preserves, cheese, and wine.

Rose emerged from the orchard and went into the avenue of old trees. She patted the engine, which was sitting in its shelter, cool, still, and breathless.

In the daytime the avenue was a shady tunnel; at night it was like a cathedral, a ruin with a broken roof. Rose walked beside the tracks, her face turned up to the moonlight that fell, almost warm, through gaps in the foliage high overhead. She glanced down only now and then to step over tree roots that snaked almost all the way up to the rails.

Rose intended to go to the sh.o.r.e. The tide would be out, and she wanted to see what the bare sands of the Inlet looked like by the light of the moon. But as she came near the two stacks of rails left over from the time the line was laid, Rose saw something that made her stop, and then slink off the track and behind a tree trunk.

She stepped up onto a tree root and peered around the trunk-yes, she had seen a light. There was a lamp sitting unattended beside the pile of surplus rails. Nothing moved in the circle of its vaporous white light. And then a moth appeared and began a colliding orbit.

Rose, craning around the trunk of the plane tree, saw four rangers appear. The men flickered into existence beside the pallets and their loads. The rangers were working in pairs, picking up several rails each and carrying them out of sight, Into the Place.

For two weeks Rose had walked by the stacked rails-and, for that matter, the pile of surplus timber ties a few paces away, concealed in a patch of fennel. She had walked past them and hadn't wondered how Doran's builders had made such a huge overestimation when buying for what was, after all, less than a mile of line. Nor had she wondered why the rails, after sitting there for years, lacked even the faintest freckle of rust.

Now she knew. The piled rails never rusted because they were replaced, new ones were landed on the sh.o.r.e-probably when the house was empty-and were carried by engine to this spot, then, by rangers, into the Place.

Rose knew nothing about the country In from the Awa Inlet, but she knew that she'd never heard anything about a railway in the Place. Where would a rail line go? And what would run on it, if a flame couldn't be kindled and put to coal to heat a boiler and make steam? If there could be no spark in the valves of a combustion engine, if only muscle could move things?

As Rose considered all this, the rangers came and went, and the stacks of rails were gradually reduced. She remained where she was till she worked out, from s.n.a.t.c.hes of talk and the rangers' gestures, that next they meant to start transporting the timber ties from the fennel patch to the border.

Rose realized that she couldn't keep edging around the tree in order to stay out of sight. She'd have to make a run for it. She'd have to wait till they were all In, then break cover and run as far from the lamplight as she could. She hoped the light had formed a kind of capsule and sealed the rangers into it, so that they would be as blinded as people coming from a bright outdoors into a dark room. She hoped the moonlight would seem weak to their dazzled eyes and they would miss her running form, her pale hair and white nightgown.

Rose waited till all four rangers were out of sight, then sprinted flat-out for the next tree. She slid behind it before they reappeared. Again she waited, ducked out, dashed on, scrambled under cover. When she was five trees farther up the avenue, she looked back to see the lamp moving, then pa.s.sing into the fennel, casting giant, feathery shadows on the smooth trunks of the nearest plane trees. The shadows leapt to engulf the trees as the lamp was lowered to the ground.

Rose sprinted through the orchard and up the steps to the house. Her feet and the hem of her nightgown were wet with dew, the cloth clinging to her ankles. She didn't pause to catch her breath but headed straight for the unlocked dining room doors.

Then she stopped dead.

Ru Doran was standing on the veranda beside the only unlocked door. He looked at Rose, then past her at the lamplight along the rail line. He craned his neck and came forward. Rose edged away a little, so he stopped. ”What was it?” he said.

”Rangers,” said Rose.

He regarded her. ”You know-most girls would be more cautious about wandering at night.”

Rose shrugged. She met his eyes, but only briefly.

”But you aren't like most girls, are you, Rose?”

”What do you mean?” Rose said. She felt uneasy. Ru was standing between her and the door.

”Well-your mother is a dreamhunter. And so you've been exposed.” His tone was insinuating.

Rose tossed her head, snorted, and started forward briskly.

Ru intercepted her. He put his shoulder against her, backed her into the wall, and caught hold of her wrist.

”Please let me go,” she said.

”You're still whispering.” He sounded amused. ”Very sensible. It would be a shame to be caught. Out of your bed. Snooping.”

”Let go of me,” Rose said, angry but ineffectual. She found that she was feeling more indignant than frightened, though she knew fear was probably the sensible response to being cornered and threatened.

Ru Doran was threatening her. She knew that he had decided she was a certain kind of girl. A girl somehow spoiled by ”exposure” to freedoms and excitements most girls hadn't had. He'd decided she was fair game. And he was laughing at her, chuckling in a superior, indulgent way and shaking his head. How dare he be so comfortable about making her uncomfortable. ”Let go of me,” she said, ”or I'll get my father to take care of you-or, better, I'll get your father to do it!”

Ru's face went hard with anger and, immediately following the anger, spite. He put his free hand to her face, perhaps to press it over her mouth. But Rose had had enough. She moved toward him and let herself fall forward. One of her feet thumped onto his instep, and her wrist wrenched free from his grip. She plunged through the gap between his body and the wall of the house, caught herself on her hands, sprang up, ran to the door. She jerked the door open and rushed inside.

Rose hurried back to her room, closed the door, and locked it. She climbed into bed and lay fuming and s.h.i.+vering till the birds started up, legitimately this time, to greet the dawn.

2.

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