The Winter Garden

by Kara Jorgensen

  “Yes, and that is probably why she sent you up here.” Rubbing his wrist, he sighed. “I’m sorry I left so suddenly, but I have never acted on my impulses before.”

  “Well, that explains it. Denying who you are is not going to make them go away. Believe me, I have tried.” Immanuel dropped his voice, letting each word come out slow and measured, “Adam, I want us both to be happy, and I believe you and I both feel a certain attraction. I want to be happy again, and I think if you allowed yourself to give in to your feelings, you would be happier, too. What I am saying is, I think a relationship would be good for both of us. That is, if you feel as I think you do.”

  He hesitated. Never had he thought it would have been possible. That moment of freedom was the best thing he had felt in so long. Gently taking Immanuel’s hand, he clasped it between his own and brought it to his lips. “It is worth a try.”

  Chapter Seventeen:

  Tea and Tears

  Eliza reclined by the hearth, book in hand and tea at her elbow. The soft flames flickered and reflected off the cabinets of curiosities, illuminating a cylinder housing a complete human spine and pelvis covered in nodules of nervous tissue. She looked up at the specimen fondly before returning to the pages of Frankenstein. Adam had brought it for Emmeline with the rest of the novels she requested, but after twenty pages, she had abandoned it for Austen. The doctor had forgotten the joy of reading fiction, but something about Shelley’s creation was tantalizingly off-putting when combined with her husband’s profession. Her eyes roved over the love-worn pages until the creaking of boards behind the chair roused her from the creature’s journey through the Alps. She expected to find her husband reminding her of the late hour but instead met the copper and blue gaze of Immanuel Winter as he stood in the doorway with his hands clasped behind his back.

  “Is everything all right, Immanuel?”

  He shook his head silently, but the heaviness of melancholy that clung to him that morning was gone by the time she and Emmeline arrived home. “Emmeline is crying.”

  “Do you know why?” she asked as she tucked the book between the cushion and armrest and stiffly rose from her seat.

  “I did not ask. I know she would prefer I not speak to her, and I did not want to make things worse.”

  What could be wrong now? She sighed, assuming her tears were for some petty thing like a gown without enough lace or a slipper made of satin rather than silk. As Eliza reached the second landing, she caught a faint but tremulous mewl. Tiptoeing down the darkened hall, the girl’s soft, pitiable cries grew clearer. They were not the exaggerated cries of one who wanted to be discovered but those of pain which were stifled by the awareness that others may hear. Emmeline sat with her back to the door and her knees drawn to her chest under the white cotton of her nightgown as she stared into the breathing tinder of the hearth. Eliza Hawthorne paused in the doorway, watching her niece’s back quiver with sobs, and couldn’t help but feel compassion for the wayward girl for the second time in the same day. With a rap of her knuckle on the molding, Emmeline’s red rimmed, owl eyes gaped up at her. Upon seeing her aunt’s form silhouetted in the fire’s dying light, she pawed at her cheeks with balled hands and fought the pull of hiccupped cries that refused to be smothered by pride.

  “Emmeline, what is the matter?”

  “I’m fine,” she snapped as another wet whimper leapt from her throat.

  “You can lie to me,” the redhead said, softening her tone as she sat at the foot of the bed behind the girl, “but your tears can’t. Why not tell me what the matter is instead of keeping it to yourself?”

  “I don’t want to. You wouldn’t understand.”

  Eliza’s green eyes fell on the glinting surface of blue enamel petals and diamond faces between the orphaned child’s fingers. “I think I would. You know, I lost my mother when I was thirteen. I know how hard it is to lose your best friend. I cried every day for months because I missed her.”

  With a sniff, Emmeline raised her head, never taking her eyes off the hearth. “How did you get over it?”

  “I didn’t. You never get over losing your mother, but my father helped me a lot. Some people never talk about their loved ones after they die, but my father spoke about her all the time. At first, we would sit and cry together about some memory we shared of her, and it hurt more than anything to think of her. After a few months, I realized I was smiling when I thought about her laughing or singing. I still missed her terribly, but the pain lessened the more I talked about her.”

