A Bed of Thorns and Roses

by Sondra Allan Carr

  Fortune tellers claimed to read the future in the leaves. All she could see were a mismatched cup and saucer, chipped and crazed with age, nothing like the fine bone china to which she had grown accustomed.

  Isabelle looked around the room, seeing not the future, but her past, observing everything with newfound clarity. The hole in the sofa cushion, the faded chintz slipcover that hid a hopelessly worn chair, the threadbare carpet. Cheap to begin with, the furnishings had not improved with age.

  She had nurtured the delusion for years that they lived in genteel poverty. The plain truth of the matter was, she could no longer think of their lives here as genteel. The only word that came to mind was squalid.

  “You said you had something to discuss.” Jenny laid each word down as evenly as a row of bricks, adding to the invisible wall growing between them.

  Isabelle pretended not to notice by sipping her tea, but found that it was too hot and set the cup aside before she began.

  “Dr. Garrick recently spoke to me about you.” Isabelle paused, searching her sister’s eyes. “About your future.”

  “He did?” Jenny forgot her reserve and leaned forward eagerly, causing her tea to slosh over the edge of her cup onto her skirt. She snatched a napkin from the tray and began blotting away the moisture, blushing furiously all the while.

  Isabelle waited for Jenny to regain her composure. Both of them needed to remain calm if they were to consider the situation with logic rather than emotion.

  “What did he say?” Jenny laid the napkin aside casually, but Isabelle knew her sister too well to be fooled by her seeming nonchalance.

  “He approached me with an offer that he hoped I would—” Isabelle stopped, realizing her mistake. “That we should give thoughtful consideration.”

  Jenny covered her mouth with her hand. “Go on,” she said through her fingers, her voice rising with excitement.

  Isabelle looked down at her lap and began rubbing at the scar on the pad of her thumb. “Dr. Garrick has a school in mind for you, one where he has some influence and could gain your entrance without the cost of tuition.”

  Mrs. Cooper, who had been a polite observer until now, joined in the conversation. “A boarding school, Miss Tate?”

  Isabelle nodded apologetically. “I wanted to give you plenty of notice, Mrs. Cooper.”

  “School?” Jenny asked. The hollow disbelief in her voice should have been a warning. “Which school? Miss Potter’s Academy?”

  Miss Potter’s was more a young ladies’ finishing school than an academic institution. In the past, the two sisters had often discussed the possibility of Jenny attending there, though they both knew the cost was well beyond their means.

  Isabelle shook her head. She saw the look of disappointment on her sister’s face and hastened to add, “Even better. Dr. Garrick’s mother and sister attended this school.”

  “Then tell me the name of it, for heaven’s sake.”

  “Jennifer!” Mrs. Cooper uttered a shocked reproof. Jenny’s tone bordered on disrespect.

  “Dr. Garrick didn’t say and, I’m sorry, I didn’t think to ask.”

  “Did he at least tell you where this place is?”

  Mrs. Cooper shook her head, this time wearing an expression of disappointment rather than reproof.

  “Well, yes.” Isabelle hesitated, sensing disaster, but smiled nevertheless, determined to put her best face on it. “Switzerland.”

  Jenny’s eyes immediately filled with tears.

  “Won’t it be exciting to travel abroad?” Isabelle knew she sounded less than convincing.

  Jenny jumped to her feet. “You want to get rid of me.”

  “That’s not true, Jenny.”

  “I’m nothing but a nuisance to you.” Jenny’s features contorted in a pitiful expression that held as much pain as anger. “And Dr. Garrick, too.”

  Isabelle felt obliged to come to the doctor’s defense. “Dr. Garrick made a generous offer. He wants to do what is best for you. I should think you would be grateful.”

  “Everybody wants to get rid of me.”

  Isabelle was speechless. Jenny had always looked up to her. She was accustomed to her admiration, not her anger.

  “Everybody!” Jenny wailed before she turned and ran from the room.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Cooper.” Isabelle got to her feet, staring helplessly after her sister. Upstairs, a door slammed. “This isn’t like Jenny.”

