The Fragrance of Her Name

by Marcia Lynn McClure

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  “Dearest Brant,” the letter began. Brant smiled as his father started reading the letter from Lauryn. He could imagine how long she’d labored over her salutation. He knew her well enough, even after a mere week, to know that she would’ve taken a great deal more time in penning her letter than he had in dictating his to his father.

  “She’s got beautiful penmanship, this girl,” Brant’s father commented. Brant could just imagine his father adjusting his reading glasses and peering down his nose through them trying to read the letter. It was a comforting image to his mind. He wondered, briefly, if his father’s hair was any whiter than it had been when he’d left for the war.

  “Thank you for letting us all know that you arrived home safely and are well. We have thought of you every moment since you left, wondering about your welfare. Thank your father for his efforts in writing, also.

  “She’s got the ‘we’ down, too,” Darnell Masterson chuckled. “What? She thinks I don’t know she’s wishing you could read your own letters?”

  Brant chuckled, too. “Come on, Dad. Just read the letter.”

  “I hope this girl isn’t taking me for a fool. I can read between the lines as well as the next man,” Darnell stated. Chuckling he added, “Well…maybe things are just a tad fuzzier.”

  “I know that you will be wondering how things are coming along where my responsibilities to dear friends are concerned and I hope you will not abandon me when I tell you that I am still laboring fruitlessly.”

  “She’s very proper,” Brant’s father commented, pausing, again, in his reading of Lauryn’s letter.

  “She knows you’re reading it,” Brant chuckled. “Believe me. She knows you’re reading it.”

  “How is your family?” Darnell continued. “We are all well here at Connemara.”

  And then the tone of her letter changed. As if she’d forgotten that it wouldn’t be just Brant who would be reading it. Refreshingly, the letter began to sound like Lauryn.

  “Everything is uneventful. Patrick is going to have Mama fairly fleeing to the asylum! In cleaning out his pockets yesterday, she found a dead snake and a hardened lump of dog manure! Patrick explained that he was carrying it around just in case Betty Anne Thompson tried to kiss him again.”

  Brant and his father both burst into laughter having to pause from reading the letter until they could breathe regularly once more.

  “I like this girl, Brant,” Darnell chuckled.

  “I know. I do, too,” Brant confessed.

  Darnell continued. “Penny and I have spent hours in the flowerbeds together. Connemara’s gardeners of the past were masters! And I’m afraid that our efforts will not do Connemara justice.

  Sean and Mindy and the baby are well and happy. Mindy nearly dropped dead when Junie ate a bug last week. Now we all call her, Junie-bug. Naturally.

  Nana is well enough. A slight touch of something kept her in bed for a few days. But she’s up and around fine now.

  Everyone sends love and best wishes. I refuse to write what Sean says to tell you…only know that he is still making my life miserable! You would be proud of him.

  Please stay warm and healthy and tell your father, ‘Thank you,’ for writing for you. We all miss you and wish you well.

  Yours,

  Lauryn”

  Brant sat back in his chair, sighing contentedly. He missed Connemara and everyone in it. He had begun to find himself there, to regain his strength. And he missed that little chit of a girl, Lauryn. Missed her lectures on the evils of self-pity and the wonders of love. She’d taught him a great deal. Taught him of emotions, of happiness, of rising above trials. He’d have to go back, someday. Someday. Maybe.

  Chapter Seven

  Winter faded. Not that winter was ever severe in Franklin, but the weather did change. The early spring flowers had blossomed, the grasses greened up, the rain lessened. And soon the beautiful wisteria, which was Connemara’s fame, began to flourish. By early May, Connemara’s wisteria was in full and wondrous bloom.

  Lauryn loved the wisteria. Even more than she had as a child. Every morning she was glad she had returned home in time to see it, touch it, breathe of its passionate perfume. She swore to herself that, no matter where she ended up on earth, she would always have wisteria. Always!

  Brant had written Lauryn at least once every two weeks since he’d returned home. There were several things he’d learned about Laura that he told Lauryn in his letters. For instance, the locket Laura wore around her neck had been a gift from Brand the day he’d left to go to war.

