The Last Camellia: A Novel

by Sarah Jio

  The room suddenly fell silent.

  I looked up to see Desmond standing in the doorway of the servants’ hall. “Top of the morning to you,” he said, smiling nervously.

  “Desmond,” Mr. Beardsley said, rising to his feet. “May we help you?”

  “No,” he said. “I mean, yes. Well, I— I was hoping to have a word with Miss Lewis, if I may.”

  Mrs. Dilloway and Mr. Beardsley exchanged glances before I nodded. Together, Desmond and I walked a few paces, until we were out of earshot of the servants’ hall.

  “You didn’t come see me last night,” he said, looking hurt. “I was waiting.”

  “How could I, Desmond?” I asked, looking into his big green eyes. “Mrs. Dilloway told me about your engagement.”

  “Oh,” he said, taking my hands in his. “It’s true. I was engaged, but I assure you, I’m not anymore.”

  I searched his face. “What are you saying?”

  “I called it off. I went to see her yesterday.” He shook his head to himself. “It was all wrong. I should have known, after . . .” His voice trailed off. “Anyway, marriage should be about love, not about business arrangements.”

  “Business arrangements?”

  “Marrying Vivien might have secured the financial future for the manor, for the family,” he explained. “In Father’s eyes, I would have been a hero. But I couldn’t live with myself. I didn’t love her, and I never could.”

  I searched his face, feeling my heart swell in a way I hadn’t expected.

  “Now,” he said. “When can I see you again?”

  “Tonight,” I replied.

  He kissed my forehead, then turned to the staircase.

  “Desmond’s certainly taken a liking to you,” Sadie said with a smile after breakfast.

  I returned her smile, following her up the back staircase until we came to the second floor. We walked along the corridor into the east wing.

  “Wait,” I said, noticing the closed door on the right. “Whose room is this?”

  “The east wing belonged to her Ladyship,” Sadie replied, with big eyes. “No one goes up here now—well, except Mrs. Dilloway.”

  “Why?” I asked, eyeing the door curiously.

  Sadie shrugged. “Guilt, probably.”

  “Guilt?”

  Sadie looked pained. “Listen,” she said, “we’d better get started on the bedrooms.”

  “Thanks for your help,” Sadie said, fluffing the last pillow.

  “Don’t mention it,” I replied, following her out of the room. She lifted a basket of washing and disappeared down the servants’ staircase.

  Alone on the second floor, I couldn’t stop thinking about the east wing, about Lady Anna. Why did Mrs. Dilloway go into her chambers, and what had Sadie meant when she spoke of her guilt?

  I walked back down the corridor, looking over my shoulder twice. When I came to the door, I placed my hand on the knob, expecting it to be locked, but it turned and the latch released easily.

  Inside, the air felt thick and sultry as I took a breath. I could smell a musky scent of vanilla and lavender. The drapes had been pulled shut, but as soon as my eyes adjusted to the dim light, I saw a large bed with four intricately carved posts. I walked closer, running my hand along the coverlet. My heart raced as the soft white lace touched my palm. This was her room. Her bed. Her linens.

  I opened the wardrobe and gazed at the dozens of dresses inside. A white silk evening gown caught my eye, and I lifted its hanger, holding the fabric against me, twirling around like a little girl in a fancy dress shop. The skirt rustled as I hung it back on the rack. I walked to the dressing table, and my cheeks flushed as I regarded myself in the mirror. What would Lady Anna think of me here, in her bedroom—a stranger sifting through her most intimate possessions? In spite of my reticence, I couldn’t resist letting my fingers rest on the bulb of the perfume atomizer. A quick squeeze and the yellow cord connected to the stately cut glass decanter flooded the air with a sweet, floral mist. I breathed in the heady scent, and then I heard footsteps in the hallway. Who’s coming? How will I explain myself? I’d been seduced by my own curiosity and lingered too long. I have to hide. I looked ahead, where a dark hallway deeper in the room connected to an interior door, which had been left ajar. I slipped inside what must have been Lady Anna’s personal study. Framed botanical sketches hung over a desk and a bookcase.

