Dr. Garrick closed his eyes for a moment as if he, too, were praying for courage. The sternness faded from his features, replaced by a look of profound discouragement.
“We must be patient, Miss Tate. Jonathan—” He corrected himself. “Mr. Nashe does not take well to change. I should have prepared you for that fact.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“Simply wait. I will have a word with him tonight.” When Dr. Garrick stood, Isabelle followed his example. “And now if you will excuse me. I’m afraid there will be cause for consternation if I am late.”
“Thank you for speaking with me, sir.”
The doctor studied her as if trying to come to a decision. When he finally spoke, he gave the impression of having considered his words with the utmost care.
“He is like a son to me, Miss Tate. And though he may be difficult at times, our trouble on his behalf is nothing compared to the troubles he has endured.” He paused to emphasize his words, then added, “I hope you will keep that in mind.”
His tone of voice convinced Isabelle that the doctor had not made a request, but had issued a warning. “Yes, sir. Of course.”
Dr. Garrick inclined his head politely. “Good evening, Miss Tate.”
She watched him go, then sat once more, needing to review their conversation to be certain she hadn’t misconstrued some vital piece of information. In the distance, the rosy hues of sunset had faded to gray. As the light diminished, the rubble of the burnt out western wing grew darker, until it seemed to rise up out of the earth like a waking beast.
Why, she wondered, had the ruin never been reclaimed? Or at least cleared away. It sat there like a monument to the hidden misery of the place. She thought of her own hidden misery, the shame that remained with her as persistently as the forbidding pile of charred stone and timber remained a part of Nashe House.
Perhaps misery attracts misery, she thought. Perhaps by some hand of fate we are drawn to places and people who strike the same chords within our own being.
Isabelle sighed. From the beginning, her life had been composed in a minor key. She had to ask herself, what part in the sad symphony of this place would she play?
* * *
Garrick did little justice to Cook’s efforts that night. By the time he and Jonathan retired to the smoking room, the tension between them had mounted unbearably.
“We need to talk,” Jonathan said, when Garrick waved away the offered humidor. He meant to take the advantage by having the first word. Too often of late he’d felt the need to defend himself to his friend.
“Yes.” Garrick nodded his agreement, then proceeded to destroy any advantage Jonathan had presumed. “Miss Tate just offered me her resignation.”
Jonathan stared at him, his undamaged eye blinking rapidly.
“Good!” The word erupted as an exclamation of relief, rather than the expression of cool satisfaction he’d meant to convey. He attempted to cover his indiscretion by feigning indifference. “Then I am saved the bother of dismissing her.”
“I refused her offer.” Richard leaned forward in his chair. “Unless I hear a convincing reason, I mean to hold you both to the contract.”
“Fine! Pay her the year’s wages. Then get rid of her.”
“Why, for God’s sake? Give me one good reason.”
Halfway rising from his seat, Jonathan flung the truth at his friend. “She’s a woman!”
He fell back, dropping heavily onto the cushion. “What were you thinking?” His voice lacked the force needed to turn the question into an accusation.
“What of Cook? And Nellie? You haven’t turned them out because they’re women.”
“That’s different.”
“How so?”
Jonathan left his chair and walked to the window, standing with his back to Richard while he considered his reply.
“They run the household with a minimum of supervision. I rarely have to speak to them.” He studied the deep burgundy folds of the drapery. “But a secretary requires a more—” He barely stopped himself in time. He had almost said intimate. “A closer communication.”
“I have understood all along that you must, of necessity, occasionally speak to the individual who acts as your scribe.”
Richard’s displeasure hurt; his sarcasm added salt to the wound.
“But—in the same room?” With a woman. “In the same room, Richard?”
With a beautiful woman. And he a monster. What was so damnably difficult about understanding the catastrophe inherent in such a situation?
Jonathan flinched when Richard’s hand came to rest on his shoulder. The thick carpet had deadened his footsteps, rendering his sudden closeness a surprise.
“Jonathan. Look at me.”
Reluctantly, he did so.
“I promised Simonne,” Richard began.
“You are not playing fairly.”
“On her deathbed.”
Jonathan frowned, silently cursing the scars that robbed his features of expression. “Completely unfairly.”
“I promised her I would look after you as I would my own son.”
“I absolve you in this instance.”
“What sort of father would I be to abdicate my responsibility?”
Jonathan shook his head. He had no answer, especially now that Richard had summoned his mother’s memory to reinforce his argument. He was outnumbered, two to one.
“It’s unhealthy to shut yourself away from human contact.”
“I see you.” It was a faint objection, one he knew Richard would ignore.
“And I cannot allow you to lose the use of your hand. Especially when it is for no better reason than sheer stubbornness on your part.”
“It is not out of stubbornness.”
Richard had defeated him. Instead of arguing from logic, he was reduced to uttering a weak echo of the doctor’s words.
“I’m not asking you to change overnight. I’m simply asking that you begin to make an effort.”
“But how?” He felt a rising panic and knew Richard must hear it in his voice. “What do I do?”
