by L C Kincaide
“Is that the original house?”
“Indeed, it is. This one was copied stone by stone. The timber, naturally, was locally milled.”
“Yes, Elinor told me the story last night.”
“Ah, but what you don’t know is why it was built the way it was.” She looked at her mysteriously. Ivy waited.
“Lord Everdon wanted to come to America to pursue business opportunities in the New World, but his lovely bride could not bear to leave their beloved house behind, so he handed the plans to his American architect, and had a replica of their home built in this spot.” Lucy gazed at the photograph of the couple, a dreamy yet sad smile on her face. “He would have done anything for her.”
Lucy traced the edge of a picture. He was turned toward his laughing wife, her head thrown back in reaction to him sharing something amusing, thus rendering her features out of focus. The photographer had captured a sweet, intimate moment that would be preserved, if not for eternity, then at least for generations of Everdons to enjoy. She breathed a heavy sigh and closed the album.
“Enough of this musty, old library.” She said with renewed enthusiasm. “Let us go outdoors where the air is fresh. I want to show you something most guests seldom see.”
From the hallway, they turned into a narrow service corridor that offered access to a stairwell and a door that lead to the outside. By the door several plain coats hung from hooks, and rubber boots lined up on a mat below. They emerged between the two wings of the manor and soon came upon a pea gravel path that eventually wound its way through a garden.
Yellowed weeds exploded between the stones, and hollyhocks, foxgloves, and delphiniums in varying stages of decay wilted on either side. Only the hardiest of geraniums held tenaciously to the fading red of their petals. As sad as the remnants looked, the garden must have been equally beautiful when they were in full bloom. Ivy imagined bursts of color swaying on graceful stems, bees buzzing, and butterflies sheltering among the flower heads.
The path led them to a walled garden constructed of local stone and tucked away at the edge of a forest.
“This is a very special place.” Lucy said pushing the wrought-iron gate open on rusty hinges. “It does not look like that now, but in the summer it is simply exquisite.”
A statue of a female figure wearing a simple tunic occupied a place of honor on a rock in the center of a shallow pool in the middle of the garden sanctuary. Her long, loose hair cascaded over one shoulder, and water flowed and splashed at her feet from a pitcher she held in her arms, the concentric circles keeping the accumulation of debris at bay. Shrubs in need of a trim lined the stone walls, and flowers in flower beds graced the edges of the walkway, but they too had seen better days. A breeze wafted through the overhanging branches, and golden leaves shivered and drifted over their heads. Ivy filled her lungs with the crisp fall air.
“I must go back, but stay here and enjoy yourself. Sit in the shade if you like.” Lucy suggested indicating a wooden bench. “I often come here just to listen to the water splashing. I find it very soothing.”
Left on her own, Ivy ambled along the edge of the pool and stopped at a granite memorial stone centered among the withering plants at the far wall. Choked with weeds and speckled with moss, the inscription was illegible under the topmost engraving of the family name — EVERDON. Someone very important, most likely Amelia Everdon occupied this secluded haven as her final resting place. Intrigued, she crouched for a closer look to confirm her suspicions, and was about to pull away some dead stalks when a shadow fell over her. Startled, she jerked her hand back and spun around intending to stand, but didn’t quite make it, and she wobbled. Mason reached out to steady her, and placing his hand at her elbow, helped her up.
“I apologize. I didn’t intend to startle you.” He released her and put his hands in the pockets of his tweed jacket.
Ivy regarded him closely, searching for a clue about their earlier meeting, but shaded by the bill of his cap, she could not discern his eyes properly enough to tell. His face, from what she could see of it registered no memory of their intimate moment in the parlor either. Surely, if he had kissed her, he would make some indication that their acquaintance was on more familiar terms. Maybe she had imagined the whole thing after all, and her heart sank with the realization. His gaze shifted to the headstone.
“Lucy was giving me a tour of the grounds, and we ended up here. I just realized what this place is.” Her eyes moved back to the marker. “She must have been very important to someone.”
Mason was silent for a moment, then he spoke. “Tell me, Miss Ivy. Have you ever loved another so deeply you would do anything to be reunited with them?”
His words took Ivy aback, but the answer was simple. “No, I can’t say that I have.” She said keeping her tone light. “Not in this lifetime, anyway.”
His eyes searched hers, then his face broke into a grin. “Forgive me. Cemeteries and gravestones bring out my morbid side. Please accept my apologies for such an intrusive question.”
Ivy returned his smile. “None needed. She must have been a very special woman to have had this garden built in her memory.”
“She was. She died before her time while still young.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” They both gazed at the gravestone and she wondered if he had a connection to it.
She had the sense that he himself had lost someone very dear to him, and maybe it was she who was buried here, but there seemed no way to ask without appearing nosy. She tried a more casual approach.
“The stone looks old. It must have happened a long time ago.”
“It was in 1903.”
So, it wasn’t anyone with a close connection.
“Do you know what happened to her?”
“It was an accident.” He said, not elaborating further.
“How sad.”