  I took a deep breath and peered through the crack in the door, unsure of whom or what I’d see. A figure walked toward the window and pulled the drapes open. I covered my mouth when I saw Lord Livingston’s face in the light. He looked deeply pained, grief-stricken, as he knelt beside Lady Anna’s bed. I watched as he hung his head, choking back tears. “I’m so very sorry, my love,” he muttered. “So very sorry.”

  I stood frozen. And then, the creak of the door again. Lord Livingston turned and frowned as Mrs. Dilloway approached.

  “Forgive me for interrupting you,” she said solicitously. She held a vase of pink flowers. Peonies. “I’ll leave you.”

  Dabbing a handkerchief to his eye, he searched her face. “We were wrong, you know,” he said, “terribly wrong.”

  She looked down at her clasped hands, solemnly. “Yes,” she said. “Yes, we were.”

  My heart raced. What are they talking about? What could they possibly mean?

  Lord Livingston cast a glance in my direction. “I was just going to . . .” He shook his head, as if he didn’t have the emotional energy to continue.

  Mrs. Dilloway took a step forward, and he pulled her toward him, burying his face in the crook of her neck. “Please, Edward,” she said, looking up. “You don’t have to carry this burden alone. Let me—”

  He held up his hand, a quick dismissive gesture. In an instant, all trace of their intimate moment evaporated. “No,” he said in his usual clipped, businesslike tone. “We mustn’t carry on like this.” I could see the changed look in Mrs. Dilloway’s face too, as she followed his lead. Whatever moment they’d shared, whatever meaning had been exchanged in their eyes had vanished.

  After Lord Livingston left the room, Mrs. Dilloway set the vase of peonies on the table near the bed. She paused to smooth the coverlet, before pressing her face against her forearm and weeping. I looked away. It felt wrong to watch her sorrow.

  After I heard the door click shut, I exhaled deeply, which is when I noticed a book that appeared to have fallen from the bookcase. It seemed out of place on the floor in the tidy study. I knelt down to pick it up, and eyed the cover with interest. “The Camellias of Livingston Manor; Compiled by Anna Livingston.” I tucked it under my arm and hurried out the door, through the bedroom, and out into the hallway.

  “What’s that in your hand?” Katherine asked suspiciously as I slipped inside the nursery. How much time has passed? I glanced at the clock on the wall: a quarter past ten.

  “I’m so sorry I’m late, children,” I said. “I was helping Sadie with the linens this morning.”

  Janie ran to my side, where she tugged at the book eagerly as though she’d seen it before. “Flower book,” she said, pointing to the cover.

  “Where did you find Mummy’s book?” Katherine asked, hovering near me.

  Cautiously, I revealed the book as I sat on the sofa. “Would you like to look at it with me?” I said, avoiding the question.

  Katherine nodded and the boys gathered round as I cracked the spine and thumbed through page after page of beautiful camellias, pressed and glued onto each page, with handwritten notes next to each. On the page that featured the Camellia reticulata, a large, salmon-colored flower, she had written: Edward had this one brought in from China. It’s fragile. I’ve given it the garden’s best shade. On the next page, near the Camellia sasanqua, she wrote: A Christmas gift from Edward and the children. This one will need extra love. It hardly survived the passage from Japan. I
will spend the spring nursing it back to health.

  On each page, there were meticulous notes about the care and feeding of the camellias—when she planted them, how often they were watered, fertilized, and pruned. In the right-hand corner of some pages, I noticed an unusual series of numbers.

  “What does that mean?” I asked the children.

  Nicholas shrugged. “This one was Mummy’s favorite,” he said, flipping to the last page in the book. I marveled at the pink-tipped white blossoms as my heart began to beat faster. The Middlebury Pink.

  I leaned in closer to read Anna’s handwriting. “It says here that it’s the last remaining variety of this type in the world.” I turned to Katherine. “Is it in the orchard with the others?”

  “Probably,” she said, standing up. “Unless Mr. Blythe moved it. He was always moving things around. He and Mr. Humphrey.”

  I shook my head. “Mr. Humphrey?”

