Mirror Bride

by Jane Peart

  Garnet watched as the two, hand in hand, made their way back across the lawn in the direction of the gazebo. There they turned down the path leading to the lake at the bottom of the estate, probably to feed the swans, Garnet surmised and then moved over to her desk where her correspondence waited.

  She didn't begin the task of answering her mail right away. The sight of her granddaughter had brought with it all the memories that the little girl evoked, and she must take time to sort them out. Was it possible that six months had elapsed since the tragedy? The awful disaster that had left the child motherless and Garnet mourning both husband and daughter?

  It had been a day much like this one, Garnet recalled, when she had received the news of the sinking of the great Titanic. Only days before, she had accompanied Davida and Faith to Southampton from where they would board the new, "unsinkable" luxury liner, headed for New York on its maiden voyage.

  She thought of the gala luncheon she had given for the departing travelers here before they left. How excited and elated they had all been as they crowded into the luxurious cabin for a farewell party before the women set sail. It had been such a happy occasion, no long separation was anticipated. Jeremy and Jonathan were booked on a smaller ship to follow and would meet them in New York, where Davida and Faith planned to do some shopping and theatergoing before returning to Virginia. Jeremy was leaving to be gone only a few weeks on a business trip.

  They were all so happy that day. Davida had seemed particularly well and animated, and Jonathan was relieved that she seemed to be coming out of the long depression. Garnet had not seen them so openly devoted in a long time. Again she sighed deeply.

  Jonathan was so dear to her, almost like her own son, their deep bonding the result of her care of him immediately after the death of his mother, Rose, who had died when he was only three. Garnet had wanted so much for his troubled marriage to be restored, and she had felt she was beginning to see the answer to her prayers. Then . . . this. Jonathan had still not fully recovered from the loss of his wife among the countless drowned when her overloaded lifeboat capsized.

  Most of all, Garnet grieved for her own daughter. Faith had survived the dreadful ordeal of the sinking ship, had drifted in a crowded lifeboat for hours in freezing weather, dressed only in a thin nightdress and silk robe. Then, after a miraculous rescue at sea, she had been taken aboard the Carpathia, the ship that had steamed to the aid of the stricken Titanic. Weakened by exposure and shock, she had later died of pneumonia.

  Garnet had always prided herself on her strength, having lost so many dear to her during the War but still was not spared another cruel blow. Only a few days after the disaster, Jeremy had had a fatal heart attack. In one short week, both husband and daughter were taken from her.

  Garnet put her head in both hands, suppressing an involuntary shudder. She had once been the envy of many, a woman whose whole life seemed charmed, a brilliant triumph. But overnight everything that meant most to her had been taken away. Her child, her beautiful bright Faith . . . and Jeremy—

  At first, she had not thought she could bear it, that she would surely go mad with grief. For more than half her life, Jeremy had been everything to her—husband, lover, companion, protector. The one person in the world who knew her best, and loved her most, in spite of her flaws and failings. How, she asked herself, could she go on without him?

  A few weeks after her double tragedy, a package was delivered to her at Birchfields—a small box of Faith's belongings that had finally been released by the hospital where she had been taken after her rescue and later died. It was sent to Garnet, since that was the address registered on her reservations aboard ship.

  When Garnet could bring herself to open it, she found inside something both familiar and unexpected—the amethyst betrothal ring. She had never expected to see it again!

  Now the sight brought fresh tears and, as she put it away, she decided she would soon pack it among her other things and send it to Jonathan for safekeeping.

  The tragedy had shattered each family in a different way, Garnet mused. Jonathan had been stunned, but with a crush of business affairs to settle, he had taken little time for his own grieving at first. Since Jeremy's fatal collapse had occurred in New York, Jonathan had managed all the details, cabled Garnet, arranged for Jeremy's body to be returned to England for burial. All this, in addition to his own sad tasks—the arrangements for a memorial service for Davida, whose body was never recovered, the comforting of his own two children—

  Garnet thought then of Kip and Meredith. Kip had gone off with a college friend to a ranch in Montana to spend the summer as a cowboy, and to the surprise of some, mild little Meredith had married the Portuguese fisherman she had known since her childhood at Nantucket and had gone to stay with him there. This left Jonathan alone at Montclair. She wasn't sure what he was going to do.