  He told her about the weather in Castledale. He told her about his family, of his sisters and their husbands and babies and of Parker, who was courting a young lady named Violet. Brant suspected that it wouldn’t be long before his brother proposed marriage to her.

  Each time Lauryn received a letter from him, her heart would swell with dreams of his someday returning to her. If not returning to her, specifically, at least, to Connemara. But she knew, that until she found Laura at Connemara, there would be no reason for him to return.

  Lauryn grew to know Brant more thoroughly through his letters. And in ways that she may not otherwise have had the chance to. The stories he told of his families, revealed his strong sense of humor. His opinions and thoughts revealed his wisdom. And the way he wrote, rather contentedly, spoke to Lauryn of a man whose soul was healing. And she reveled in the knowledge.

  Now, the Captain had, as always, been Lauryn’s friend and confidant. But, somehow, his friendship, didn’t fill the void in Lauryn’s heart left by Brant. Though they talked, as they always had, Lauryn continued to feel a sort of deep emptiness. She still loved the Captain, was still obsessed about helping, because she did love him. But it was Brant who dominated her thoughts and the images in her mind. It was Brant who made her think it was possible to be in love. Brant who filled her dreams and her wishes. Brant who caused her heart to ache. Brant’s existence which made it impossible to go through life carefree and calmly as she had before. And so, Lauryn went on searching, hoping, dreaming.

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  “My stars Patrick! You get yourself into more fixes!” Lauryn scolded from her awkward perch in a neighborhood tree one warm spring day in May. “On second thought…” she added as her shoe lodged awkwardly between two branches for a moment. “You get me into more fixes!” As she struggled to free the boy’s ball, a branch seemed to actually reach out and tangle itself in her hair. “Treed like a kitten,” she mumbled as she fiddled with the twig to try to free herself.

  “And now someone’s comin’,” Patrick called up from his lookout position on the ground below her.

  “Patrick Kensington I’m gonna have your hide for this!”

  “It’s a man, Lauryn and he’s gonna see you up in that tree!”

  “Not if you keep quiet and let him pass, he won’t. You hush your mouth and let him pass, you hear me Patrick?”

  “I hear you, Lauryn. I hear you.”

  Lauryn sighed and rolled her eyes, hoping the stranger would simply pass under the tree and be gone. What a sight she must be! So help her soul if Patrick ever threw another ball in that tree she’d let it, and him, rot up there before she’d fetch it for him.

  “Hey, there Mister,” Lauryn heard Patrick call out. “Where y’all headed?”

  Lauryn looked down through the dense leaves to see the outline of a man stop directly beneath the tree at her little brother’s prompting.

  “You little rat,” she whispered angrily. Could Patrick have just let the fellow walk on by? No! He had to stop him for a chat! That child couldn’t keep his mouth shut if his life depended on it.

  She couldn’t see the man clearly enough from her perch to identify him. However, when he spoke to her brother she felt her limbs weaken, her heart begin to race and it was nearly impossible to breathe. Brant!

  “Don’t you remember me, boy?” Brant asked Patrick.

  “Brant!” Patrick exclaimed. “Hey there, Lauryn!
” he shouted, looking up into the tree where Lauryn wanted to hide for the rest of her life. “It’s Brant! Come back to visit! Come on down! You’ve gotta see him! He’s all better it looks like!”

  Then, to Lauryn’s complete humiliation and horror, Brant Masterson stepped beneath the tree and looked up to where she was balanced above him. She couldn’t stop the gasp that escaped her at the sight of him…eyes healed and unbandaged and piercing through her own like sapphire bullets. A smile spread quickly across his fatally handsome face as he studied her from head to toe.

  So this was Lauryn, Brant thought to himself. He couldn’t help but smile, far beyond well pleased. She was wildly pretty. Like some small forest sprite or other creature from a fairytale. Her eyes twinkled with the possibility of mischief and her face was as soft and creamy as a dream. Her size and figure were more than merely pleasing in their proportions…and her hair…her long, nutmeg brown, ringletted hair was most assuredly her crowning glory. For the most part, she had it pulled back into some sort of loose braid. But most of it had escaped here and there, and hung enchantingly about her face and shoulders.

