“I know just what we need.” Alicia hurries out of the room. She calls out from the passage, “Where’s Mack, by the way?”
Rory stares at the little screen as if there’ll be questions about the dress. “With Mum. Been a rugged couple of days.”
“Knew we had a couple left.” Alicia’s returned with a very, very large bottle of Bollinger. “Nineteen fifty-six. Not exactly cold, but not too bad.”
Rory gets up. “Let me.”
“I’m sorry about Helen. She’s a proud woman. I suppose she did what she thought was best.” It’s a big admission, but for a moment, when she hands him the bottle, Alicia’s expression wobbles. “Glasses!” She hurries to the cabinet. A collection of less-than-grand odds and ends of crystal is on a shelf.
“I, Charles Philip Arthur George, take thee . . .”
Rory times the pop of the cork to the moment when the archbishop says, “I now pronounce you man and wife.”
“Can you hear that? They’re all cheering! The whole of London!” Alicia turns to him with delight. “The whole world too. It’s real, then. The fairy tale. Just like you said.” She’s trying to catch champagne as it foams from the neck of the bottle. “He looks a bit serious, though.”
“Wouldn’t you? Man’s just got married in front of the world. Can’t back out now.”
“Hello, hello. Anyone home?” The door bangs open as Mack tows Hugh Windhover into the kitchen.
“I thought you were with Mum?”
“I was.” Mack’s not commenting.
Hugh clears his throat. “Lady Alicia. You’re looking, ah”—it would be a lie to say she’s looking better. The black eyes are a rich green-purple now—“brighter than when I saw you last.”
“I am.” Alicia hands their visitor a glass. She lowers her voice. “Sorry to waste your time, Hugh, but I don’t think we’ll be selling. Circumstances have changed in the family.”
Rory, dispensing champagne, hears family. He smiles at his sister.
“I’m very pleased to hear it. Hundredfield should stay with the Donnes, Lady Alicia. That’s my honest opinion.” Hugh’s suddenly aware that the others are watching them. “And you haven’t wasted my time.”
She looks at him, surprised. “No?”
He takes a sip of the champagne. Smiles appreciatively. “No.”
“Oh, look. He’s going to kiss her.”
Standing behind the chair that Alicia’s sitting in, Hugh murmurs, “Sensible man.”
CODA
O LITTLE TOWN of Bethlehem,
How still we see thee lie.
Above thy deep and dreamless sleep . . .
The words of the carol float from the tinsel-decked radio as the old nun unfolds the sheet of paper.
Dear Sister . . .
She turns it over to see who’s written to her. A bold signature, but it’s readable. Jesse Marley. Sister Mary Joseph sighs. It’s always so nice to get letters, but she doesn’t know what more she can say to the girl.
I hope you don’t mind me writing to you. It’s a few months now since we saw each other, and a great deal has changed in my life. And since it’s so close to Christmas, I thought I’d just drop you this note to give you some news.
“Cup of tea, Sister?” The sentence is delivered directly into an ear.
The old lady jumps. “Julie! I can hear you perfectly well.”
“I know.” The volume is barely different. “But I like to be sure. Christmas cake to go with a cuppa?” The lumpish girl in the Santa hat pours dark brown tea into indestructible china. “That’s a treat. A letter.”
Sister Mary Joseph takes the tea, shakes her head at the cake. Julie. Loud and nosy. Yes, we all have our crosses to bear.
“Julie, you forgot the sugar.” Mrs. Valentine, Sister Mary Joseph’s mah-jongg companion, claims the ward assistant’s attention.
“We can’t have that, can we? I’ll just go and get it.” Julie wields the tea trolley like a weapon on her way to the fake log fire. Numerous old ladies draw back as the wheels sweep past.
Once the trolley’s nosed back through the door, Sister Mary reads again.
Where to start. First of all, you might like to know that I’m now engaged to Mack. He sends his very best regards. We’re so happy, and planning to be married in spring next year when we can get all our family together in the one place; I think I said my parents live in Sydney?
Sister Mary smiles. They suit each other, this handsome pair. And they’ll have lovely children together; giants, but lovely all the same.
The other thing I wanted to let you know is that I’ll be moving to Newton Prior next year. (I’ve been staying at Hundredfield for the last few months.) Mack has a house there, and we’ve been having great fun painting and pulling out walls ahead of moving in together.
A tolerant chuckle from the old lady. After the wedding? Only perhaps.
However, and I hope I’m not being a nuisance if I ask you just once more, is there anything, anything at all, that you can remember after my birth mother died? Any detail will be helpful. Next year I’m planning to look for more information about the disappearance of her body, but I do need help.
