Song of the Spirits (In the Land of the Long White Cloud saga)

by Lark, Sarah

  3

  Thomas ran into Elaine again in her father’s store when he was looking for fabric for new suits. There were excellent tailors in Queenstown, as his father had pointed out. And they worked at much more reasonable rates than their colleagues in Dunedin. When he really thought about it, there was hardly any reason to make the long trip to Dunedin for every little thing. He liked every aspect of the selection in Queenstown. And the fabrics that Ruben carried were not only of good quality but were also recommended by the most delicate hand.

  Elaine was straightening a few bales on a shelf when Thomas entered the textiles department. His father was busy with Ruben O’Keefe at the time. All the better, as Thomas wanted to get another look at the girl on his own.

  Elaine turned a flaming red when she saw him coming, but Thomas thought it suited her. He also liked the timidity, almost fear, in her eyes. They were beautiful eyes, scintillating like the sea in the sun with a hint of green. She was still wearing the same riding dress as the day before. One certainly could not accuse her of vanity.

  “Good morning, Miss O’Keefe. You see, I made a note of your name.”

  “It’s… it’s not like I have a twin.” The stupid remark slipped out before she could work up something cleverer. Thomas, however, seemed to find her enthralling.

  “Thankfully, no. I think you’re one of a kind,” he responded gallantly. “Would you care to show me a few fabrics, Miss O’Keefe? I need two suits. Something high quality, but not too gaudy. Suited to business in banks and formal evening functions—the livestock breeders’ gathering in Dunedin, to be specific.”

  A few months before, Elaine would have coquettishly replied that livestock breeders tended to go about in leather jackets and breeches. But at that moment, no reply came to her at all. Instead, she simply let her hair fall into her face. She was wearing it down that day, and it was well suited to hiding. When she lowered her head, no one could see her face, though she could not keep track of what was happening around her very well either.

  Thomas looked on, amused at the way she fingered through the selection. She really was quite attractive. And she must be red-haired down below too. Thomas had once been with a red-haired whore whose pubic hair had been blonde. It had made him angry. He could not stand it when people tricked him.

  “Here, there’s this one, and we also have something in brown,” Elaine said.

  It matched his eyes, she thought, but she could not bring herself to say it out loud. In any case, it would certainly look better than the gray suit he was wearing that day. He had beautiful eyes. There was something mysterious in them, something hidden.

  She laid the swatches of material before him eagerly.

  “Which would you choose, Miss O’Keefe?” he asked kindly. His deep voice was a bit raspy and almost too quiet to hear, altogether different from William’s bright tenor.

  “Oh, I…” Surprised by the question, she lapsed again into stammering. Finally, she pointed at the bolt of brown fabric.

  “Good. Then I’ll take that. The tailor will contact you after he’s taken my measurements. Thank you very much for your advice, Miss O’Keefe.”

  Thomas moved toward the exit. Suddenly Elaine would have liked to stop him.

  Why did she not just say something? Before that business with William, she had never found it difficult to talk with people. Elaine opened her mouth, but could not overcome her own resistance.

  Thomas turned around abruptly.

  “I would enjoy seeing you again, Miss O’Keefe. Your grandmother told me that you ride. Would you care to accompany me on a ride?”

  Elaine did not mention her rendezvous with Thomas Sideblossom to her parents. Not only because she knew how her mother felt about his father, but even more importantly, because she feared being rejected again. No one was to know about it if another man should take an interest in Elaine O’Keefe. For that reason, she steered Banshee quickly out of town. Thomas behaved like a perfect gentleman. The town’s residents would simply think it a coincidence that the black horse and Elaine’s white mare had left the stables at Helen’s hotel at the same time, and it was to be expected that their riders would exchange a few words in that situation. Only Daphne followed Elaine and Thomas with a searching gaze. It was not easy to pull the wool over her eyes. She saw the interest in his eyes, as well as hers. And she did not like it.