Richard sighed and shook his head. Jonathan was beginning to think he looked ready to admit his inability to answer the question, when Richard pulled him into a hug.
It was something his real father would never have done. Cornelius disapproved of displays of affection. The memory made Jonathan feel like a child once more, and suddenly brought home how much he had been missing simple physical contact with another human being.
“Now promise me you’ll make an effort,” Richard said, stepping back.
Jonathan looked at him doubtfully. “Or you shall give me no peace in the matter.”
“Promise.”
Jonathan answered with a slight nod. He had never given Richard reason to doubt his veracity, but now his friend studied him carefully, as though considering whether he possessed the strength of character to fulfill his promise. Jonathan knew exactly what he was thinking. The knowledge compelled him to voice those thoughts, rather than suffer Richard’s silent judgment.
“I’m a coward.”
“No—”
“Don’t deny what we both know to be true.”
Richard put his hand on Jonathan’s shoulder. “You are worn down by your burdens. Tired, not cowardly.”
Jonathan shook his head. He didn’t argue the point. Was it because he was too tired, or too cowardly?
“And besides, you have nothing to fear from Miss Tate.”
“How do you know?”
Richard patted his shoulder a couple of times before letting his hand drop. Jonathan knew he meant it as encouragement, but chose to take it as cavalier ignorance and set his mind against anything Richard was about to say.
“She is worn down by her burdens as well.”
Jonathan leaned his head to one side, questioning Richard’s meaning. Intrigued in spite of himself. “Really?”
“Poverty weighs on a person. The uncertainty of Miss Tate’s situati
on guarantees her gratitude for your employ—and more importantly, her discretion.”
“Gratitude won’t prevent her revulsion.”
“You don’t hold a monopoly on suffering, Jonathan. The difference between the two of you is that her scars are not visible.”
Richard’s sudden sternness surprised him. “I never claimed . . . ”
He stopped, hearing how he defended himself. Again. “What reason did she give for her resignation?”
He remembered her dancing alone in the garden. She had seemed happy enough then. He had been happy enough to watch her, until he saw her face.
Richard accepted the change of direction with good grace. “She said it was apparent that you were dissatisfied with her presence here, judging from the fact that you had failed to give her any duties.”
“I commend her for her perspicacity.”
“You would do better to provide her with work.”
Jonathan walked around Richard and took his seat once more. He braced his elbows against his knees and rested his forehead in his hands, his fingers splayed across his skull. The temptation to give in to his despair prompted him to agree with Richard.
“You are right, of course.” He lifted his head and attempted a smile. “May we leave off this subject now? I would hate to let it ruin our evening together.”
For the briefest moment, Richard looked unbearably sad. Then he rallied and smiled warmly.
“Forgive me for being so hard on you, my boy.” He gestured toward the humidor. “I think I will have one of those cigars now.”
Jonathan was already lifting the lid and holding it toward him, relieved to reestablish one of the cherished rituals of their friendship. Richard was his dearest, his only friend. He regretted that, even briefly, he had allowed this stranger—this woman—to come between them.
* * *
Isabelle sat in front of the mirror on her dressing table, plaiting her hair in a single, long braid in preparation for bed. It felt odd to know that somewhere in this vast house, two men who were strangers to her were deciding her future.
But wasn’t that the way of things? Weren’t men always deciding for women? The only difference between her and most other women was that she had even fewer choices.
Isabelle looked around her, still unable to believe she was allowed to stay in a room that would have made a fairy tale princess happy. She had known from the beginning that the enchantment was too good to last. But she’d had no idea it might end this quickly.
She tied a ribbon at the end of her braid, then walked aimlessly to the window and looked out. A full moon shone down from the clear night sky, bright enough to cast shadows. Its light lent a pearlized glow to the landscape, suffusing the scene with an otherworldly beauty.
Her sense of propriety told her she should move away from the window. Standing there in full view, wearing only her nightgown, anyone might call her a brazen hussy.
But honestly, she had been called worse. And beside, who was there to see her? She remembered hearing Dr. Garrick’s carriage pull away only moments before. The other servants would be in bed by now. And Mr. Nashe never left the house. She could stand naked in front of the window and no one would see.
That was something she had come to appreciate about this place, the isolation. In the city, people were always staring at you, judging you by the quality of your clothes, by how pretty you were. Or by how you were not. Their eyes pierced her like arrows.
When she was younger, she couldn’t understand how people were able to bear such scrutiny from their neighbors, and without seeming to mind. Gradually, she came to realize that others did not possess her sensitivity. While she could read a person’s character by looking into his eyes, the general population were apparently illiterate in this respect.
Something moving in the garden below caught Isabelle’s attention. A shape glided across the lawn, looking at first like a shadow, then recognizable as the figure of a man. He wore a long cloak, like an opera goer, and a broad brimmed hat pulled low around his face.
She thought it might be Roger, then remembered he was driving Dr. Garrick’s carriage. The figure was too tall to be Will. And it had probably been decades since Joe moved with such speed.
She gasped with the sudden realization. It was him.
