The Lovers (Echoes From The Past)

by Irina Shapiro

  Gabe merged onto the motorway, glad to see that it was practically deserted and he had the road to himself. He stepped on the gas pedal and felt the Jaguar pounce as it responded to his command. The car flew toward London, darkened countryside and empty petrol stations flashing past the windows. Gabe enjoyed the sensation for a few minutes before easing his foot off the gas. Where was he rushing to? There was nothing waiting for him at home, save an empty flat and an even emptier fridge. He didn’t even have a few bottles of lager, and he was desperate for a pint. Gabe thought of calling his best mate, Pete McGann. Pete was always up for a few pints, especially on a Friday night, but Gabe didn’t think he could handle Pete’s rhapsodizing on marital bliss in his current emotional state.

  Pete married his girlfriend the day after the university commencement ceremony, and although nearly the whole graduating class took bets on how long the marriage would last, given that Pete met a somewhat inebriated Jen in a pub only a month before and shagged her not five minutes later in the loo, Pete was still happily married nearly twenty years on. Pete and Jen had three strapping teenage boys who were always up for Sunday morning football or a trip to the arcade with their Uncle Gabe. They were fine boys, and Gabe secretly, or perhaps not-so-secretly, envied Pete his beautiful family.

  Over the past few years, Gabe began to ache for a family of his own, the desire to have a child growing by the day, but despite always having women in his life, the only woman he could envision having a family with was Quinn. The thought of Quinn carrying his child filled him with such desperate longing that he nearly howled with the futility of his devotion to her. Luke was such an unbelievable wanker, a man who never put Quinn first and who discarded her like a piece of rubbish. Why couldn’t she see that and give Gabe a chance?

  Gabe swung the car off the nearest exit and turned around, getting back on the northbound motorway. He wasn’t going to London, he was going to Berwick. He was too gutted to face spending the weekend on his own, and Pete and Jen’s well-meaning platitudes were more than he could handle at the moment. He wanted what every man wanted when he was hurting too much for words. He wanted Mum. His dad liked to retire early, but his mum was something of a night owl and would still be up by the time he made it home. Gabe was close with his dad, but it was his mum who truly understood him, and she understood about Quinn. Phoebe Russell was the only person he’d ever confided in about his love for his friend.

  Pete suspected, and Jen certainly knew, but Gabe had never said it out loud, never revealed himself to that extent. He was generally a private person, who liked to keep his feelings to himself. Besides, what kind of man admitted to carrying a torch for another man’s woman for eight years? What kind of man was too honorable not to make a play for her at some point? Well, perhaps he’d refrained from making a play for Quinn not out of a misguided sense of honor but from some deeper knowledge that he’d be rejected, as he had been tonight. He’d allowed himself to believe that Quinn cared for him, maybe even loved him on some level, but that dream was over now. She’d made her feelings clear.

  Gabe felt somewhat calmer by the time he pulled into the drive of the manor house he’d called home for the first eighteen years of his life. He’d notice signs of dilapidation come morning—his father had done little to maintain the family home since suffering a heart attack a few years back—but at the moment, the place looked like heaven. Warm light spilled from the library windows, where his mother was no doubt reading some juicy novel. His septuagenarian mum had discovered a liking for racy novels in her old age but diligently hid them from her husband for fear of giving him another coronary. Gabe didn’t think his father would be particularly shocked. They hadn’t been married for over forty years without learning something about each other, and Graeme Russell knew exactly what his sprightly seventy-two-year-old wife was into, just as his mum knew all about the online gambling his father liked to dabble in when no one was looking. Gabe suddenly realized how much he’d missed his parents. He didn’t visit them nearly often enough, perhaps because he felt like a little boy the moment he walked through the door, but at times, that wasn’t such a bad thing.

  Gabe used his key to let himself in and walked toward the library, his footsteps echoing on the flagstone floor of the corridor. He should have rung, but he was in no mood to pull over, make the call, and explain to his well-meaning mum why he suddenly wanted to come home. Instead, he knocked on the library door gently, so as not to startle his poor elderly mother.

