Masterful Trickery

XXVII. Above the Below

Three years ago...

Ralph returned to the ballroom after spending a few moments of silence in the garden.

It was both to think and give Lady in Blue and him enough time to escape a gossipmonger's notice.

She was beautiful. And she was not what he expected her to be.

There was more to her.

He yearned to discover more of that.

Determined, he walked back to the ballroom, scouring the sea of people with his eyes.

Ysabella was dancing with her husband. Emma was with Margaret and their other siblings. His mother was talking with Lady Hayward.

There was no sign of her.

Every blue gown had a different face.

Her cousins were also nowhere in sight.

"She has left," Maxwell's voice said behind him. When Ralph whirled around to look at his brother, Maxwell was wearing a small, knowing smile. He slapped Ralph's back and added, "A brandy would cure your little heartache."

Ralph looked around the ballroom again.

She was gone.

*****

The woman from the large tavern they stayed in, the very same one sitting behind the tall desk, told them (and wrote down) every step on how they could get to their destination: Holystone.

At first the woman was skeptical as to why they could choose such a small village—as what she would call it—for their grand vacation.

Studying the roughly-made map by Lady Belinda, the three of them headed to Durham bus station, a facility where their mechanically-driven long carriage, a bus, was waiting.

Durley sat at the back end of the said carriage, between two ogling young men who could not keep their eyes off Durley's bowler hat. Alex and Ralph sat together in the middle, with Alex looking out the window at the passing bright view.

She wondered what could be happening belowground at that very moment. Here they were, traveling quite fast on a smooth road with a spectacular view while somewhere down below, a carriage was moving slowly and loudly along a rough path with nothing to offer but the dire, dark surrounding—and perhaps a bandit or two.

Ralph fell asleep with his head on her shoulder not long after they had taken off. Alex had to shove him off his sit to wake him up nearly an hour later when they reached Haymarket where they again took another long carriage to Rothbury.

Having had enough respite, Ralph was wide awake to join Alex in watching every detail they passed by. Durley, on the other hand, seemed uninterested where he was sitting in front of them. He remained quiet and unmoving.

Alex sensed Ralph studying her from time to time, chuckling whenever she gasped and pointed at something spectacular like the giant white bird that flew over them, its sound too loud it could not be an actual bird.

There seemed to be too many different sounds. The Town had its own and she grew up in a place where animals and even birds were about. Yet here, aboveground, something else was different. Although she could not hear it because they were in an enclosed carriage, she could see the wind through the trees. They moved so freely she almost felt sorry for the ones underground in the woods. The plantations they passed through were bright green and yellow. They were not shadowed by walls of rocks. They basked in endless sunshine.