Mariana

by Susanna Kearsley

  “A caution against this cursed plague,” he explained. “You may not be from London, child, but there’s no saying where your coins have been.”

  I tossed the four pennies into the vinegar with trembling fingers, certain that he could read the guilty knowledge in my downcast eyes. Grasping my purchase, I backed hastily away from the cart, and did not slow my pace until I had lost myself in the anonymity of the milling crowd.

  My sense of direction having quite left me, I found myself wandering in aimless circles, unable to find either Rachel or the row of butchers’ stalls. After making what seemed an endless circuit round the market square, I paused in the shelter of a lane to rest a moment, and found myself facing an enormous gray stallion that seemed curiously familiar.

  The beast was tethered to an iron ring in the wall, and stood quite calmly, staring down at me with great liquid eyes that betrayed only mild curiosity.

  “Oh,” I said softly.

  I had always had a weakness for horses. Even as a small child I had displayed no fear of the animals, and had developed a worrisome habit of running into the road to try to pet the cart horses and hackneys that crowded the London streets. I felt no fear now, as I stepped closer to the towering stallion and stretched out a questioning hand.

  “Oh,” I said again, “you beautiful thing. It’s all right, I won’t hurt you.”

  The wide nostrils flared, testing my scent.

  “There, my love,” I went on, speaking in that foolish tone that one reserves for babes and animals, “don’t be afraid. I only want to touch you. There.”

  I curved my hand over the horse’s nose, stroking lightly, and after a moment I felt the stallion relax, pressing its face against my caressing hand. I laughed in triumph and leaned forward to kiss the stallion’s questing nose, running my hand along his beautifully arched neck.

  The man’s voice, coming from directly behind me, was a startling intrusion.

  “You hold your life cheaply, mistress,” the voice said dryly. “He’s a bad-tempered devil, and his affections are often false.”

  “Nonsense,” I said. “He’s a lovely brute.” And I turned my head to look Richard de Mornay squarely in the eye.

  I had to look quite a long way up, in fact. He seemed no smaller standing than he had on horseback, and the top of my head was barely level with his shoulder.

  He swept the hat from his head with a gallant gesture and bowed low before me, his eyes laughing.

  “We meet again.”

  “My lord,” I acknowledged him, nodding my head in response.

  He had beautiful hair, I thought idly. As he stood and shook it back it caught the sun like gleaming sealskin, and I was sorry to see it once again covered by the broad-brimmed hat. Viewed at this close range, he also seemed to me much younger than I had originally judged him to be. Surely he was no more than fifteen years my senior, and not above thirty-five years of age.

  “I congratulate you on winning Navarre’s confidence,” he said, nodding at his horse.

  “Navarre? Is that his name?” I stroked the animal’s muscled jaw. “It is a lovely name.”

  Richard de Mornay shrugged and moved past me to tuck a parcel into one of his leather saddlebags.

  “I’ve no ear for names. I called him Navarre because that is where I bought him. Have you lost Rachel, or did you simply tire of the market?”

  I blinked warily. “How did you know I was with Rachel?”

  “I saw you earlier. ’Tis difficult not to notice two fair-haired beauties in a place such as this.” He did an extraordinary thing, then. He reached across and touched my arm, just above the wrist, his fingers warm upon the plain fabric of my sleeve.

  “You should have bought the bracelet, you know,” he told me, in a contemplative tone. “The stones would match your eyes.”

  Pride kept me from saying that the trinket had been too expensive for my purse. I took a small step backwards and he let his hand fall, his expression unconcerned.

  “I bought this, instead.” I held up my book to show him.

  “You can read, then.”

  “My father was a scrivener. He viewed illiteracy as an unpardonable sin.”

  “You were fortunate. I cannot imagine you would find much to read in your uncle’s house.”

  I smiled, in spite of myself. “Very little.”

  “Then you must come visit me at the Hall. I have a good library. You would be welcome to borrow anything you wanted.” His eyes went past me for a moment and swept the marketplace behind us. “There is Rachel.”