  “Come in,” she called eagerly. “I knew you’d come tonight,” Phoebe Russell announced when Gabe stepped into the library. She was sitting in her favorite chair before the fire, an open book on her lap, and Buster the Lab asleep at her feet. Her heather-gray twin set was an almost identical match to her iron-gray hair, styled in a fashionable pixie cut, and her cheeks were rosy from the heat of the fire. Phoebe’s blue eyes scanned Gabe from head to toe, checking, just as she did when he was a boy, that everything looked to be in the right place and that there was no cause for alarm.

  “And how did you know that?” Gabe asked as he stooped to kiss her on the cheek and then sank into his father’s chair, stretching his legs before the fire.

  “A mother always knows,” she replied cryptically. Phoebe gave Gabe another lengthy once-over, focusing on this face this time, and shook her head in disgust. “Foolish girl.”

  “Mum, have you suddenly become clairvoyant?” Gabe asked, smiling despite his misery. Truth be told, when it came to him, she always had been.

  “Is it necessary to be clairvoyant to see that your boy is suffering? And why is he suffering, you might ask?” Phoebe asked dramatically, as if addressing a roomful of people. “It can only be because the woman he’s worshipped for the past eight years is too much of a blind fool to recognize her good fortune when it’s presented to her,” Phoebe replied with a straight face, but her eyes twinkled with good humor.

  “I’m not sure that Quinn agrees with you about the good fortune part,” Gabe replied, staring miserably into the fire. Now that he was here, he wasn’t sure he really wanted to talk about Quinn after all, but his mother was already off and running, going from relaxing in her chair to leaning forward in her eagerness to console him.

  “Gabriel, you always were an impatient child,” his mother scolded. “You could never wait for the right time. Why, I’d run out of places to hide Christmas gifts from you. Like a bloodhound you were, searching until you found every last one and ruining your own Christmas morning in the process.”

  “I’m no longer seven, Mum,” Gabe sighed.

  “No, you are thirty-seven, but you’re still the same eager beaver you’ve always been. Quinn needs time, Gabe. She’ll come around, you’ll see, but you can’t rush her. The man she loved just left her, for someone else, no less. She needs time to come to terms with that rejection before she can open her heart to someone new. Had she been the one to leave him, she might be ready to move on, but Luke’s desertion came as a shock. You said so yourself. Stop hounding her.”

  “Is that what I’m doing?” Gabe asked, hurt that his mother would use such a harsh term.

  “Isn’t it? How many times since she returned from the Middle East have you made your feelings known?”

  “Three,” Gabe muttered, suddenly feeling like the biggest prat to walk the earth. His mother had that effect on him at times, but he didn’t mind. He needed to hear the truth, even if it made him feel like a right fool.

  “And that’s two times too many. She knows how you feel, love. Give her a bit of time to come round. She has her reasons for not falling into your arms.”

  “And what might those be, Mum?” Gabe asked, smiling at his mother over the glass of brandy she just handed him, taking one for herself in the process. His mum loved a nightcap.

  Phoebe Russell shook her head, as if astounded by her son’s epic thickness. One never finishes raising a son, she mused as she resumed her seat. On some level, they remained little boys forever, always needing tha
t little bit of guidance to come to the right conclusion, even when pushing forty.

  “Gabe, you are not some random man Quinn met in a bar or at some dull archeological conference. You are her friend, her employer, and the man she’s known the longest, other than her father and the pillock who ran for the hills with that teenage bimbo. You two don’t have a clean slate; you have history already, and that history is holding her back. Crossing that line with you will jeopardize your friendship as well as her job, and she’s worried and scared of losing you for good. You mean too much to her to be discarded like someone she had a casual drink with and didn’t care to see again. I wager she’s said something along those lines, hasn’t she?” Phoebe inquired as she took a sip of her brandy, her eyes bright over the rim of her glass.

