A bucket of ashes

by P. B. Ryan

  “I mustn’t be,” she said, “or I would never tell you that the divorce has been granted.”

  “What?”

  “As of the nineteenth, I am a divorcée. Makes me feel rather deliciously decadent, actually.”

  “Don’t get used to the feeling, because I mean to make you a respectable married lady again as soon as you’ll have me.”

  She pulled away to study his face, as if to gauge his sincerity. His eyes were dark and earnest. Threading his fingers through her hair to tilt her face up to his, he said, “I want you to be my wife, Nell. I’ve wanted it for so long, and I... God, I thought I’d have to spend the rest of my life wanting you, needing you, but knowing I could never have you. I’ll do everything in my power to make you happy. I’ll give you the kind of life you want, the kind you deserve. I swear to God I’ll never touch a playing card again, or an opium pipe, or a morphine syringe.”

  “You don’t believe in God,” she said.

  “I don’t much care for religion. God is a different matter entirely. Gracie can come live with us, as she’s always wanted. I’ll sign that five-year contract to teach medical jurisprudence at Harvard.”

  “If you really wanted to teach, you would have been doing it all along,” she said.

  “You little nit. I love teaching, and I especially love the research—I just didn’t love the agony of being in Boston, where all I could think about was you and how I could never have you. I appreciate your skepticism, though. You’re not sure I’ve got what it takes to turn over a new leaf, and who could blame you? I know I have to prove myself to you, and I will. We can have as long an engagement as you like—two or three years, even longer if that’s what you need.”

  “Oh, I need it be quite a bit shorter than that,” Nell said, a smile quirking her mouth. “A month or two, at the most.”

  Will’s expression gradually transmuted from quizzical to stupefied. He lowered his gaze to her stomach, then looked up, his eyes huge.

  “I assumed it wasn’t possible,” she said. “That’s why I didn’t think we needed... you know. Precautions. But it would seem you’re right—I’m not quite so clever after—”

  He pulled her close and kissed her for so long, she thought her heart would explode from joy. “I am going to make you happy, Nell, as happy as you’ve just made me.” He kissed her forehead, her eyelids, temples, cheeks... “I’ll build a house for you—for all of us. A palace—one of those the Back Bay monstrosities.”

  Nuzzling his prickly jaw, she said, “I’m actually quite fond of your house on Acorn Street.”

  “Then we can live there,” he said between kisses. “But I want another house on the water somewhere, and a boat so I can take you out sailing, you and Gracie and the baby. Or sometimes just you and I.”

  “And we’ll drop anchor at night, and swim naked under the stars.”

  “And dream about the future.”

  “And then we’ll go home,” she whispered against his lips, “and make those dreams happen.”

  * * *

  From the Boston Advertiser, October 15, 1870

  A FELICITOUS WEDDING.

  DR. WILLIAM HEWITT MARRIED—Medal of Honor

  Recipient and Miss Sweeney United at King’s Chapel—President Grant Among the Distinguished and Fashionable Guests.

  Rev. Martin Hewitt Officiates

  The wedding of Miss CORNELIA SWEENEY and Dr. WILLIAM HEWITT, which took place yesterday afternoon at 1 o’clock at King’s Chapel, was one of the most notable events of the kind this season. It was a balmy autumn day, with bright sunshine, which was seen as an auspicious omen for the future happiness of the wedded pair.

  Miss SWEENEY was born in the village of Falcarragh in County Donegal, Ireland, and brought up from an early age in East Falmouth, Cape Cod, where her father worked in the shipping industry; her parents are sadly deceased. A young lady of particular grace and beauty, she made the acquaintance of Dr. Hewitt through his parents, Mr. and Mrs. AUGUST HEWITT of this city, for whom she served, until her marriage, as governess to their adopted daughter.

  Dr. HEWITT graduated from Oxford University before earning his medical degree at the University of Edinburgh. In 1861, he enlisted as an Army surgeon with the rank of major, distinguishing himself through extraordinary heroism at the Battle of Olustee before being captured by Confederate forces. He was held at the notorious Andersonville prison camp, from which he escaped in August of 1864. His most recent professional achievement is the establishment of a syllabus in medical jurisprudence at Harvard Medical School. It was for his service at Olustee that President Grant awarded him the Medal of Honor in a ceremony at City Hall Thursday morning. The groom was smartly attired for his nuptials in English morning dress with his Medal of Honor pinned to the breast of his coat at the request of the President.

