by Rice, Anne
“ ‘But what is so very wrong with Mona being with me? Do you believe it’s that we both see spirits?’
“ ‘No, it’s not that in itself,’ said Michael. He sat back comfortably in his chair as he addressed me. ‘The fact is, there are medical reasons, good medical reasons that have to do with Mona’s health.’
“ ‘It’s Mona who has the right to talk about the medical aspects of things,’ Rowan said in her softly running husky voice, ‘not us. But we can tell you that Mona isn’t acting wisely and we are trying to guard Mona from herself.’ She was soft and sincere.
“I wasn’t sure what to say. ‘I understand your problem,’ I replied, ‘because I can’t divulge the things that Mona has said to me. But can’t I see her? Can’t you let her come down? Can’t I tell her about the ghost of Oncle Julien? Can’t I ask her what she has to say?’
“ ‘You do understand,’ said Michael, ‘that this was a powerful apparition. This ghost chose to intervene in a powerful way. Have you ever seen a ghost like this?’
“ ‘Yes,’ I said, ‘I have seen ghosts that strong.’
“I told them both the whole story of Rebecca. And as I did so I knew I was being my own worst enemy again. But there could be nothing under this roof but frankness, or so it seemed to me. My love for them ordained that frankness.
“I also told them about Goblin. As much as I thought right.
“ ‘Don’t you see that I belong with her?’ I said finally. ‘She’s the only one who will ever understand me, and I’m the only one who’ll ever understand her?’
“ ‘Son, you have your own ghosts,’ said Michael, ‘and she has hers. You have to move away from each other. You have to seek a decent normality on your own.’
“ ‘Oh, God, that’s impossible!’ I said. ‘We’ll never achieve it. Besides, who’s to say we can’t achieve it better together if it’s achievable at all?’
“I could see now they were pondering my words. I had made some incidental impression of intelligence on them if nothing else. They hadn’t kicked me out of their house yet in any event, and now an overpowering urge to have hot chocolate came over me, a stupid, insidious desire to drink hot chocolate in large amounts.
“And to my utter amazement, Michael rose and said, ‘I’ll fix it for you. I’d like some myself.’ I was stunned. They were a family of mind readers on top of everything else. I heard him laugh under his breath as he went to the pantry. Then came the noises and the deep delicious fragrance of the heated milk.
“Rowan sat there solemnly and pondering, and then, very softly, she spoke. Her voice as usual was much gentler than her angular face, with its high cheekbones and blunt-cut wavy hair.
“ ‘Tarquin, let me lay it out,’ she said. ‘Let me violate Mona’s confidentiality. Let me make that judgment call. Mona has given me permission to do it, to tell you things about her, which really shouldn’t be told. She isn’t really old enough to give that permission. But let me go on. Mona endangers herself every time she has intimate relations with a man. Do you follow me? She runs the risk of hurting herself severely. We’re trying to keep Mona alive.’
“ ‘But we used protection, Dr. Mayfair,’ I insisted. Nevertheless this was frightening news. I had dried my eyes by this time and was trying to behave like an adult.
“ ‘Of course you did,’ said Dr. Mayfair, raising her eyebrows slightly, ‘but even the best of precautions can fail. There’s always the possibility that Mona will conceive. And just the smallest miscarriage weakens Mona in ways that a normal woman does not have to worry about. It’s all because of the baby born to Mona, the baby whom Oncle Julien mentioned to you in the garden outside. It left Mona vulnerable. And we’re trying to keep Mona alive. We’re trying to discover how to fix what’s wrong so Mona won’t be so vulnerable, but for that we need time.’
“ ‘Dear God,’ I whispered. ‘That’s why Mona was at Mayfair Medical the day I saw her.’
“ ‘Precisely,’ said Rowan. She was becoming a little more heated, but she sounded compassionate at the same time. ‘We’re not insensitive monsters,’ she said. ‘Really we’re not. We’re trying to get her to stop seducing her cousins and to cooperate with our regimen of blood tests and nutritional supplements so we can find out what’s going wrong inside of her and why she so often conceives. Now, I’ve told you more than I should, and by the way, let me add that she is in love with you and she’s stopped roaming since she met you; you have every right to know that, but we can’t countenance her being with you.’