  “Yes, she has,” Gabe confessed, hanging his head in mock shame. “How’d you get to be so wise, Mum?”

  “It comes with having a womb,” his mother quipped. “You should know, my historian son, that women have always had to be wiser than men. Having no equal rights and being at the mercy of men their whole lives, they had to anticipate every eventuality and know how to deflect anger and injustice to protect themselves and their children. Women are not hotheads, my boy, they are thinkers and planners.”

  “You don’t know modern women, Mum,” Gabe countered, thinking of all the women who had thrown themselves at him over the years, interested only in a casual shag rather than a meaningful relationship. Women were liberated and as brazen as any man these days, if not more so.

  “Don’t I? Oh, they might be sexually liberated and free to speak their minds, but they still have to compete in the world of men in most areas, and they have to be twice as clever to achieve half as much because they are held back by misogyny and fear.”

  Gabe remained silent as he sipped his drink, considering what his mother had just said. She had a way of putting things in perspective and helped him see the situation from a completely different angle. Perhaps she was right, and he’d been impatient and overly aggressive. He thought that he was swooping in to save the day, when, in fact, he was making Quinn feel cornered and unsure of his motives. He needed to give her the time and space she needed to think and come to terms with Luke’s betrayal. A slow smile spread across Gabe’s face as he regarded his mother across the room.

  “Thanks, Mum. I love you.”

  “And I love you,” she replied, ruffling his hair as she rose to retire. “And do you know what does wonders for unrequited love?” she asked, a wicked grin tugging at the corners of her mouth.

  “No, but I can’t wait to find out.”

  “Hard work. The gutters need cleaning, the leaves on the lawn need to be raked, several lightbulbs need changing, and there’s a drip in the master bath. And Buster could use a visit to the vet. He’s been poorly lately, but your father keeps putting a trip to the doctor off. Afraid of losing his longtime pal,” his mother added sadly. Buster had been with the family for the past fifteen years, son of the previous Buster who’d been Gabe’s pup when he was a boy. At fifteen, there wasn’t much a vet could do for him, but if the animal was in pain, perhaps he could offer some relief or a humane end.

  Gabe got to his feet and saluted his mother. “Yes, ma’am. All will be done, and by teatime, no less. Make a list, Mum. I will fix it, change it, screw it in, rake it, and make it whole again.”

  “That’s what I like to hear. At least you are not a procrastinator like your father. Now go to bed and dream pleasant dreams,” his mother said as she reached up to kiss him goodnight. “I’ll see to the fire.”

  Gabe trudged up the creaking steps, a silly grin on his face. It’d been the right decision to come home. His mother hadn’t told him anything he didn’t already know, but somehow, he felt remarkably better, and helping his aging parents around the house was something he looked forward to doing. It would help to assuage some of his guilt for not visiting them more often. Perhaps he could convince his father to take a ride to a nearby kennel and choose a new puppy. It would ease Buster’s passing for his dad and give Gabe a chance to give his father an early Christmas present.

  Chapter 37

  June 1665

  London, England

  Elise cried bitterly as Janet’s body was carried from the house wrapped in a linen shroud. Two grooms had donned leather gloves and tied kerchiefs over their noses and mouths, fearful of contracting the disease from coming into contact with the corpse. Janet had died peacefully, just slipping away in her sleep after days of fevered lucidity in which she kept crying out for her mother and begging God to help her. Lucy didn’t appear to be infected but had to be kept in isolation for a period of forty days. And now they had no choice but to alert the authorities. A red cross would be painted on the door and an armed guard would be stationed outside to keep nobles and servants alike from leaving the premises.

  Elise curled into a ball and rested her forehead against her knees. The position wasn’t comfortable, and she was acutely aware of her small belly. The babe inside had begun moving during the past week. The movements were strange, almost like a fish on a hook thrashing in panic. They startled Elise and then stopped just when she got accustomed to them and longed to feel more. Elise put her hand on her belly, willing the child to move, but all was still. It’s as if her baby felt her despair and tried to keep as still as possible to protect itself.

