The Lily Brand

by Sandra Schwab

  The vicar himself opened the door, his eyes growing wide as he saw who was standing on the threshold. Troy swayed on his feet and clutched the door frame to steady himself. “Mr. Norris. I’ve brought the doctor for Mistress Nanette.”

  The vicar took their coats and sodden jackets and brought them towels, so they could dry their hands and faces before he led them upstairs. In the little room, Mrs. Norris sat with the old woman—as did Troy’s wife.

  His wife.

  Troy leaned against the wall to let the doctor pass. Alive and well. His vision seemed to blur as he feasted his eyes on the girl whom he had married, the girl who had saved him from the Black Widow’s malice and cruelty. His hand reached up and clutched at his shirt, where underneath the material the lily bloomed on his chest.

  A lily for Lillian.

  She started when the doctor touched her shoulder, and when she half turned, her mouth formed a perfect circle of astonishment. She stumbled to her feet, awkward in her haste to make room. And Troy saw what toll the night had taken on her: mud and bloodstains soiled her erstwhile white dress. Her hair had come undone and hung in loose, matted strands around her face; her skin was gray with exhaustion. Still, to him she had never been more beautiful.

  Then she spotted him and froze.

  ~*~

  It took Lillian a moment to recognize him, damp and bedraggled as he was, so far removed from the immaculate gentleman. No, he looked more like a particularly large rat, drowned twice over. Strain and tiredness had etched deep lines into his face, lending him a haggard appearance and reminding her of how he had looked chained to Camille’s construction. His cornflower-blue eyes burned with the same intensity as then, yet with an entirely different emotion. He stared at her as if he had never seen her before, his gaze curiously hungry.

  Behind her, Nanette made a sound, and Lillian’s head whipped around. The doctor had started to unbutton the old woman’s nightgown, baring the blood-soaked bandage underneath. The doctor… they had not been able to get die doctor because the bridge had been washed away.

  Very slowly, Lillian looked back at Ravenhurst. Like the young doctor, he was wearing only a sodden shirt and trousers. She took a step toward him.

  With a barely suppressed exclamation, he strode across the room to her side. He searched her face, and then his arms were around her, enveloping her in warmth. She did mot mind the dampness of his shirt, if only she could hold on to the warmth a little longer, a shield to protect her while her world came apart at the seams.

  Just one little moment…

  With a sigh she rested her face against his chest. Strong and steady, his heart thumped against her ear as if to welcome her. As if this were the place God had created for her of this man’s flesh and bone.

  The flesh she had marked with her brand.

  Lillian shuddered violently.

  Immediately, his arms tightened around her. “Hush,” he murmured against her temple. “Hush. Everything will be all right, my dear. Just hush.” With a sob she let herself be pressed back against the strong wall of his chest, a haven in the midst of chaos.

  She should have known, though, that in the end the coldness would return for her, that for her there would be no happily ever after.

  When the doctor finally cleaned his instruments and put non back into his bag, Nanette had slipped deeper into unconsciousness. Ashen color tinged the doctor’s round, young face, while he explained that the old woman was beyond human help. “Her life rests in the hands of the Lord.”

  Lillian stepped out of her husband’s arms, while she felt the coldness gather in the corners of the room like a wild beast, ready to pounce and devour her whole. “Can I hold her hand?” she whispered.

  “Of course. I am sure it would bring her comfort, even where she is now.”

  She took the chair that Mrs. Norris had abandoned earlier, and sat down beside the bed. With the ease of lifelong familiarity, Lillian slipped her hand into Nanette’s and held on tight. The old woman’s fingers felt so fragile within her own, the skin wrinkled and thin like parchment. Lillian’s heart constricted as she stared at her old nanny’s beloved face.

  She hardly heard the door open and close as the doctor left the room. Yet when her husband put a gentle hand on her shoulder, she flinched.

  Immediately, he removed his fingers. Deep grooves bracketed his mouth. “Can I bring you something?”

  She shook her head.

