“You worked for Morland, then?”
“Aye, for a few years. It all but drove me mad,” he confessed. “I’d rather have my hands in the dirt, thanks all the same. So I chucked Morland and bought this place just after my thirtieth birthday, five years ago. Close to Geoff, it was, and it suits my pace of life.”
I tried to imagine him sitting behind a desk in some modern office, and failed. “You met Geoff at Cambridge, Vivien tells me.”
“Aye, and a wicked day that was.” He grinned into his cup. “My grades went straight downhill after that. I’m surprised we weren’t both sent down.”
“You studied English?”
He nodded. “More for interest than anything else. You can’t make a living writing poems.”
Somehow, I couldn’t picture Iain Sumner writing poetry, either. He was, come to think of it, rather difficult to define. Not handsome, exactly—his jaw was too stubborn and his eyes too shrewd—but, still, there was something… He was solid, I thought. Solid and warm and dependable, and I felt an odd, seductive comfort in his company. He leaned back in his chair and pushed his empty plate to one side.
“Do you mind if I smoke?”
I set my fork down and shook my head. “Not at all.”
He lit a cigarette and shook the match out, setting it neatly on the side of his plate. “You were up to the manor for tea yesterday, I hear.”
“It was more like a five-course meal,” I corrected him. “Vivien’s aunt is a wonderful cook.”
“She is that,” he agreed. “I’ve been doing some work in the rose garden this past week, so Freda’s been cooking my dinners. I’ll not fit my trousers if my work lasts much longer.”
“She says you ought to be able to work it all off.”
“Does she, now?” He puffed at the cigarette, smiling. “Well, I expect she knows best. She usually does. That’s what the name Alfreda means, you know—‘supernaturally wise,’ or something to that effect. Vivien looked it up in a name book, once.”
“It doesn’t surprise me.” I picked the plates up from the table and carried them over to the sink. “Names are funny things, aren’t they?”
“I suppose.” His voice was absent. “I got stuck with a boring one, though.”
“What, Iain? I think that’s a nice name.”
“Boring,” he maintained. “Just a Scottish form of John, for all that. No imagination involved. Iain, Evan, Sean, Hans—they’re all variations on a theme.”
The plates went clattering into the sink with an ugly splintering sound, and Iain turned in his chair to look at me.
“Sorry,” I said, “I think I’ve broken one.” I looked down at the wreckage, my heart pounding. Evan…
“You didn’t hurt yourself?”
I surfaced from my daydreaming, and shook my head. “No. Just the plate, I’m afraid.”
“No harm done,” he assured me. “That’s one less I have to wash. D’ye want some more coffee?”
“I wouldn’t mind.”
He rose from his seat and filled both our cups. “Fancy a tour of the estate?” he offered grandly. “It’s not as impressive as the Hall, I’ll admit, but there is a lot of it.”
I pushed myself away from the worktop. “I’d like that.”
“You’d best not go barefoot,” he advised, sweeping me with a glance, “or you’ll be stepping in something you’ll wish you hadn’t. There’s a spare pair of wellies behind the kitchen door, I think.”
I found the boots and slipped my feet into them, feeling more like a dressed-up clown than ever. Iain looked at me and grinned.
“A bit large, aren’t they?” was his comment. “Don’t worry, I’ll walk slowly.”
I smiled back at him. “Never mind that. Just don’t let anyone else see me looking like this.”
“Only the sheep,” he promised, “and I’ll warrant they’ve seen odder sights.”
I shifted to let him move past me, and one of my ludicrous boots knocked a ceramic dish sliding.
“I didn’t know you had a dog,” I said, looking down.
“I don’t.” His smile was self-conscious. “She died a few months back. I just haven’t had the heart to move her things, yet.”
“You ought to get another one.”
“I’ll have to, eventually. It’s no small task herding sheep without a dog. I’ve a neighbor who gives me the loan of his collie, when I need it, for the time being.”
He held the back door open for me, and we went out into the sunlight, Iain walking ahead with his easy, athletic stride, and me squelching after him in the oversized boots. It took us well over an hour to circumnavigate the property, and by the time we made our way back to the cottage there was a faintly scorched smell in the vicinity of the back shed, and my clothes were completely dry.
“If you want to get changed, I can give you a lift into Exbury,” Iain offered. “It’s quicker by car, and you shouldn’t be walking on the road in your bare feet.”
“I don’t want to be a bother,” I began, but he brushed my protestations aside.
“It’s no bother. I have to stop by the Lion for a few minutes, anyway. I can run you home afterward.”
It took Iain a few tries to get his aged car started, and I accurately guessed that he hardly used the vehicle, since every time I saw him, he seemed to be on foot. It was, as he said, a very short run to Exbury, scarcely worth the bother of starting the car. The fields and hedges flew by us, and before I had time to really register them, they had been replaced by houses and gardens, and we were pulling into the parking lot of the Red Lion.
Vivien was outside washing windows, and she came over to greet us, folding her arms across her chest as we climbed out of the car.
“I’ve just had your brother on the phone,” she informed me.
“Tommy?” I raised my eyebrows in surprise. “What was he doing calling you?”