  “He sometimes helps in the orchard,” Abbott added, rolling his eyes. “Mummy never liked him skulking. She said he made a mess of her rose garden once.”

  “Well,” I said, “I’m sure he was just trying to be helpful.” I turned back to the book, and in the final pages before the Middlebury Pink, Lady Anna had pasted an entry from an old encyclopedia, detailing the story of the camellia’s introduction to the New World. I read for a few moments, before turning to the children. “Their seeds were brought by ship from all over Asia and considered very valuable,” I said. “According to this book, camellias can live for hundreds of years, which makes them the best secret keepers of all plants and trees.”

  “Sounds silly to me,” Katherine said, feigning disinterest, but I could see that she was captivated. “Trees don’t keep secrets.”

  “Well,” I said, “it says that in Victorian times, people used to believe that if you made a wish under a camellia tree, it would come true.”

  Nicholas grinned. “Sort of like throwing a shilling into a fountain to make a wish?”

  “Yes,” I said. “Your mother must have been a special person to have loved camellias the way she did.”

  “Why didn’t the trees protect her, then?” Nicholas said. “The day she died?”

  Abbott stomped over to the window seat. Of all the children, he seemed most disturbed by his mother’s death.

  I closed the book, realizing that the memories of their mother might be too much for them to bear. “Let’s read something else,” I said, setting the book on the side table. I’d have a look again later. Perhaps there was a clue to the Middlebury Pink’s location.

  “What’s that smell?” Abbott asked, pausing to sniff the air.

  “I don’t know,” I said, a bit flustered.

  “It smells like Mummy,” Nicholas said.

  Their mother’s perfume.

  Katherine huffed. “It’s not Mummy’s perfume, you ninny,” she said, turning her nose to the air. “It’s coming from the kitchen. The cook probably burned the roast again.”

  Nicholas eyed his mother’s camellia book before looking at me again. “Miss Lewis, can I ask you a question?”

  “Of course,” I said.

  He sighed. “Our last nanny, Miss Fairfield, said a mean thing about Mummy the day she was dismissed.”

  “Oh, honey, whatever did she say?”

  Nicholas clasped his hands together. “She said, she said . . . that our mother wasn’t a real lady.”

  If I lived at the manor for a decade, I still don’t think I’d get used to taking my meals with Mr. Beardsley hovering around the dining room. He served the meals, assisted by Mrs. Dilloway. He’d place rolls on our plates as if we were incapable of reaching for them ourselves. All of it made me long for home, and the quiet, unpretentious meals at the kitchen table in the apartment over the bakery, where Mama and Papa and I would laugh and talk, and dip our bread into Mama’s potato soup. And if we wanted another piece or, heaven forbid, more butter, we’d reach for it ourselves. New York seemed a world away.

  Mr. Beardsley held a tureen and ladled fish stew into each of our bowls. He eyed me coldly, I thought, as he passed my seat, but then again, I hadn’t gotten used to the formality in the house.

  “Aw,” Nicholas complained. “Not fish stew again!”

  I shot him a look before his father scolded him. “What Nicholas meant to say was, ‘Thank you, Mr. Beardsley.’”

  Lord Livingston nodded at me, and dipped his spoon in his bowl as Mr. Beardsley hovered beside him. “If I may, your Lordship,” he said, nervously wiping his brow with a handkerchief. “May I have a word with you?”

  Lord Livingston nodded, released his napkin from his neck, and turned to us. “Please excuse me.”

  A moment later, he returned. Sitting back down at the table, he held out his hand, where a silver coin rested in his palm, and cleared his throat authoritatively. “It has come to my attention that one of the Roman coins from my collection has turned up in . . .” He paused, looking directly at me. “In Miss Lewis’s quarters.”

  My mouth gaped open, and I shook my head in disbelief. “I don’t understand,” I said quickly. “That can’t be.”

  “I have no other choice but to ask you to leave, Miss Lewis, at once.”

  “But, sir, but, please, I—”

  Lord Livingston held up his hand. “Please, don’t make this harder than it is.”

  My cheeks flushed as I stood up, setting my napkin down on the table. Mrs. Dilloway eyed me with disdain. Janie began to cry. The older children wouldn’t look at me.

