The Winter Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  Seamie had taken Charlie to Gravesend. There were ships there bound for all parts of the globe. Charlie had owned a boatyard, and knew enough about engines to make himself useful belowdecks. He planned to travel east, as far away from England as possible, and leave the ship in some foreign port, finding work of one sort or another.

  They had said their goodbyes some time after midnight. Fiona had been beyond sad, but she'd tried to hold her emotion in check and not make their parting harder than it had to be.

  "You give Joe my regards when he wakes, Fee," Charlie had said.

  Fiona had nodded, her eyes downcast.

  Charlie had taken her chin in his hand and tilted it up. "Listen to me, he will wake up. I know it, Fee. Other blokes might not, but other blokes don't have what he has. They don't have you and Katie and another one on the way. He's got everything in the world to live for, everything to fight for, and I know he'll win that fight."

  And then he'd put his arms around her and held her tightly, telling her thank you, telling her he loved her. And then he was gone. And she was watching him go, knowing she would probably never see him again. It was hard and bitter, and she had spent the night tossing and turning, angry that the fates had taken her parents, her sister, and now her brothers, too.

  The clock on her bureau chimed the hour. Nine a.m. Where is Seamie? she wondered. Why isn't he back? I never should have let him go. Never should have let them go. They'd sneaked out twice before--once to snatch a body and once to get Charlie's money out of the Albion Bank. The body-snatching trip had gone off without a hitch, they'd said, and she'd seen herself that it had worked, for the news of Sid Malone's demise was all over London, but they'd come very close to being caught on their second outing. Charlie hadn't come back to the house until well after dark that night, and Seamie had come home with a bruised and scraped face. All they would say was that they'd had a bit of bother.

  It's still too dangerous for Charlie to be out and about, Fiona thought now, even if he is supposed to be dead. And Seamie... what if he'd gotten mixed up in something bad? Anything could have happened to them. They could have been arrested. Hurt. Shot. Killed.

  The baby kicked again, violently. "Happy thoughts, Fiona," she said to herself. "Happy bloody thoughts."

  There was a knock on her bedroom door. "Fee?" Seamie called, opening it.

  The dogs leaped up, yapping and whirling. Relief flooded through her.

  "Seamie! Thank God you're all right. I was so worried. Please tell me Charlie made it to the boat," she said.

  "He did, Fee. He's fine."

  "Where is he?"

  "On a ship. Bound for Ceylon."

  He sat down across from her. She could see that he was exhausted.

  "I'm starving," he said. "You going to eat that toast?"

  Fiona buttered a slice and handed it to him. She poured him a cup of tea.

  "Was it hard saying goodbye?" she asked him.

  Seamie shrugged. "I waited with him till dawn. Then he said, �This is goodbye, lad. Hardly seems fair, does it?' and then he told me he hoped I'd find the North Pole. And I reminded him it was the South Pole I was after. And then he was gone."

  "That's all?" Fiona said. "Charlie's leaving and never coming back, and that's all he said? �Hope you find the North Pole'?"

  Seamie shrugged. "It's blokes, Fee," he said.

  Fiona nodded, sadness welling up inside her again.

  Seamie must have noticed, for he stopped eating for a few seconds and patted her hand. "There's no other way," he said gently. "He had to go. He'd be a goner if he stayed."

  "I know. I know it's for the best. I just ...I want you both here with me. I want us to be together. Like a family should be. Is that so much to ask? I'm losing everyone all over again. Charlie, you..."

  She didn't say Joe. She didn't have to. They both knew there was no news. No change. Every day was the same. He was unresponsive. Immobile. Losing weight.

  "Aw, Fee," Seamie said, trying to cheer her. "It would never work. You know it wouldn't. What would me and Charlie do here anyway? I'd make a terrible waitress at the Tea Rose. So would he. I'd be dropping the silver and he'd be stealing it."

  Fiona tried to smile at the joke, but she couldn't.

  "He's out of the life now. He's got a chance," Seamie said. "Isn't that what you wanted for him?"

  Fiona looked at him, startled by his perceptiveness. "Yes, Seamie, it is," she said.

  "Then let him go, Fee. And let me go, too."

  Fiona looked at him. "All right, then, I will. Seems I have no choice, do I?"

  Seamie stood. "Come on, let's go for a morning stroll. Over to Hyde Park and back. We'll take Katie with us. You need some sunlight. Some fresh air. Sitting here brooding isn't good for you. Or Joe. Or the baby. Life goes on, Fee. It has to. It's all we've got."

  Fiona gave him a puzzled smile. "When did my little brother become smarter than me?" she asked.

  Seamie snorted. "About a hundred years ago."

  Fiona stood. She and Seamie were about to leave her bedroom when they both heard footsteps pounding down the hallway.

  Fiona reached for Seamie, suddenly frightened. "It's something to do with Charlie," she said. "Something's happened to him. I know it."

  There was no knock at the door, it was simply flung open. Foster stood there, breathless and flushed from his mad dash.