“He was trying to hunt you down, from the sound of it,” she said, smiling brightly. “He’s up at your house, eating his way through your refrigerator and waiting for you to come home.”
“This would be your brother the vicar, I take it?” Iain asked, and I nodded.
“You didn’t meet him last time he was here, did you, Iain?” Vivien looked at him. “You were in Marlborough that day, I think. He’s quite fun.” She turned to me with a sudden thought. “Why don’t you ring him up and tell him to come and meet you here? I don’t have to open up for two hours yet; we can sit in the bar and make a party of it.”
Iain looked over at her. “It’s a little early for drinking, don’t you think?”
“You don’t know Julia’s brother,” was her reply. “Come through to the back, Julia, you can ring him from there.”
My brother restrained his curiosity admirably when I talked to him on the telephone, showing no surprise when I rather cryptically asked him to fetch a pair of shoes from my cupboard and drive in to meet us at the Red Lion.
“Dress or casual?” was his only question.
“I beg your pardon?”
“The shoes,” he elaborated. “Dress or casual?”
“Oh. Casual.”
“Right. I’ll be there in five minutes.”
I relayed the message to Vivien, who smiled like a child getting a present. “Wonderful,” she said. “I’ll open a bottle of wine.”
Iain followed us through the connecting door from Vivien’s rooms to the front of the pub, his eyebrows lifting. “A vicar who drinks wine at ten o’clock in the morning,” he mused, speculatively. “This I have to see.”
He got his opportunity when, true to his word, Tom pulled into the car park five minutes later. When Vivien opened the door to him, he was standing on the step balancing one of my tennis shoes on his upraised fingertips as though it were the glass slipper.
“I have brought you a tennis shoe,” he said dramatically. “Does that qualify me to enter these premises?”
“Idiot,” I greeted him. “Come on in.” I took the shoe from his hand. “What, you only brought the one?”
“I could only find the one,” he responded dryly. “Your cupboard is a disaster.”
“You can borrow a pair of my shoes,” Vivien assured me, laughing. “I’ve got dozens.”
She found me a pair of well-worn loafers, and we spent a mirthful couple of hours sitting at the bar, watching the level of the wine bottle sink. I was pleased to see how well Tom and Iain got on together, after they had been introduced. One stray comment about politics, and the two men were soon deep in animated conversation, moving from subject to subject at the speed of light, while Vivien and I sat back on our stools and drank our wine at a leisured pace.
“I quite like Iain Sumner,” Tom told me later, when we had tottered out of the Red Lion and strapped ourselves into the car.
“I’m glad,” I said. “Should you be driving?”
My brother sent me a superior glance. “I only had one glass. Unlike some people.”
I attempted a dignified expression. “Are you implying I’m drunk, or something?”
“Plastered.” He nodded. “And before noon, at that.” He clucked his tongue reprovingly. “I’m shocked.”
“Get over it,” I retorted good-naturedly, rolling my head sideways against the seat to look at him. “It’s good to see you, Tom. I don’t think you ever visited me this much when I lived in London. You’ll be wearing grooves in the motorway.”
He smiled. “It’s just a flying visit, this one. I’m on my way to a conference in Bristol. I just thought I’d stop and say hello, while I was in the neighborhood.”
I studied his face. “Mother sent you to check up on me, didn’t she?”
“Bingo.”
“Well, you can tell her I’m fine,” I said, looking back at the windshield. We were on the road now, just leaving the village, the hedgerows closing in on either side of us.
“You can’t really blame her for worrying,” Tom commented. “That’s what mothers are supposed to do. You had me rather worried myself, this morning, when I turned up and found you missing.”
“I couldn’t get back to sleep after I got off the phone with Mum,” I explained. “So I went for a walk.”
My brother slowed the car to let a hedgehog scramble across the road. “You didn’t lock the door when you left.”
“I’m not overly fond of that new lock,” I told him. “It’s very stiff, and I can’t always turn it. So unless I’m going to be miles away from home, I just don’t bother. Besides,” I added in a practical tone, “Iain does work in that back garden, sometimes, and he might need to get a drink of water, or use the lav.”
“The village life, indeed.” My brother smiled, faintly. “If I were a less trusting person,” he said, “I might think that you’d gone on one of your little excursions into the Middle Ages.”
“The seventeenth century,” I corrected him.
If he asked me directly, I thought, I would have to tell him. I had never been any good at telling lies to Tom—he could always find me out. But he didn’t ask.
“Whatever.” He shrugged, and gathered speed again, and we drove the rest of the way in silence.
Chapter 22
The month of June was a glorious one, long sun-filled days and warm, scented nights, when the summer breeze came drifting across the greening fields while a nightingale sang to its mate in the darkness, down by the murmuring river. Even the rains fell more softly, and the little dovecote garden crept shyly into bloom. The columbine and iris bowed down to make way for bolder sprays of red valerian, and a mingled profusion of clustered Canterbury bells and sweet william, pale blues and pinks intertwined, danced at the feet of more stately spears of deep-purple foxglove and monkshood.