  As it turned out, the black gelding belonged to Thomas, the stallion to his father. And the horses were, in fact, father and son. “My father once bought an Arabian in Dunedin,” Thomas said. “A fantastic horse. He’s been breeding it ever since. He always keeps a black stallion. Khazan is his third. My horse here is named Khol.”

  Elaine introduced Banshee, but she did not overwhelm Thomas—as she once had William—with a torrent of details about her grandmother Gwyneira’s Welsh cob breed. She still hardly spoke a word in Thomas’s presence, though that did not appear to bother him. Maybe she had scared William off with her chattering? Elaine was struck hard by the realization that Kura had answered practically every question with only yes or no. She would definitely have to exercise more restraint.

  So she rode in silence alongside Thomas, who had no trouble keeping the conversation going on his own. Though he was thoroughly interested in his companion and asked many polite questions, Elaine answered with a simple yes or no as often as she could. Otherwise, she proffered brief comments, always hiding behind her hair. Indeed, she only slipped up once during the whole ride: she suggested a race when they came to a long, straight stretch. She was immediately sorry she’d suggested it though. William had never liked such wild rides, and when she had beaten him, he had become downright angry. But Thomas reacted differently. He even seemed to be quite taken with the idea as he brought his horse up next to Elaine’s. He let her give the signal to start. The Arabian Khol beat Banshee effortlessly, of course, but Elaine crossed the finish line only three horse lengths behind him.

  “She’s pregnant,” she explained, excusing her horse.

  Thomas nodded, not much interested. “That’s what mares are for. But you’re a bold rider.”

  Elaine took that as a compliment. As she rode home much later, she held her head high for the first time since William’s betrayal, letting her hair blow in the wind.

  When the Sideblossoms extended their stay in Queenstown, Ruben grumbled and Fleurette came up with more work that needed to be done around the house. Only Helen knew of the relationship developing between Thomas and Elaine, whose frequent meetings were no more a secret to her than the first signs of Elaine’s recovery. Of course, she felt some degree of guilt, since she was clearly abetting their secret. On the other hand, Elaine was laughing again, and she’d observed that Elaine was wearing more flattering dresses and brushing her hair until it shone.

  Helen did not notice that Elaine lowered her head whenever she spoke with Thomas or that she remained largely monosyllabic, weighing each word carefully. When Helen had been growing up in England, all the girls had behaved that way. In fact, she had found Elaine’s open manner with William rather shocking. When Helen compared Thomas to William, Thomas was the clear choice. William had been charming and eloquent, of course, but also thin-skinned and impulsive. Helen had always felt when speaking with him at the table as though she were guarding a powder keg. Thomas, however, was polite and reserved, a gentleman from tip to toe. Whenever he rode out with Elaine, he held the stirrups for her.

  At the church service on Sundays, which the Sideblossoms attended, naturally, Thomas exchanged only a few polite words with the girl, and not even Fleurette noticed the pair’s friendly relations at first. She was too busy trying to make herself invisible. As Ruben and Fleurette had done everything they could to avoid the Sideblossoms, they were surprised when Thomas asked Elaine to join him for a boat ride after the community picnic. The ever-resourceful church society was renting rowboats to young couples to collect money for the construction of a new church.

  “I met your daughter in M
rs. O’Keefe’s hotel and would be honored if I could treat her to a little something.”

  Elaine immediately reddened as she all too vividly recalled her last moments of fun with William.

  Fleurette looked as though she was about to rudely turn him down, but Ruben laid a hand on her arm. The Sideblossoms were good customers, and Thomas’s behavior had never given them cause for complaint. There was no reason to send him away. As Fleurette launched into an argument with her husband, Thomas led the nervous Elaine, with her father’s permission, over to the nearest rowboat. Elaine did not notice that he had not even asked her whether she would like to go or that he did not—as William had—let her choose the color of the boat. Thomas simply steered them toward the nearest one and genteelly helped her in.

