Hemlock Veils

by Davenport, Jennie

  Hesitating only briefly, she reached out to the large, ornately carved, wooden door and knocked. It was silly to expect anyone from within to hear. The knock was so small she almost didn’t hear it herself. But she couldn’t find a doorbell or even a door knocker. She waited a moment, knocked again, then waited some more. No answer.

  She stepped off the porch and looked around, even up to the vast peaked eaves, where birds dove playfully from point to point. She thought about leaving the tool belt on the doorstep, but the narrow path did continue, winding through more rhododendrons and hemlocks before disappearing behind the house.

  Before she could stop herself, she was walking it. It was so solemn and secluded here that if it wasn’t for the trimmed grass and meticulous pathway, she would have bet no soul had set foot on this side of the mansion in years. The pathway led to a tall rock wall, the same she’d seen from her back porch. It crawled with vines and appeared to fence off the entire rear of the estate. Back here, the wrought iron fence stopped where this robust and secretive barricade took over.

  The pathway led through a narrow opening in the wall, one just big enough for a person to fit through, and even though she thought she shouldn’t, she went in, moving aside vines that hung in her way.

  And back here…

  Back here lived a different world entirely, even with a different feel to the air. The stone wall fenced no more than an acre of land—land quite the opposite of the maintained landscape outside it. It used to be some sort of garden: planned, straight rows bordered with granite, stone pathways disappearing within unkempt plant life, and strategically placed stone benches. The largest path, running through the middle and dividing the garden symmetrically, traveled right to the steps of the mansion’s back door. The steps were just as intimidating as the ones out front, but the door was all glass—double doors, actually, with large golden handles.

  There was something beautiful in the garden’s unruly, wild abandon. Green exploded everywhere, spilling over stone walls and intruding on pathways, and amongst it, red popped to life. Rosebushes traveled up the walls, tangled amidst vines and foliage. Every corner overflowed with the roses, and every bench was backed by them—rosebushes so large they appeared to have started life hundreds of years ago.

  She stopped before one that grew so high it almost reached the top of the wall. Every rose adorning it was perfect, far more bloomed than she would have expected for April, and she found herself reaching out to one, just to make sure it was real. Its petals were a rich blood red, and silky to the touch. She grazed the back of her finger over it.

  “Ms. Ashton?”

  With a sharp inhalation she turned, dropping the tool belt in the process. Henry stood with bare chest and a drink in his hand. His brows pulled together, as though her being here was an enigma he couldn’t grasp. He stepped closer, narrowing his eyes. She couldn’t tell if he was angry or just surprised. Perhaps both.

  It took her a moment to process coherent words, with the way adrenaline made her heart race. But it raced from more than her surprise. It raced at the sight of him, eyes on fire and torso shirtless. She’d almost forgotten how stunningly sculpted he was, or maybe she had just been too preoccupied to fully appreciate it before. It seemed every muscle had been chiseled with great care, from his broad shoulders, pectorals, and biceps, down to a most appealing cobblestone eight-pack. A trace of dark hair trailed downward from his naval until it disappeared beneath the low waist of his pants. He appeared shapelier without clothing, taller and larger. Below he was barefoot, standing on the wild, weed-bearing grass.

  “I—I’m sorry, Mr. Clayton,” she said, trying to divert her eyes as she bent and retrieved the tool belt. Her eyes instead found the fist-sized dark spot over his right pectoral, just below his collarbone—the one she hadn’t been able to make out beneath his shirt before, on the morning with Brian and the rain. A tattoo. She needed a better look, but he wasn’t close enough, and she didn’t want to stare. Her eyes shot to his, off his nakedness. Warmth flooded her, from chest to cheeks.

  “How did you get in here?” he asked, his tone as clipped as she’d ever heard. A lock of dark hair fell between his eyes.

  “The gate was open and—”

  “The gate is never open.”

  “It was—”

  “Even if it was, you think that gives you the right to trespass?”