“Her husband couldn’t accept her loss and became a recluse.” They gazed at the headstone for a long while.
Ivy considered the fate of two soulmates tragically torn apart by a force that could have been avoided. She expected clouds to gather overhead and the wind to moan among the trees, but the day remained sunny and bright, and birds chirped happily in the gently swaying branches.
“And here I am being morose again! Perhaps we ought to leave this place to the dead and have you rejoin the living.” He indicated for her to move ahead of him.
“Do you like flowers, Miss Ivy?” He asked after a while of walking in silence.
“Yes, I do.”
“There is a hothouse beyond those trees. Perhaps you would be interested in seeing it.” He indicated to their right. From where they were, she could just make out the glint of a steeply pitched glass roof where the sun caught its panes amongst the branches.
“Yes, I would like that.”
“May I?” He asked holding out the crook of his arm. Ivy hooked her hand through. She was quickly forgetting what century this was. It felt so natural.
He turned from the gravel path to one paved with flagstone that led to a Victorian hothouse. Painted white, it was a wood and wrought iron structure with ironwork curlicues adorning the front, and a Victorian ridge cresting that spanned its pitched roof. Glass walls gleamed in the morning sun.
Mason held the outer door open, and she stepped into the portico that separated the outside world and the inhabitants inside. A heady aroma greeted them when he opened the inner glass door to a spacious interior full of vibrant plants, the majority being orchids. A checkered tiled path wound its way around a fern-fringed fountain, similar to the one she had seen earlier, in its center. Along the perimeter, wooden and wrought-iron tables displayed the flowers, and ferns and more orchids hung suspended from the beams overhead.
She didn’t know much about the exotic flowers except they were as delicate as they were beautiful. For that reason, she ha
d never tried to grow one herself, but had she any skill with plants, she probably would have. They walked among the tables where various species thrived.
“It is an impressive collection.” She said wondering to whom it belonged. Someone who is here continually, she surmised, perhaps a caretaker. The flowers could not have survived otherwise without attention.
“Did you know there are more than twice the number of orchid species than there are bird species?”
“That many? I had no idea.”
They meandered among the tables laden with pots of different sizes and flowers. He had removed his cap in the warm space, and she could see his eyes more clearly. Even in daylight, they were as deep and dark as she had recalled from the night before.
“That spiky pink one is a Laelia.” He pointed to another. “The green one with the red spots is a Renanthera.”
Ivy glanced around at what must be at least a hundred orchids, among some less exotic plants, all different from their neighbors in shape and color. Some looked like inhabitants from a distant planet.
She paused before an exquisite white orchid, its three pristine petals converging into a deep red and a yellow center.
“That is a Miltonia.” Mason said without hesitation. “A rather ostentatious specimen, from Brazil.”
“It’s gorgeous. Showy, yet simple. It resembles a pansy, doesn’t it?”
“Indeed, it does.”
“Do you know them all by name?” She asked, curious. He hadn’t impressed her as a botanist, but then she didn’t know him at all, and wasn’t surprised she wanted to learn more about him.
He grinned before replying. “Most of them, but not all. I don’t claim to be an expert.”
“Your knowledge is better than mine.” She said smiling up at him.
The sun filtered drowsily through the branches and cast dapples of shadows over the exotic display. A detached leaf skittered here and there along the glass roof and tumbled over the side and drifted to the ground.
“Do you grow plants?”
“Me?” Ivy laughed. “Oh, no, not with these hands. I have no green thumbs at all!” She held up her hands to prove her point.
He took them both in his and held them gently while gazing upon them. His touch was light, the pads of his thumbs grazing the hollows of her palms, igniting a tingly trail where they touched.
She watched him mesmerized, the thrilling sensation moving up her arms and spreading throughout her body. Surely, he must know what he’s doing to me… she thought from afar and considered pulling her hands back, for the exquisite pleasure was becoming unbearably intense, yet she could not.
The world beyond the glass panes had ceased to exist, and it was only the two of them in the warm and sweetly scented greenhouse. Nearby, a fly landed on a flaming scarlet petal that yielded just a fraction to the insect’s weight as it crawled along, stopping to rub its head with its forelegs. Vapor from their breath formed on the cool panes, and tiny droplets coalesced on the glass, while a shadow of a bird in flight sliced through the sunlight. Without having to turn to look, she saw all this with perfect clarity. Mason raised his head, and his eyes met hers, probing and intense.
What are you searching for? What do you want of me? She returned his gaze, longing for a reply. The thought that followed burst in her brain like a Roman candle, bright and loud.
— REMEMBER —
The word flared in her mind, and light-headed, she swayed against him.
“Let us go out. It is a bit close in here.” Mason let go of her hands, and with his arm around her, he carefully guided her toward the door. When they were outside again, he released her and turned to secure the hothouse.
She closed her eyes and breathed the crisp, leaf-scented air. It was like a jungle in there, and she was overdressed. All her senses were overwhelmed. When she opened her eyes, the doors to the hothouse were shut, and Mason had once again disappeared, leaving her alone. She glanced around hoping to see him, even if it was only to glimpse his retreating back, but he wasn’t anywhere. Only the plants remained beyond the misted glass panes, undisturbed.