  Somehow Garnet had gone on. She had had no choice really, for there was Bryanne to think about now that her beautiful young mother was dead. Jeff had completely collapsed. Later, he had left with their young son, Gareth, and gone to live with a friend in New Mexico, leaving Lynette, their nine-year-old daughter, with her other grandmother, Blythe Cameron.

  Strange, wasn't it? Garnet reflected, that once again her life and Blythe's should be inexorably bound, each caring for a grandchild. The two women who had loved the same man, Malcolm Montrose, whose lives had crisscrossed dramatically for years, who became sisters-in-law when Blythe married Rod, and then even more closely tied when Blythe's son by Malcolm and Garnet's daughter Faith, fell in love and married. Now they shared grandchildren.

  Life was filled with irony.

  Six months ago life had seemed impossibly bleak, empty, sad, without meaning for Garnet. Now Bryanne had become the focus of her life. Plans for her future were the most important yet troubling aspect of Garnet's day-to-day existence.

  Nothing had been settled about Bryanne, and Garnet knew that she could not put it off indefinitely. No word had come from Jeff in months, not since his few cryptic notes from New Mexico, with little in them to give a clue as to his plans for the future of his lost little family.

  It seemed it was up to Garnet to make some decisions . . . about Bryanne, at least. There was n o alternative but to go to Virginia and discuss their mutual concerns with Rod and Blythe. Yes, something must be settled—and soon.

  Part V

  Mayfield, Virginia

  Fall 1912

  chapter 18

  Cameron Hall

  IN THE MIDDLE of September, a cable from Garnet was delivered to Cameron Hall, saying that she would be arriving in Mayfield the first week in October. She would be traveling alone.

  "She says nothing about Bryanne," Blythe said, puzzled.

  Rod shrugged. "Maybe she didn't think it was necessary."

  "Perhaps—" Blythe's voice trailed off uncertainly. A tiny shred of suspicion that she could not quite name stirred in her heart.

  Three weeks later Garnet was on the afternoon train pulling into Mayfield. From her compartment window she saw the small yellow-frame station as the train pulled to a stop. How little it had changed in all these years! In all the decades of comings and goings, arrivals and departures . . . young men had been seen off to war, veterans returning met. H ow many hopeful youths had set out to seek their fortunes, how many come back wiser, richer, poorer, humbled, sometimes broken. She herself had come and gone countless times. But this was perhaps the saddest time for her.

  Kitty had been delegated to go to the station. There was no mistaking her aunt as she alighted gracefully from the train. Dressed in a pale gray suit trimmed with a ruff and cuffs of silvered blue fox fur, wearing a velvet toque adorned with blue and gray feathers, Garnet was elegant as usual. As she started down the platform, in her wake was a porter wheeling a cart loaded with monogramrned luggage.

  "Aunt Garnet!" Kitty waved.

  At first Garnet wasn't sure which twin it was. Both were stunning young women, so alike it was hard to
tell them apart. Unless they dressed differently, uniquely reflecting their opposite tastes and personalities, it was a wonder that anyone could tell them apart!

  Suspecting her aunt's uncertainty, Kitty came forward. "It's Kitty. Could I carry something for you?"

  On the ride from the station out to Cameron Hall, they were silent. Kitty knew that her aunt was lost in nostalgic memories as they drove over the familiar road. After all, even though she had lived abroad for years, Garnet had spent her childhood, girlhood, and young womanhood in the magnificent house they were approaching. She had first left it to become the bride of Bryce Montrose, returning five years later as a widow. Then she had left again, as the wife of Jeremy Devlin, to live in England, visiting many times over the thirty-two years of that marriage. Now she was returning, a widow once more.