“ ‘No,’ I said, ‘what you can’t countenance is her being alone with me. Let me see her here with you present. Let me see her with a vow of celibacy. What could be wrong with that?’
“Michael came to the table with the very silver pitcher I had seen in the garden and cups for us all. It was the same damned china. The hot chocolate was as rich and delicious as it had been in the vision and I was ready for a second cup almost at once. I wanted to tell them about the pitcher and the china, but I wanted even more to talk about Mona.
“ ‘Thank you for humoring me on this score—I mean with this chocolate,’ I said. ‘I don’t know what’s the matter with me.’
“Michael refilled my cup for the second time. I drank deeply. It tasted better than anything known to man.
“I sat back. ‘I’ve been level with you,’ I said. ‘Can’t you be level with me? Tell her that I’m here—.’
“ ‘She knows that, Quinn,’ said Michael. ‘Her powers of clairvoyance are tremendous. She knew it when you came through the front gate. She’s wrestling with the very things Rowan confided to you. The truth’s coming full force on her. She’s sick. And then there’s the question of her lost offspring—the one that Julien told you was alive. She heard that news when you did, and she was the one who came to us and told us to come down and welcome you in.’
“I wanted to say this was a great consolation, which it was, but I wished they had told me before this time and I didn’t want to complain. Also something else occurred to me. Why had they interrupted my conversation with Julien when they did? If they hadn’t come, how much more would Julien have said?
“ ‘That’s a question to which we don’t have an answer,’ said Michael, having read my thoughts again.
“ ‘But you stopped him. You stopped him from revealing family secrets,’ I said. ‘You thought it best.’
“ ‘We did,’ said Dr. Mayfair. ‘We thought it best.’
“ ‘Does it matter to you that I am one of you?’ I asked in a sober voice.
“Neither of them had an answer for me. Then Rowan spoke in the most dejected manner. ‘If only Mona wasn’t ill,’ she said. ‘If only we could find a cure. Then everything would be different, Quinn. As it stands now, what is the point of asking you to cast your lot with us? What is the point of asking you to be genetically tested as all of us are? What is the point of you taking on the weight of our history and our curses and all we suffer and know?’
“ ‘Genetic testing?’ I asked. ‘To see if I have a susceptibility to see spirits?’ I drank down the hot chocolate. Michael poured me another cup.
“ ‘No,’ said Rowan, ‘to see if you could produce the mutation in your offspring as Mona did.’
“ ‘I want it,’ I said.
“She nodded. ‘All right. I’ll set it up at Mayfair Medical. You report in to Dr. Winn Mayfair. Call his secretary to arrange the time.’
“ ‘And now, where are you keeping my darling princess?’
“I heard her from the top of the back stairs: ‘Quinn!’
“I rose at once and ran up to her, jogging left then left again with the little stairway, and then throwing my arms around her as we came together on the second floor.
“ ‘Remember my warnings,’ came Rowan’s voice from below.
“ ‘I promise, no penetration,’ said Mona. ‘Now leave us alone.’
“I picked her up off her feet.
“ ‘Oh, my egregious boy!’ she declared, her breasts h
ot beneath her snow white shirt, her red hair everywhere in my eyes and against my heart, her naked legs smooth and beautiful to my touch.
“I carried her down the hallway. ‘Where do we go, Princess Mona of Mayfair?’ I asked. ‘I have wrestled with angels and dragons to be with you!’
“ ‘To the very front of the house, Prince Tarquin of Blackwood,’ she answered. ‘There is my bower among the branches of the oaks.’
“We passed up a short few steps, out of a narrow hallway, to a big bedroom and through it into a large hallway and on past a regal staircase to the very front where my beloved, my red-haired beloved, signaled me to make a left turn.
“It was the very front bedroom, all right, and its two floor-length windows were open to the upper porch, and they seemed to be filled by the oak branches of the two trees which stood before the house.
“We fell onto the bed.
