Mariana

by Susanna Kearsley

  “Yes.” Vivien’s flushed smile had given way now to a puzzled, hurt expression. “We thought you’d be pleased.”

  “I am.” I forced a smile. “Really, I am. I’m just surprised, that’s all.”

  She relaxed. “We were rather cloak-and-dagger about the whole thing, weren’t we? I’m not sure why. It was part of the fun of it, I think, sneaking off with no one knowing. We both have to be so respectable most of the time.”

  “Well, you fooled me,” I said honestly. “I can’t believe my mother didn’t say something, either. She’s terrible at keeping secrets.”

  “She doesn’t know,” Vivien told me, hesitating. “I haven’t met your parents, yet.”

  Tom must be head over heels, I thought in amazement, to propose marriage without first vetting the girl through the family. It seemed there were some corners of my brother that I barely knew, for all our intimacy. Vivien bit her lip, watching my face.

  “Do you think they’ll like me?” she asked.

  “My parents?” I smiled at the thought. “They’ll be over the moon. They’ve been pestering Tom to marry since he came down from Oxford, and you’re very much their type. You’ll like them, too, I think,” I added. “They’re rather odd, but lovable.”

  “Like Tom.”

  I grinned. “Not quite as odd as that.”

  “And you’re not upset? About us getting married, I mean.”

  “Of course not. Why should I be upset?” Why, indeed, I asked myself, my gaze straying out the window to the man bent working in the garden by the crumbled dovecote wall. Why should I think that destiny was perfect? After all, Rachel and Evan had gone off together, loved each other, presumably grown old together. Maybe fate had reserved a different twist for them, this time around.

  Richard and I, once separated, had been brought together. Perhaps Rachel and Evan, in this second life, must live apart…

  The kettle screamed upon the cooker, and I looked away from the window with a start, reaching to switch off the burner and fill the coffee cups. Vivien was watching me, silently, wearing again that look of puzzled concern.

  “Oh,” she said suddenly. “I nearly forgot. Geoff rang you.”

  I lifted my head. “Here?”

  “While I was getting the coffee.” She nodded. “About an hour ago. It was a rotten connection, I could barely hear him, but I promised I’d give you the message.”

  “He’s still in France?”

  “I think so. Somewhere in the Pyrenees, I think he said. Anyhow, he said to tell you he’d ring again this evening.”

  I stirred the coffee, thoughtfully. “Did you tell him you were getting married?”

  “No.” She laughed. “It must have slipped my mind. But then, he was on a bit of a high, himself, so I let him do most of the talking. There’s no out-talking Geoff, once he gets going.”

  I smiled. “So I’ve learned. Did he say when he was likely to ring back?”

  “No. Only that I wasn’t to drag you off to the pub this evening, until after he’d called.” She glanced at her watch, and grimaced. “Lord, I must be going. Ned will have my hide. Look, I’m sorry to have sprung this on you out of nowhere…”

  “I’m thrilled,” I told her firmly. “Honestly.”

  “And you will stand up for me? I promise I won’t make you wear some ghastly dress, or anything.”

  “I’ll be there with bells on,” I said, and sealed the promise with a hug. “I hope my brother appreciates his good fortune.”

  Vivien smiled, and shook her head. “I’m the one who’s lucky,” she told me. “And I’ll be getting a sister, on top of it all. I always wanted a sister.”

  A shadow flitted by the door, and I fancied for a moment that it was Rachel who stood before me, and not Vivien. Rachel, with her soft, quick smile and laughing eyes, and the fair hair tumbled anyhow about her shoulders. But as I blinked, she vanished.

  “You will stop by the Lion, later?” Vivien paused on the doorstep, turning back. “After Geoff rings? I’ll treat you to a bottle of my best Bordeaux, in honor of the occasion. And I’m sure the lads will want to celebrate.”

  I promised her I’d be there, and she went off happily, calling a farewell to Iain as she headed off across the field towards the village. Perhaps in sympathy for the stoic Scotsman, I fixed a plate of sandwiches and pickles, and gathering up the coffee mugs in my free hand I went out again to the dovecote, crossing the grass slowly so as not to spill anything.