  “Did you like mama?”

  “Yes, we did not always see eye to eye, but I think she and I were too much alike. We were both hardheaded women desperately trying to be independent in a society that wants us to be anything but.” The doctor laughed to herself as her mind wandered ten years back to her wedding. “I thought Madeline hated me. The Hawthorne women played by the rules to get some semblance of freedom while I went to a university to become a doctor and inadvertently stole their only brother from the upper class life his father had envisioned for him. At our wedding, your mother was the first one to truly welcome me to the family.”

  Squeezing the jewelry and shard of jet in her palms, Emmeline clenched her eyes shut against the image of her mother in flames. “I thought— I thought mama would be there for me forever.”

  The words tumbled out as her body shook with sobs. Mama would never be there anymore. She would never come back no matter how hard she wished or prayed, no matter how hard she pretended Samhain never happened. Gentle hands wrapped around her shoulders and enveloped her until her face was pressed into the skirt of her aunt’s gown. Artful fingers as skilled in science as in tenderness combed through her hair and smoothed the inky tendrils away from the wetness around her eyes.

  “Mama will never see me presented into society or be there on my wedding day. She won’t be there when I have children. Who will I go to when I need help?” the girl cried, her voice strained and weak under the enormity of her mother’s absence. “It’s all my fault. If she hadn’t gone back into the house to find me, she never would have died!”

  Eliza gently shushed her niece. “It’s not your fault, Emmeline. Someone set the fire and kidnapped you, and your mother reacted as any woman who cannot find her child would. Her love for you was incalculable.”

  “I wish she didn’t love me so much. Then, she might still be here.” The room fell silent as Emmeline closed her eyes against her aunt’s lap. If she concentrated, she could smell the sweet perfume in her mother’s boudoir and feel the plush Turkish carpet under her naked toes, but she couldn’t picture her alive or peaceful. Her face was already fading. “These bits of treasure are all I have of her now. I have nothing to remember her by, nothing. Why did she have to die? I’m— I’m so afraid I will forget her.”

  She gently wiped the tears from her niece’s cheeks and whispered, “I will be right back. I think I have something that may help.”

  Dislodging her body from under Emmeline’s head, Eliza Hawthorne descended to the floor occupied by her bedroom and the study. Through the crack in the door, she could make out her husband fast asleep with his face pressed into his pillow and his glasses resting on the nightstand. The study stood open on the other side of the hall, but as she crept inside, she swore she heard the shriek of a kettle. Eliza dug through the cabinets below the bookshelves until her hands fell upon a bound parcel of photographs varying in size and subject. At the bottom of the pile among the larger pictures was a group of dark-eyed, dark-haired children. She smiled at the boy who sat on the edge of the portrait looking off into the distance as if he did not belong with the four older girls. As she carried it back to Emmeline’s bedroom, she chuckled. Poor little James probably looked so lost because they had taken away his glasses and he had no way of knowing where the camera was. When she came in, the lamps were on and her niece was sitting on her bed blowing her nose and staring at her reddened reflection in the mirror with a deep frown.

  Eliza handed her the
photograph as she lowered herself onto the edge of the mattress. “Your mother was only twenty in this picture.”

  “She was beautiful,” she replied, immediately recognizing her mother’s byzantine eyes and knowing gaze amid the four familiarly featured women. Madeline Hawthorne, the very recent Lady Jardine at the time of the photograph, stared directly at the camera and beyond into her daughter’s eyes. “Uncle James looks so young.”

  “He was only twelve at the time.”

  Emmeline had only begun mastering her emotions when the sight of her mother’s youthful visage crumbled her resistance again. Dry, sticky tears irritated her eyes as she stared into the face the father she had never known fell in love with. Sweat and the flush of feeling flooded her cheeks as Emmeline drew in a constrained breath. Her mother was the only one in the photograph who would never age. She would be forever frozen in time, never to deteriorate or diminish with age, but at what cost?

