The Passion of the Purple Plumeria

by Lauren Willig

  She had seen him leave, seen him make his way out among the garden paths. Now she paused on the final terrace, surveying the seemingly endless miles of carefully engineered botanical illusion, fighting her own desire to turn back around, to march back into the house, plunk firmly down on her chair, settle a pair of pince-nez on her nose, and stick her nose in the air, secure in the knowledge that a mission was a mission and if William Reid couldn’t understand the importance of what she was doing, what she had done, then he wasn’t worth seeking out and it was his loss anyway.

  So there.

  She had grown very good at turning up her nose over the years. She snapped and snipped and snarled, keeping the softer emotions at bay, scaring away anyone who might have the temerity to attempt to treat her with affection. But that rogue of a Reid had slipped under her guard, and she couldn’t, wouldn’t, leave without setting things right.

  She cared what he thought of her.

  It was a horrifying thing, but there it was. His good opinion mattered to her. The scorn on his face down by the gate had abraded her like a cloak of nettles, scouring her raw.

  Gwen took a cautious step down, then another, her boots crunching on gravel. The boots didn’t go with the gown, but Henrietta’s slippers were the wrong size for her, too small, so her boots it was, incongruous under the satin and lace, rather like herself, mutton dressed as lamb in a dress more fit for a debutante. She yearned for the armor of a high collar and a well-boned bodice, a fan, even one without an attached stiletto. Anything to form a barrier between herself and the world, and something decidedly more substantial than the flimsy shawl that rode low between her elbows, more ornament than warmth.

  A stone lion snarled at her from the one side. On the other, a unicorn lowered its horn to her feet. There were rabbits everywhere, disporting themselves among the carefully clipped yew hedges, frozen forever in marble in the imitation of movement. The gravel beneath her feet glimmered like pearls in the moonlight, marred only by the shadowy shapes of the topiary on either side.

  She wove her way past dancing nymphs and leering satyrs. The house, with its lights, its conversation, felt very far away. She had no idea what she would say to William when she found him. She only knew she had come too far to turn back.

  She saw him, at last, in a summerhouse posing as a Roman temple, a round structure with a domed top and carefully scaled columns circling all around. It was the sort of summerhouse that demanded a lake, but no one had ever bothered to build one.

  There was a small flight of steps leading up, bounded by the bare stalks of rosebushes, pruned down for winter. William stood by the railing, his elbows on the ledge, his shoulders bowed, looking out over the acres of garden.

  It was, Gwen realized, a rather pretty inversion, the prince in the tower, the lady clambering up the path below. It was steeper than it looked; the folly stood on its own rise. Stones slid and crunched beneath her half boots.

  William turned, sharply. When he saw her, he straightened as if to leave.

  “Don’t go,” she said quickly. “I’ll be right up.”

  Gwen struggled up the final few steps, her gown tangling around her ankles like vines. The ridiculous gossamer shawl straggled from her elbows, catching on a thorn. In the summer, the temple would be banded by bank upon bank of fragrant roses. Now there were only thorns.

  “It’s more of a climb than it looks,” she said tartly, plucking a thorn from her borrowed shawl.

  William had stayed—that was true—but only in the most literal sense. His expression was removed, remote. All the liveliness that usually animated it was gone. He looked at her as though she were a not very interesting species of bug on a naturalist’s table.

  Fighting against a rising sense of panic, Gwen joined him by the curve of the balustrade, resting her elbows on the pitted stone. Up close, it wasn’t marble, but a coarser substance, worn down by the English weather.

  “There ought to be a lake here,” she said. “With swans.”

  William didn’t reply. To be fair, it wasn’t necessarily a comment that demanded a response, but she had never before known him to resist the chance to remark on anything, however trivial.

  Gwen fidgeted with her borrowed shawl, drawing it closer around her shoulders and letting it drop again. William’s continued silence made her twitchy. It would have been easier if he had stormed off down the hill; then she might have stomped down after him, demanding explanations, berating him for turning his back on a lady, whatever came to mind.

  It felt very quiet without William talking. She had never realized before how much she had relied upon him to keep their conversations going, to bounce her witticisms back to her and coax her out of her self-indulgent tempers. He had dealt with her sulks, her storms, her snits, but she hadn’t the slightest notion of how to respond to his silence.

  An animal rustled in the underbrush. Somewhere nearby, a bird squawked, an unlovely, unromantic sound. But William might have been carved from marble.

  Gwen slammed the balustrade with the flat of her hand. Her palm stung with it, but her temper stung more. “For the love of God,” she cried, “why won’t you speak?”

  Very slowly, William turned to face her. “What do you want me to say?”

  He didn’t sound angry, just immensely weary. Anger might have been easier to counter. One could return anger shout for shout.

  She wanted—

  Oh, blast it all. She didn’t know what she wanted. She wanted to go back before yesterday. She wanted him to smile at her again. She wanted him to storm at her so that she could storm back.

  There were half a dozen things she might have said, but the one that came out was, “I didn’t sleep with you for information.”