  Miss GRACE ELIZABETH HEWITT, the 6-year-old child who has been the bride’s charge, will henceforth reside with Dr. and Mrs. HEWITT, due to her attachment to her governess and the physical limitations of the elder Mrs. HEWITT. In two weeks’ time, they shall all three, along with a small staff, board a private railroad car to San Francisco, where Dr. HEWITT will serve a yearlong guest professorship in forensic studies at the University of California’s Toland Medical College. Upon their return to this city next autumn, Dr. HEWITT will resume his position at Harvard Medical School.

  The church was decorated in the finest taste with baskets of flowers trailing a profusion of green creepers; the railings were likewise wreathed in beautiful flowers and vines. At noon, the carriages began to arrive, and the church to fill with ladies and gentlemen of the greatest elegance and distinction. In the second pew on the right sat President and Mrs. GRANT and Governor and Mrs. CLAFLIN, chatting together. Among the other close friends and family occupying the front pews were Mr. and Mrs. HARRY HEWITT; Mr. and Mrs. LEO THORPE; DENNIS DELANEY, aged 14, of Georgetown Preparatory Academy in Bethesda, Md.; Dr. CYRIL GREAVES of Cape Cod; Rev. JOHN J. TANNER of Harvard Divinity School; and his sister-in-law, Miss REBECCA BASSETT. Other guests included Mayor SHURTLEFF, along with numerous members of the Board of Aldermen and the Common Council; Mr. and Mrs. WILLIAM ASTOR of New York; Judge and MRS. HORACE BACON; Mr. and Mrs. ORVILLE PRATT; numerous colleagues and students of Dr. HEWITT’S from Harvard, including Dr. CALVIN ELLIS, Dean of the Medical School; and several members of the Hewitts’ household staff, who were invited at the request of the bride.

  Shortly after 1 o’clock, the bridal party arrived and Dr. HEWITT took his place at the altar with his best man, Dr. ISAAC FOSTER. First came the bridesmaids: Mrs. TANNER, Mrs. COOK, and the maid of honor, Miss EMILY PRATT, who is betrothed to Dr. FOSTER. The groomsmen were Boston Superintendent of Pawnbrokers EBENEZER SHUTE and State Detective COLIN COOK. Det. and Mrs. COOK recently welcomed a baby daughter, whom they named Cornelia after the bride.

  The bride, who entered on the arm of playwright MAXMILLIAN THURSTON, wore a gown of white satin and point lace with a court-train, a tulle veil secured by a wreath of orange flowers, and an exquisite diamond brooch in the shape of a sailboat, a gift of the bridegroom. She carried white roses and lilies of the valley. Miss GRACE HEWITT, in a dress of white silk illusion with blue satin piping and sash, a wreath of white rosebuds on her head, attended the bride as flower girl.

  The ceremony was performed by the bridegroom’s brother, the Rev. MARTIN HEWITT, who appeared toward its conclusion to be struggling with his emotions, as did the bridal couple themselves, the groom’s parents, and several others in attendance.

  At 3 o’clock Mr. and Mrs. AUGUST HEWITT gave a reception for their son and new daughter-in-law at their residence on the corner of Tremont and West Streets. The parlors were festooned with roses, wreaths, palms, and flowering plants; a canopy was erected in the garden, where a small orchestra played. The festivities were formally launched with a series of toasts to the bride and the bridal couple, with perhaps the most touching, judging from the tears it inspired, being that offered by Mr. AUGUST HEWITT. The jubi
lant bride drank from a cup that was the wedding gift of Dr. GREAVES, a heavy silver goblet inscribed with the enigmatic legend:

  To Higher Ground.

