A Beauty So Rare

by Tamera Alexander

  “Thank you, Miss Thornton.” Barrett gestured, seeming somewhat relieved by the interruption.

  The young woman set the tea service on the desk corner closest to Marcus and poured slowly. Too slowly in Marcus’s estimation. But her continued stare in his direction let him know that swiftness wasn’t her intention.

  She was petite. And pretty. And most of all, she knew it.

  He doubted—with his having inherited his parents’ tall stature—whether the young woman would reach him midchest, even standing on tiptoe. She was fragile and delicate-looking, much like the fine china she held out to him. And much too much like Baroness Maria Elizabeth Albrecht von Haas.

  His mood darkened at the accompanying memory of the baroness and their . . . relationship, if one could call it that, and at the fate awaiting him upon his return to Austria. Extending an empire through marriage had been a long-standing Habsburg family tradition, and he could already hear his uncle redrawing the boundary lines.

  Marcus lifted the cup and drank, wishing it were something much stronger than tea—even stout coffee would do.

  From a young age, he’d grown accustomed to this kind of attention from women. At first, it had fascinated him, the way they flocked to him. And with little to no effort on his part. As he grew older, that fascination turned into an amusement, even a sport. “The challenge of the quest,” as one of his friends used to say.

  But after what happened with Rutger—

  Marcus saw his brother’s face so clearly in his mind, and he swallowed hard, strong-arming emotions to keep them at bay. The way he’d lived his life before the incident seemed almost foreign to him now. Yet he couldn’t forget. And God help him—if God was still listening, if God gave second chances to men like him. . . .

  Keeping his gaze to himself, he did nothing to encourage the attention of the young woman beside him.

  Finally she crossed to the door and closed it quietly behind her.

  “I feel certain,” Barrett continued, “that the mayor will announce his decision no later than this time next week.”

  “I wish I shared your certainty, Mr. Barrett.”

  Marcus returned his empty cup to the tray and stood, frustrated with the mayor’s delay and eager to be on his way. “When is Mayor Adler scheduled to return?”

  “Monday at the latest, sir.” A flicker of relief sparked Barrett’s expression as he gained his feet. “I’ll tell him you stopped by the moment he disembarks the train. And I’ll relay your inquiry regarding the status of your company’s bid as well.”

  Marcus crossed to the door. “If you’d also be so kind as to inform the mayor that I, along with the other three firms who placed bids on time and in proper order, will be expecting confirmation that this . . . anonymous fifth bidder did the same.”

  Barrett blinked. “Yes, sir, of course. I’ll relay that request to Mayor Adler as well. And may I say with utmost sincerity, Mr. Geoffrey, the mayor would want me to assure you that his office desires to be of assistance in any—”

  “Good day to you, Mr. Barrett.”

  Marcus closed the office door behind him, not caring to hear Barrett’s parting insincerities.

  Minutes later, as he passed the post office on his way out to Belmont, he wished again that his colleague from Boston, Luther Burbank, would mail the package as promised. He didn’t think Burbank was holding out on him.

  But given the subject of their collaboration, there was always that possibility.

  “Is you sure you want me to drop you off here, Miss Braddock? Long way up to the main house, ma’am. And most of it be uphill.”

  “Yes, I’m certain, Armstead. Thank you.”

  Eleanor accepted his assistance from the carriage. Having already checked her watch, she knew she was early, despite the tour of the city and countryside Armstead had given her. She’d intended to stay at the asylum to help her father get settled, but since those plans hadn’t come to fruition . . . “Mrs. Cheatham isn’t expecting me for a while yet. And after all the riding today, I welcome the chance to walk.”

  She wasn’t about to arrive so early for an appointment with her aunt, especially her first in years. She knew how important punctuality was to Adelicia Acklen Cheatham, even if Armstead wasn’t aware. Although, seeing Armstead’s thoughtful look, she got the inkling he might fully understand.

  “Walkin’, it’s good for a body,” he said, a smile lingering in the depths of his voice.