  In the best efforts of his imagination, Brant had never expected Lauryn to be so perfectly adorable! He would have to be careful on this trip to Connemara. If he was sure of nothing else, he was certain that this adorable brunette, could be far too distracting. Look how she’d dominated his thoughts when he was blind. No doubt, his sight restored, he’d find himself all the more tempted toward flirting, wooing and the like.

  “Come on down here and let me get a better look at you,” Brant chuckled.

  Lauryn was mortified! Her cheeks felt like smoldering embers as a deep blush caused her face to burn.

  “I…um…I…” she stammered. Her heart was beating so fiercely within her bosom that she could hardly breathe and she felt her hands, arms and legs begin to tremble.

  “She can’t come down. She’s stuck up there. That rats nest she calls hair is all tangled up,” Patrick blurted out.

  “I’m fine. I just caught my foot….” But as Brant removed his jacket handing it to Patrick and reached up to take hold of a lower limb, it was apparent he intended to climb up after her.

  “No, no, no!” Lauryn argued shaking her head at him and trying frantically to dislodge her foot and free the branch from her hair. “I’m fine. I’ll be right down.”

  Giving no care to pain or possible bleeding of the scalp, Lauryn fairly ripped her hair from the branch that entangled it and simultaneously almost broke her ankle as she tore her foot free from it’s trap. Brant, smiling, released his grasp on the tree and stood expectantly beneath her.

  “I…I’m comin’ down just now,” she muttered.

  “She’ll fall down,” Patrick told Brant. “She can never get down from that tree without almost breakin’ her neck.”

  And sure enough, whether it was her own clumsiness or Patrick’s curse upon her, Lauryn lost her footing and handhold. Tumbling headlong out of the tree, she knocked Brant down, landing exactly on top of him in the process.

  Lauryn’s breathing ceased for several moments. There he was! Brant Masterson! Smiling up at her, a delighted, amused smile, the cool sapphire of his eyes hypnotizing her. He was so close! She could feel the warmth of his body, feel his breath on her face.

  Lauryn Kensington had thought Brant Masterson to be intriguing, magnetic and overpoweringly attractive when most of his face was bandaged. But to see him now, his eyes revealed, his face unbruised and so perfect! He was like some mythical god of masculine beauty. Some unnatural creation of perfection in a man.

  Kiss me, she thought as he reached up and brushed her wild, nutmeg locks from her face. And she gasped audibly at the ridiculous statement of her own mind. But even as the right corner of his mouth twitched ever so slightly several times, Lauryn’s mind bordered on insanity again. Kiss me, Brant, and I’ll settle that twitch, she thought. What was the matter with her? Lauryn shook her head slightly trying to dispel the hex Brant had woven throughout her mind and body. It was only Brant that stood…rather, lay before her. Brant Masterson, her friend from the train.

  “Hello, Lauryn,” Brant greeted, grinning devilishly. “I surely didn’t expect to find you here.”

  “Well, we’re even then,” she tried to tease. “Because I certainly didn’t expect for you to find me here either.”

  As she awkwardly tried to stand since she’d never had to raise her self from lying atop a man before, Brant chuckled lightly.

  “Come on now,” he said, standing and helping her to her feet. “Let’s get a good look at you.”

  Lauryn felt ill. He wanted a good look at her? Well, it was the last thing she wanted. What a fright she must be. Her hair was no doubt, like some wild insane woman’s for she had only braided it loosely back to begin with. And to make matters worse, she’d been climbing about in the branches of a tree. She wondered, for a moment, if, perhaps, there was a huge, gaping, bleeding patch of her scalp showing as a result of her tearing her hair from the branch. Reaching up self-consciously, she was relieved to discover that she still possessed a full head of hair.

  To make matters worse, it was then that she realized she wore the least flattering set of clothes she owned. And beyond that…well, beyond that she did not want to face the look of disappointment on his face when he saw that she wasn’t nearly as lovely as she supposedly smelled.

  On the other hand, the light of the beautiful day continued to illuminate his appearance perfectly. And he was gorgeous. Gorgeous! It seemed like such a rather feminine word to be going through her mind she noted, and yet, it’s what he was. Absolutely gorgeous! More gorgeous than he had been a moment before.

