Nine
Sara was dreaming.
Right away, she recognized the dream as one of her Gifts from Above. Or maybe this one was a gift from Lachlan House and its spirits. In her long writing career, this had happened only three times. She knew she was dreaming, and that what she was seeing and hearing was a compilation of her hundreds of thoughts and observations. All of it was converging to make itself into that greatest of blessings: a story.
Smiling at her good fortune, she looked about with intensity. She was trying to memorize everything she saw so that when she woke up, she could write it all down.
She was hovering, not a real person, but just an observing entity. She knew from experience that no one could see or hear her. It was a rural area, with trees and grass and a rough, unpaved road.Oh goody, she thought.An historical.She looked down the road, hoping to see men in armor. She could stand to write her twelfth medieval novel.
A woman came into view. She was walking along the far edge of the road, as if she didn’t want to be seen. Her head was turned, but Sara could see that she was young, maybe even a teenager. She had on a long pinafore over a flowered dress that had puffy sleeves. Sara noticed a couple of palm trees.Rats!she thought. It looked like the story wasn’t set in England and wasn’t a medieval. By the clothes, it seemed to be the 1940s. Sara didnotwant to write something set in WWII.
When the girl turned her head, Sara gasped.Uh-oh.This wasn’t a heroine so beautiful that she made a duke fall in love with her. This girl’s looks were...well, unfortunate. She had a big nose, teeth so protruding that they distorted her lower jaw, and there were half a dozen large brown moles on her face. She wasn’t thin.
A good gym and a year with a couple of surgeons would help, Sara thought.
The girl was carrying a basket of pears, and she was walking slowly. She kept glancing over her shoulder.
Abruptly, the girl halted, then smiled in a way that made her chest rise and fall. Sara thought that if she were describing this in a book, she’d say the girl “smiled down to her very soul.”
Only love can do that, she thought. The girl was in love with whomever she was seeing.
Sure enough, a young man came strolling down the road. He was tall, early twenties, and good-looking. Not hero-gorgeous, but nice. When he turned, she saw a red birthmark on the side of his neck. It went up to his ear lobe and was very noticeable. In a romance novel, it would be called a “port-wine stain.”
He had on a blue cotton shirt, those loose 1940s trousers, and very clean brown and white oxfords. His clothes were simple but of good quality. From the look of the two of them, he was much richer than she was.
Ah, Sara thought.The plot thickens.The impoverished girl would be in a car accident, and he’d pay for her reconstructive surgery. She’d emerge as beautiful. She did have nice eyes. They’d marry and...
Plotting had to wait. Sara put her attention back on what she was seeing.
The young man—certainly not a boy—smiled when he saw the girl. Sara feared the girl was going to melt. When she spoke to him, there was no sound. He replied, and again Sara heard nothing.
She cursed. Who wanted a soundless dream?! But that’s what she was getting.
The girl handed him a pear, he took a bite, and they walked side by side along the road. He wasn’t like her in skulking along the edge, but he walked down the center. He did all the talking—not a word of which Sara could hear.
The girl laughed a couple of times. But then, from the way her eyes were dripping with love that was close to worship, she would have laughed no matter what he did.
There was a patch of little blue flowers beside the road and when he threw the pear core away, he bent and plucked one.
Both Sara and the girl held their breaths. Would he give her the flower? Was he a hero who could see past looks and into a soul? Would he love her in spite of those teeth? Those moles?
Before the questions could be answered, the sound of a horse on the road made them stop and turn. The happiness on their faces disappeared. For all the expression they wore, they could have put on masks.
A young man on a beautiful horse came into sight. He had on clothes that criedRich!The son of the lord of the manor? He wasn’t haughty or arrogant, just self-assured in that way that being born into money gave a person.
From his higher-up position, he looked down at the girl and seemed to be genuinely confused. It was as though he wanted to say, “Why are you withher?” When he said something that Sara couldn’t hear, the first man stepped in front of the girl in a protective way.
This idea came from seeing the nursery for two boys, Sara thought.
She’d been so dazzled by the man’s elegant clothes and the beautiful horse that she had only glanced at his face. When she took a closer look, she was startled. The two young men looked very much alike. Except for the big birthmark on the first man, they would be hard to tell apart.
Sara smiled.Oh yeah, I can plot from this.Of course the two men had the same father. But one was a legitimate son and the other a bastard. The marked man—yes, that was a good nickname—was torn between the rich world of a father who didn’t acknowledge him, and the poor world of the girl with the pears. There’d be lots of jealousy and many dramatic scenes. And of course many false accusations. Since she was always looking for a way to make a story different, she thought,What if, for once, the rich guy was good and the poor one evil?
She watched as the man on the horse extended his hand down, meaning for the other man—his half brother?—to climb on the horse behind him. In what was obviously a practiced movement, the first man easily and swiftly got on behind him.
This reinforced her idea that the boys of the nursery had been raised as brothers.
The two young men looked down at the girl, then the rich one tossed her a coin. She made no effort to catch it and it landed in her basket. She didn’t look at it, and for a second there was a flash of pure hatred in her eyes. The man saw it too and he seemed startled by it, seeming to not understand her animosity. He turned away, leaned forward, and patted his horse’s neck.