  She started when he brought himself a chair from the other end of the room and set it down beside her. “You do not need to stay,” she said. She almost did not recognize her own voice, flat and dead.

  “I think I do.” He sank down on his chair. “Will you allow me this?”

  She stared at him a moment longer. Why would he tempt her with illusions of warmth and security? They were just that: illusions. For her, there was only the cold. So she lifted her shoulders in a small shrug and turned her attention back to Nanette. “If you want to.” It was all the same to her, for the coldness would return one way or the other.

  ~*~

  Troy had to swallow several times to dislodge the lump that formed in his throat as he watched his wife holding on to her old nanny’s hand, a small child holding on to her mother in the midst of a storm.

  But the storm would swallow her up nonetheless.

  He had failed her—bitterly, bitterly failed her. He had misjudged her, ruined her, forced her into a travesty of a marriage, and now he had even failed to protect her from this loss.

  Tears burned in Troy’s eyes as he picked up his wife’s free hand, the hand of the girl who had saved him from the Black Widow’s malice and cruelty. He cradled her fingers between his own and warmed them with his flesh. She did not protest, but neither did she look at him. And thus, they sat in silence through the rest of the night, until the candles had burned down and Troy’s fingers had grown numb. Outside the birds broke into jubilant song. The blush of a new dawn colored the horizon, and together with the night, Mistress Nanette’s life ebbed away.

  Chapter 16

  Troy saw to it that the old woman’s body was brought back to the Hall. Then he ordered his coach so he could bring his wife home. She was very pale, exhaustion bleaching her skin of all color except for the shadows below her eyes, which resembled painful bruises. When she stood, she swayed on her feet, so Troy slipped his arm around her and pulled her against him to lend her the support of his body. Her eyes dim and flat, she let him guide her out of the house into the bright light of the new morning.

  After the rain everything glinted and glistened, freshly washed, and it seemed to Troy that all things had taken on a new brilliance as if created anew. Beside him, his wife trembled like a leaf in the wind, a child lost in a world that no longer made any sense. He drew her tighter against him. “Everything will be all right,” he whispered.

  She did not react any more than would a statue carved out of ice.

  And so, while waiting for his coach on the vicar’s doorstep, Troy pressed his lips against his wife’s dark curls and wished they had the kind of relationship where he could bundle her off to bed, hold her in his arms and offer her the comfort of his body. But in this, he had failed her as well.

  He closed his eyes. “How I wish things would have been different,” he murmured. But now all he could do was bring her home and make sure that a maid saw after her, that Nanette’s body was washed and laid out, that candles were lit. Like an old gray mouse, Hill padded through the Hall, from room to room, to close the shutters, veil the mirrors and stop all clocks. Silence settled on the house. Even the Weimaraners remained hushed, as if they too knew of the young mistress’s horrible loss.

  Troy only washed, shaved and changed clothes before he went back to the village with Justin to oversee and help with the clearing work. Drake, meanwhile, remained at the Hall in case Troy’s countess needed the comfort of a friend. It pained Troy that he could not be that friend.

  In the afternoon, when their clothes were smudged with dirt
and mud, Troy caught up with the doctor, who had gone from house to house, looking after the wounded and the ill. Yet all he had done was change a dressing here or there, and clean a wound that had ripped open again.

  “Whoever looked after these people did a very fine job of it,” the doctor said.

  Bittersweet pain sliced Troy’s heart. “My wife did,” he said.

  At that, the young doctor raised his brows. “Well, well, this is most unusual. Yet as I said, she did a very fine job. All broken bones are set correctly, all wounds are properly dressed and stitched…”

  Troy gave the rosy-faced young man a tight smile. “My wife is very knowledgeable in the art of healing.” Another memory sprung up. How she had tended his wounds that first evening, had spread salve over his torn and burnt flesh. Only now, the pain was worse than when the brand had seared his skin.

  Shuddering, Troy closed his eyes.