  William raised his brows. “I suppose it was for my handsome face, then,” he said.

  “No,” Gwen shot back. “For your glib tongue, more like.”

  It was only once the words were out of her mouth that she realized that there were many ways that could be interpreted, none of them good.

  “Not like that. I didn’t mean it like that.” She tried again, lifting her head haughtily. “If I’d wanted information from you, I would have had it.”

  Somehow, that didn’t sound much better.

  “I’m very good at what I do, you know,” she said shrilly.

  William rubbed the side of his hand against his eyes. “Is your name even Gwen Meadows?” he asked wearily. “Or is that just more fustian?”

  That inn in Bristol felt a thousand years ago, a tale told by another person, but even that small reference to their shared past felt like encouragement.

  “Only the Fustian was fustian,” Gwen said eagerly. She leaned towards him, the words pouring out of her like water from a dam, “I was christened Gwendolyn Meadows; I’ve spent most of my life in Shropshire; I was hired as chaperone for my neighbor’s daughter. Ask me anything you want to know and I’ll tell you. As long as it’s mine to tell.”

  William’s voice was carefully neutral. “There’s much that isn’t, I imagine.”

  “I’ve kept all kinds of secrets.” Some of them hardly worth keeping, others a matter of life and death. She tried to catch his eye, to make him understand. “A slip of the tongue and a life might be forfeit for it. I’ve learned to keep my own counsel. There’s no other way.”

  She remembered Jane, the other night, berating her for treating it all like a game. A game, maybe, but a very dangerous one. She’d grown used to it, the prevarications, the lies. It was all easy to justify when one was in the midst of it.

  It was only when one stepped away that one realized the loneliness of it.

  She’d thought that s
hared dangers created shared camaraderie; Jane had shown her the falsehood in that. They were strangers even to each other.

  “How long have you been . . . a spy?” William pronounced the word with difficulty.

  Gwen seized it as the olive branch it was. “Just over two years now.” It seemed vitally important to make him understand, to make him understand she had a reason for doing as she’d done, that it wasn’t wanton or careless. “I had a chance to go to France as chaperone to a neighbor’s daughter, and it just . . . happened.”

  William raised his brows. “I hadn’t realized you could catch spying like the measles.”

  That was more like himself again. Gwen took heart. “Not precisely, but the opportunity arose. I would have done anything rather than go back to my brother’s house. In Paris, I was free.” At least, she had felt free, in comparison with Shropshire. “No relations carping at me, reminding me that I was dependent on them for every mouthful of bread I ate, just waiting for me to—to commit some indiscretion.”

  “If it was that bad,” said William, still in that noncommittal tone, “why not just leave?”

  Gwen looked at him, her lips pressing together. It would be easy to make some excuse, to dodge the truth. She’d made a habit of silence, relentlessly protecting her secrets.

  But of all the secrets she couldn’t tell, this was the only one that was truly hers to share. She owed William that much. However painful it might be.

  “I had no money. And I couldn’t expect anyone to marry me, not after— I made a terrible mistake a very long time ago. I was disinherited for it.” In a rush, before she could think better of it, Gwen said, “I had a child. Out of wedlock. There. Now you can jeer and mock and what you will.”

  She felt more naked than she had the other night in that storeroom, with her skirts hiked to her knees and her bodice falling from her shoulders. She was stripped bare, all of her weakness exposed.

  She raised her head, gathering the shreds of her pride around her, waiting for the inevitable expression of censure.

  There was nothing but sympathy on William’s face. “Would you truly expect me to condemn you for a child out of wedlock? I’ve three of my own such.” He put out a hand, resting it on the balustrade beside her, not touching her, but there. Just there. “What happened?”

  Gwen shook her head wordlessly, her neck bent, staring at his hand, the fingers relaxed on the stone, strong and steady. It felt almost indecent to air the story of her youthful idiocy; she had kept it decently shrouded for so long. Her throat closed around the words.

  “Do you really want to hear the full tale of my folly?” Gwen was embarrassed to hear how her voice shook. She tried to make a joke of it. “I could say I was young and stupid, but I was old enough to have known better. Four and twenty.”

  Just about Jane’s age.

  William’s voice was soft and musical. “You don’t have to tell me if you don’t care to—but I’d like to hear it if you do.”

  Gwen took a deep breath, looking out over the fantastical topiary, the moon-washed paths. “His name was Timothy Fitzgerald.”

  The name felt strange on her lips. For years, it had been forbidden in her father’s and then her brother’s house, the silence speaking louder than words. Now, in the vastness of the Darlington gardens, it was reduced to what it was, just a name and not a particularly distinctive one.

  Gwen cleared her throat. “He claimed to be the grandson of an Irish earl. Whether he really was or not, I don’t know, but whatever he was, he had a way about him.” She turned her head to look at the man next to her. “You put me in mind of him when I first met you.”

  William shifted on his feet, positioning himself more comfortably. “I’m guessing that’s not intended as a compliment.”