  Elaine, overcome by a flood of feelings and memories, did not say a word the entire time, but looked very sweet in her pale-blue silk dress, with matching ribbons braided into her hair. She gazed into the water, her face averted from Thomas, who had a chance to admire her profile as he fought against his own memories. Emere’s silhouette in the moonlight like a shadow play. She never looked the man who took her in the eye. In the sunlight, it didn’t seem real. Yet if Thomas were to take a wife, he would also have to deal with her during the day after filling his nights living out his darkest dreams.

  But Elaine was quiet and looked easily intimidated. It would be easy to keep her in line. He tentatively began to speak of the Sideblossom farm and Lake Pukaki.

  “The house has a beautiful view of the lake, and is comparable to Kiward Station in style, even if it is not quite so big. We have well-tended gardens, and there is plenty of house staff on hand… even if Zoé thinks the Maori don’t do their work well. She’s working hard to rectify that, but a second woman in the house would be a great benefit to Lionel Station.”

  Elaine bit her lip. Was that meant to be a proposal? Or was he cautiously testing her? She risked a look at Thomas’s face and read the expression in his eyes to be serious, bordering on a little anxious.

  “I’ve… heard that the farm is in a very… lonely place,” she remarked.

  Thomas laughed. “None of the big sheep farms have neighbors close-by,” he said. “There is only a Maori camp near Lionel Station. Queenstown is the nearest town of any size, though there are a few smaller villages closer. But a place is only lonely if you are unhappy.”

  It sounded as though Thomas, too, was lost in his own sad thoughts.

  Elaine looked up at him timidly. “And are you often lonely?” she asked hesitantly.

  Thomas nodded gravely. “My mother died when I was still a boy. And the Maori who cared for me never… gave me what I needed. Later, I was sent to England to boarding school.”

  Elaine looked at him with interest, suddenly forgetting her shyness.

  “Oh, you were in England? How was that? It’s supposed to be very different than here.”

  Thomas smiled. “Well, there aren’t any weta bugs, so you might not think much of it if you couldn’t live without the ‘god of ugly things.’”

  “That’s what it means in Maori, right? ‘The god of ugly things.’ Do you speak Maori?”

  Thomas shrugged. “A bit. Like I said, my nannies were natives. That’s entirely different from England, as well. There, good nannies carry the children to bed and sing them lullabies instead of…” Thomas trailed off, and a painful expression swept across his face.

  Elaine studied him and felt an upswelling of sympathy within her. Bravely, she put her hand on his arm. He let the oar go.

  “I would not mind living on a farm even if it was a little isolated. And I have nothing against weta, either.” In fact, she had enjoyed catching the huge insects as a child and racing them with her brother.

  Thomas got ahold of himself. “We can talk more about it later,” he said. Elaine felt a surge of warmth inside her that William, too, had made her feel when he spoke lovingly to her.

  Arm in arm with Thomas, she walked with a spring in her step back to the place where her parents were sitting.

  “What did he talk about with you?” Fleurette asked skeptically after Thomas had taken his leave with a formal bow.

  “Oh, just about weta,” Elaine murmured.

  “Your granddaughter is in love again,” Daphne said flatly over tea with Helen. “It appears she has a weakness for men that make my hair stand on end.”

  “Daphne!” admonished Helen. “What exactly is that supposed to mean?”

  Daphne smiled. “Forgive me, Helen. I meant to say that Miss O’Keefe is drawn to men who fill me with a vague feeling of unease.”

  “Have you ever made a kind remark about any man of your acquaintance?” Helen inquired. “With the exception of those who… er… are in a certain sense self-sufficient?”

  Daphne demonstrated a pronounced preference for barkeepers and bellboys who felt themselves more drawn to the same sex. She had always spoken very warmly of Lucas Warden; she had gotten to know him shortly before his death.

  She laughed. “I’ll remember that expression! Drinking tea with you is still so informative after all these years, Helen. As for the boys, homosexuals are simply more practical, since they don’t bother the girls. Besides, normal men are boring. Why should I waste kind remarks on people who aren’t even clients? These Sideblossoms, however. The boy never comes by, but the old man is not exactly among our favorite guests, and that’s putting it mildly.”

