But hers had been a merely physical pain. He wanted her to taste the bitter emotions he felt—even now—at the memory of her judgmental stare. At the shame of being exposed as a monster.
Know your enemy, Cornelius had always preached. Advice which, in this instance at least, should perhaps be heeded.
With that thought in mind, Jonathan reluctantly retrieved the letter and carried it to his desk. After smoothing the wrinkled paper with the flat of his hand, he slipped a letter knife beneath the flap and broke the seal, then withdrew a single sheet of paper covered in neat cursive.
She plied a pen to graceful effect. But what of it? Cornelius had been right. Crediting her qualities, however insignificant they might be, was exactly the sort of spontaneous generosity he should despise in himself.
He set aside all sympathetic feeling and began to read.
Sir,
I pray you will have the mercy to read this letter.
Her first sentence angered him so, he almost tossed the letter away again. Mercy! Had she shown any to him?
Cornelius’s voice echoed inside his head: Know your enemy. Doggedly, Jonathan read on.
You deserve an explanation for my inexcusable behavior, but in truth, sir, I have none. I cannot say what prompted my actions, though let me assure you, it was not idle curiosity. If anything, I acted from fear. When you remained behind the screen, I feared that you had somehow learned of my history. I feared—forgive me, sir—that you might expect me to repeat the past; or that you held yourself apart out of moral fastidiousness. In my petty self concern, it never occurred to me that you might have other reasons.
I hope you can find it in your heart to forgive me and let me remain in your employ. If not, it is no more than I deserve.
I shall wait in the parlor at four, in the hope you will speak with me. Whether you order me to go or stay, please know I never meant you harm, and I wish only the best for you.
Your faithful servant,
Isabelle Tate
Only the best! How great a fool did she take him for? The crass lies in her simpering letter sickened him.
He got up and paced the length of the room, trying to walk off his anger. Now was the time to think like his father, with cold calculation. What would Cornelius do?
Give her what she wanted. Of course. Keep the appointment. In fact, why not thoroughly satisfy her curiosity and leave off his mask? How long would she stay then?
The idea calmed him somewhat. There was a perverse pleasure in imagining her disgust at the sight of him. He went to the window, where he could see a faint reflection of himself in the glass.
“I would hate to distress you, Miss Tate.” He spoke aloud, watching himself as he said the words, smiling at his lie, smiling even wider when he saw the ghastly rictus spread across the scarred remains of his face.
“Let me satisfy you.” He laughed aloud, realizing the double entendre of his words. “Your curiosity, I mean to say.”
He looked across the lawn, remembering the day he saw her with her hair down, her arms raised above her head, her thin cotton bodice revealing the shape of her breasts.
“Though I will be happy to oblige . . . ” His voice dropped to a whisper. “ . . . should your hunger for knowledge prove more—how shall I say?—extensive.”
The monster in the glass abruptly stopped smiling. Jonathan leaned his head against the sash in silent communion with his own reflection, feeling the wood impress the shape of a cross on his brow, all the while fighting a strong urge to ram both fists through the window.
Chapter Fourteen
In the end, he proved a coward and wore the mask. Though his courage failed him in this, he at least made her wait, descending the stairs to the parlor a little after five o’clock.
His greatest hope was that she had given up, had departed the room, had departed his house forever. He opened the door quietly, stepping into the room even more quietly. If he had the misfortune to find her there, his stealth might buy him a few extra moments to compose himself. As an additional precaution, he left the door ajar, assuring a quick exit should the need arise.
Running from a woman. Jonathan imagined his father’s voice excoriating him for his weakness. He had heard similar accusations since his earliest memory, yet for all their familiarity, the hurt caused by his father’s scornful remarks never abated. In this instance, knowing he more than deserved such scorn caused his cheeks to burn with shame beneath the linen mask.
Jonathan stole into the room like a thief, poised to flee should his cowardice get the better of him. He sidled past the screen, telling himself that what must be done was best done quickly.