  Blythe was in the front hall when they entered the door and came at once to greet Garnet, hands extended. Whatever negative emotions her mother might be experiencing, Kitty saw that they were masked perfectly behind her gracious welcome.

  It was the first time the two women had seen each other since their mutual tragedy. As their eyes met in a long look, the souls of both were exposed in their mute agony of loss, the clasp of hands acknowledging the sorrow they shared and receiving the mutual sympathy offered.

  "Garnet, my dear, it is so good to see you. You're looking well . . . splendid, as usual. But you've had an exhausting trip. Come in. We'll go into the library. There's a nice fire going, and we'll have tea."

  Kitty excused herself, knowing her mother and aunt had much to discuss in private.

  Entering the library, Garnet took one of the wing chairs by the fireplace and glanced around appreciatively. Nothing much had been changed in here. It was very much the same as it had been when she was a child. Her gaze halted on the family portrait still hanging over the mantel, the one commissioned by her father and painted when she was five years old and her twin brothers, Rod and Stewart, were eight. How young and handsome her parents were then . . . goodness, could it really have been so long ago? Garnet gave an unconscious little shudder, reminded that she had passed her sixtieth birthday.

  Blythe busied herself pouring tea from the silver service. She was sure that Garnet recognized it from the Cameron crest engraved on the rounded surface. Perhaps all the family silver should have gone to her as the only daughter. Blythe wondered if she should mention it. She had always felt a little unsure about such things, having come into the family late and as an outsider, at that. Well, but this was surely no time to bring it up.

  "Lemon? Cream? Sugar?" she asked, then handed Garnet her teacup and offered the plate of cheese biscuits and rolled ham sandwiches. But underneath the polite exchange, Blythe felt the discomfort of past intimidation.

  She had always been a little in awe of the older woman's confidence, her instinctive air of belonging, while Blythe herself suffered the sensations of inadequacy and insecurity. And when she had learned that Garnet had once hoped to marry Malcolm, Blythe had felt even more ill at ease around her.

  The passing years had put them on a more equal footing, however. Blythe had acquired a new poise in her many life experiences of travel and cultural exposure. She now gave every evidence of being a well-loved woman, wealthy in her own right, and held an unassailable position in Mayfield society.

  The two spoke of trivial matters while each continued her private assessment of the other. Although many things connected them—they were, after all, sisters-in-law twice over—it was the marriage of Blythe's son Jeff to Garnet's daughter, Faith, now deceased, that had been the strangest twist of fate.

  And therein lay the challenge. What had brought them closest might yet be the thing that divided them most, for all their new civility. Uppermost now in both women's minds must be the future of their two motherless granddaughters, Lynnette and Bryanne Montrose.

  As she sipped her tea, feeling its energizing warmth, Garnet could not help comparing the composed, fashionably dressed woman sitting opposite her now with the coltish young girl in the outlandish outfit she had first seen in the pantry of Montclair—the bride that Malcolm had brought home from California.

  Today in a lavender dress, softened by the lace collar fastened by an amethyst pin at the neckline, her auburn hair against the emerald green velvet chair on which she was seated, Garnet had to admit she made a stunning appearance. The unlined creamy smoothness of her skin reminded Garnet sharply that Blythe was some ten years younger than she.

  The first exchange of pleasantries past, the room was suddenly quiet. Only the sounds of the log crackling in the hearth and of a clock striking the quarter hour somewhere deep in the house disturbed the silence.

  Well, thought Garnet, there is no use delaying what I've come to say. But something stopped her, something in Blythe's posture, her demeanor. Looking over at her sister-in-law, Garnet was struck with the expression in her wide, dark brown eyes—a kind of innocence much like she had seen on that long-ago day when Malcolm had introduced her for the first time.

  As Garnet hesitated, there came the bang of the front door, the sound of a child's voice, then laughter.

  The two women looked at each other, and Garnet read in Blythe's face a pleading, a questioning that disturbed her. She spoke only a single word. "Lynette?"

  Blythe nodded. "Yes," she said in a whispery voice.