  “I don’t want to know about that, Daphne,” Helen declared energetically. “Even disregarding the fact that Thomas Sideblossom’s behavior here has been above reproach, Elaine is really flourishing.”

  “It might be a short bloom though,” Daphne noted. “Do you really think he has honorable intentions? And even if he does, Fleur won’t be happy.”

  “That goes without saying,” Helen said. “But the same goes for her as for you, Daphne. Thomas and John Sideblossom are not the same person. Whatever the elder Sideblossom’s failings, he must not have passed them on to his son. My Howard was no gentleman either, but Ruben does not take after him one bit. It could be the same with the Sideblossoms.”

  Daphne shrugged.

  “Could,” she noted. “But if I remember correctly, you, too, only discovered the truth about Howard after you were already established in the Canterbury Plains.”

  Inger was more direct with Elaine, even if she did not go into all the details of her experience with John Sideblossom.

  “Daphne would only let him have the experienced girls. There were always discussions about it. He only wanted the very young ones, and, in a certain sense, we wanted that too, because it… well, there was always extra money for men like that and we often got a few days off too. But Daphne only gave in once because Susan really, really needed the money.”

  Inger pointed a little ashamedly at her pelvis, a gesture that Elaine did not know how to interpret, however.

  “After that”—to her astonishment, Elaine saw her friend blush for the first time—“but after that, she didn’t need the extra money anyway. Her… expectation did not survive the night. But Susan was rather… that is, she was not well. Miss O’Rourke had to get the doctor. And after, she would always run off when Mr. Sideblossom came. She couldn’t look at him anymore.”

  Elaine found Inger’s story very strange. What “expectation” had Mr. Sideblossom destroyed? But she did not want to hear about him anyway. She wanted to talk about Thomas. When she described to her friend in minute detail what they did when they were together, Inger could not find fault with any of it. If there was any cause for concern, in fact, it was that Thomas’s behavior was so reserved.

  “Strange that he’s never tried to kiss you,” she said after an excruciatingly long description of a ride during which Elaine and Thomas had done nothing more than exchange glances.

  Elaine shrugged. She would not allow herself to admit that it was precisely that aspect of Thomas’s behavior that she liked most. After the incident with William, she was anxious about
touching. She did not want anything else awakened within her that would find no fulfillment. “He is a true gentleman, you know, and he wants me to take my time. Sometimes I think he has serious intentions.” She blushed slightly.

  Inger laughed. “Let’s hope so! When boys don’t have serious intentions, they go after what they want quicker. Not even ladies are spared.”

  Thomas was still uncertain. On the one hand, Elaine was appearing more and more often in his dreams, and she was, of course, a suitable bride. On the other hand, he felt almost unfaithful—a completely ridiculous feeling, as he had never once touched Emere. She would never have permitted it, not even when he was a little boy yearning for innocent tenderness. Yet it was almost as though a window would close—an era would be brought to an end—if he seriously courted Elaine and ended up bringing her back to Lionel Station. Thomas could not bring himself to make a decision, though he would soon have to, because his father was pushing him. He was more than happy with his son’s choice—and was already looking forward with devilish glee to dancing with Fleurette O’Keefe at Thomas and Elaine’s wedding—but for the time being, he wanted to return to his farm. Queenstown had run out of charm for him; he had seen to all the business he needed to and visited every whore Daphne would let him. He had also begun to miss his young wife, Zoé, and the work on the farm. It would soon be time to herd the sheep out of the highlands, and he needed Thomas back for that.

  “What reason do you have for wanting to stay here?” he asked his son. “Does a Sideblossom hang around a woman’s front door like a male dog in front of a bitch’s doghouse? Strike while the iron is still hot! Ask the girl and then her father. It’d be better the other way around, but nobody does that anymore. You’ve got the girl eating out of your hand, don’t you?”

  Thomas grinned. “The girl is ripe for the picking, though I’m not sure she knows what that means. It doesn’t seem that this Martyn fellow could have taught her much, being as timid as she is. How could I ever have doubted that she was a virgin? She shrinks whenever I so much as accidentally touch her. How long will you give me?”