A mere two paces into the room, he stopped abruptly. His heart, his breath, even time itself stopped for one long, frozen moment. Then time recommenced with a backward surge, sweeping him into a vortex of memories, back to an event that had marked him indelibly.
The scene before him was the same as another he had come upon some fourteen years earlier. His mother had sat just so on that very couch, stretched nearly prone across the cushions, her head resting on her folded arms, her skirts flowing out around her, her body shaken by quiet sobs like a tender blossom battered down by a heavy rain.
He was only twelve at the time, still innocent of carnal knowledge. Innocent of even the idea of it, his experience—what would prove his only experience—limited to the clumsy gropings of a drunken maid, who passed out before her attempted seduction came to fruition.
Ignorant though he was, he knew his mother’s tears had to do with his father’s blatant infidelity. Cette putain, she had sobbed, unaware that he heard. His father had dared to bring that whore into his mother’s house. All his life, he had tried to protect her from his father’s cruelty. But this was something beyond his ken.
The clock on the mantel struck the quarter hour. The single chime roused Jonathan from his bitter reverie; the strength of his memories had momentarily lifted him out of time and place. He returned to the present with a jolt, confronted by an unwanted epiphany, one that clutched at his heart and threatened to pull it out by the roots like a bad weed.
He was no better than his brute of a father. He was the one who had caused this woman’s despair.
Certainly, she had deceived him, had wronged him, had no doubt even reviled him. But the sight of her there, so like his mother that day, called forth a clash of discordant emotions. She deserved to suffer, and yet . . . that he might be guilty of the casual cruelty his father so regularly dispensed . . .
The moral quandary paralyzed him.
As though cognizant of his vulnerability, the woman chose that moment to become aware of his presence. She lifted her head and looked at him over her shoulder.
Jonathan braced himself for her scream, her gasp of horror. At the very least a narrowing of her eyes, the way others had done before, as though trying to reduce the extent to which his disturbing appearance filled their vision.
She sat up and looked directly at him, her eyes wide, then spoke in a thin, incredulous voice. “I thought you wouldn’t come.”
Her cheeks were wet with tears. He had thought her eyes were brown, but looking closely now, he saw they were nearly green. His mother had had the same eyes, a chameleon like hazel that shifted toward pure green whenever she cried.
The fascination of her sad gaze, its inexplicable familiarity, drew Jonathan toward the couch. He carefully lowered himself onto the cushion beside her and, reaching into the inner breast pocket of his jacket, withdrew a neatly squared linen handkerchief.
“I am here now.” He gave her the handkerchief, adding ironically, “For better or worse.”
His gesture brought a slight smile to her lips, answered by one of his own, though he knew she couldn’t see it hidden beneath his mask. She dabbed at her tears haphazardly, doing such a poor job he was tempted to take the handkerchief from her and perform the task himself.
Rather than return the handkerchief, she crushed it in her fist, then shifted in her seat
, angling toward him slightly. To better see him, he realized, wincing beneath the mask as her eyes pricked him with their gaze. She stared at him, not out of fascinated horror as he had supposed, but with such abject contrition, he wondered how he could have previously missed the pain written in every line of her face.
“I . . . I, um . . . ” She bit her lower lip to stop herself from stammering, then began again. “I’m sor—”
He lifted his hand to motion her to stop, shaking his head as he did so. “Don’t apologize.”
As soon as he said it, he wondered if he should be the one to apologize. Sitting here beside her, he thought his indignation no longer seemed as valid as when he’d nursed his anger, alone in his room.
“Shall we agree to forget . . . ” He glanced down at the bandage on her thumb. “Shall we try to forget what happened yesterday? Make a fresh start?”
She nodded, then favored him with a shy smile that transformed her features and set his heart beating at a faster tempo. He wanted to laugh aloud, to cry out with joy or pain, he didn’t know which, because he had been the one to elicit her smile. Not a grimace, nor a frown of aversion, but a smile.
