by Karen Ranney
There was nothing in the pitifully few belongings to link her to Alice. Nothing to indicate that her life had been anything but what he’d suspected it to have been, hard work flavored by slices of tragedy.
Money would be reason enough to entice Mary Kate Bennett to play this role, a thought that did not resonate as purely as he’d expected. It was too simple an explanation.
What kind of woman was she, who could dismiss the sight of the rarest of blue diamonds and yet dance with light as if it had been created to be her companion? One who believed in ghosts and spirits and came to protect him.
He found himself wanting to believe her, but being forced upon a precipice at sword point did not mean that the participant truly wished to jump. He would walk as close to the edge as he could, but when she extended her hand and asked him to fly with her, his natural commonsense logic occupied the forefront of his mind. His wish to believe her was a confession he would make to himself but no one else. He had learned over the years to capture his thoughts and errant musings and not divulge them to a soul; it made for less fodder for gossip and less ammunition for those who wished him ill.
But as this quiet moment lengthened, a question stepped forth he’d been pretending not to hear, its stridency insisting, finally, that he pay heed to it. What if she was telling him the truth? And if she truly did not know where Alice was, then what did that mean?
The painting was where anyone would expect it to be, except, of course, that Mary Kate had not known there was such a thing as the Wives’ Gallery. Alice was, after all, a St. John wife, the last in a seemingly endless line of good and bad portraiture.
How did she know it was Alice? The same way she had known that walking through this doorway would bring her here, led to this place and this painting. Because she had dreamed of occupying that body while staring full-faced at herself in the mirror, had felt the movement of those hands.
Alice stared out at her from a scene of bucolic beauty. She sat upon a carpet of green grass; behind her, Sanderhurst. The house was a vast sprawling place crafted from bricks faded to the color of old gold. It rose three stories, each floor bedecked with tall, slim windows that reflected the pink and yellow of the eastern sky. Above each window was a heavily carved lintel depicting grinning gargoyles. Beside Alice was a basket of squirming spaniel puppies, one of them trapped forever upon the gentle cushion of her lap.
Pretty ringlets of blond hair framed the sides of a heart-shaped, winsome-looking face. The rest of Alice’s hair was caught back in a ribbon adorned with mauve roses and sprigs of greenery. There was a smile on her bow-shaped lips, a comforting, placid type of smile one found in portraits of this type, but there was no answering expression in the azure of Alice’s eyes. The absence of emotion revealed either the artist’s talent or lack of it.
It was only Mary Kate’s imagination that placed Alice standing beside her, of course. Only conjecture that made her note that Alice was much shorter than she was, so much smaller. She seemed ethereal, a loveliness not simply of the flesh, but a goodness of the soul. In a second the impression was gone, and only the portrait remained, a heritage of mystery.
Who are you, Alice? What did you want from life? What dreams did you have? Was living here so horrible for you?
Mary Kate folded her arms around her waist and stared at the portrait. Perhaps if she looked at it long enough, she could reason behind the oils and canvas enough to the soul of the person who stared back at her.
Why did you leave him for a lover? How could you inflict such pain? Did you hate Archer that much? Or love someone else far more? What happened to you?
And perhaps the most important question of them all: Why me, Alice?
Chapter 17
Bernie solved the problem of transportation by buying a new coach and four within two days of arriving in London. It truly was a bother having to wait upon a hired hack, and she had never been known for her patience. It was bad enough that it would be days until her things followed her, in the series of wagons needed to transport all the many possessions she’d accumulated over the years.
Still, it was rather nice to be a St. John, even if she’d paid for the privilege of it through nine ghastly years being married to Archer’s father. The money was a convenience, even though she could quite well do without the subservience. She’d never understood how some people could acquaint being rich with being good. She was not at all as nice a person as she could be, even though she tried not to be a despot. But she certainly wasn’t as kind as some people she knew and she had the devil’s own wit when something tickled her and heaven itself knew that she liked her comfits a bit much and the touch of a handsome man more than was seemly. But the way she was bowed and scraped to was almost as if she were a religious icon, or some celestial virgin come down from Mount Olympus. Did celestial virgins live at Mount Olympus? Never mind, it was a strange and errant thought, but it had managed to take her mind from the toadying of the firm that managed her affairs quite credibly, for all they kowtowed. It gave her a headache.
She obtained a promise that they would not divulge her presence in England to Archer or any of their grasping relatives, and managed to seem decorous and matronly and charming as she bid them a long-awaited good-bye and headed north out of London two days past her tolerance level.
She leaned back against the padded interior of her new coach, tried to ignore the rather noxious scent of lacquer and the even more pungent one of horse, and pretended she was aboard ship, the swaying simply the ebb and flow of tide.
The remainder of her journey had been lonely for the most part. Dear Matthew had left the ship at some port or another, and despite her wishing for it, there had been none to take his place. There had been a mother and a daughter, both pruny-faced creatures terrified of venturing out of doors, lest they get a touch of the sun, and an old, bearded gentleman who had kept to his cabin for the remainder of the voyage. Lumbago, she’d heard the cook say, as he’d taken a pot of stew to the man.