  I turned and looked, my eyes widening a little as I spotted Rachel in the company of a man. The man was tall, with broad shoulders and large, capable hands and a strong and compelling face. I looked again at those shoulders, and suddenly remembered where I’d seen him before.

  “Is that Evan Gilroy?” I asked.

  “Ay.” Richard de Mornay eyed me strangely. “I wasn’t aware that you’d met.”

  “We have not. I saw him when he brought my box up from the village. Rachel told me his name. He is a friend of yours.”

  It wasn’t really a question, but he answered it anyway.

  “Ay, we are friends. Your Rachel is in good hands.”

  There was little doubt about that, I thought wryly, watching as Evan Gilroy handed several parcels over to Rachel and bent down to speak to her. Whatever he said brought a flush of color to her pale cheeks, and as he turned away to walk in our direction, she watched him leave with eyes that did not bother to hide their longing. She did not see me, standing in the shadowed corner beside the tall gray horse, and I sighed in unconscious relief.

  “Evan,” Richard de Mornay hailed his friend, “this is Mistress Farr, lately come to Greywethers.”

  Evan Gilroy lifted his hat as he drew level with us. The frank, intelligent appraisal of his gray eyes was not unpleasant, and I smiled easily at him.

  “I believe you have already done me a service, sir,” I told him, “for which I owe you thanks.”

  “The delivery of your box, you mean? ’Twas no great matter, I assure you. And it is Richard you should thank, since it was he that asked—”

  “We must be going,” Richard de Mornay cut in, casting a black look at Evan Gilroy that was easily deflected by the latter’s guileless smile. “You should find your horse, my friend.”

  “’Tis in the next lane,” the big man said, nodding at me once more before moving off. “A pleasure, mistress.”

  Richard de Mornay swung himself into the saddle and reined his horse tightly, turning so that his polished boot in the stirrup was only inches from my face.

  “You will remember,” he said, “to come and view my library.”

  I strained my neck to look up at him. “I am sorry,” I told him, “but I cannot.”

  “May I ask the reason?”

  “My uncle,” I said plainly, “has forbidden me to speak to you.”

  He stared down at me for a long moment, his eyes narrowed in thought.

  “’Tis odd,” he said slowly. “I’d not have thought you a coward.”

  Before I had a chance to reply, he touched the stallion’s neck with the reins and was gone, leaving me for the second time to stare after him in foolish confusion.

  “Mariana!” Rachel called me from the street, and I went slowly out to join her.

  “I thought you were lost,” she said to me, handing me a wrapped joint of beef to carry and shifting her own parcels into a manageable load. “Did you find what you were looking for?”

  “I bought a book.” I showed her.

  Rachel raised her eyebrows.

  “You will have to hide that from Jabez,” she said, matter-of-factly. “He takes a dim view of women reading for pleasure.”

  I was beginning to think that
my uncle took a dim view of anyone doing anything for pleasure, but I merely bit my lip and hugged my book more tightly. We began our four-mile walk home in silence, both occupied with our own private thoughts. With each step I took, the heavy joint of meat seemed to grow heavier yet, and more unwieldy. When we had gone but a mile on the road I nearly dropped it altogether.

  “’Tis a pity that Evan Gilroy was not chivalrous enough to carry this wretched thing home for us,” I told Rachel ruefully, struggling to recover my burden.

  Her head snapped round with a start, her eyes wide and alarmed. “You saw us?”

  I nodded, touched by her embarrassment. “He is a handsome man, Rachel.”

  She lowered her head, not meeting my eyes.

  “I am betrothed,” she said, her voice slow and steady, “to Elias Webb, the bailiff of Exbury.”

  I had seen the bailiff. He was a stern, unyielding man with a dour, humorless mouth and a perpetually black expression that matched his somber clothing.

  “Oh, Rachel.” I could not contain my dismay.