The figure veered diagonally across the lawn, heading for the ruins. Isabelle rested her fingertips against the glass, straining to peer through the shadows where he had disappeared. Then she remembered the adjoining bathroom. Its window faced west, in the direction of the ruins.
Isabelle whirled around, in her haste getting tangled in the curtains. She fought her way free and ran headlong for the next room, arriving in time to see his cloak billowing out behind him as he continued on a determined path through the rubble. He picked his way past the piles of stone and debris without hesitation, as though he knew the route well. Before she could fix the direction in her memory, he vanished completely, swallowed up by the night.
Isabelle stared after him until the chill in the room and the cold marble beneath her bare feet made themselves felt. Shivering, she returned to her bedroom, turned down the lamp, and slid beneath the bedcovers. Sleep would be a long time coming.
Chapter Ten
Why do you stand there, watching for her?
Jonathan gripped the window ledge. “Leave me be.”
His visit to the mausoleum had been a mistake.
It had seemed a good idea at the time. After Richard took his leave, the house began to close around him, crowding in on him until he felt it would crush him. He fled outdoors, where the night promised a freedom he could never know in the light of day. Where a monster could roam unrestrained, cloaked in darkness.
He set his course for the graveyard, where his parents were laid to rest. He’d hoped to find some comfort there, the promise that one day he, too, would be freed from this miserable life. What he found instead was anger, the emotion as raw and fresh as the day his mother died.
Why? Why had death taken her and not him? Even Cornelius’s black soul seemed to mock him, chastising him for clinging to life when by all rights he should have been the first to die.
He returned before dawn, unable even then to sleep. And now, this presence at his back, a familiar enemy. His temptress.
You want me. You know you do.
The voice sounded too real to be a manifestation of his tormented imagination.
I am the only one who can comfort you.
The symptoms were all too familiar. Sleeplessness. An inability to concentrate. Agitation. But most of all, the wanting.
He wondered, if he turned to look, would she be there? He had dreamed her so many times, he half believed her to be real. Jezebel, her kohl rimmed eyes alight with glee at his suffering, her lips red with the blood of sacrificed infants. She wanted to taste his blood as well. To consume him entire.
A clammy sweat beaded on his forehead. Inside his pocket, the key felt deliciously cool to his touch.
Jonathan rested his forehead against the window glass, the craving so strong, his groin tightened with it. His temptress mocked him this way, scorning his monkish existence, promising to relieve him of desires that could never be fulfilled.
Outside, a movement caught his eye. Jonathan pulled back from the window, sucking a sharp breath between his teeth.
Damnation. It was her.
He didn’t want to look, but couldn’t help himself. She fascinated him, the cautious way she moved, as wary as a frightened rabbit. A wild creature taking no ease in her surroundings, as if at any moment she expected the hounds to be loosed against her.
But no, he was painting her with false strokes, dipping the brush into his own feelings to color his vague sketch of her with familiar hues.
The woman disappeared into the rose garden before he had time to realize her intent. Jonathan pounded against the window frame, too late.
She had no business in his mother’s garden, she didn’t belong there. If that woman touched a
petal—even so much as a thorn—he would throw her out, and Richard be damned.
The roses had been special to his mother. She chose each variety herself and taught him all their names. The place was more than a garden, it was a sacred shrine to his mother’s memory. Certainly it contained more of her spirit than the dank mausoleum where her bones rested.
Jonathan turned away from the window, his feet seeming to move of their own accord. They took him across the room, where he stood in front of his own shrine, one that—unlike the garden—was far from sacred. His hand closed around the cold metal in his pocket. As he lifted the key toward the cupboard, he couldn’t help but smile at how easily, after all this time, it fit into the lock.
* * *
The back of her neck prickled with awareness, of what she couldn’t say. Isabelle ducked inside the shelter of the yew hedge to get away from the feeling, making her way toward the corner where she had discovered a bench with a perfect view of her sanctuary.
The rose bushes stood arrayed like skeletons, all twigs and thorns. Though it was too early for them to bear blossoms, Isabelle could tell the plants were well tended. Joe had trimmed back the dead wood and raked the beds, covering the ground surrounding the rose plants with a rich black compost.
She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply. The air here carried the faint scent of roses, as if the ghosts of past blooms hovered unseen. Something, a leaf or branch, rustled in the gentle breeze, sounding like the whisper of silk skirts.
What sort of woman was Mrs. Cornelius Nashe? Isabelle wondered. Had she ever visited this garden? When she tried to imagine the scene, a picture began to form in her mind: a tall, graceful woman making her way through the garden, stopping at each plant, bending to smell a rose, snipping off a blossom here and there to fill the basket she carried looped over her arm.
Isabelle opened her eyes. The vision had seemed so real, she could almost believe the woman would appear at any moment. She laughed uneasily. She wasn’t normally given to fancy.
One thing here was very real, however, the profound sense of peace. It was a commodity sorely lacking in her own life. She wanted to stay in this garden forever and bask in its serenity.
A Bed of Thorns and Roses Page 6