The changing nature of the garden fascinated me. By borrowing books from Iain I learned the name of each and every new flower, and soon the flowers themselves were working their way into my drawings, lending joyful color and variety to the dark medieval forests of my fairy tales. My editor was thrilled with the samples I sent her, and if she noticed that all my princes bore a peculiar resemblance to one another, she made no comment.
I, too, was blossoming, basking in the sweet exhilaration that heralds the beginning of a new romance.
Geoff had returned home two days after my walk by the river, and on the Saturday evening, as promised, he treated me to dinner and dancing at an elegant restaurant this side of Swindon.
It was an incredibly magical night, like something out of one of the fairy tales I’d been so diligently illustrating. The restaurant itself might have been a set from a film—all candles and flowers and linen and waiters who never hurried. By the time we had finished our after-dinner cognac, I think I had fallen halfway in love with Geoffrey de Mornay. I’d have had to be superhuman not to.
We didn’t really change towards one another, but as the month waned, it became apparent that something had been added to our relationship, a hint of potential yet to be realized that lurked beneath the friendly smiles and easy conversation. I was being wooed.
With my days divided equally between work and play, I had little time for further experimental trips into the past. Whenever I felt the warning dizziness begin to rise, I quickly forced it back, closing my eyes tightly and resisting the whirling darkness with every ounce of my being. Plenty of time for that later, I reasoned. But every morning, when I paused to finger Mariana’s bracelet, the jeweled eyes of the birds of paradise stared up at me in mute accusation. “I haven’t forgotten,” I argued, speaking as much to the face in the mirror as to the gilt birds. “I only want a little bit of fun, that’s all.”
It was rather like being on holiday. Geoff and I walked the long paths that snaked through field and countryside, spent afternoons poking about antique shops, and evenings playing darts and sharing stories at the Red Lion, under Vivien’s indulgent eye. I celebrated my thirtieth birthday at the Lion, and the taps flowed freely, each of the old men at the corner table insisting on standing me a birthday drink. I had forbidden anyone to buy me a gift, but still Geoff gave me roses, and Vivien produced a pair of earrings, and even Iain gave me a present—a shining garden trowel with a bow tied round it. “So you’ll stop losing mine,” he told me dryly. “There must be ten trowels rusting in the field as it is.”
At the month’s end my parents finally flew back from Auckland, and Tom and I drove together down to Heathrow to collect them. True to form, they insisted upon seeing my house straightaway, before going home to Oxford. Their reactions were much as I’d expected. My mother, her mind full of plans for wallpapers and curtains, wandered round the rooms in a pleasantly preoccupied state, while my father bounced once or twice on the floorboards to check the soundness of the structure. Hands in his pockets, he lowered his chin to his chest and nodded, faintly. “Very nice,” he said. It was the highest praise I could have hoped for, and my spirit swelled.
I grew reckless in my happiness. On one memorable afternoon in the first week of July, Geoff coaxed me into going riding with him, despite the fact that I hadn’t been on horseback since my school days. Fortunately, only the horse seemed aware of my lack of skill, and I put on a brave show by keeping my back ramrod straight and my expression calm.
“You see?” Geoff turned an encouraging smile in my direction when we paused to rest the horses. “You needn’t have worried. You ride perfectly well.”
Leaning forward in my saddle I patted my mare’s neck, silently thanking her for graciously allowing me to stay on her back. “Yes, well.” I affected a casual tone. “I suppose there are some things one never forgets.” The mare’s ears twitched, catching the lie, but Geoff was already looking the other way.
“Wel
l, this is it,” he told me. “The end of the property.”
“Where?” I looked for a fence, and found none.
“Just beyond that row of trees. It used to go much farther, of course, but most of the land’s been sold off over the years. It would be foolish to own that much land these days, I think. And selfish.”
It all depended, I thought, upon one’s sense of proportion. After all, the manor lands stretched practically to my back door, and it had just taken us half an hour to ride from the Hall to the westernmost boundary of the property.
After a moment Geoff turned his horse to follow the line of trees, and with a graceful step my mare fell in behind, moving as cautiously as a thoughtful pony balancing a small child. I let the reins lie loose upon her neck, and enjoyed the scenery.
“It’s so lovely, Geoff,” I said, watching a hawk trace lazy circles high over our heads. “How can you bear to leave it as often as you do?”
He shrugged, and half turned in his saddle to speak over his shoulder. “I don’t know. I like variety, I guess. My home in France is just as beautiful. I don’t think I could stand being tied to one place my whole life. Besides, this has always been more my father’s house than mine.”
I was silent, thinking over something he’d said. “Why France?” I asked him.
He turned again. “I beg your pardon?”
“Why did you buy a house in France? Do you have family connections there?”
“Not really,” he replied. “Though I suppose if I carried the family history across the Channel I’d find a whole army of de Mornay cousins populating the countryside. The first de Mornay was a Norman, after all. No, I bought the house because I liked it. It has a gorgeous view of the Mediterranean, and there’s a harbor close by where I can keep my boat. And the sun shines all the time,” he added, “which puts it a notch above Exbury, in my book.”
“I thought you said you liked variety,” I reminded him with a smile, and he shook his head.
“Not when it comes to weather.”
Mariana Page 21