  She went on stoically, “He is a friend of your uncle’s, and an honest man. We are to be married at the summer’s end.”

  I said nothing, and after a minute she lifted her eyes to mine once more, her expression almost pleading.

  “So you see,” she told me, “it would not be seemly for me to be seen speaking to Evan Gilroy. Of course, I would never do such a thing.”

  I reached to give her hand a small squeeze of reassurance. “I saw nothing,” I said.

  Her taut face relaxed into a smile, and as I watched, I saw the twinkle return to her forget-me-not eyes.

  “No more did I,” was her cryptic reply.

  We spoke nothing more until we came to Exbury and the lonely gray house. Aunt Caroline was in the kitchen when we arrived, feeding baby John beside the hearth. She looked incredibly gray and weary, and her eyes were red.

  “Jabez is gone to Salisbury for a time,” she informed us dully. “He has some business there.”

  It was not unwelcome news. Caroline was colorless and weak, but she had a reasonably pleasant disposition and I could not help feeling that, given time, we might become friends. She was close to my own age, although she looked years older, her hair already whitening with the strain of her miserable existence.

  I smiled at her, but she did not respond.

  “A man came to the house,” she said to me. There was no interest in her voice. “A servant from the manor. He left a parcel for you. Said you dropped it in the marketplace. It’s there, on the table.” She pointed, careful not to disturb the nursing baby.

  I looked. It was a small, flat parcel, tied up with colored string in bright paper. I was, frankly, astonished by its presence, but I had no wish to let Rachel or her older sister view my reaction.

  “How wonderful,” I exclaimed brightly. “I thought I had lost it. Thank you, Caroline.”

  My aunt eyed the package with a flicker of curiosity, glanced at the book in my other hand, and raised a pale eyebrow, but she said nothing. Nor, to my relief, did Rachel.

  A short time later, alone in my upstairs room, I set the parcel on my bed and carefully unwrapped it, my blood racing with anticipation. I could feel the hard outline of the contents through the paper before I had removed even half the wrapping.

  Still, I was unprepared for the actual sight of the beautiful bracelet, ringed with the blue-eyed birds of paradise, spilling out across the plain, homespun coverlet.

  Chapter 16

  “Julia.”

  I was shaking all over, or at least I felt as if I were. Perhaps it was the room itself. Certainly the walls seemed something less than solid; they shimmered and danced as if the subtly shifting daylight was being reflected through a thousand swaying prisms.

  “Julia.” Again the voice spoke, and I turned my head slowly, with a great effort, towards it.

  At first, I could see nothing but the open doorway of my bedroom and a curious gray, shapeless thing that blocked my view into the hall. A gray, shapeless thing that swelled and drifted, cloud-like, towards me, addressing me in a male voice that was growing decidedly sharper in tone.

  “Julia.”

  My first thought was, that’s not my name, and then I thought, but I know that voice, and then I thought, Oh, it’s Tommy, and sure enough, there was my brother standing over me, wearing on his face the same expression our father had assumed whenever one of us had fallen ill. It was an expression of dismay and concern mingled with a sort of piteous helplessness, and my response to it was automatic.

  “I’m all right, Tom. Honestly.” Then, as reality took a stronger hold, “What in heaven’s name are you doing here?”

  He ignored my question, and went on staring down at me with eyes that now seemed more fascinated than concerned. “You weren’t here,” he stated in a tense voice, “were you? You were somewhere else. Someone else.”

  I was still kneeling on the floor. I pushed myself stiffly to a standing position, feeling my joints creak a protest. Mutely, I nodded my head.

  There was certainly no doubt in my mind as to what had just happened. My hair, when I pushed it away from my face, was wet, and there was mud on my shoes and on the hardwood, smeared where I had walked across the floor of the studio. My hands were stiff and reddened with cold, and I looked down at them stupidly, as if surprised to find that they belonged to my body.

  “My God,” Tom breathed, his eyes still fixed on me.

  It was the first time I had heard him say that since he had come down from Oxford. He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. “Do you have any brandy in the house?”