  Mrs. Cooper was on her feet as well. “It’s not for you to apologize, Miss Tate. Jenny had no right to speak to you that way.”

  “I should go to her.”

  When Isabelle moved toward the door, Mrs. Cooper intervened. “Give her time to come to her senses. I’ll speak to her when she has calmed herself.”

  “I must confess, I’m not eager to see Jenny travel so far from home.” Now that the shock of Jenny’s angry outburst had begun to wear off, Isabelle felt close to tears. “But I thought she would be overjoyed at the opportunity.”

  “I believe I know why she is so upset.” Instead of explaining, Mrs. Cooper added mysteriously, “If you think about it, you should know as well.”

  “What do you mean?”

  Mrs. Cooper hesitated. “I don’t want to be carrying tales.”

  “I know you’re not a petty gossip. Please Mrs. Cooper, for Jenny’s sake, tell me what you mean.”

  Mrs. Cooper looked away. After a while she bobbed her head thoughtfully, as though she’d held an argument with her conscience and come to an uneasy agreement.

  “A few days ago,” she began, “Jennifer and I were taking a walk.” Mrs. Cooper smiled fondly. “She loves to stroll past the shop windows and look in at what they have to offer.”

  Dreaming of all the fine things she can never have, Isabelle thought. She nodded. “I know, I’ve often accompanied her on such outings.”

  “We were passing an expensive jeweler’s shop and spied Dr. Garrick inside.” Mrs. Cooper shook her head sadly. “I tried to stop her, but she insisted on going in to speak to him. I stood outside waiting for her, and—oh, it was sad, Miss Tate. I watched through the shop window and saw her heart get broken.”

  Mrs. Cooper paused, obviously saddened by her memory of the event. Isabelle prompted her gently. “What happened?”

  Mrs. Cooper sighed, then reluctantly resumed her story. “Dr. Garrick was buying an expensive pair of earrings. They were emeralds, Miss Tate, not the sort of gift a man would buy for just any woman. When Jenny saw, she left at once, but I’m afraid the damage was done.”

  The women fell silent. Slowly, Jenny’s past behavior toward Monique became clear to Isabelle. “Your story explains a good deal, Mrs. Cooper.”

  “She used to speak of Dr. Garrick all the time.” Mrs. Cooper shook her head sadly. “Now she refuses to say his name.”

  “I knew she carried a girlish infatuation for him.” Isabelle looked to Mrs. Cooper for confirmation, realizing she was outside the realm of her own experience. “I just assumed, as with all childish fancies, she would soon forget.”

  “It’s more than infatuation. Don’t you see?”

  Isabelle shook her head. She was out of her depth, and she knew it. “I’m afraid I don’t.”

  “Notwithstanding the fact that Dr. Garrick is an extremely handsome man.” At these words, a deep blush colored Mrs. Cooper’s cheeks. “Notwithstanding, he has been kind to your sister—more than kind. He has taken an interest in her welfare, coming round to check with me if there’s anything she needs. And . . . ”

  “And what, Mrs. Cooper?”

  The older woman looked at her uneasily. “I don’t know if I should say this.”

  “You may speak freely with me.”

  Isabelle remembered Jonathan saying the same to her and experienced a sudden bittersweet pang. It took a moment for her to identify the feeling. She realized, somewhat surprised, that she missed him.

  “Begging your pardon for saying so, Miss Tate.”

  “Please.”


  “Dr. Garrick provided your sister with a sense of security that she has been unfamiliar with. A feeling that she was protected.”

  * * *

  Isabelle mulled over her conversation with Mrs. Cooper on the walk to Monique’s house. She had come to depend on her new friend’s advice, and wanted desperately to tell her about Jenny’s problem. That was impossible, of course, because in a way, Monique was the problem.

  “But my dear, why did you walk all that way? I would have sent my carriage for you,” Monique said when she learned that Isabelle had arrived on foot.

  “I know you would have. Thank you, but I needed the time to think.”