  He stopped work when he saw me coming, straightening his bent back and stretching. He pulled the gloves from his hands and set them neatly on the rough wall beside him, then reached to take his plate and mug from my careful grasp.

  “You’re an angel,” he thanked me, tucking in. “She told you about the wedding, then?”

  I nodded. “Yes.”

  “She’s got good taste. I like your brother.”

  I glanced at him, looking for some sign of emotion behind that impassive façade. “I suppose you’ll miss her, though, when she’s gone.”

  He shrugged. “Hampshire’s not so very far away, and I fancy we’ll see plenty of them.” He set his plate upon the wall. “She’d hoped you’d be excited.”

  “I am,” I said, but my voice was flat.

  He pulled a crumpled packet of cigarettes from his shirt pocket, shook one loose, and lit it. Over the brief flare of the match, the gray eyes flicked towards me, unconvinced. “Then d’ye mind telling me why you look as though you’ve just lost your best friend?”

  “I don’t know.” I sighed, and leaned my back against the wall, gazing out at the line of distant hills. The sun was fading in the west, setting off a glowing burst of dying colors that spread across the rolling grass, bowed low beneath the breeze. I looked down, at the ruined garden. “I really don’t know,” I said again. “It’s just been a wretched couple of days, what with the rain, and everything dying, and…” My voice trailed off. It was impossible to explain. “This was such a beautiful garden,” I said.

  He seemed to understand. “It will be again,” he told me. “Next year. That’s the wonderful thing about gardens, they always grow back.”

  “I suppose so.” I sighed again. “But I wish they wouldn’t die.”

  He was silent a moment, gazing down at his feet with a contemplative air, and then he kicked gently at a loose clod of earth, turning it over with the toe of his boot to expose its underbelly of tangled white roots.

  “It’s still there, you see,” he pointed out. “Bulbs and roots, just waiting to grow. You have to learn to look with more than just your eyes, Julia.” He took a deep pull on the cigarette and exhaled, slowly. “Try looking with your soul, instead. The soul sees what truly matters.”

  For a long minute, nothing moved. Then he lifted his head and his eyes met mine across the stillness of the dead garden. Across the centuries. Behind us, in the house, the telephone began to ring, but I made no move to answer it. I went on staring at him, wordlessly, my heart rising in my throat.

  “Could you not see it?” he asked me, gently. “Christ, I’d have thought it was that obvious. Freda had to threaten violence, once or twice, to make me hold my tongue.”

  My own voice came with difficulty. “She knew?”

  “Oh, aye. She knew the moment Geoff first brought me home from Cambridge. Hell of a time I had, that summer. I thought I must be going mad… Well,” he smiled faintly, blowing smoke, “you know what it’s like.”

  “Yes.”

  We might have been discussing the weather. He hadn’t moved to touch me—he looked the same old Iain, leaning square against the dovecote wall, his hair turned copper by the setting sun that caught the stubborn angle of his jaw. Unhurried, he lifted the cigarette. “Afterwards, I went to Paris, worked for Morland. I was curious, about what Richard did in Paris, in his exil
e. I had some small adventures, over there, but all I really felt was loneliness, and of course there was no you.”

  “So you came back.” I almost whispered the words.

  “Aye. I bought the cottage, settled in, and waited for you to turn up. I knew you would.”

  His gaze slid sideways to mine, a glancing touch, then passed on to where the oak tree stood in shadows in the hollow. The telephone, forgotten, gave a final dying ring that faded softly into silence. I scarcely noticed.

  “Why didn’t you say anything?” I asked him.

  “I wanted to.” This time the gray eyes didn’t look away. “Believe me, I wanted to. I’ve been to hell and back, this summer. But Freda said you’d get it right, in time, if I would only wait.”

  “Iain…”

  “Ordinarily,” he went on, evenly, “I’m a patient man. But I think I’ve waited long enough.” He pitched the cigarette away and came towards me with slow, deliberate steps. “Time we both stopped waiting, and began to live.”