  She released a breath through her teeth. “Mr. Clayton, I wasn’t trespassing. Arne told me to come by, said he would leave the gate open for me.”

  He seemed surprised.

  “This morning, before you left Jean’s.”

  “He did, did he?” He ground his teeth.

  “I wouldn’t have come, but he asked if I would bring your tools by. I knocked on the front door, but…”

  He sighed. Looking to the ground with a troubled brow, he pondered. That was when Arne emerged from the glass doors, smiling as though letting people in Henry’s gate was an everyday occurrence. “Elizabeth!” he said, lifting his hands. “Glad to see you let yourself in.”

  Henry turned on him. “Ms. Ashton says you left the gate open.”

  “Of course, Mr. Clayton. I wouldn’t have heard her otherwise.”

  “You didn’t hear her.”

  As Arne waved a hand, Elizabeth closed in on them, avoiding a tempting glance at Henry’s magnificent physic and his mysterious tattoo. She placed the tool belt on the stone bench beside him. “I’m sorry to have intruded. I’ll let myself out.”

  “I don’t know what Arne told you, but I don’t want the tools, Ms. Ashton.”

  She paused, confused.

  “I left them there on purpose, in case you might need them again.”

  “That’s…um, thank you. But I really—”

  “Oh dear,” Arne said. “I’m sorry for the mix up, Elizabeth. I must have misunderstood. I thought Mr. Clayton needed them back.”

  “It’s…all right.” It wasn’t difficult to understand what was going on here, what Arne was trying to do. And Henry knew it, too. He placed his glass on the bench, next to the tool belt—just a trace of caramel-colored liquid resting within ice.

  “Well, now that we have that cleared up,” he said, still throwing Arne daggers as he folded his arms. Arne didn’t appear the slightest bit affected.

  Elizabeth wasn’t sure she could handle another second of tension between him and Henry, or between herself and Henry. “I should get going then.”

  “Nonsense!” Arne said. “You just arrived. Please, Elizabeth, stay a short while. I’ll get us some iced tea. I do owe you after the drink on your porch the other day.”

  “Arne, it was only water,” she said, almost laughing. “Besides, you helped me move in. If anything, I still owe you.”

  “You already paid me this morning with that delicious coffee. Now, you stay here and I’ll fetch the tea.” He looked at Henry, as though he was the master here. “Mr. Clayton, why don’t you show her around the gardens while I do?”

  “Why don’t I fetch the tea for you and Ms. Ashton?”

  “We both know you make a poor batch of tea, Mr. Clayton.” They engaged in a stare-down, and Elizabeth wondered if they would notice her sneaking out.

  “I’m barely—”

  “I’ll bring you a shirt.”

  Another stare-down. Really, she could have left three times now without them noticing. Why hadn’t she?

  Arne left, back inside those glass doors.

  “Really, Mr. Clayton, I can go…”

  “It’s all right, Ms. Ashton. Arne might poison my food if I allow it.”

  She chuckled, and he smiled ever so subtly. And before she knew it her curiosity won out, allowing her eyes to travel to the tattoo. It shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did, so much so that a tiny electrical jolt ran through her chest. It was a monster—a fearsome cartoon-version of his nighttime self, down to the ears and eyes and ridge of fur. It actually looked similar to Eustace’s drawing, the one he had shown her that first ni
ght. Only this tattoo, a lot like Eustace’s drawing, was pure evil—something truly gruesome and frightful, like a demon character from a comic book, with extended claws and gnashing fangs. It was him, or his interpretation of who he was. He had branded himself. Perhaps as a reminder?

  Then, on the skin of his right arm, over his curved triceps, she spotted a pink, fresh scar, recently healed. Like a forgotten memory suddenly recalled, she knew this was where Eustace had shot him that first night, when her distraction had so unfairly allowed it—the first time Eustace had ever been successful. Again, like she had then, she absorbed the blame. That scar was on his arm because of her. But she had to admit, as guilty as she felt, she was more awed that it appeared so healthy after such a short amount of time.