Was it possible that she had suffered another seizure? So soon after the last? At what point did it happen? Was it at the walled garden, or some time after that? It was luck that she hadn’t fallen into the pool back there if that is what happened. But how could she have walked from the sanctuary to here? She didn’t know about the hothouse until now, having only glimpsed its edges from the library windows.
And what of Mason? Were they together looking at the orchids, or did she only imagine the whole episode with him as well? It had felt so real, the warm sweet scents of the flowers, and his touch, more than anything else his touch. Yet, none of what she had experienced could be real. He wouldn’t have vanished and left her out here on her own like this. She refused to believe he was unfeeling. She gazed at her palms that still tingled. Could it be a symptom of what was happening to her physically? Dear God, if this continued she would have to see a doctor, for what other rational explanation was there?
She was barely out in the open and on the pea gravel walkway when she heard a voice calling her name.
“Finally! I’ve been looking all over for you!” Emma hastened toward her awkwardly not used to wearing long, narrow skirts. Ivy stifled a grin.
“Ah, I see you have found the old hothouse. I’ll show you the secret garden later, a sad story about that, but now, we have to primp ourselves for lunch, or more appropriately, luncheon!”
“Is it already so late? I guess I’ve completely lost track of time.“
“I’m glad you’re keeping busy. This place can get a bit dull after a while.”
They meandered along the path at the side of the house in silence.
“Sometimes I hate coming here.” Emma said unexpectedly. “I’m an independent woman, I have my own apartment, I have a job I like, friends, a decent enough social life. But when I come here, I’m reduced to a little kid, my every word, every action under the microscope.”
Ivy didn’t have that problem. She’d been on her own since turning eighteen.
“It’s just her way of showing she cares about you.” She said trying to reassure her.
Emma laughed. “Sometimes I wouldn’t mind if she cared a bit less, if you know what I mean.”
“So, who else is coming?” Ivy changed the subject.
“Well, there are the Langstones, cousins, distant ones anyway. Robert, who is drop-dead-gorgeous, his sister Grace, and their father, Sir Theo. He’s a real Lord, by the way. You’ll like him, he always fits right in, not pretentious at all.”
“He sounds interesting.”
“Oh, he is! Every year he grows these awesome mutton-chop whiskers. He’s a sight for sore eyes, quite a character. They’re coming all the way from England.”
“And who else?”
“Then there are the Ruskins, Godfrey and Frances, their son John, who’s pretty cute too, and their daughter Carrie. Years ago some of the others came out, but not in the past few years. Still, you never know who will be here until they all show up.”
“And all these people come out every year?”
“Yes, that group does. Year in and year out. Then we all go our separate ways and not hear from any of them until the next October.” Emma paused. “We sort of grew up together. I don’t remember a year of not seeing them. Wait ‘till you see Robert. He’s… well, perfect, a real English aristocrat, but you’d never know it, he’s so down-to-earth. A really nice guy.” She sighed. “They’re all good people from what I know of them from the Weekends, but like I said, we’ve never seen each other anywhere else.”
Ivy didn’t want to judge, but the situation sounded strange to her. Why would they not be interested in getting together after the two days?
“I know what you’re thinking.�
�� Emma said, startling her. Did she just read her mind?
Emma opened the side door to the service hall. “Why do I go on about Robert when it’s clearly hopeless? Because I’m a glutton for punishment, and I like a challenge. And I’ve decided that this is the year I get him to notice me!”
Ivy gave her a quizzical look. “I don’t see why he wouldn’t notice you. Why should that be a challenge?”
“Geography.”
“Where does he live?”
“London, England.”
“Oh. Right.”
“I know I talk a big game in front of mum, but he’s the only one I’ve ever really been interested in. If only he wasn’t so far away…” Her voice trailed off wistfully.
They emerged from the hallway and continued through the central hall and up the stairs.
“Yes, I can understand how that would be a challenge.” Ivy agreed.
“I know it would be much easier with John, since he only lives in Connecticut, and you’ll see, he’s really nice and handsome in his way, but Robert…” Emma’s face acquired a dreamy expression. “Well, he is perfection.”
“Then I wish you luck!”
“Thanks, I’ll need it. See you downstairs.”
They arrived at the landing of the open gallery and headed toward their respective rooms.
Ivy wondered if one of the maids would make an appearance. She hadn’t seen Clyfford since the other day, but it was a large house, and she was probably busy somewhere else. At any rate, it was none of her business, and Styles was much friendlier.
Her eyes widened in surprise as soon as she entered her room. On the round pedestal table by the windows, she found the beautiful Miltonia orchid she had admired earlier. So, she had not imagined it! Mason must have sent it, but how did he manage to do it so fast? And why had he vanished so suddenly? Perplexed, she nevertheless delighted in his thoughtful gesture. She would make it a point to thank him later even if she had to hunt him down to do so.