  On a playful whim, she glanced from side to side as though worried someone might overhear. “Though I haven’t been here in years, I haven’t been gone so long that I’ve forgotten my aunt’s high regard for punctuality. I no more want to arrive an hour early at Belmont than I would a minute late.”

  “Yes, ma’am.” A knowing grin creased his face. “The Lady likes ever’thing runnin’ on time. That’s for sure. She got her schedule, and we best keep to it.”

  Eleanor smiled, feeling an unexpected kinship with the man, especially considering what he’d witnessed earlier today. “I’ll explore the conservatory for a while, then make my way on to the house.”

  “Yes, ma’am.”

  “And, Armstead . . .”

  He turned back.

  “Thank you for understanding about what happened with my father. And for your . . . discretion.”

  He nodded, taking his time to answer. “We all got our roads to walk, ma’am. Ain’t none of ’em pretty all the time.”

  “No, they’re not.”

  He tipped his hat to leave, then hesitated again. “How ’bout I wait ’til you come up to the house ’fore I tote your luggage in. Make it all proper like.”

  “That would be much appreciated, Armstead.” She smiled in gratitude.

  As the carriage pulled away, Eleanor let her focus wander the vast grounds and gardens of the estate, until it finally came to rest on the mansion atop the hill.

  The afternoon sun bathed the enormous Italianate-style villa in a warm glow, giving it a ruddy pinkish hue from this distance. Her aunt had appropriately named it Belmont, Belle Monte in French. Beautiful mountain . . .

  Moving her gaze downhill, Eleanor studied the lavish formal gardens in front of the mansion. The gardens were circular in formation—the largest of the three situated nearest the home, its counterparts descending downhill, diminishing in size.

  Marble statuary spaced at random intervals—sometimes beside a cast-iron gazebo, other times set apart—stood like silent sentinels watchful over their domain. Flowers bordered endless beds, the fading summer palette of crimsons and saffrons, purples and pinks clinging to their petals—the pink looking far better on them than it did on her.

  She scanned the rows of shrubbery, looking for a certain plant, one they’d had in their garden back home. But it was nowhere to be seen. Its flowers, being more common in appearance, were probably not elegant enough for Belmont, but she enjoyed their fragrance.

  In the distance, to the west of the mansion, lay an empty plot of ground where she would’ve sworn another building had stood years earlier. An art gallery, if she remembered correctly. But for whatever reason, it was gone now.

  On the east side of the mansion, a new building was being erected—the brick building twice as long as it was wide, and every bit as stunning as the rest of Belmont.

  The estate was more impressive than she remembered.

  Feeling very small—and out of place—she sighed and turned to look behind her. The glass-walled conservatory, complete with domed cupola, that housed Aunt Adelicia’s prized collections of flowers and trees, shrubs and herbs, appeared to be at least twice the size of the family home Eleanor had recently sold. There was no telling the variety of plants contained within, or their cost.

  She followed the walkway leading to the main door of the conservatory but, before entering, paused and lifted her gaze to the nearby water tower.

  The brick structure, well over one hundred feet tall, she estimated, reached skyward to the ethereal blue. Her focus trailed to
the top, where a windmill turned in the breeze.

  As beautiful as Belmont was, she hoped her stay would be brief.

  Thinking of the proposal she had for her aunt—the acceptance of which would enable her to make a way, however humble a one, for herself and her father—spawned a thread of anxiousness that worked a stranglehold around her confidence. An odd emotion, since ordinarily she wasn’t easily intimidated.

  But there was nothing ordinary about Adelicia Acklen Cheatham. Or about Belmont.

  When visiting in the past, Eleanor had never felt at home. But considering the surroundings, who would? The place was like make-believe—at least in comparison to the world in which she lived.

  She opened the door to the conservatory, and a warm whoosh of air greeted her. Not surprising in view of the glass ceiling and a full September sun overhead. Within seconds, the heady scent of roses enveloped her and—unprepared for what she saw—she let the door close behind her with a soft thud.