“I was all wound up with Mona’s virginal white blouse and its voluminous sleeves and lace, and we were tumbling in her white pillows, and I pressed my hand against her hot wet panties, and with the pressure of my palm brought her to the finish with divine blushes that made me come.
“Again we did it, and this time more slowly and playfully, and then again, and I was as always spent before she was, but I was in no mood to desert her in her need.
“It must have been an hour that we lay together, and all the while the door was partially open and there came no sound of any intruding person in the house.
“We were on our honor and on a small white lace baby quilt, which I had pretty much spoilt with my overspilled love. ‘Entirely washable, and destined for the purpose,’ said my Lady Love as she folded it and cast it away.
“Now it was the season for kisses and for snuggling and for lying back against the pillows and looking out of the windows at the oak branches in which the lithe little brown squirrels tripped among the clinging green ferns.
“ ‘I never want to leave you,’ I told her. ‘But awful things have happened to me since we were together,’ I confessed.
“I told her all about the stranger and his bizarre assault. I told her how he had read my very thoughts about the Hermitage. And how I had given the order for the renovations and he and I would be partners in it, but I was more sure than ever that I had seen him dumping bodies by the light of the moon.
“She was fascinated.
“ ‘Doesn’t that scare you?’ she asked.
“ ‘Of course not,’ I said. ‘I’m more scared of Oncle Julien.’
“She laughed.
“ ‘Does Oncle Julien come any time you want him?’
“She looked sad.
“ ‘No,’ she said, ‘it’s more like he comes when he wants to come, and now you have to tell me everything that happened to you with him. I overheard your telling Rowan and Michael, I admit. I was an eavesdropper. But you have to tell me. Describe him. Describe how he acted. I have to know. I’m so ferociously jealous when Oncle Julien appears to anybody else.’
“I recounted the whole experience for her. I described Julien’s dapper clothes, his gentle manner. I described the flowered china pattern. She knew it. She said it was Royal Antoinette. She wasn’t sure they even had it in his time. She said he had snatched the image out of the pantry. He was a clever ghost.
“She was deeply affected by the fact that he had said her child was alive. That meant the world to her. I had a jewel there to give her in that simple intelligence.
“ ‘But doesn’t a ghost ever lie?’ I asked. I went, in my mind, back over my experience with Rebecca. Perhaps she never lied to me. She only deceived me and there can be a difference.
“I got up out of the bed. I went to the window and looked into the oak branches. It was so beautiful here. You’d never guess that you were in the middle of the city—that the waterfront lay a scant eight blocks from here to the left, that St. Charles Avenue with its legendary streetcars was only three blocks to the right.
“ ‘You know what I think?’ I asked.
“ ‘What is it?’ she said, sitting up. She pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around her legs. Her hands looked beautiful in her big laced ruffles. Her hair fell down around her shoulders in a way I’ll never forget.
“ ‘I think I need you much more than you need me,’ I said.
“ ‘Quinn, that’s not true,’ she said. ‘I love you. You’re the first person I’ve ever fallen in love with. It came on me all last night after they brought me home. It hurts and it’s splendid and it’s real. I need you because you’re fresh and vital and you’re not part of us.’
“She sounded so earnest.
“ ‘But I am,’ I protested. ‘I told you what Julien told me. He took the place of my great-great-grandfather William, I told you.’
“ ‘But you weren’t brought up a Mayfair,’ she said. ‘And you come with a strong name and tradition of your own. You live in a manor house with its own legends and grandeur! Besides, what does it matter? I need you and I love you, that’s the point.’
“ ‘Mona, was it true what Dr. Rowan told me, that every time …?’
“ ‘Yes, it’s true. They don’t know why. But I’m constantly ovulating, constantly fertile; I conceive constantly and I lose the offspring, and every time it happens I’m weakened. More calcium is pulled out of my bones. Now, it is extremely possible—totally possible actually—that if they performed a hysterectomy on me, the problem would be solved, but then I’d never have children, and they’re hoping that somehow they can solve the problem without that step.’
“I was frightened by all this, frightened for her. That I had unknowingly hurt her terrified me.