  ###

  Other Electronic Books by Patricia Ryan

  Nell Sweeney Historical Mysteries by Patricia Ryan writing as P.B. Ryan:

  Still Life With Murder

  Murder in a Mill Town

  Death on Beacon Hill

  Murder on Black Friday

  Murder in the North End

  Medieval Romances by Patricia Ryan:

  Falcon’s Fire

  Heaven’s Fire

  Secret Thunder

  Wild Wind

  Silken Threads

  The Sun and the Moon

  An extra-long EXCERPT

  from the opening of Book #1 of the series,

  STILL LIFE WITH MURDER

  by Patricia Ryan writing as P.B. Ryan

  Nominated for the Mary Higgins Clark Award

  September 1864

  Cape Cod, Massachusetts

  “It’s going to be a bad one.” Dr. Greaves said it so quietly that Nell, sitting across from him in the Hewitts’ glossy black brougham, almost didn’t hear him.

  Nell squeaked an end of her paisley shawl across the foggy side window. Trees writhed against a purpling sky as they rumbled past; raindrops spattered the glass. “The storm, do you mean? Or...” She eyed the flat mahogany surgical kit on the seat next to him, the cracked leather doctor’s satchel by his feet.

  “The delivery,” he said. “And the storm. Both.” Lightning fluttered across his face, making him look, for one jolting moment, strangely old. She’d never thought of him that way, despite being half his age. Cyril Greaves remained lean in his middle years, and was taking his time in turning gray. And then there were those benevolent eyes, that ready smile.

  He wasn’t smiling this evening.

  “There must be something terribly amiss for them to have sent that fellow to East Falmouth for me.” Dr. Greaves cocked his head toward the brougham’s front window, through which the Hewitts’ coachman, who’d introduced himself as Brady, was just visible as a smear of black hunched over the reins. “Families like the Hewitts don’t bother with physicians for mere chambermaids. Not for routine births, anyway. It’s only when disaster strikes that they fetch one, and by then it’s usually too late.”

  All too true. How Nell dreaded the difficult calls—especially when something went wrong with a birth.

  Crossing his arms, Dr. Greaves stared out at the passing countryside as it grew yet murkier and more turbulent. A white-hot rivulet crackled down from the heavens; thunder rattled the carriage. Nell turned to gaze out the other side window, thinking she might draw this landscape tomorrow if she wasn’t too tired after her chores. No, she’d paint it, on a sheet of Dr. Greaves’s best writing paper, in ink—great, bruising stains of it, black for the trees and a near-black wash for the sky.

  Brady halted his team at a massive iron gate, which was hauled open for them by two men in Macintoshes. Snapping the reins, he drove the brougham past a shingle-sided gatehouse and up a long, undulating roadway. Nell had all but decided this couldn’t possibly be the Hewitts’ estate; there was just too much of it. But then a pulse of lightning illuminated a building in the distance—a huge, sprawling edifice adorned with turrets and a hodgepodge of steep gambrel roofs.

  Her breath came out in an astonished little gust.

  Dr. Greaves smiled at last; she often made him smile, but rarely when she meant to. “They call this place Falconwood. The Hewitts spend about six weeks here every summer, usually mid-July to the end of August. I wonder why they’re still here.”

  “Six weeks? This...castle is for one family to live in for six weeks?”

  “The Hewitts call it a cottage,” he said, “but it’s got over twenty rooms. Those in back look out on Waquoit Bay. The boathouse is larger than most people’s homes.”

  Nell stared at the mansion as they neared it, at the scores of warmly lit windows, picturing the two-room hovel she’d shared with her entire family for the first eleven years of her life.

  Her expression must have reflected her thoughts. “Nell,” Dr. Greaves said softly. “You, of all people, should know that life isn’t fair. And yet, somehow, you always manage to muscle through. Most people follow the path wherever it leads them. Others hack their own way through the brush and always seem to end up on higher ground. You’re of the second sort.”

  The clattering of horses’ hooves drew her attention back to the house, which they were circling on a paved path. Like the gatehouse, it was sided in shingles that had weathered to a silvery gray.

  “The Hewitts have been summering on the Cape for about twenty years,” said Dr. Greaves as he gathered up his satchel and surgical kit. “Not the most fashionable vacation spot, but I understand they like the solitude. Their main house is in Boston, on a Brahmin enclave they call Colonnade Row—that’s a section of Tremont Street built up with mansions that make Falconwood look like a gardener’s shed.”

  “Brahmin?”