Another thing about a St. John ship, they were fed well. She pulled the waistband of her skirt loose with one finger. Such inactivity as she was forced to endure did not bode well for the remainder of her dresses.
She would be at Sanderhurst soon, and then she would take walks along the park, enjoy the wintered gardens. Pity, when she’d left the lower hemisphere, it had been winter, and she’d sailed a few months only to reach winter again.
Oh well, she’d just have to find some way to stay warm, she thought, and smiled.
“Is this where you putter about all day, Archer?” Mary Kate’s head was tilted back to absorb the wonder of the structure, her eyes wide as she scanned the sunlit expanse of glass. There were thousands of panes arching high overhead, surrounding them on four sides. Walls of clear glass. A house of crystal enveloping all the lovely green plants.
It smelled of the forest after rain, when all the scents seemed to have been lifted into the air, warm, rich earth, decaying leaves, the fecundity of nature. Except that here there was no riotous pattern of leaves on the earthen floor, no dappled sunlight, no chattering forest creatures, not a sound of a babbling brook. There was order and regimen and nature being harnessed by man, a curiously sad place for all its wealth of green, for all its glad profusion of growth.
He did not look happy to see her, she noted, but then, he rarely did. His ominous thundercloud expression had muted over the last few days to a mere frown. Today, however, he had unearthed the expression, and it made him formidable indeed.
Yet some places were meant to be explored, and some people were meant to be bedeviled.
She strolled nonchalantly toward him, admiring the picture he presented standing in a shaft of sunlight. Some men are defined by their clothing while others define themselves regardless of their attire. Even with his shirtsleeves rolled up, black gloves to his elbows, collar undone and discarded, a stained tradesman’s apron covering the rest of him, Archer St. John appeared noble, haughty, and at this moment, aristocratically
irritated.
“This place is not accessible to you, madam. I have given you the freedom from your room, it does not mean you are allowed to roam at will.”
“You act as if my freedom were something for you to grant, Archer. Is this a secret place?” She looked about her, knowing that her very presence discomfited him.
“It is my laboratory, madam.”
“A laboratory?”
“Quite so.” Was it possible for words to be so sharp they could cut glass? If so, she thought Archer St. John should be wary. The tone of his voice rendered him vulnerable in this place crafted of sparkling panes.
“You dabble in growing things, Archer?”
“I do not ‘dabble,’ as you would say. Nor is my work in the glasshouse up for speculation or comment.”
“Which means, I presume, that you will say nothing further, only go about with that pursed look on your lips, leaving me to either apologize or pretend it did not happen.”
“I would appreciate it, in the future, if you would restrict your explorations to the public venues. There is nothing of interest for you here, madam.”
“Except for you, Archer. You are perhaps the most fascinating part of Sanderhurst.”
She smiled at his look. It was such a combination of startlement and something else, more fierce, more quickly masked, that it piqued both her curiosity and a growing sense of daring.
She’d found the structure quite readily. One of the maids had passed along her query to Jonathan, the lordly-looking majordomo who was responsible, Mary Kate suspected, for the earl’s household running so smoothly. Jonathan had not demurred at directing her to the earl’s laboratory, had only glanced at her consideringly before leading her here.
Strange, how she’d never thought of plants being considered scientific before. Evidently, however, that’s exactly what they were. As she followed Archer, she passed row upon row of delicate-looking seedlings, all tagged with long Latin names. Some were no longer than her thumb, some had been transplanted to large clay pots sitting beneath something that looked like the nozzle from a watering can. As she walked past one of them, it gurgled, then emitted a fine spray over the plant.
She closed her eyes, raised her face to the cloud of mist. It felt as if a thousand little darts were tickling her skin. She smiled, then opened her eyes, to find Archer St. John looking at her with more than his usual stoic concern. The mask had dropped for an instant, to reveal the man behind the indifference. A man whose look empowered her not to step back or forward, but to remain trapped in the sheer web of it.
There was nothing about his stare to indicate indelicacy, but Mary Kate had the impression of it, nonetheless. A promise of pleasure, a hint at something enigmatic and delicious and thoroughly unknown to her. Some emotion, neither fear nor compassion, lodged at the back of her throat, slid down into her body where it warmed what it touched.
And then it was over. Disappeared in the flash of a smile, a release from a silent bond. The warmth remained in her body, aching, rendering her breathless, but the real man lay hidden once again, ensnared behind indifference, perhaps never glimpsed at all.
“Hardly simple gardening, Mrs. Bennett. I take my work very seriously.”
“You may call me Mary Kate, you know. I’ve already addressed you as Archer.”
“I know.” Was that disapproval in his voice? What a paradox he was, that he would make her captive on one hand and censure her on manners the next.
“I take it you do not espouse egalitarian principles?”
One eyebrow winged skyward. “Do you often go about saying exactly what you think with such regularity, Mary Kate? I can assure you, while the cows may not mind, you are certain to have difficulty being employed with that habit.”
She smiled at the use of her name, recognizing a concession when she heard one. She trailed her fingers over the fronds of a delicate-looking fern, wondering if he wished the truth or a proper type of answer. Undoubtedly the latter, but their relationship had been steeped in an odd sort of honesty from the beginning. What difference did it make now?