“Thank you.” She spoke just above a whisper, unable to hide the catch in her voice.
He inclined his head in a frugal nod to acknowledge her thanks, afraid to speak because he feared his voice might betray his emotions even more blatantly than hers had done. After a while the silence between them grew uncomfortable. He started to speak, with little forethought of what he would say.
“It must be unpleasant for you. I mean . . . ” He gestured with his left hand, indicating his mask. “I’m sorry—”
She interrupted him with a loud gasp, as he had expected her to do at the sight of him. “You mustn’t say that. No. You mustn’t. I’m not—”
She came up short, blushing a violent crimson. “Forgive me. I spoke out of turn. I have no right . . . ”
He leaned away from her, resting his back against the arm of the couch. He couldn’t explain his extraordinary mood. Normally, only drugs induced this state of relaxation.
He laughed lightly, a single, barely audible huff of amusement that remained trapped inside his throat. “Have you noticed that neither of us seems able to complete a sentence?”
She gaped at him as her complexion slowly faded to a translucent ivory, with the merest hint of color remaining along the ridge of her cheekbones. Perhaps it was her obvious disquietude that put him at his ease.
“I am unused to direct discourse with others,” he continued. “Or, it would be more accurate to say, I am unacquainted with it.”
His confessional mood must have been contagious. She glanced up at him shyly and said, “And I am uncomfortable with strange men.”
He laughed, this time without restraint. “You would be hard pressed to find one stranger than I.”
She stared back at him, a blush rising once more to her cheeks. Then, incongruously, her lips began to twitch at the corners. She struggled to maintain control but failed, unable to stifle a giggle. Leaning back against the opposite arm of the couch in a mirror image of his pose, she covered her mouth with the handkerchief and gave in to her laughter.
Their eyes met when she glanced across at him, and the look that passed between them infected him with her mirth. As the laughter welled deep within his chest, he clamped his lips together, trying to suppress it, but with limited success. Involuntary spasms forced the breath from his nostrils in short, tortured bursts.
Gradually, her laughter faded, his having died long before, overtaken by a sense of wonder at what had just occurred. She had found humor in his grotesqueness, though remarkably, she was laughing at herself, not at him. They were both, in fact, laughing at themselves. The revelation acted as a balm to his soul.
But his soul was unaccustomed to finding itself at peace. Before this meeting, he had distrusted the woman. Now he found he distrusted himself. Perhaps, yet again, he was acting the fool. He had no standards nor experience by which to judge.
He stood slowly, careful to conceal his sudden anxiety. She followed his example, her skirt brushing his trouser leg as she turned to face him.
“It is late,” he said stiffly, feeling the need to reassert the formality between them.
She looked up at him. Her brow furrowed with concern, yet she remained silent, waiting for him to speak first.
He held his breath, overwhelmed by her sudden nearness. It had been years since he stood face to face with another person in such close proximity. Of course, there was Richard, but theirs was the comfortable familiarity of close friends. She was a stranger, and her strangeness, her otherness, both fascinated and frightened him.
He noted with astonishment that the crown of her head barely came to his chin. She had loomed so large in his thoughts that he never noticed nor expected her slight stature. Her fragility reminded him of a newly hatched bird fallen from its nest. There was an air of vulnerability about her, the look of someone who knows she is easy prey.
Jonathan realized, uncomfortably, that he had no idea how long he had been standing before her, rudely staring.
“Tomorrow is Sunday.” A stupid thing to say, as if she didn’t know the day of the week. He cleared his throat. “Shall we begin on Monday, then?”
He cleared his throat again. His vocal cords had suffered permanent damage during the fire. Just now his smoke roughened voice sounded harsher than usual.
“Whenever you like, sir.” Her worried frown vanished, replaced by a smile that warmed the temperature in the room by several degrees.