  “What?” Puzzled, I glanced down at my wristwatch. “Tom, it’s barely half-ten. Don’t you think it’s a little early yet? Especially for a man of the cloth.”

  My brother grinned irreverently. “I’m certain God would forgive me if I drank an entire keg of brandy, given the circumstances. But it isn’t for me. It’s you that needs the brandy, my love. You look bloody awful.”

  “Vicars can’t say ‘bloody,’” I reminded him woodenly.

  “Then it’s a good thing the bishop isn’t here to hear me,” Tom retorted, steering me by the arm across the room and into the upstairs hallway, where he turned me towards the stairs.

  “I don’t have any brandy in the house,” I told him, caving in, “but I think there’s some Grand Marnier in the cupboard over the cooker.”

  “Capital,” said Tom. “That’ll do.”

  I had some trouble negotiating the stairs because of a curious stiffness in my legs, a condition that baffled me until I realized that, as Mariana Farr, I must have walked over eight miles that morning.

  Tom seated me unceremoniously at the kitchen table, located the Grand Marnier, and poured a generous measure into a tumbler for me. Under his stern, insistent gaze, I drank. The liqueur prickled warmly through my insides, bringing a sharp flush to my skin and driving the numbness from my fingertips. I drank again, pushed the damply curling hair out of my eyes, and raised my head to face my brother.

  “You still haven’t told me what you’re doing here,” I reminded him.

  “Visiting you,” was the simple reply. “I didn’t have any pressing business to attend to today, so I left my curate in charge and drove out here. Thought I’d see how you were getting along—make sure everything was all right. And I wanted to deliver these,” he added, looking down at a thick sheaf of papers on the table between us. The title of the article on top showed plainly that this was the information that Tom’s librarian friend had unearthed for us. Tom was looking at it now as if it had lost some of its importance, as if it had been somehow made redundant by what he’d just witnessed.

  “Anyhow,” he went on, “when I arrived, I found the back door wide open and the house deserted. I called out but no one answered, so I w
ent upstairs to check your room and saw that your bed was made, which meant either you’d got up early and made it,” his eyes told me plainly how unlikely he thought this idea, “or that you hadn’t slept in it at all. At that point I began to worry, and I had just come down here to try to decide what to do next, when you came waltzing in through the back door, staring like a sheep and dripping water all over the floor.”

  “Did I say anything?”

  “No.” He shook his head. “No, you just stood there a moment, by the door, then you went right past me and up the stairs to your studio. I suppose I could have waited for you to come out of it naturally, but I’m afraid I rather panicked. Did I interrupt something important?”

  I thought of that lovely bracelet, half felt it again trickling through my hand, and heard Richard de Mornay’s voice saying, “You should have bought the bracelet” while he held my wrist in the marketplace. My wrist. Mariana’s wrist. I lifted one hand to my forehead and closed my eyes.

  “No,” I said, “it was nothing important.” But I could hear the regret in my own voice, and wondered if Tommy could, too.

  “You’re lucky you were dressed when it happened,” he commented, eyeing my damp, wrinkled shirt and jeans. “It would be a bit awkward to be seen roaming the countryside in your dressing gown and slippers.”

  I smiled. “Oh, I made certain that I was dressed. I just didn’t allow for my being able to unlatch doors, that’s all.”

  “I’m not sure I follow.”

  “I planned it, Tommy,” I said, unable to prevent a small trace of pride from showing in my tone. “This was a sort of experiment, you see. I wanted to know if I could trigger a regression myself, in a time and place of my own choosing.”

  “And?”

  “And it worked, obviously, though it didn’t go off exactly the way I’d hoped. I had thought to contain the regression within this house.”

  Tom glanced over his shoulder at the kitchen door, which still stood ajar, letting in the invigoratingly damp scent of a late-May morning.

  “And Mariana opened the door,” he guessed. “I see. That can’t be the same lock that was on in the seventeenth century, surely.”