  A light knocking on the door broke the girl’s tearful reverie as she clutched the picture to her chest. He was in the doorway carrying a tea tray. Her eyes roamed up to the liver scar across his cheek, the lasting reminder of her twenty-two days in captivity. Every time she looked at him, the inhuman howls of pain surfaced in her memory followed by the reverberating smacks of flesh being struck and the pleadings for mercy half indecipherable and the rest horrifically comprehensible. She had moved past all that now. She was becoming a medium. She wasn’t stuck there helplessly counting the days by his lamentations.

  “I thought you could use some tea,” he began softly as he waited to be allowed in.

  “How thou—”

  “Go away!” Emmeline spat as she spun her body toward the wall, blocking him from seeing her face.

  Eliza gaped at her niece but quickly turned to Immanuel who stared back uncertainly. “That was very thoughtful of you, Immanuel. Thank you.”

  He nodded stiffly and placed the tray on the dresser a little harder than he intended, rattling the porcelain cups and pot. “Good night, Mrs. Hawthorne.” His tone sharpened as he added, “Miss Jardine.”

  When the door across the hall thudded shut, Eliza Hawthorne’s steeled eyes fell on the sulking child beside her. “What is the matter with you? Have you no manners? Immanuel is nothing but kind to you, yet you treat him worse than you would a dog. I demand to know why.”

  “I hate him.” She kept her head on her knees as she turned the picture of her mother her siblings away from her. “I hate that he makes me think of that place.”

  Eliza sighed as she poured herself a cup of tea. “That is not his fault, Emmeline. He is as much a victim as you are if not more. You should be blaming the men who took you and Immanuel, not him.”

  She would if she knew who they were, but the only tangible proof was etched on his face.

  “You should talk to him. The two of you are the only ones who can understand what the other has gone through. Maybe you can help each other heal by talking about it.”

  Emmeline feared that what he would tell her would be worse than anything her imagination could create, and for that, she remained silent.

  “I want you to apologize to him in the morning, Emmeline.”

  “I will,” she croaked as she laid the photograph on the nightstand and watched her aunt move to leave. “Aunt Eliza, am I a bad person?”

  The redhead lingered on the threshold. “No, you are not a bad person. You are a child who has not yet learned compassion.”

  “But bad people are selfish, and mama always told me I was terribly selfish.”

  Looking over her shoulder, she saw that the girl’s wide eyes were diminished by striations of pained red and her mouth was drawn bitterly straight with the realization of her guilt. “Work on it then and better yourself. That is all I have ever wanted for you, Emmeline.”

  When the other woman was out of sight, Emmeline crossed the boards to the pot of tea and poured a cup. Even if the sight of him upset her, she couldn’t let tea go to waste. With only a sip, she knew it was exactly as she liked it. It was a light hyson tea, and each mouthful tasted like a cup of flowers. Her mother would always tell her it tasted like lawn clippings, yet the man down the hall had made it for her without prompting. Aunt Eliza was right, he had gone through it with her, yet he didn’t regard her as a disdainful reminder of the past. As she drained the teapot one cup at a time, she knew she had to keep her word. She would apologize to him in the morning. He at least deserved that.

  Chapter Eighteen:

  The Gentleman Devil

  Miss Katherine Waters watched as her lady’s maid removed her coiffure and brushed away the creases until her hair tumbled down in loose chestnut ringlets. She had finally gotten the chance to wear the apricot dinner dress her father had bought for her in France, and even if it was a little big on her, the night had gone exactly as planned.

  “How did the dinner go, milady?” Kirby asked, her dark eyes crinkling into a smile as she unbuttoned the back of her mistress’s gown.

  “Splendidly. Father adores Alexander just as I thought he would. The idea that one day I will be the Marchioness of Montagu only makes him love him more. Who wouldn’t love Alexander though? He is more than I deserve.” Her soft, hazel eyes fell upon the purple-tinged diamond ring that had once been his mother’s. “You will come with me to Eidolic Hall, won’t you, Kirby?”