  In the doorway of the dining room, I stopped when I heard the scuff of a chair on the wood floors. “Wait,” Abbott said. “Don’t go, Miss Lewis.”

  “Abbott,” Lord Livingston said, “I’ve already made my decision. Do not contradict me, young man.”

  “But, Father,” he said, “Miss Lewis didn’t take the coin.” He scratched his head nervously. “I did.”

  Mr. Beardsley exchanged a look of shock with Mrs. Dilloway.

  Lord Livingston appeared momentarily astonished. “You did what?”

  Next, Nicholas rose to stand behind his brother. “I’m to blame too, Father,” the younger boy said. “We put it in Miss Lewis’s bedroom.”

  Katherine stood next. “I knew too,” she said. “I should never have let them go through with it.”

  “Children,” Lord Livingston said, “why would you do such a beastly thing?”

  Abbott looked at Nicholas. “You see,” he said nervously, “we didn’t like Miss Lewis. Not at first. We thought she’d be like all the other nannies. So we tried to get her sacked.” He stopped and smiled at me apologetically. “But then we realized she was different, Father. She wasn’t like all the others. But it was too late. We tried to get the coin back, but by the time we went back to her room, it was gone.”

  “We’re awfully sorry, Miss Lewis,” Nicholas said.

  Lord Livingston slammed his fist on the table. “Abbott, Nicholas, and you, too, Katherine—I’ve never been more disappointed in my children.” He turned to me. “Miss Lewis, please accept my sincere apologies for this . . . misunderstanding.”

  “Of course, sir,” I said quickly. Katherine began cry. “Please, your Lordship, don’t punish them. They’ve been through so much already; it’s only natural that they’d—”

  “What on earth is this?” Lord Livingston said suddenly, after Ferris trotted in and deposited something in his lap. The dog wagged his tail expectantly, oblivious to the mood in the room. “Beardsley, what has Ferris made off with here?” He held up a mauled piece of fabric, tan in color. “Well, I’ll be hanged,” he said. “I do believe this is my sock.”

  A thick silence fell over the dining room. I wasn’t sure whether Lord Livingston would storm off to his study or send the boys to their room. Surely one of the two. But then he picked up his napkin and covered his mouth. I detected laughter fr
om behind the napkin. Mr. Beardsley chimed in next, beginning with a chuckle that turned into a roar. The children followed suit, even Katherine.

  “I have two very sneaky sons,” Lord Livingston said with a wry smile. “But it’s most uncanny, Mrs. Dilloway,” he continued. “They were telling me earlier how much they’d enjoy helping Sadie wash the dishes tonight. I don’t suppose she could use a little help in the kitchen later?”

  Mrs. Dilloway looked at me and then at Mr. Beardsley with raised eyebrows. “If you say so,” she said. “Miss Lewis, bring them downstairs after dinner.”

  Abbott and Nicholas smiled through the rest of their dinner. I knew they didn’t care about having to wash dishes, not when they’d seen their father smile for the first time in what was probably a very long time. I smiled too, for now I knew I had earned the children’s admiration.

  “I hope they weren’t too much trouble with the dishes,” I said to Sadie in the washroom later that night.

  “No,” she replied, twisting her long hair into a single braid, “they did their best. Nicholas broke a saucer, but this house has enough saucers to invite the entire country to tea.” She paused. “I heard that his Lordship was laughing at dinner.”

  I nodded, smiling as I recalled the scene.

  “This house could use more laughter,” she said. “He carries such a burden, you know.”

  “What do you mean, exactly?”

  She tied the end of her braid without looking up. “Lady Anna was a saint, if you ask me,” she said. “All those women.”

  I shook my head. “You’re not saying that—”

  “That he was unfaithful to his wife?” Sadie shrugged. “That’s between him and his maker.” She tucked her braid into her nightcap with a sigh. “But, yes, there were many, including—” She shook her head, as if snuffing out the thought. “I mustn’t gossip. Well, good night, Miss Lewis. I’d better turn in.”

  Before I turned my lamp out, there was a knock on my door. “Yes,” I said.