“ ‘If it means your life, Mona, you have to let them do the hysterectomy,’ I said. ‘You can’t keep risking your very life.’
“ ‘I know, Quinn, I think about it constantly,’ she said. ‘And so does everyone else. There will come a moment when they say that it’s time to do it, and that time may be very soon. Think about that, Quinn. Does the Lord of Blackwood Manor want a bride that can never have a child?’
“ ‘I love you, Mona. I don’t need children. In fact, I know of a child we can have.’
“ ‘Just have?’ she said, laughing. ‘You mean just like that?’
“I told her about Pops, about Terry Sue and Tommy. Brilliant little Tommy sitting on the log with the book of paintings in his hand, and the black-and-blue mark on his face.
“ ‘Wow, think of it!’ she said. ‘It would be like Cinderella! You could just change his entire life!’
“ ‘Yep. I intend to do that, no matter what happens. So don’t think about me anymore when you think about this hysterectomy. I’m pretty sure that Terry Sue is open to bargaining where Tommy’s ownership is concerned. I’m going to help Terry Sue with the whole passel of them, that’s a done deal. But there’s one thing I have to ask you.’
“ ‘You already sound like the man of the house,’ she said matter-of-factly. ‘I’ll do my best.’
“ ‘No, I’m serious, Mona.’
“I sat on the bed next to her and I kissed her.
“ ‘Do Rowan and Michael know where your child is?’ I asked.
“ ‘No,’ she said, ‘I don’t think that they do. Sometimes I think that they might—Mayfair Medical is a world unto itself—but no, they couldn’t—. I can’t stand that idea. I can’t stand that they wouldn’t tell me. But let’s not talk about it, Quinn. Rowan is a cold calculating scientist in many respects, but Rowan has a conscience made out of pure gold. Let’s just talk about us.’
“I put my arms around her. Pure gold. The image struck me. Pure gold. I thought of the mausoleum and the mysterious stranger telling me that the mausoleum was made of gold.
“ ‘There’s no way in the world you could run off to Europe with me,’ I said. ‘You need the treatment that Dr. Rowan is giving you at the medical center, don’t you?’
“She sighed. She nodded. ‘It was a dream, running away. They’re giving me hormone treatmen
ts and all kinds of nutrients, I don’t know. I’m in and out all during the week. I’m wired up for two and three hours at a stretch. I don’t think there’s much progress. I wanted to fly away. It was wrong of me to involve you in my dream, to let you believe it with me for a little while.’
“ ‘I don’t mind,’ I said. ‘I don’t have to go. In fact, I won’t go. Not as long as we can see each other, and I think they trust us now. I think they know that I won’t hurt you, and you know it too.’
“There came a rap at the door.
“Time for supper, and I was cordially invited to join them downstairs. In fact, they wouldn’t hear of my not joining them, and after a quick call to Jasmine to report my whereabouts I appeared in the dining room to find Mona—attired in another gorgeous white shirt with billowing sleeves, this time over a tropical print miniskirt-shorts combination that was, if anything, more sexy than her bare panties had been earlier—and Michael and Rowan, somewhat formally attired.
“Michael looked quite the gentleman in his seersucker three-piece suit, and Rowan wore a lovely simple navy blue dress with a bold triple strand of pearls.
“Only on second glance did it register that Mona had put on Aunt Queen’s cameo and that it looked beautiful at her throat.
“To my utter amazement Stirling Oliver of the Talamasca had come to join us and in keeping with the mild late spring weather he wore a white three-piece suit with a lemon yellow tie. I remember that tie for some reason. I don’t know why. I remember men’s ties. His gray hair was clipped short, combed straight back from his temples, and he looked like a man in his sixties of excellent health.
“They were all vivid impressive people and the house in no way overpowered them or diminished their easy charm.
“I was very glad to see Stirling again and had a strong sense that Aunt Queen would be disturbed if she knew. As it was I had little choice in the matter and that felt very comfortable for me.
“ ‘I saw your friend, Goblin, outside,’ he said confidentially, as he shook my hand. ‘He indicated you wished to be on your own.’
“ ‘Are you serious?’ I asked. ‘Did you really see him and talk to him?’