  Monique ushered her into the parlor, where she already had tea waiting for them. She offered Isabelle a tray that held an assortment of fancy pastries. Isabelle took two. The walk had left her with an appetite.

  “Good,” Monique said with approval. “It is better to think with a full stomach.”

  Isabelle nodded, wondering how much she should tell Monique. Despite the long walk, she was still shaken by Jennifer’s emotional outburst.

  “And then you will tell me everything,” Monique said, as though she knew what Isabelle was thinking.

  In the end, Isabelle needed little encouragement to unburden herself. She told Monique about Dr. Garrick’s plan, and the scene that had occurred when she informed Jenny of the idea. The only details she omitted were Jenny’s infatuation with Dr. Garrick and her intense jealousy of Monique.

  “Jenny and I have so often discussed the possibility of her going away to school, I thought she would be thrilled by this opportunity.”

  Isabelle waited for Monique’s response, hoping her friend could think of a way to convince Jenny to accept Dr. Garrick’s generous offer. One thing she knew for a certainty, Monique firmly believed that a woman should never turn down a generous offer from a man.

  Monique left her seat and crossed the room, where she stood with her back to Isabelle, looking out the window at the street below. After a while, she murmured something under her breath.

  “What did you say?” Isabelle asked, uncertain whether the comment was meant for her.

  Monique turned to face her. “It would be wrong.”

  Isabelle read true concern in Monique’s eyes, and something else she had thought entirely foreign to her friend’s character—guilt. “Do you mean school would be wrong?”

  Monique shook her head and declared firmly, “Jenny should stay here.”

  “Why?”

  “Here is where she will find happiness. Here . . . ” Monique left her place in front of the window and resumed her seat across from Isabelle before finishing what she had to say. “It is here where Jenny is loved.”

  “But she knows I love her. She knows I will be here for her when she returns.”

  “Of course, of course.” Monique waved her hand in the air, brushing aside the obvious. “I mean to say, she must stay here to find the man who loves her.”

  Monique looked away briefly, then met Isabelle’s eyes once more. “Or, I should say, let him find that he loves her.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Monique smiled uncomfortably. “I have said too much already.”

  Monique’s discomfort was puzzling, as well as her unusual reticence. Isabelle decided not to press her for an explanation.

  “Let’s not speak of it, then,” she said, thinking that this new mystery was yet one more secret added to the many others she could never speak of.

  Chapter Thirty four

  At exactly twelve noon Garrick locked the door to his surgery and drew the drapes in the front parlor that served as his waiting room. Miss Harris usually performed those tasks, but he had given her early leave to attend a special Saturday meeting of her women’s temperance group. One of the Vanderbilt wives was to appear as a guest speaker, a virago of a woman from what he heard, though he paid scant attention to the goings on of New York society.

  He never begrudged Miss Harris her rare requests for leave. Her cause, however, mystified him. He could never understand the crusade against one of life’s finer pleasures. The Temperance Society’s demand that the law mandate total abstemiousness was not only unrealistic, it was extreme. Moderation in all things was what he believed, a dictum he often used in counseling his patients. It was one he sought to apply to his own life as well, with the possible exception of Cook’s Thursday night dinners.

  Garrick remembered he had left the letter he meant to post lying on his desk and was just headed back to his office when someone knocked at the front door. He groaned, seriously considering the temptation to ignore the caller. The knock came again, more insistently this time, and his conscience won out. What if it was a patient with a dire emergency?

  “Duty above pleasure,” he muttered under his breath, fiddling with the latch. The damned thing needed oiling. He must remember to have it seen to on Monday. Finally, the latch turned, and Garrick opened the door partway, not wanting to appear too welcoming if it was someone he could quickly turn away.

  The vision standing there before him momentarily robbed him of speech. When he at last found his tongue, a single word escaped his lips, more from involuntary reflex than a conscious decision on his part.

  “Jenny!”

  She was indeed a vision of loveliness. Her complexion was as pure as a china doll’s. The curls escaping her bonnet framed her face with a golden halo. And her mouth.