  “The first families of Boston—the venerable old bluebloods.” Dr. Greaves answered even the most uninformed query without smirking or seeming surprised at one’s ignorance. Nell had learned a lifetime’s worth in her four years with him. “They tend to worship at the altar of high culture, and August Hewitt is no exception, though he’s unusually sanctimonious for that breed. The wife’s English, I think—Violet. No, Viola. There are some sons. The local girls would swoon for days whenever one of them showed up in town. They haven’t been round the past few summers—except for the youngest. I see him at church every Sunday, along with his father. Perhaps the rest are off fighting Johnny Reb.”

  The carriage shuddered to a stop on a flagstone court behind the house, near an attached leaded-glass greenhouse with a domed roof. Passing the reins to a waiting groom, Brady unfurled the biggest black umbrella Nell had ever seen, opened the brougham’s door and handed her down. “I’d best be takin’ you folks in through the greenhouse,” he said in a wheezy Irish brogue, raising his voice to be heard over the drumming rain. “The drive’s flooded out up ahead. Watch that puddle, miss.”

  Taking a lantern from the brougham, the coachman gestured them toward an imposing arched entryway. Nell followed him through the unlit greenhouse, which she’d expected to be filled with plants, but which instead housed...

  Paintings? She gawked as she wove through a forest of canvases propped on easels, each executed in loose, vibrant brush strokes. Some were seascapes featuring picturesque Waquoit Bay, and there were one or two still lifes, but most were of people—not posing formally, but lounging in opulent surroundings, exquisitely attired; jewels glinted, silks shimmered. They materialized out of the darkness, these sublime apparitions, only to dissolve back into it as the coachman’s lantern swung past. The lamplight shifted and swayed just enough to make it seem as if they were inclining their heads ever so slightly toward Nell, eyes alight, mildly curious, before looking away.

  The women dazzled, but it was the young men whom Nell found most arresting. There were perhaps three who had been painted repeatedly, golden creatures with luminous skin and expressions of languid ease. A particularly large canvas, which stood half-finished near the back wall, depicted two of them. One, an adolescent with hair the color of champagne and quiet, watchful eyes, sat tucked into one end of a maroon settee, while his brother—for surely these were two of the Hewitt sons—sprawled in elegant repose across the other. This older one’s hair was a slightly darker blond, his smile more careless. Collar loose, tie undone, he had both arms draped across the back of the settee, a brandy snifter cupped lightly in one hand.

  On a folding table nearby sat a palette crusted with dried oil paints, a jar of brushes, a wadded-up rag; some preliminary sketches were tacked to the easel’s crossbar. Nell detected only the faintest whiff of linseed oil and turpentine; she would have expected the smell to be stronger.

  “That’s the on
e I see at church.” Dr. Greaves pointed to the younger brother.

  “Aye, that’s young Master Martin. He’s right pious.” Gesturing them through a multipaned door into the house, Brady winked at Nell and whispered, “For an Episcopalian.”

  Nell winked back. She didn’t think she looked particularly Irish, but those from the old country always knew.

  “I’m to hand you over to Mrs. Mott, the housekeeper,” the coachman said as he led them into a dim, cavernous kitchen, where he pulled a bell cord. Cocking his head toward a lamplit hallway, he said, “They’ve got Annie down there in the cook’s room. That’s Annie McIntyre, the girl what’s havin’ the baby. She sleeps up on the top floor, ordinarily, with the rest of the maids. But when her time come, Mrs. Hewitt, she said to put her down here where it’s more cozy and private-like.”

  There materialized before them an old woman who looked to have been rendered in hard pencil on smooth vellum, so devoid of color was she: pale bespectacled face, scraped-back gray hair, unadorned black dress with a heavily laden key ring dangling from her belt, hands like carved bone clasped at her waist.

  “Evenin’, Mrs. Mott,” Brady said. “I’m to go fetch Father Donnelly now. When you’re ready for me to take you back, Doc, just—”

  “We’ll find you, Brady. Thank you.”

  “This way.” Mrs. Mott turned and led them down a hallway, at the end of which slumped a young woman in a black dress with white collar, cuffs and apron. Red hair frizzed out from beneath her cap—not just a rusty brown, like Nell’s, but a smoldering, red-hot red. She eyed them while gnawing on a thumbnail.