  The young doctor left with the promise to come back in a few days. Troy was grateful for this; he did not know whether his wife would be ready to care for her patients herself.

  Upon Troy’s return, he found that his wife had several of her dresses dyed black. He refrained from pointing out that it was not seeming to wear full mourning for a mere servant. Mistress Nanette had clearly been more. Out of respect for the old woman, he found himself a piece of crêpe to wear around his arm.

  Until the funeral, his wife sat with her old nanny, the flower fairy having reverted back to the sad, gray ghost he had met in France.

  Whenever he thought of France, a vise constricted around Troy’s heart. Because of his own fear and pain he had been unable to sense hers, had been unable to see past anything other than the violence he’d suffered. And yet, all that time, Lillian had tried to help him, to protect him. She had set him free in more ways than one. Apart from Jus and Drake, she was the only person who had ever stood up for him—and that was not an easy feat in her circumstances.

  He tried to envision her childhood and youth, spent in that hellish château in France, cut off from all human company, indeed, cut off from all humanity. How she had survived was beyond him. He marveled at her endurance in the face of the worst adversity, at the will of steel that even her stepmother had not been able to twist. And he admired the courage with which she had taken her life in her own hands when she had fled from Château du Marais, and once again when she fashioned a new life for herself here at Bair Hall. For she had clearly done that: the villagers asked after her, and his friends adored her. While his own anger and hatred had poisoned the atmosphere at the Hall, she had gone out and been happy, had made herself a flower queen of his fields and gardens. This was the girl who had freed him from Camille’s shackles and had later lied to her stepmother to protect him from her—when it should have been him protecting his wife.

  It humbled him.

  And it filled him with deep gratitude toward the woman he had married. With gratitude and more—so much more.

  But after all that had happened, how could he expect she would ever forgive him? For ruining her, for forcing her into this marriage, for nearly raping her on their wedding night. He shuddered when he thought of that. He despised himself for it, the self-contempt churning in his stomach. How could he ever have sunk so low? Driven by a base need for revenge, all unjustified. It was indeed he who needed forgiveness. It had never been her, never been Lillian, whose only sin consisted of being a girl, as much a victim of her stepmother as himself.

  How could she ever forgive him?

  He watched her during the funeral as she stood at Nanette’s grave, so still as if she were one of the statues that adorned so many churchyards. A sad angel, clad in the bleakest of colors. Yet even wearing deepest black, she did in no way resemble la Veuve Noire. Her delicate features did not mirror her stepmother’s malice, but revealed only loneliness. Deep loneliness. He wondered how he could have ever thought otherwise.

  It seemed to Troy that he had woken from a long, dark dream. And now it was time to set his life to rights and to prove to his wife that he was worthy of her after all.

  ~*~

  How strange it was that life outside had not died, that the birds should still sing, that horse chestnuts, round and shining, would litter the park, and that the rowan tree at the gate would be aglow with a thousand red berries. Should they not all be withered and dead?

  When Lillian wandered around the grounds she now knew so well, she, at least, felt withered and wilted, as if a part of her had died with Nanette. Whenever she stepped into the countess’s sun parlor, she almost expected to hear the merry clicking of Nanette’s needles; and when she stepped into the kitchen in the afternoon, she would wonder why it did not smell of melting wax, of mint and dried herbs. Never again would she feel cherished in lavender-scented embraces, would she see the petite figure of her old nanny slip through the woods with the light step of a young girl.

  With Nanette, Lillian had lost the last bridge to her childhood and to happier years. Now there was nobody on this whole wide earth who had been present when Lillian had taken her first step or smiled for the very first time. Forgotten was the first word she had spoken, the first drawing she had made and the name of her first doll. Everything was lost in the past, the memories gone like sand in the wind.

  And so, the coldness returned to reach for Lillian, to envelop her in its icy embrace until it had dimmed the pain.

  What did it matter then that her husband wanted to leave for France? She did not know why he wanted to return there. She did not care. It did not touch her. Nothing ever would. Never again.