  He must have noticed her staring because he turned that side of him away from her and began to walk. The way he walked slowly down the broadest path told her she was welcome to walk beside him. “Well, Ms. Ashton,” he said, both their strides casual, “as painful as it is for me to admit, it would appear Arne is trying to play matchmaker.”

  Her face warmed, but she chuckled. “I suppose I should have picked up on that when he told me the gate would be open and you wouldn’t be available.”

  He chuckled too, shaking his head. After a moment, when the path led them beneath a canopy of trees that cut them off from the rest of the modern world and made the atmosphere itself appear green, he said, “I’m…sorry for overreacting. I shouldn’t have expected you trespassed. I don’t often have guests here. Ever, to be exact.”

  She paused briefly before picking her steps up again, surprised the words “I’m sorry” had left Henry’s mouth. He began talking before she could. “I don’t know why he calls them gardens. They haven’t been for many years.”

  “It’s lovely like this,” she said, glancing up at the trees singing with birds, only the slightest, threadlike beams of sunlight breaking through. “Untamed, overgrown…it’s quite picturesque.”

  He looked at her with a severe brow and put his hands behind his back. His feet were still bare and he walked them over the terrain with an ease that said he was used to shoeless walks. “Yes, but…your idea of beauty is peculiar.”

  “Don’t they say beauty is in the eye of the beholder?”

  “Ah, back to ‘perspective is reality.’”

  She faltered at his words, since the perspective vs. reality talk had been between her and the beast. He didn’t seem to notice his mishap and she quickly recovered. “You disagree?”

  They paused and he gazed into her eyes a few seconds before looking away, squinting against a shard of sunlight. It was moments like that, with his eyes pulling magnetically to hers, she found herself desperate to open him up. “I think things that are truly beautiful are beautiful to everyone.”

  She gave a short laugh and kept walking. He got back into stride with her.

  “What do you find so unbelievable about that?”

  “Everything. I don’t think a statement has ever been more false.”

  He lifted a brow as though amused at her challenge.

  “We’re all different, Mr. Clayton. Every one of us has different opinions and outlooks, and different ways we feel life. It’s all a matter of what we know and what we’ve experienced, and our outlooks are what make certain things beautiful or ugly to us. Take the dandelion for example.” She bent, picking one from a yellow patch near her feet. She stood and studied it, twirling it between her fingers—the blossom straggly and rigid but bright and hopeful. “To most it’s just a weed. Obnoxious, destroying, ugly. But to the honeybee…” She gave it a light sniff.

  “I…see. And though I disagree, you’re right about one thing: every one of us has opinions, and yours and mine couldn’t be more dissimilar.”

  She smiled. “You are right about that.”

  They reached another unruly rose bush, every bud red like the others. She stopped before it, running her finger delicately down its petals in the way she had before. “They were my mother’s,” he said. “Of all things once planted by human hands, they’re all that still grow out here.” He rubbed his neck. “It was the only thing my father allowed her to take control of in this place.” With eyes distant, he swallowed as he touched a flower himself, cradling a small bud ever so gently in his large hand. “Funny, how the only thing with her touch was all that survived.”

  He had survived, and she wanted to say that. But instead, she let the sadness she felt for him swell inside her chest, adding it to her many complicating feelings. “And they’re all red,” she said. “Her favorite color.”

  He looked at her as though she’d yanked him from a deep thought. “And yours?”

  After a moment of speechlessness, she managed, “I…don’t really have one, I guess. I find it depends on the time in my life.”

  “Lately?”

  She looked above her. “Lately, green.”

  He nodded in agreement, and his smile seemed involuntary as they left the roses. The pathway turned, rounding behind overgrown ferns, and her focus drifted again to his ink.

  “Didn’t your mother teach you it was impolite to stare?”

  Her eyes shot to his, and a smile played at the corner of his mouth. “I’m sorry, Mr. Clayton. I don’t mean to, it’s just…there are too many details to pick up in one glance.” He appeared uncomfortable, and her heart sank. “The tattoo, I meant.”