  “Yes, ma’am, as long as Lord and Lady Waters will allow it.”

  “Of course they will.” She paused as the dumpy maid helped her step out of the gown and slip her camisole and petticoat off. Miss Waters smiled as she gazed at her reflection in the vanity. The corset cinched in her already narrow waist until she could nearly wrap her hands around her middle. Her limbs and chest were thin but gradually filling out now that her past ills were behind her with the aid of Alexander’s unwavering support. “Mother has her own lady’s maid, but I will still need one after I am married.”

  The maid tugged the strings of her corset until, with a sigh, the boning’s grip loosened, allowing her body to unfold and relax for the first time all day. As she stood in only her chemise and bloomers, she raised her eyes to the darkened window on the other side of her bed with a start. For a second, she was certain there had been a grimacing, grinning face peering in, but that was impossible. No, her room was on third floor. Her doctors always told her she was susceptible to becoming hysterical when she was overly tired, and that must have been it. With an exchange and flutter of fabric, she was in her nightclothes, tucking her silk dressing gown close as Kirby tidied up her toilette before slipping out for the night.

  Miss Waters lingered in the stillness, listening to the wind lash against the windowpane. When she was certain she was the last one awake, she tiptoed to the dresser at the far end of the room and soundless slid open the bottom-most drawer. Shaking the lid off the box, she drew out its precious cargo of lace and silk. Her wedding dress had only arrived a few days before, but every time she was in the room, she found herself staring at it and lovingly stroking the fine fabric. Her mother would think her foolish for being so infatuated with something she wouldn’t wear for months, but she did love Alexander Rose. He would make her life better.

  A steamer horn blared behind her, and she dropped the bridal gown as she flinched. Behind the bed curtains, the drapes danced in front of the open window. Katherine frowned as she tucked the dress back into its casket and crossed the vacant room. Staring out into the night, she saw nothing but the iron filigree of the decorative balcony rail just beyond her reach. She smiled to herself. Did she really expect to find a face glaring back at her? As she shut the window against the winter dampness, the murky tang of tobacco ash blew across her nose in a long puff. Her body froze before her eyes ever fell upon the massive figure obscured between the bed curtains and the window’s drapes. Katherine Waters hesitantly raised her gaze to meet the creature’s saffron eyes, which glowed in the shadows behind his molded leather mask.

  Her throat tightened, refusing to form a sound, as she
stepped back. The monster’s unnaturally long legs terminated in a metal, hoof-like pad, but as it stalked her, it moved with the controlled, rolling gait of a panther. The humanoid beast was nearly seven feet tall with elongated metal nails at the ends of its fingers, which caught the dying light of the fire as they flexed and reached as if to snatch her. His body was clothed in black but peeking from beneath his cloak were jutting brass ribs that covered empty yet opaline lungs. As her back collided with the oaken poster of her bed, Katherine stared into his face. While the mouth and chin were of a man, the top was that of a sharp-featured demon with curled horns. Had the devil finally come to collect her sullied soul?

  “God, help me.”

  “God has no business here, Kitty.”

  Kitty. Only one person called her that. “Alastair?”

  “Ah, you recognize your devil,” he drawled as he slipped a claw into the knot of her dressing gown. “At least that is what you called me the last time we were together. It suits me, doesn’t it, Kitty?”

  She shrunk from his probing fingers but was halted by the unforgiving surface of the bedpost. “Touch me, and I swear I will scream.”

  “By the time they get in here, I will be long gone. When you start babbling on about devils and men in masks coming through the window, do you think they will believe you? If you scream, you will be sent back to the doctors.”

  “What do you want, Alastair?”

  A cold grin passed his lips, chilling Kitty to her core. “To see you, of course. How could I not congratulate you on your brilliant maneuver? You were able to seduce both brothers.” With barely a tug, the robe fell open, revealing her gossamer nightgown and the pale pink flesh hidden beneath it. “But Alexander will never enjoy your company as much as I have. Is he aware that he is engaged to a fallen woman?”