  “You don’t anymore,” she said gruffly. She dared a quick glance at him. “Not now that I know you better.”

  William didn’t say anything, but his hand covered hers and stayed there.

  Gwen let the warmth of it seep into her, taking strength from the gesture. “My father told me he’d sooner cut me off without a shilling than see me married to an upstart Irish fortune hunter. I assumed he was bluffing. He had never denied me anything before.”

  She had been the spoiled darling of an indulgent parent. Her brother was the butt of their jokes, the object of their wit, but she—she could do no wrong. Until Tim. It had never occurred to her that she wouldn’t be able to wear him down. She had blithely flouted his wishes, meeting with Tim in barns, in inns, in the disused attics of their own house.

  “He wasn’t bluffing?” William said gently.

  “He was right, on all counts, but I was too stubborn to see it. I told Tim what my father had said. Tim said”—even now, even twenty years on, the memory made her shrivel inside, at her own fatuous credulity—“Tim said he had friends in high places, he just needed some time to muster them on our behalf. He’d be back in two weeks and then we could be married.”

  She’d gone around the village with her head high, wearing the secret of their engagement like a gaudy cloak.

  “He didn’t come back, did he?” William’s hand tightened around hers. He said, conversationally, “Is it wrong to want to punch a man for something he did twenty years ago?”

  “The two weeks passed, then a month, then two.” Gwen stared woodenly ahead of her, seeing, not boxwood and marble, but the walls of her old bedroom, the flowered hangings on the windows. “And I found I was with child.”

  She had been so lonely those long, awful months. So scared. Her brother had just married. She remembered her sister-in-law’s titters and sideways glances, her father’s rage, her brother’s smug delight.

  Gwen stared straight ahead, out over the bushes. “Even then I was stupid. My family spirited me away to an elderly cousin on the Isle of Wight. I was to be a young widow, and the baby taken away as soon as it was born.”

  William’s arm curved around her shoulders, offering her the support Tim hadn’t. “I can’t see you submitting to that.”

  “No.” Her voice broke on the word. “It was easy enough to escape. They hadn’t thought I would try. I had more than enough money—my father had never kept me short of coin. I made my way to Tim’s old lodgings and was told he could be found at a place called Hadley Hall, in Hereford. It had been,” she added, with clinical detachment, “seven months since I had last seen him.”

  “What happened?” Gwen could feel the flat of his hand on her back, moving in slow, soothing circles.

  She was dimly aware that she didn’t deserve this sympathy, but she was in the grip of the past. The images, so long denied, rolled over her. She could see it as if it were happening now, the pretty brick house with the white woodwork, an open carriage harnessed and ready before the house, with lap rugs and hot bricks in plenty.

  It had been winter. There had been frost on the ground, nipping her cheeks, making her nose drip, her belly heavy and uncomfortable beneath her shawl. She had climbed the stairs awkwardly, and then, just before she reached the top, the door had opened.

  “I arrived just as they were going out for a drive. The maid opened the door, and there they were, the two of them, Tim all smiles, with his arm around her waist. She was wearing figured brocade. Blue.”

  Not that it mattered now, but the details were engraved on her brain, like a print from a morality tale. Blue, and her blond hair in long curls. Her face was plain, but that didn’t matter. The sapphires around her neck more than made up for any defect of countenance.

  Gwen
looked up at William, all the anguish of memory in her eyes. “It was his wife. They had married three months before.” Her hands clenched into fists at her sides, the nails biting into her palms. “Married while I was waiting for him to come and take me away, more fool I.”

  “What of the child?”

  The sympathy in William’s eyes nearly undid her. Gwen looked away. “The child came early.” With a macabre attempt at humor, she said, “Falling down the steps probably didn’t help.”

  She could still remember the feeling of falling, her foot slipping on the step, her clumsy body bearing her backwards, arms flailing, the world circling past her, and Tim, Tim, just standing there, standing at the top of the steps, making no move to help her. She had landed with a jolt that had jarred her to the bone. Jarred her to the bone and jarred Tim’s baby from her womb.

  Not at once, of course. The pains had started hours after. She had scarcely felt them. What was physical pain compared to the agony of the soul? She had vowed never to expose herself to such pain again.

  William drew her against his side, making a comfortable place for her head against his shoulder. “Did he acknowledge you?”

  “Are you mad?” Gwen’s laughter had a wild edge to it. “He told her I was a cousin, a poor cousin, on my own in the world. I don’t know if she believed him.”

  His cheek touched her temple. “He must have led her a merry dance.”

  “I had a lucky escape. I know,” she said flatly. She had been told so time and again. “But my pride stung all the same.”

  She could feel his breath against her hair. “Better your pride than your heart.”

  “No,” said Gwen, and pulled away, nearly bumping him on the nose. “Don’t you think I haven’t thought that myself? But it’s wrong, all wrong.”

  She had spent all these years atoning. And for what? For nothing. For less than nothing. For a man who hadn’t been worth it in the first place. She had confused infatuation with affection and spent twenty years paying the price.