  "I'm anxious to see my other granddaughter." Garnet made a move as if to rise from her chair, but Blythe stood first.

  "I'll call her in," and Blythe went to the library door. She opened it. "Darling, come in. There's someone here you'll want to see."

  Garnet felt her throat tighten and instinctively put up a hand as if to ease the tightness. When the little girl entered the room, Garnet drew in her breath.

  How like Faith at that age she was!—dark hair, heart-shaped face. But she had the Montrose eyes—those extraordinary, intensely blue eyes, passed on from Sara Leighton Montrose to her sons, her grandson. The child held herself very erect. A small, slender, dignified little creature, Garnet thought, but with a look of vulnerability that is very appealing.

  She was wearing a red coat with a little cape. Blythe helped her out of it, revealing a plaid dress with lace collar, bowed at the neck.

  "We've a nice surprise for you, darling," Blythe said. "Your grandmother Devlin has come all the way from England to see you."

  Lynette glanced at Garnet a little shyly and slipped her hand into Blythe's as they crossed the room toward her.

  "Precious child, come here! Let me look at you! Give Grandmother a hug." Garnet held out her arms. She felt a twinge of annoyance as Lynette hesitated, looking up at Blythe as if asking permission.

  When the child was standing in front of her, Garnet cupped her face in her hands, then kissed both rosy cheeks. "Well, my darling, it's been such a long time since I've seen you and you've grown into such a pretty, big girl. I wouldn't have recognized you!" Garnet's voice wavered at the thought of Faith, and a renewed sense of her loss threatened to overtake her.

  The last thing she wanted was to upset the little girl, so she quickly controlled her emotions and tried to smile brightly. "I'm so happy to see you."

  "I'm glad to see you, Grandmother," Lynette said shyly, one hand stroking Garnet's velvet sleeve.

  "Now, tell me, where have you been this afternoon?"

  "To my dancing class."

  "The Mayfield Junior Cotillion. You remember, Garnet. They've reactivated it. It's a very nice way to get the children together early enough so they'll find it easy and natural to move into social situations when it's suitable," Blythe explained.

  "Ah, yes." Garnet recalled her own cotillion days.

  "She loves going," Blythe continued. "She has so many friends—"

  "I'm sure she does," Garnet said quickly. "But I find children make friends easily wherever they are."

  Suddenly Lynette twisted free of Garnet's hold and directed her attention to Blythe. "Nana, Dabney Carrington is having a birthday
party. May I go?"

  "Well, I certainly don't see why not. When is it?"

  "He said they would be sending invitations."

  "Well, then we shall see."

  "I'll need a new dress, don't you think?" Lynette's voice was tentative.

  "And you shall have one!" Garnet said, turning the child toward her again. "Just wait 'til you see what I've brought you in my trunk!"

  "A dress?" Lynette sounded excited.

  "Yes, darling, a dress, and many other things besides! And a special present from your little sister Bryanne!"

  There was a moment's pause, and Lynette put one chubby hand up to her mouth, rounded into an O.

  "What is it? What's the matter?" Garnet was concerned.

  Lynette's expression was suddenly solemn. " I . . . well, sometimes I almost forget I have a little sister."

  Over the child's head, the two women's eyes met, and the look they exchanged was inscrutable.

  Garnet recovered first. "Well, of course, you haven't seen her in so long . . . but she knows all about you and she wanted to come with me to see you. But you'll never guess what happened! She came down with the miserable old measles and is in quarantine, so I couldn't bring her. Still, she picked out your present herself and was sure you'd like it."

  "Can we go open your trunk and see it now?"

  "But, Lynette, your grandmother hasn't finished her tea—" began Blythe.

  "Nonsense," Garnet dismissed her concern with an airy wave of her hand, and got out of her chair. "I've had it, and it was lovely, but now the important thing is that Lynette have her gift from her sister. Shall we go now, darling?"

  Taking the child by the hand, they started toward the door, then stopped and turned. "I don't know where you've put me, Blythe," Garnet said apologetically.