In fact, it was an interesting phenomenon, she radiated heat. He felt it, how his own body warmed standing so near hers. Beneath the mask, perspiration dampened his face, until he feared the thin fabric might cling to his skin and reveal the shape of the monster beneath.
“Very well. At four.”
He turned abruptly to leave and was already halfway to the door when her voice struck him like an arrow between his shoulder blades.
“Mr. Nashe?”
He stopped where he stood, waiting for her to speak but afraid to face her. He had despised her before, when he saw his name written in her hand and took it for brash familiarity. But now, hearing her call his name, he felt . . . He didn’t know what he felt, only that he could not trust himself to look at her. “Well?”
Her skirts rustled softly. Every muscle in his body tensed when he heard her approach. His heart began to race. He felt like a wild animal caught in a trap.
She had so easily reduced him to this.
Her hand appeared as she reached around him, holding out the handkerchief. “Thank you, sir.”
He huffed a wordless sound by way of reply and took the handkerchief. Unwilling to encourage a further exchange, he hurried through the open door, shutting it firmly behind him.
Chapter Fifteen
Garrick turned his horse off the main road leaving the city and took the narrow lane that led to the village of Bear’s Ford. Its name had nothing to do with the local fauna but was, in fact, a perversion of Beresford, the family name of Cornelius’s mother, whose forebears had owned the largest tract of land in the area. As Cornelius expanded his business empire, he gradually added to his family’s original holdings, over time doubling, then quadrupling the acreage.
Jonathan’s staff would soon be returning from their weekly worship, and Garrick had planned his arrival accordingly. Fortunately, it was an easy journey the rest of the way. When Cornelius built his palatial country home, he paved a four mile road between it and the village. During the two decades of his residence there, Cornelius had likely employed half the local population in one way or another; it was in his best interest to facilitate the flow of traffic to and from the estate. And Cornelius, Garrick thought bitterly, always acted in his own best interest.
As he neared the house, Garrick spotted Will in the tall grass just beyond the point where Joe had left off mowing. Every year the area he kept in trim shrank a little more. The
weeds would soon reach the front door if Jonathan didn’t hire another, younger groundskeeper to help the old fellow.
Will was running through the grass, flapping his arms like a bird, spending the pent up energy that must have neared the bursting point after the forced inactivity of the morning service. Luckily for the lad, Jonathan’s retainers chose to attend the Episcopal church, where the sermons were decidedly shorter than those heard by the Methodist congregation.
Will looked up. “It’s the doctor!” he yelled, though no one else was there to hear him. He immediately set off on a headlong run toward Garrick.
Garrick tightened his hold on the reins and slowed his mount to a walk. The animal possessed a steady temperament, but even the most placid of creatures might be expected to shy from Will’s erratic, overly exuberant gestures.
“Easy, lad,” Garrick warned, when Will reached them. The boy stopped flapping his arms and trotted alongside until they reached the house.
“Stable him for me,” Garrick said after he’d dismounted. He handed the reins to Will, giving him a wink as he slipped the boy a penny.
Will beamed at him. “Yes, sir!”
Garrick turned to enter the house, but was stopped by Nellie, who hurried down the steps to meet him. Dressed in her Sunday best, her dark curls freed from the cap she normally wore, she was a pretty woman, endowed with the sort of lush curves most men found irresistible. He could almost pity her former employer, whose insistent advances had driven her to flee across the Atlantic.
“I’m here to pay a visit to Miss Tate. Would you find Roger for me?” He stated his purpose abruptly, intending to avoid having his presence announced to Jonathan.
“Oh Dr. Garrick, sir.” Nellie’s mouth cinched into a worried pucker. She seemed about to burst into tears.
“What is it, Nellie?” Intent on his mission, he had failed to notice her agitation.
She squeezed her hands together nervously, as if she feared they might take flight. “He isn’t here. The master sent him off.”
A Bed of Thorns and Roses Page 9