The nun closes her eyes. Polite but persistent, is Jesse. But what can she say to the girl? What should she say?
The police regard this as what is called “a cold case.” That is, the file is not closed, but they have no plans to reopen it. But I don’t feel I can rest until I know more about where she might be buried or, indeed, anything at all I can find out about her. My adopted mum can’t tell me very much because, as you are aware, Eva couldn’t speak, though she did tell me, and I know this sounds odd, that the earl arrived at Hundredfield with her one day. He’d been out riding in the forest and found her there.
So, apart from the information you’ve been able to give me about my birth, there’s very little else. But one day I may have children. And I’d like them to know who Eva Green was, and what happened to her. I’m sure you can understand.
If you would like to write back to me, Hundredfield will find me until January, at least.
I hope you have a very happy Christmas.
Warm best wishes,
Jesse Marley
The old hands lie slack on the paper. Christmas. The word weaves like smoke through Sister Mary’s mind as sleep beckons. Something about Christmas. What is it?
Her eyes fly open. She remembers now. She’d been invited to Hundredfield, an Advent children’s party. Lady Elizabeth herself had sent the invitation, and that had caused a stir at Holly House. She’d met the countess, but only once or twice, and she wasn’t sure why she’d been invited.
But snow, there’d been a great deal of snow that Christmas, hadn’t there?
In the great hall at Hundredfield, a glass of sherry in her hand, Mary Joseph remembers staring out the window as that lacy veil began to fall. The countess had asked if she was enjoying herself, and if she was warm.
She’d said, “Thank you, Your Grace. I’m delighted to be here.” And she was.
Then the countess had said an odd thing. “I just wanted to thank you for your help this year. Such a delicate matter.”
Mary Joseph had been puzzled, and perhaps she’d shown it, for the countess said smoothly, “And here is my daughter, Alicia. Alicia, this is Sister Mary Joseph.”
She’d shaken the little girl by the hand—so serious and, unfortunately, so plain, though wearing a pretty dress—but seeing a dark-haired boy all by himself, she’d said, “And who is this?”
The countess had turned. And paused. “That’s Rory.”
Just that. Nothing else. She’d not attempted to call the child over. In that awkward pause, the countess had swept her daughter on.
Sister Mary knows what happened next. Uncertain of what to do, she’d wandered around the hall, looking at paintings and a magnificent, if battered, suit of armor. An open door took her inside a library, and there, outside, where garden faded into shadowed forest, she’d seen her. Eva.
The girl was standing in a pool of light where there was no light. And Eva had smiled at her. A silver figure in the falling snow. And then she had turned and walked away into the trees. Into the dark.
Sister Mary Joseph closes her eyes. Five months dead, but I saw her. And her white skin seemed silver in the light because she was naked. How can she tell Jesse that?
Mrs. Valentine nudges her friend Miss Bester. “Should we wake her up? She’ll miss dinner.”
Miss Bester shakes her head. The letter has fallen to the floor but the old nun looks so peaceful. “Let her sleep, poor thing. She’s earned it.”
Mrs. Valentine nods wisely. “Done a lot of good in her life, Sister Mary Jo. Come along, then.” The two old friends get up and leave the nun to her dreams.
They pass the Christmas tree and pause. “Looks lovely up there, doesn’t she?”
Miss Bester nods. “Magical.”
Among the tinsel and the lights, the silver fairy looks down from the top of the tree. Light from the windows gilds the white quilt covering the garden outside as fresh snow begins to fall, and the radio sings on to itself.
Silent night,
Holy night . . .
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Caerlaverock, Tantallon, Dunvegan, Cawdor, Eilean Donan, Alnwick, Bamburgh. The names roll like thunder out of the riven history of the wars between Scotland and England. Castles, each one of them—and so many more—went into the making of Hundredfield and the story I wove around that place. It grew slowly, this tale, and three times I went back to Scotland and the borders region to find the pieces that would bring my puzzle together.
First, twenty years ago, there was Dunvegan on the Isle of Skye, and the legend of the Fairy Flag. In some odd way that stayed with me—the story of the fairy woman who married a McLeod.
But it wasn’t just the buildings that brought me back: It was the landscape and the light as well. And the people. I like Northerners. I like their toughness and I like their humor.
Then there’s the work that the Landmark Trust does in rescuing smaller, but no less significant, structures than the great buildings preserved by the National Trust for Scotland. That needs a tribute here.