  A knock sounded on her bedroom door, and Elise roused herself and wiped angrily at her eyes. The servants needed her to be strong, not come apart like a child. “Come,” she called out.

  Peg came into the room timidly. She was in her early twenties, with abundant fair hair and huge blue eyes that missed little. She was ethereally beautiful, but Elise suspected that she wasn’t quite as innocent as she appeared. Peg was aware of her beauty and used it to her advantage, not that Elise could blame her. She’d learned a thing or two over the past few months, and perhaps being possessed of a little cunning wasn’t such a bad thing for a woman.

  “What is it, Peg?” Elise asked warily.

  Peg lowered her eyes as she spoke, her voice reedy and frightened.

  “I can’t hear you,” Elise said irritably.

  “It’s Judd, me lady. He’s taken ill. The other grooms have taken him up to the loft above the stables.”

  “Oh, dear God,” Elise whispered. “Not another one.”

  “I’m ’fraid so.”

  “Is it the plague?” Elise asked, already knowing the answer. What were the chances of a man simply getting ill when the Black Death was raging all about them?

  “Aye, me lady.”

  Elise nodded. “Thank you for telling me. Make sure he has food and drink and that someone keeps an eye on him should he need anything.”

  “Aye, ma’am.” Peg turned to leave, but not before Elise saw the terror in her eyes. “Are they coming to shut us in, me lady?”

  “I’m afraid so, Peg.” A desperate sob tore from Peg’s chest as she fled the room, leaving Elise shaking with fear. She began to pace the room, taking deep breaths in an effort to calm down. She had just about mastered herself, when there was a loud banging on the front door, the thudding reverberating through the house. Had they come so quickly? Janet had died only that morning.

  Elise took a shuddering breath and headed downstairs. She was the mistress of the house and needed to take responsibility for the people who relied on her. Peg was already at the door, her face contorted with fear as she pulled it open, half expecting to see soldiers. A man stood on the threshold. His hat was pulled down low and the bottom part of his face was covered with a kerchief. He looked dusty and travel-stained, and his leather-clad hand seemed to hover near the hilt of his sword. He wasn’t there to shut them in, but perhaps he was bent on thievery.

  “What do you want here, sir?” Elise spoke loudly. “There’s plague in this house, so if you value your life, you’d better be on your way.”

  The man pulled off the kerchief impatiently, revealing himself to be James. “Aye, I
know there’s plague. Get your things together. We are leaving. Hurry, we don’t have much time. They’ll be here within the hour, and then it will be too late.”

  Elise nearly threw herself into his arms, but she had to preserve a sense of decorum. To the rest of the household, James was just another servant, a man who had no business telling the lady of the house what to do. Peg gaped at James for a moment, but she quickly got her bearings and whirled around to face Elise, her hands clasped in front of her.

  “Oh, please, can I come with ye?” Peg pleaded. “I ain’t sick. Not yet. And ye’ll need a lady’s maid to look after ye. Oh, please, me lady.”

  Elise would have preferred to take Lucy, but to break Lucy’s quarantine was too risky. She showed no symptoms yet, but that didn’t mean she wasn’t on the verge of falling ill. “All right, Peg. Get your things and pack for Lady Barbara.”

  “James, how did you know?” Elise asked as she threw together a few items of clothing, a pair of sturdy shoes, stockings, and several small pieces of jewelry. She didn’t have any money, but the jewelry could always be traded for goods, should the need arise. Elise took her mother’s brooch from her jewelry box and pinned it to her bodice. She would never part with it, not even if she were starving. It was the only thing she had left—the only thing that meant anything.

  “I didn’t know. I heard of the terrible outbreak in London and waited for Lord Asher to bring you to Suffolk. I thought it was only a matter of time before he realized that he had to get you out of the city, but you never came, and I began to fear for your life. I saw them carrying out a body as I came up the street. Hurry, Elise. We need to go now,” he added urgently. “They are coming.”