  The tone, the stance, were briefly Richard’s, but it was Iain who came to me, Iain who stood before me with his broad shoulders blocking out the light. How could I have been so blind, I wondered, not to have seen it long before? Everything I wanted, all that I had ever been or could ever hope to be, was there in those steady gray eyes.

  For a long, aching minute he just stood there looking down at me, silent and serious. And in my eyes he saw his answer, for at last he smiled, and took my face in his strong hands, tracing my cheekbone with a delicate touch.

  “These are your beautiful days, Julia Beckett,” he promised me softly. And as he lowered his head to mine and kissed me, a flock of starlings rose beating from the hollow in a shifting, glorious cloud, wheeled once against the bloodred sky, and then was gone.

  The circle was closed.

  Author’s Note

  The buildings that make up my fictional village of Exbury really exist in the village of Avebury, Wiltshire. I may have moved Greywethers some distance out of the village, and taken away the stone circle that Avebury’s set in, but otherwise most things were left where they actually stand.

  I’m indebted to Mrs. J. Moore of the National Trust, which administers Avebury Manor, for sending me reams of historical documents, floor plans and articles, guidebooks, assessments, and details—including the “ghost” some have sensed in the Cavalier bedroom.

  If she had been any less generous and helpful, this book wouldn’t be what it is.

  Many thanks.

  Reading Group Guide

  1. Julia may be the modern incarnation of Mariana, but they are different women with vastly different life experiences. How would you compare their personalities?

  2. Did you see any similarities between Richard’s personality in the past and in his present incarnation?

  3. When Julia runs to Tommy’s house after her first few regression experiences, she tells him she thinks she’s going crazy. What would you have thought, in her position? Would you have accepted the idea of a past life? Would you have gone back to Greywethers, as she did?

  4. Tommy tells Julia, “I believe everything happens for a reason.” Do you agree with him?

  5. When she might have contradicted Jabez’s Puritanical opinion of the Plague, Mariana tells us “I did bite back my words of argument, remembering in time that the independence of spirit encouraged by my parents was not to be tolerated in other households.” Although her independence of spirit remains strong, how does Mariana have to adapt her outward behavior to get by in her uncle’s household, and what do you think was the most difficult adjustment she had to make?

  6. Do you think her independence of spirit still managed to assert itself in her actions, and how?

  7. Mrs. Hutherson says, “It’s a kind of a journey that you’ve begun, Julia, and no one can show you the way of it. You must find your own direction.” Nevertheless, in what ways does Mrs. Hutherson help and protect Julia through her journey?

  8. One of the ways the author shows the summer passing is by the changing flowers in the dovecote garden. What other purpose do you think the garden served in the book, and why do you think Iain spent so much time there?

  9. Was the ending a surprise to you? In looking back, do you see any clues you missed the first time around in how the characters were interacting?

  10. Julia, before she can find happiness, must learn to see with her heart and not her eyes. Do you think the author is deliberately trying to make a statement about the way we as women are conditioned, by everything from fairy tales to movies, to seek out the handsome Prince Charming instead of the boy next door?

  An Excerpt From

  The Shadowy Horses

  The bus had no business stopping where it did. We should have gone straight on across the Coldingham Moor, with Dunbar to the back of us and the English border drawing ever nearer, but instead we stopped, and the shaggy-faced cattle that lifted their heads on the far side of the fence appeared to share my surprise when the driver cut the engine to an idle.

  A fierce blast of wind rocked the little ten-seater bus on its tires and drove a splattering of cold spring rain against the driver’s windscreen, but he took no notice. He shook out a well-thumbed newspaper and settled back, humming tunelessly to himself. Curious, I shifted in my seat to peer out my own fogging window.

  There seemed, at first glance, nothing to stop for, only the cattle and a few uninterested sheep, picking their way across a ragged landscape that was turning green reluctantly, as if someone had told it only yesterday that spring had come. Beyond the moor, lost somewhere in the impenetrable mist, rose the wild, romantic Lammermuir Hills I’d read about as a child. And in the opposite direction, although I couldn’t see it either, the cold North Sea bit deep into the coastal line of cliffs.