  Her mouth was as perfect as a rosebud ready to unfold. The touch of her lips would be as soft as a shower of rose petals against his skin.

  “May I come in?”

  Garrick watched the color rise to her cheeks. She had taken his hesitation as a rebuff. He stepped back quickly, opening the door wide.

  “Of course.”

  The light scent of jasmine lingered in the air after she entered. Garrick stood there, breathing it in, savoring the sensation. The fragrance evoked his youth, hot summer nights laden with the scent of flowers, a garden bower draped in jasmine where he stole his first kiss.

  “I won’t take much of your time.”

  Jenny’s voice struck Garrick’s ear with a note of sharpness that brought him back to the present. He closed the door and turned to face her.

  “You may have as much of my time as you like.”

  At this, Jenny arched a brow and lowered her chin, looking up at him provocatively. “May I?”

  Her seductive drawl would not have been a surprise coming from Monique, but Garrick never expected to hear such from Jenny’s lips. She held his gaze, favoring him with a slow smile at once so innocent yet so sensual that Garrick felt his brain congeal like a poached egg.

  “Where is Mrs. Cooper?” he asked, inwardly cursing himself for a fool. It was the first thing he should have asked, before he let her through the door.

  Jenny’s expression hardened into a frown. “I am quite capable of venturing out on my own from time to time.”

  Her response began defiantly, but ended with a quaver that betrayed her nerves. She turned her back to untie her bonnet, taking her time as she lifted it from her head and placed it on the entry table. Garrick understood she was buying time to collect herself and was grateful for her ploy. He as well needed the time to gather his own wits.

  She turned to face him, reaching up to remove a comb that held her curls gathered atop her head, miraculously freeing her hair in a single, bold gesture. Garrick’s mouth went dry as he watched the golden waves cascading down toward her waist, like a waterfall of softest sunshine.

  “No one else is here.” His tongue stuck to his palate, impeding his speech. “We’re alone,” he added stupidly.

  She took a step toward him, then another. “Exactly as I had hoped.”

  “You must think of your . . . ” She came even nearer, until they were mere inches apart. Garrick struggled to remember what he had been about to say. “Think of your reputation.”

  She stared at him with an intensity that left him feeling naked.

 
Garrick took a steadying breath, immediately regretting it when the scent of jasmine filled his nostrils. The odor permeated his lungs until he felt submerged in the perfumed air.

  This, then, was the euphoria said to occur in the last few moments before death by drowning. He barely had the breath to whisper.

  “What do you want, Jenny?”

  “I want to know.” She paused. Then, her voice deep with significance, she reciprocated his familiarity. “Richard.”

  She had always addressed him formally, a practice that allowed him to indulge the pretense that his years formed a wall between them, one that protected him from his folly. The extent of his self deception staggered him.

  “Richard,” she repeated, sending a tremor of desire through his body. “I want to know why you and my sister are plotting to send me away.”

  Her accusation doused his ardor as effectively as a bucket of ice water. “Plotting? You make it sound as though we wanted to be rid of you.”

  “Well?”

  Anger flashed behind her beautiful aquamarine eyes. Odd, how he had always thought they were blue.

  “If I am to be in Switzerland, won’t you be rid of me?”

  “Our intention.” Garrick stopped to correct himself. It had been his idea, after all. “My intention was to offer you the opportunity to broaden your experience. To let you travel and learn from European culture. To see other ways of life.”

  “I want to do all those things.” A look of expectation replaced her anger of a moment before. She stared up at him with the wide eyed hopefulness of a child anticipating a much longed for gift. “I want to do them with you.”

  There was a long pause as Garrick repeated these last words to himself, certain he had misheard her.

  “What are you saying, Jenny?” he asked slowly.

  “You know perfectly well what I’m saying.”

  He stared at her incredulously, at a complete loss for words, and watched her eyes fill with tears.

  “I may not be as beautiful as Miss Lavalle. I may not have any experience at pleasing a man.”