  He scratched his head, and she would have bet he was wishing for a shirt. “If you must know, it was a mistake. It has no significance, other than I saw the monster for the first time as a boy, and…I guess I couldn’t forget it. Just one of those things you do when you’re young and trying to live in the moment.”

  The way he tried so hard to convince her was amusing. “Ah, one of those.”

  “But I bet you don’t have any of those, do you?”

  “I’ve made mistakes, Mr. Clayton. Many. Just not…in the form of ink.”

  “Tell me one.”

  She looked at him.

  “I did tell you one of mine, after all.”

  “Are we actually sharing juicy secrets here?”

  He looked ahead, put in his place.

  “Remember,” she went on. “It wasn’t me who was opposed to them.”

  “Fine. Then tell me.”

  She swallowed. “Tell you what?”

  Stopping, they stood closely, her neck craned to him. “What it is you were running from when you came here.”

  She looked down, scrunching her brow. “Mr. Clayton, I…can’t.”

  “I thought you didn’t concern yourself with the judgment of others?”

  It was clear he’d overheard her and Arne’s conversation on her porch the day she moved in, and the realization left her cheeks warm. “In others, I don’t.” She met his eyes. “In you…I do.”

  He appeared lighter then, his shoulders low and brow relaxed. His mouth fell open ever so slightly as he stared into her eyes, and he even seemed to gravitate closer. And something new stirred between them. In the beginning, she’d felt heat by the bucketfull, heat of anger and frustration; but this was different. It was a fulfilling heat, one that began at her heart and eased in every direction. It was heavy and light at the same time, a magnetism that radiated from both their chests, desiring to join them.

  “Sorry it took me so long,” Arne said from behind, making her inhale as though she’d been holding her breath. Perhaps she had been.

  Henry lightly cleared his throat and took a step back. No longer in the trees, they were now in the lowering sunlight, only about twenty paces to the back door. The realization that she just now noticed this was staggering. And the reality that Henry could be such a distraction made her chest burn again, just from the thought of it. Arne handed her a full glass of iced tea, the rim topped with a lemon slice. He handed the other to Henry, as well as a shirt Henry didn’t put on.

  Neither of them drank and Henry looked at the falling sun.

  “So, Elizabeth, what do you think?�
�� Arne asked with a smile of anticipation.

  “The tea?”

  He chuckled. “No, dear. The gardens.”

  “Oh.” She closed her eyes momentarily, attempting to align her thoughts. Trying not to dwell on how it felt to get lost in Henry’s eyes, in that heat. “It’s absolutely breathtaking.”

  “I knew you would like it.”

  Henry glanced at the sun again, fidgeting. “Arne, I hate to waste the tea you slaved over, but we really should get inside. It’s…getting late.”

  “I should get going, too.” She handed her full glass to Arne. “I’m so sorry. Can we take a rain check on the tea?”

  “Do you have another engagement, Elizabeth?”

  “Don’t mind him,” Henry said.

  “Yes, something like that,” she answered, anxious for the night. “Thank you for being kind enough to show me around, Mr. Clayton.”

  He nodded and she turned away, storing his image in her mind. “The tools, Ms. Ashton,” he said. She turned back. “Take them.”

  “No, you keep them.”

  “You may need them again, given the condition of your home.”

  “If I do, then…I’ll just have to come back for them, won’t I?”

  He seemed to be taken by that same speechlessness again, and with his eyes locked on hers, he nodded. When she turned, walking the trail that would lead her from the gardens, she smiled to herself, especially when he said from behind, “Goodbye, Ms. Ashton.”

  ***

  Henry slowed his pace out of his gate, his feet unhurried. He didn’t want to be too obvious, but at this point he was sure Elizabeth knew his intentions: that he planned his morning walks to coincide with hers. Perhaps he should back off, especially after the heat between them yesterday afternoon in his gardens. Things were getting too personal, his logic kept reminding him. In the back of his mind, he scolded himself for it, reminded himself that if he kept foolishly giving into his feelings, she would find out too much about him.