  It was Patrick’s intrusive whining that brought Lauryn out of her mesmerized daydreaming. “Lauryn! You left the ball!”

  Patrick’s disturbance of the moment caused Lauryn’s discomfort and embarrassment over her situation to intensify and she dropped her gaze from Brant.

  “For pity’s sake, Patrick,” she began to scold. But Brant was up the tree before she could argue and returned in a matter of seconds having retrieved the ball.

  “There you are, boy,” Brant chuckled, trading the ball for his jacket and tousling the child’s hair. “You go on and leave your sister to me.”

  “Gladly, Brant,” Patrick sighed. “You can have her! She’s completely helpless!”

  “Now Patrick,” Brant scolded, teasingly. “You haven’t been giving your sister a rotten time of it since I’ve been gone, have you?”

  Patrick sneered, assuring Brant that he had. “Sorry, Lauryn,” the boy mumbled before turning and running off. “I’ll tell them up at Connemara that you’re here! Nana will bust her corset strings!”

  “Patrick!” Lauryn scolded, even thought she knew she was wasting her breath.

  Brant watched him go, then turned back to Lauryn. She felt like bursting into tears as an amused smile spread across his face again. “So,” he said studying her from head to toe. “This is Lauryn Kensington.”

  Lauryn winced as the breeze blew a stray strand of hair across her face momentarily. “Pretty disappointin’, I suppose.” He only smiled, an amused twinkle sparkling wildly in his gorgeous eyes.

  “Forgive me, my boy,” came a booming masculine voice from somewhere behind Lauryn. She turned from Brant to see the most adorable elderly man and woman walking toward them.

  “Brant, Honey!” the woman chimed. “I just had to have a wee whiff of those lovely lilacs back there! I just had to! I couldn’t pass up their heavenly beauty. Why, to do so would’ve been a sin. Just an utter sin!”

  “I know Auntie,” Brant chuckled as the charming couple approached. They walked with their arms linked together and the small woman placed her hands dramatically in Brant’s as the arrived.

  “And you know that I completely understand your love of nature, Auntie…but Lauryn here was treed like a raccoon and needed some assistance.” Gasping, the elderly woman turned her full attention on Lauryn.
>
  “Lauryn?” she breathed in an awed whisper! “So you’re Lauryn!”

  “Yes, Ma’am,” Lauryn muttered with a slight curtsy. The woman, obviously Brant’s aunt, smiled and brushed a stray strand of hair from Lauryn’s face.

  “Quite a beauty, that one, my boy,” the gentleman chuckled, winking at Brant. His blue eyes twinkled and his voice was raspy and gruff. Lauryn liked it.

  “I’m Felicity Jenson…Brant’s great-auntie! And this is his great-uncle Johnny…. and I tell you…when Brant said he was coming back to thank your family for all they’ve done for him… I just up and said, ‘Brant, Honey! I’m the one to go with you! Johnny and I! We’re the ones!” She giggled girlishly and added, “And here we am!”

  Brant’s Aunt Felicity was more beautiful than any queen. Her hair was pure white and perfectly smooth in it’s style. Her eyes were the same blue as Brant’s and she still had a natural pink in her cheeks. Lauryn could guess at her age, she being Brant’s great-aunt. Her hands were bony and frail-looking, but obviously capable, and she glided rather than walked.

  His Uncle Johnny was the classic example of an elderly gentleman. Thinning white hair, a kind, grandfatherly smile and a walking stick with a silver horse’s head on top. Lauryn was aware of her momentary pause as she realized they all three stood staring at her expectantly.

  “Oh!” she exclaimed in a whisper as she tried to gather her wits about her. “Well, we’re so glad to have you.” “All of you,” she added glancing quickly at Brant. “Mama will be beside herself with excitement.”

  “Is this Connemara, sweet thing?” Aunt Felicity asked looking past Lauryn to the house behind her. “I remember it looking quite differently.”

  “No. It’s just down a ways. Connemara house,” Lauryn answered as she moved past Brant signaling they should follow her. The quicker they arrived at Connemara, the quicker she could sneak away and freshen up! And, the less time Brant could stare at her with that unnerving amusement he wore on his incredibly attractive face.