  On the day he left, she stood on the front steps of Bair Hall together with his friends and their dogs, while the servants hovered in the entrance hall behind them. She noticed how the sun glinted on her husband’s hair, little dark flames dancing around his head. Her gaze wandered on, to the bright blue sky, which was dotted with a few white clouds, sheep of the air.

  “My lady,” her husband said.

  She blinked.

  He stood in front of her, on the step below so that their eves were almost level. She had not heard him come so near.

  “Lillian,” he said. His warm, large hand cupped her cold cheek, and for a moment she was tempted to snuggle closer to that warmth. But then, the coldness from the stone beneath her seeped through her shoes, into her flesh, traveled upward until the cold erased his tempting warmth.

  His thumb slowly rubbed over her skin, and she saw that his eyes were as blue as the sky. “Before I leave I wanted to tell you…” Even his voice was soft and warm. “I know it is too late this year, but I wanted you to know that you can fill this house with flowers if you wish. And that, should you prefer to change the decoration, you can do that, too.” He regarded her solemnly, and his thumb rubbed over her cheek. Again she was tempted to cuddle closer to the warmth he offered.

  Yet warmth, she knew, was an illusion. It was better to reach for the cold, to cloak oneself in ice. Feelings made one vulnerable, and Lillian could not afford vulnerability. Therefore she stood unmoving, proud and erect, until his hand dropped away and something like sorrow shadowed his eyes.

  She watched how he hugged his friends, a display of camaraderie and affection, how he patted the dogs’ heads and set their tails wagging. She watched how he climbed into his carriage, how the footman closed the door. She heard the cracking of the reins, the crunching of the gravel when the coach drove off. Her husband lifted his hand, waved, and then he was gone, too.

  Lillian closed her eyes.

  It seemed to her that the wind picked up and caressed her cheek until it had chilled her flesh and, like a jealous lover, had wiped out all memory of another’s caress.

  She went into the gardens then, roamed the grounds without aim, the wind her only companion. In time, the days and weeks blurred and melted into one. She watched the leaves of the trees turn yellow and fall, the Michaelmas daisy wilt. She saw the birds gathering and watched them leave for the warmer regions of the south. And when her gaze followed
their path, she would sometimes pause and stand on the hill where the fourth earl’s artificial ruins stretched to touch the sky. She would stand and look toward the south and remember the expression in her husband’s eyes when he had taken his leave. She would pray for his safe return then, and told the birds to take her greetings with them.

  ~*~

  To track down the single golden locket he had sold months before, proved remarkably easy. All it took was time and patience to find the ship that had brought him back to England. Troy bought himself a mean-tempered brute of a horse and rode along the coast, traveling mile after mile in search of his treasure. The wind blew into his face, the land rushed by, and frequently his stallion would attempt to take a bite out of its master. Troy thumped its nose and boxed its ears, and with time, they came to an understanding. He would catch himself talking affectionately to the mean old horse, his only companion on this quest.

  As he slipped easily back into French, and because the months at prison had roughened his tone and accent, the fishermen in the small villages and the sailors in the bigger ports never suspected that he was one of the hated English. They threw him a curious glance or two, but a man who wanted to repay another a favor done in the past was not such an oddity that they would not help him. He found his captain in Roscoff, where the white chapel of Saint Barbe stood guard over the Roscovian sailors, pirates all, if legend was to be believed. This was the land where Saint Pol had overcome a horrible dragon, where Perceval had searched out the Holy Grail. A golden locket might not be as precious as the chalice that had held the blood of the Lord, yet it was precious enough to Troy, a magic talisman to heal and start anew.

  Therefore he sat patiently in the shabby tavern, stood jug after jug of the cheap sour wine, listened to the captain's tales of woe, and finally added some placating gold to the wine. The captain, he found, had sold the locket to a pawnbroker in Le Havre, but the man would have had to send the locket inland, to Paris, perhaps. Sailors did not buy their bien-aimées such a golden trinket.