  "Mr. Foster?" Fiona said, surprised by his sudden breach of decorum. She had never seen him act like this, not once in all the years he'd worked for her. "What is it?"

  "Oh, madam!" he said with feeling. "He's awake! His eyes are open. He's trying to speak. He's a bit disoriented, at least according to the messenger, but he's awake!"

  It took a second for Fiona to realize who Foster was talking about. As soon as she did, she was across the room and out the door.

  "The carriage, right away!" she shouted.

  "On its way," Foster replied. "Sarah's downstairs with your hat and coat."

  Fiona was lumbering down the stairs now, as fast as her belly would allow. Seamie had charged ahead of her.

  "Please, madam," Foster called after her, "would you kindly give Mr. Bristow my regards?"

  "Give them to him yourself, Mr. Foster," she shouted. "There's plenty of room in the carriage."

  "That would be highly unusual, madam."

  Fiona stopped midway down the staircase. "In case you haven't noticed, so is everything else that goes on in this house."

  "Quite true, madam."

  "Even so, we're all alive, aren't we, Mr. Foster?" The baby kicked. Lipton and Twining tugged at her skirt. "It's all that really matters. It's all we've got."

  "It is indeed, madam."

  "Then get Katie, Mr. Foster, and get your coat."

  Chapter 78

  "Sid is it? Sid what?" the chief engineer asked.

  "Baxter," Sid replied, caught off guard.

  The engineer thrust a shovel into his hands and pointed at a pile of coal. "Welcome to hell, Mr. Baxter."

  Sid took the shovel with a smile. A ship's boiler room held no terrors for him. He was already in hell. The night India had come to him at the Barkentine, he had thought that their love was damnation. Now he knew it was. He had known heaven with her, now he knew hell--it was the bleak gray endlessness of the years of his life stretching out one after another, years without her in them.

  "Andy McKean," a second boilerman said, by way of introduction. "We'll work the first shift. You'll want to get stripped down. Won't be long now."

  Sid had come aboard the Adelaide half an hour ago. They'd been waiting for him. Holding the ship was the least the captain could do; Sid had made him rich by buying his smuggled opium. As soon as he was aboard, a tug had nudged them out of dock toward the open water. He'd barely had time to throw his bag in his bunk and get down to the boiler room before the order came down from the bridge--full steam ahead.

  "Oi, mate! Let's go!" Andy called.

  Sid shrugged out of his jacket and pulled
his shirt over his head. Ten minutes later, sweat was pouring off him. He and Andy were no longer men, just cogs in a machine. The monster of a boiler ate every shovelful of coal and roared for more. The fire roasted Sid's skin. The muscles in his bad arm screamed every time he lifted the shovel. The bullet wound in his shoulder sent molten waves of pain through his body. He didn't care. He welcomed the pain, it blocked out everything else--every memory, every promise, every hope.

  It blocked out the words he'd seen. Printed on an invitation. An invitation that had been propped up on the mantel of Fiona's study. He'd gone down there during his last night at Grosvenor Square. He hadn't been able to sleep and had been desperate to get out of his room and walk, if only around the house. He'd paced the study, picking up photographs and putting them down again, examining Fiona's books and mementos. And then he'd seen it-- elegant black copperplate printed on an ivory card.

  The Earl and Countess of Burnleigh are pleased to announce the marriage of their younger daughter Lady India to Lord Frederick Lytton, second son of Lady Bingham and the late Earl of Bingham.

  The couple will marry at Longmarsh, the Bingham family seat, in a private ceremony on Saturday, 24 November. They will enjoy a brief honeymoon in the Scottish Highlands then return to London where they will reside at 45 Berkeley Square.

  Reading those words, Sid had felt as if someone had reached inside him and torn out his heart. A sense of unreality so strong that it was dizzying gripped it. It can't be, he'd thought. But it was. Lytton, of all people. India knew what he was. Knew what he wanted--not her, but her money.

  "Why, India, why?" he'd said out loud.

  Why would she marry Freddie Lytton after what he'd done to her?

  He knew the answer--it was because of him. Because what he'd done to her was worse. Loving her, then betraying that love--as she saw it--by trying to take Joe Bristow's life and taking Gemma Dean's.

  In the days that had followed, the anger he'd felt at India had drained away. A terrible grief had taken its place. He couldn't blame her for what she'd done. She was only going back to what she knew--Freddie, an aristocratic marriage, safety, security. If anyone deserved blame, it was him. For allowing himself to believe in love when life had taught him otherwise.

  He would never make such a terrible mistake again.

  The Adelaide was carrying ploughshares and other farm implements to Mombasa in British East Africa, then heading on to the city of Colombo in Ceylon to take on tea. Sid planned to leave the ship in Colombo and find work on a plantation--tea, rubber, he didn't care, as long as he could do an honest day's work for a living wage, hard, physical work that would leave him too tired to think at the end of the day. Too tired to remember. Too tired to grieve.

  He had always wanted to go to sea. It would wash him clean, just as he'd once hoped it would. It already had. Sid Malone was dead and gone. He was Sid Baxter now. A lowly boilerman. Invisible. Anonymous. A man with no past, no history. A man with nothing but a future, endless and unwanted.