“I have hoarded my words for a lifetime, Archer. Been what people expected me to be. I’ve discovered that the most difficult thing about living has been to find out first who you are and then how to act that way. You feel about for it, like searching for a misplaced shoe in the dark. No one can tell you how to be yourself. It’s not written anywhere. And no, I’ve not often told others what I’m thinking. It’s a habit of relatively few days, in fact.”
He said nothing to her confession. Instead, he led her into the section he’d apportioned for his work space, for the grafting of new plants, the bifurcation of others. Against one wall was a cage constructed of glass. When it captured her attention, he turned and watched her, explaining its purpose.
“It’s the damping-off area. It’s for those seedlings that contract a fungus.”
“What happens to them?”
“They mostly die,” he said.
“But why keep them here?”
“Because they might live.”
She turned and watched him, the way he studied his own specimens, with interest and something akin to hope.
“What else do you do here, Archer?”
“I grow things,” he answered, the glint in his eye diverting her attention only slightly from his voice. It sounded like wickedness might, if given speech, a ribbon of taffy, colored dark and silky. “Plants that other people say cannot grow in England.”
He divested himself of the elbow-length gloves with some degree of difficulty. He opened another door, beckoning her into the damp brightness. Torches lined the high ceiling, scorch marks attesting to their frequent use. The humidity was kept constant by the sprinkling system similar to that used in the adjoining room.
He led her to an odd-looking tree alongside the wall. It had simple leaves and small white flowers arranged in a convex cluster.
“It’s the Pimenta dioica,” he explained, touching one of the leaves with the most delicate of strokes. “When the berries are nearly ripe, they’re dried and used as a spice.” He opened a glass jar retrieved from an upper shelf and dipped one finger inside. He held his coated finger close to her mouth, watching her face as he did so. Taste it, his words said. Taste me, the gesture.
“They call it allspice,” he said, gently brushing his finger against her bottom lip. A speck of spice clung to her lip, impetus to probe her mouth, push it gently inside.
Her tongue swished against his finger, savored the strong flavor, cinnamon, cloves, something melded together and yet not quite the same. His finger emerged, wet, cleaned, danced around her mouth as if to spread the taste. Where it had been was left numbed, pungent, damp.
“I am experimenting with a species of laurel you might recognize.” He uncapped another glass jar, and the odor of cinnamon wafted from it.
She drew back, a smile dusting her face, grateful that he’d chosen not to repeat his earlier action. Her heart still beat so heavily Mary Kate was surprised he did not comment upon the sound.
Another jar opened; this time a viscous liquid, almost an oil, lay inside. He only waved it in front of her. She nearly choked.
“Potent, is it not? It’s camphor oil. I’ve been told that physicians advise their patients to inhale it.”
“Why?” Her eyes were still watering.
His grin was almost boyish. “Indeed, why? But that is perhaps the magic of it.”
“I’d rather inhale the cinnamon, thank you.”
“Or the allspice?” A man’s smile this time.
She evaded answering by leaving the room, pretending to study one of the orchids, with its large, papery stem and fragrant blooms.
“That is an acidanthera,” he said softly, “one of my imports from Africa. You might consider it another trial of mine, to see if I can induce flowering from something so tropical. I confess that it is most probably an ego-induced experiment, one which has an equal chance of succeeding or failing admirably.”
“You have such diverse interests, such strange ones for a landowner.”
“Landowner, shipbuilder, silversmith, spice merchant. But surely you knew the extent of my wealth and its headwaters. The St. Johns have been in business since the thirteenth century, Mary Kate. Nearly five centuries of being spice merchants have given us enough wealth that not even the most profligate St. John can spend it all. I should know, I support most of them.”
She said nothing as he moved to another strange-looking plant in a room devoted to them, plucked a small, oval fruit from its lower branches.
“Pouteria campechiana,” he said, hefting the fruit in one hand. From somewhere he’d acquired a small paring knife. He slit into the fruit, which emitted a musky odor, not unpleasant, simply different. Even that motion was done with grace, an odd thing to think of such a large man.
Yet there was something about Archer St. John that made one think he was beyond such plebeian things as clumsiness and less-than-perfect grace. Who was he, this man so brightly lit by the sun that he appeared luminous, either an infernally simple man or one whose complexities were such that she could never possibly understand him? Which was he?
He handed her a sliver of fruit, most properly, and as she reached out two fingers to slip it from his palm, Mary Kate wondered what she would have done if he’d attempted to feed it to her again.
“It’s very sweet,” she said, nibbling on the fruit.
“Eggfruit. An odd name, don’t you think, for something so sweet? But then again, man labels, nature enables.”
“Is this, too, something best grown not in England?”
“New Spain,” he said, an almost triumphant look appearing on a face more given to frowns.
She smiled back at him, charmed by his success. Why did she pretend that it was his protection that was so much on her mind? She had not sought him out simply because a whispered voice had entreated her to do so. She had wished his presence because there was something about him that fascinated her, lured her to the edge of propriety.