  The wind struck again, broadside, and the little bus shuddered. I sighed, and watched my breath condense upon the chattering window glass.

  Impulsiveness, my mother always said, was one of my worst flaws, second only to my habit of speaking to strangers. After twenty-nine years I’d grown accustomed to her heavy sighs and shaking head, and to her firm conviction I’d end up a sad statistic on the nightly news. But now, as I squinted out at the bleak, unwelcoming scenery, I grudgingly admitted that my mother had a point.

  It had been impulse, after all, that had brought me from my London flat to Scotland in the first place. Impulse, and the slick, persuasive writing style of Adrian Sutton-Clarke. He knew me too well, did Adrian, and he had phrased his summons craftily—his promise of “the perfect job” set like a jewel at the centre of a long letter that was so deliciously mysterious, so full of hints of grand adventure, that I couldn’t possibly resist it. Adrian, for all his faults, had rarely steered me wrong. And if today was anything to go by, I decided, he hadn’t been lying about the adventure.

  Not that one could really blame British Rail for what had happened. My train had certainly set out from King’s Cross cheerily enough, and even after we’d spent twenty minutes on a siding waiting for a points failure to be corrected, the engine had pushed ahead with vigor, determined to make up the time. It was only after our second delay north of Darlington, because of sheep on the line, that the train had begun to show signs of weariness, creaking and rolling from side to side in a rocking motion that lulled me instantly to sleep.

  I had stayed sleeping right through Durham, then Newcastle, and finally Berwick upon Tweed, where I was meant to get off. When the train lurched to a stop at Dunbar, I’d scrambled down on to the platform with the familiar resigned feeling that told me I was lost. Well, not so much lost, really, as diverted. And the fact that my train had been an hour late coming into Dunbar proved something of a complication.

  “You might have taken the 5:24,” the stationmaster had informed me, in an effort to be helpful, “or the 5:51. But they’ve both gone. There’ll n
ot be another train to Berwick now till 7:23.”

  “I see.” Nearly an hour and a half to wait. I hated waiting. “I don’t suppose there’s a bus?”

  “To Berwick? Aye, there is, at…” he’d searched his clockwork memory for the time, “…6:25. Just round the corner, there, and up the road a ways—that’s where it stops.”

  And so I’d wrestled my suitcase round the corner and up the road to the small bus shelter, my spirits lifting somewhat as I read the posted timetable telling me the bus to Berwick travelled via Cockburnspath and Coldingham and Eyemouth.

  Eyemouth, Adrian had written in his letter, pronounced just as it looks, and not like Plymouth, if you please. You’d love it here, I think—I remember how you waxed rhapsodic about the north coast of Cornwall, and this is rather better, a real old-fashioned fishing town with smugglers” ghosts round every corner and the added lure of… but no, I shan’t give the secret away. You’ll just have to come and find out for yourself.

  I’d have been only too happy to oblige, I thought wryly, but for the fact that I was now stuck in the middle of Coldingham Moor, with the bus idling on and the driver still reading his newspaper.

  There seemed little point in questioning the stop; apart from a couple of love-struck kids fondling each other at the rear of the bus, I was the only passenger. And the driver was bigger than me. Still, my curiosity had almost reached breaking point when he finally folded his paper with a decisive rattle, sat himself upright, and pulled on the lever to open the door.

  A man was coming across the moor.

  It might have been the fogged window, or the wild weather, or the rough and rolling landscape that, like all the Scottish Borderlands, held traces of the harsh and violent past—the echoed din of charging hooves, of chilling battle cries and clashing broadswords. Whatever it was, it tricked my senses. The man, to my eyes, looked enormous, a great dark giant who moved over bracken and thorn with an effortless stride. He might have been a specter from a bygone age, a fearless border laird come to challenge our rude intrusion on his lands—but the illusion lasted only a moment.