  Roses. Pots and pots of roses. Table after table, row after row. Some of them quite tall, obstructing her view to the next aisle, and blossoms in every shade imaginable—from deepest crimson to snowiest white, from golden yellow to palest pink. Some varieties, lower growing and shrubby, huddled together like friendly neighbors over a fence. While others seemed to raise lofty heads in unabashed pride, as if believing themselves more regal.

  Hundreds of blooms, perhaps thousands, filled this section of the conservatory. Surely this collection rivaled the very storehouses of heaven.

  And yet . . . while she appreciated nature and enjoyed the outdoors, and had even helped her father tend a vegetable garden years earlier, she’d never cared much for flowers. They were beautiful, to be sure, but also frivolous and extravagant. What use had they other than to just look pretty?

  She breathed the perfumed air. As much as she hated to admit it, however, the scent was nothing less than enchanting.

  Reaching the end of the first aisle, she turned the corner to start down the next when she heard voices and stilled. She cocked her head to listen, but . . . nothing.

  Certain she’d heard something, she took a step back and looked down the aisle from whence she’d come.

  But again . . . no one.

  She made a quick tour of the remaining rose collection, finally skipping the last two aisles, and moved through an open doorway into another section of the greenhouse. This section was filled with tropical plants, but a small grouping of plants in a corner, on a table all their own, immediately caught her attention.

  They were some of the ugliest plants she’d ever seen.

  Of the cacti family, if her guess was correct, they were tubular and gangly, without a single bloom. She saw a card tacked to the side of the table and leaned down. Selenicereus grandiflorus.

  Her limited study of Latin combined with her almost nonexistent use of the language since leaving school enabled her to easily pronounce the words, but that was all. She had no idea of their translation, or of the plant’s common name.

  She did, however, remember her Latin professor. Quite well.

  Dr. Carlton Adessa.

  Oh, how the girls in school had fawned over him. They’d called him Dr. Adonis behind his back, after the mortal god of beauty in Greek mythology. It still seemed unfair that a man could be so . . . beautiful. Dark-eyed and swarthy, with an air of confidence that both preceded him and followed in his wake. Everything about the man had been attractive. At first.

  With painful clarity, she remembered the day Dr. Adessa had passed her in the hallway. She’d just returned from a windy walk and stopped at a mirror to fix her hair. He smiled as he approached, and she nervously wondered if he would remember her name, since she’d earned the highest mark on the last exam.

  Eagerly shoving wayward strands of hair into place, she managed a smile. And as he passed, he said, “One cannot make a silk purse from a sow’s ear, Miss Braddock. Hurry now, class is beginning.”

  Eleanor exhaled a humorless laugh at the memory, and recalled how his attractiveness had changed in her eyes. And how the incident had framed how she saw herself too.

  Growing up, she’d been called strong, sturdy, even handsome on one occasion. But pretty was a word that had never been used to describe her. Taken individually, her features weren’t completely without merit. Her eyes were a deeper brown than most. Her blond hair was long but thin, so she braided it into a bun at the base of her neck. Her nose was probably her best feature—similar to that of the Venus de Milo, she’d been told.

  Of course, she was nearly as tall as the statue of Venus, which more than offset whatever positive there was in the comparison.

  She sighed. She hadn’t possessed the courage to offer Dr. Adessa a swift rebuttal back then. As a young woman, she’d been far too eager to please others, to earn affirmation. But somewhere through the years, that had changed. Perhaps because she’d finally learned how impossible a goal it was to earn everyone’s approval, especially when the world’s criteria for judging stood so widely separate from her own.

  She turned her attention back to the cacti and considered the reasons her aunt would have such plants in her collection.

  Knowing better but unable to resist, she gently touched a spine on the cactus, then drew her hand back, frowning. It was sharper than she’d imagined. Bringing the tip of her forefinger to her mouth, she soothed the sting, her admiration for the plant edging up a notch. What it lacked in beauty, it made up for in strength, and in its ability to protect itself.