  "Slow down, mate!" Andy yelled. "Pace yourself. This is the devil's own work. You won't last a day at the rate you're going, never mind from here all the way to Colombo."

  Sid smiled. "Is that a promise?" he shouted, and shoveled harder.

  Chapter 79

  "India? Are you all right? What's going on in there?" Maud called, rapping imperiously on the loo door.

  "Nothing, Maud, I'm fine," India called out.

  She wasn't. She was leaning over the tiny toilet in the antechamber of Longmarsh's chapel. She'd been sick in her room twice this morning. And now again here.

  "Nerves, that's all," she lied. She wiped her mouth, splashed water on her face, and opened the bathroom door.

  Her sister was standing in the room, valise in one hand, a cigarette in the other. She had just returned from Paris. "I arrived this very minute. Lady Bingham said you were in here. India, what the hell is going on?"

  "I'm marrying Freddie. In about ten minutes' time, in fact."

  "That's what Mother told me. Four days ago. When I chanced-- chanced!--to ring her from the hotel to see if she wanted some silks brought back," Maud said angrily.

  "I didn't want you to know. I thought you'd try to stop me. Mother thought so, too."

  "Of course I would!" Maud sputtered, throwing her valise down. "Just a few weeks ago you said you never wanted to see Freddie again. You told me all the horrible things he'd done. Why have you changed your mind?"

  "Please don't make this more difficult than it already is. I have my reasons. I don't expect you to understand them."

  "I would very much like to try."

  India looked at her sister. For once she was not mocking.

  "All right, then," she said. She sat down on one of the wooden benches in the room and smoothed the skirt of the highnecked ivory suit she was wearing. "I am pregnant," she said. "The baby is not Freddie's. He will acknowledge the child as his own in exchange for my dowry. The world is a very harsh place, and I do not wish my child to suffer for the circumstances of her birth."

  "What about the father? Can't you marry him?"

  "I was going to. In America, actually. But I can't now. He's dead, you see."

  Maud took a deep drag on her cigarette, then exhaled a plume of blue-tinged smoke. "Bloody hell," she said.

  "Yes."

  "Who was he?"

  "I can't tell you that. And trust me, you don't want to know."

  "India, this is your life. You may be protecting your child's future, but you're destroying your own. Do you understand that?"

  "I do."

  Maud paced back and forth, shaking her head. "Is Mother here? What about Daddy?"

  "They're in the chapel with the Lyttons. They came up from London yesterday. After finalizing the finances with Freddie."

  A week ago in London, before the marriage contract had even been signed, Freddie had hired an architect and a decorator to make over the Berkeley Square house.

  "A year from now it'll be the most beautiful, glittering home in London," he'd told her. "Be sure to order some new dresses before the wedding. We're having a ball for two hundred as soon as we're back from our honeymoon. Campbell-Bannerman, bigwigs from both parties, everyone who's anyone socially. I'll be damned if I don't get the Tower Hamlets seat back."

  India knew that Freddie's ambition had been limited only by a lack of funds. With her father's money behind him, it would be boundless. She thought of all the dinner parties ahead of her. The planning of menus and settings. The tedious introductions and numbing small talk. And never anywhere, in any room, would she ever see Sid's face again, hear his voice, look into his eyes. Fresh grief washed over her. She bent her head so that Maud couldn't see it.

  "Mother bought me this suit," she said, plucking at the ruffles on the cuff. "Ghastly, isn't it?"

  Maud sat down next to her. She was silent for a few long seconds, then she said, "Do you remember that last time we were all together? Here. With Wish."

  "Of course I do."

  "I quoted Tennyson to you: � 'Tis better to have loved and lost than to never have loved at all.' " She laughed mirthlessly. "You said he was a prat."

  "I got my comeuppance, didn't I? The love I lost is all the love I'll ever have. But he was right. I'm still glad I had that love, no matter how briefly."

  Maud covered India's hand with her own. "It won't be all bad. It can't be. There are compensations, you know," she said. "Distractions."

  India laughed bitterly. "What sort of distractions? The kind one finds at Teddy Ko's? No thank you, Maud."

  "I was thinking of your clinic, actually."

  "There is no more clinic. Not for me. That was one of Freddie's conditions. I'm to be a good MP's wife. Devote myself to his causes."

  "Well, then, there are always children," Maud said. �The one on the way and more besides, I'm sure."

  "Yes, and there is much else I can do to occupy myself," India said bravely. "Study French for starters. I've always wanted to do tha
t. Never had the time. Italian, too. I can read the great poets. Take up drawing." She closed her eyes. Her face was anguished. "Oh God, Maud," she whispered.

  There was a knock on the door and then the vicar poked his head in. "Pardon me, Lady India, but are you ready? Your groom is here."

  "I am, Reverend," India said resolutely. She took her sister's hand. "Will you stand with me?" she asked her.

  "India, there must be another way. You don't have to do this. Leave. Hurry. I'll deal with Freddie."