A year or so back, Andrew and I stayed in a fortified tower house in Dumfries and Galloway on the Scottish side of the borders. The Castle of Park is small as castles go, and it was just before the country shut down due to snow, so we wore a lot of clothes to keep warm. But it was there, in that frozen world, I found the bones of Fulk’s great keep, with its staircase tower and twisting staircase leading up to the cap house. And in the mornings, I watched deer pick their way out of the trees, foraging for food. You don’t see that where I live. . . .
And Rosslyn Castle, too. The home of the Sinclairs for hundreds of years, and close by the famous Rosslyn Chapel (of The Da Vinci Code fame). What a privilege it was to stay there as well. Each night I read ghost stories lying in the bath and drank red wine in front of the fire. It was Rosslyn Castle that gave me the bedrooms in Hundredfield’s New Range, and the layers and layers of rooms and chambers stuck to the cliff and climbing into the sky. Half ruined now, what a vast place it must once have been.
Bamburgh, too, stays with me. That great hunched mass of buildings crowning a cliff by the wild North Sea gave me so much. There, in the courtyards behind the walls that men did indeed once patrol, was the very form and shape of Hundredfield.
Scotland. Cumbria. Northumberland. I never want to leave unless it’s to go home.
But it’s not just the country I’m grateful to here. There are a roll call of people I want to personally thank who, each in their own way, has made Wild Wood real.
First, last, and always, there are my publishers, Simon & Schuster worldwide, and most particularly Judith Curr, who has supported my books from the very beginning. And of course Sarah Branham—my dear New York–based editor who works with Judith in that great ziggurat on the Avenue of the Americas. Thank you both, so much. How awed and astonished I was to walk into that building for the first time in December 2000. And then to be handed a three-book deal, when I was already on my way back to Australia to roll production, finally, on the television series of McLeod’s Daughters after waiting so many years. That was a day.
Lou Johnson, Simon & Schuster, in Sydney—thank you so much, Lou—and all her dedicated and hard-working team. Larissa Edwards and Anabel Pandiella are just two among so many who deserve my gratitude for all they have done to help my books on their way, past, present, and future.
And Nicola O’Shea, my Australian editor. Draft by draft, Nicola is the voice of reason when my own goes missing. Writing is tough sometimes. It’s not a war zone, but it can feel like it if the writing day warps out of shape. Paranoia! Anguish!
Thank you, Nicola, again. One of us has to keep a clear mind, and I’m glad I’ve got access to yours.
My agent, Rick Raftos. Unflappable man! Thank you, Rick. Kind, decent, smart—that’s you.
And thank you, too, to the friends I talk to during the writing process. Vicki Maddern. Yes, you. How compassionate you were when I was on the floor. Your calm helped me so much. It seems to me that writers, all over the world, must be a secret society. There are signs and signals by which we recognize another of our own kind. A light in the darkness, for instance. That’s a pretty good sign. In your case, you held up a bloody big flaming torch, and I stumbled toward that beacon very gratefully. Thank God for you! And Prue Batten. How good it was to talk story and process with you. What courage you have, Prue, and that’s an inspiration. Thank you.
Niki White, from Nikstar. I always thought that having a personal publicist was . . . well, remarkable. And I’ve discovered it is. Thank you as always, Niki, for the care and imagination you bring to helping me find ways to talk to the world from my ridgeline in Tasmania.
Of course, too, there’s my family. I write for all of you, each adult, each child, and you’re all in my head, all the time.
And finally, Andrew Blaxland. Dear husband, loving friend. You built me an office this year out of a more-than-fragile shed. Now I can’t believe my luck each time I open this door, because I’m surrounded by such beauty. And today as I sit here, in the place you’ve made for me with the long views over the hills and the water, my soul says thank you.
POSIE
Huon Valley, Tasmania
March 2015
MELANIE LUNDEN
POSIE GRAEME-EVANS is the author of five internationally bestselling novels, including The Dressmaker and The Island House. An Australian television producer in a former life, she has created and commissioned numerous much-loved programs for children and adults, most recently the worldwide smash McLeod’s Daughters and the Daytime Emmy–nominated Hi-5. She lives in Tasmania. Find out more at PosieGraemeEvans.net.
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ALSO BY POSIE GRAEME-EVANS
The Island House
The Dressmaker
The Innocent
The Exiled
The Uncrowned Queen
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This book is a work of fiction. Any references to historical events, real people, or real places are used fictitiously. Other names, characters, places, and events are products of the author’s imagination, and any resemblance to actual events or places or persons, living or dead, is entirely coinci
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available.
ISBN 978-1-4767-4361-5
ISBN 978-1-4767-4362-2 (ebook)
Wild Wood Page 40