  She checked the time again. There was still plenty of time before she was due at the house, so she turned her attention to the tropical plants. Trees that would take many men to move, if they could be moved, stood directly beneath the cupola. As she continued, she passed a cast-iron fountain topped with an equally cast-iron cobra coiled and ready to strike.

  A doorway to her left with stairs leading down intrigued her. But it was dark, so she continued on. While the prospect of exploring underground was appealing, the possibility of appearing before Aunt Adelicia with six inches of mud on her hem was not.

  Gazing ahead, she glimpsed yet another room and sighed, shaking her head. The conservatory went on forever, much like the mansion did, as she remembered. Such lavishness . . .

  By comparison, she pictured her father’s former vegetable garden. He’d found such enjoyment and relaxation in tending that small patch of land. She fingered the waxy leaf of a shrub, contemplating. Perhaps the asylum would let him plant some tomato and squash plants. And maybe green beans. He loved those.

  She checked the watch hooked to her bodice. A few minutes, and she would need to make her way up to the mansion.

  Catching the hint of a familiar scent, she paused. She closed her eyes and breathed deeply, and was carried back to warm summer nights as a little girl, when her bedroom window was open and the heady perfume of lilacs enveloped her room—and her dreams.

  A simpler time. One she missed.

  When she opened her eyes, the memory faded. Left in its place was a loneliness, keen and sharp-edged, and not at all unfamiliar. Whenever she thought about her father, about what his future—their future—might hold, she questioned if this sense of being adrift, orphaned, in a sense, would ever leave.

  Knowing what her father would say if he were there, she instinctively straightened, squaring her shoulders. “Be practical,” she whispered. “Sensible. Focus on what is before you, Eleanor. Not on what your imagination attempts to convince you is there.”

  Working like a talisman, the spoken words helped to push the emptiness away. Not banished forever, she knew, but cordoned off . . . for now.

  She turned to leave, but her focus fell on a doorway—or more rightly, on something through the doorway.

  She stepped closer, listening for movement beyond the threshold, and then knocked. The glass door squeaked open an inch or two more.

  “Hello?” Her voice sounded overloud in the silence, her gaze fixed on what appeared to be a surgeon’s
scalpel on the edge of the table.

  She waited. . . .

  No answer.

  Concerned, but mostly curious, she nudged the door open farther and stepped inside. And quickly wondered whether Aunt Adelicia’s gardeners were practicing horticulture . . . or medicine.

  Plants that appeared to be . . . bandaged, their roots wrapped in gauzy strips, lined a series of tables on the far wall. Pots of dirt sat behind them, as though someone had left recently and would return soon. Likewise, rows of corked glass bottles, each filled with liquid and labeled in Latin, stood shoulder to shoulder on shelves. Shiny scalpels, even syringes, lay neatly arranged on a cloth.

  She frowned. What kind of gardener needed all of—

  “I asked you to moisten the root base if it was required, not drown them!”

  Eleanor nearly jumped out of her skin at the voice. Turning, she glimpsed two men striding down the aisle toward her. Her first instinct was to hide. But where? She wasn’t about to hide in this . . . infirmary. And if she crossed directly in front of them, they would see her.

  “The plants will be fine, Mr. Geoffrey, I’m certain. I did as I thought best. After all, I am the head—”

  The taller man, still several yards away, stopped abruptly and turned, his back to her. “I know who you are, Mr. Gray. And I’m well aware of your position here.” He blew out a breath.

  Feeling like a naughty child in danger of being caught, Eleanor did her best to blend in with the greenery, wishing she’d worn anything but pink. She didn’t dare move lest the rustle of her skirts give her away.

  “Next time,” the taller man continued, a foreign accent giving the words an even harsher edge, “do as I instruct, not as you think best. And try it without the bottle. That will help.” The man uttered something unintelligible. “Never mind. There won’t be a next time. I don’t want you touching any of the plants in the—”

  The man facing her suddenly raised his hand. And with a shudder Eleanor realized he was looking directly at her.