Winter Garden

by Adele Ashworth

  Thomas opened his eyes again, his gaze fixed on the rug. The room had grown warm. The right side of his body was hot from the heat of the fire, but he didn’t care. All that mattered now was Madeleine, and he couldn’t look at her yet. Not yet, though he knew she hadn’t moved an inch or a muscle.

  “When I came back from China everything had changed for me,” he proceeded, trying to detach himself from the lingering outrage and horror that still managed to unsettle him to the bone. “I was burned very badly on my legs, and to some degree on my chest, back, and face, though most of that healed quickly where the scarring is now practically invisible. But I could not walk. In early July, when I was able to climb out of bed for the first time in weeks, I was forced to spend my waking hours in a wheelchair. Can you imagine what that was like for me? Me, the proud, extroverted aristocrat, doomed to a wheelchair and maybe, if good fortune befell me after months of physical effort and exhaustion, to a world where I would walk with the help of a crutch. A crutch. I was never again to know a life of sensual indulgences and entertaining social enjoyment, a life with sexual contact unless I purchased it, which we both know satisfies lust but offers no meaning. And I knew with certainty that I would never again be truly desired and intensely loved by a woman. As you said so well this morning, Madeleine, ‘who would want me?’”

  He scraped his face harshly with his palm. Then no longer able to stand still, he paced once again to the window, his legs like lead, aching.

  “My fears were well founded,” he detailed, resting his hip against the sill, arms crossed over his chest, gazing out at blurred shadows through increasing dark-fall. “During the first few weeks following my return to London, I became the subject of polite gossip and quiet pity, and I was generally ignored when it wasn’t socially required to visit me. Many a man came back mangled from war, but only very rarely one in my social position. It made me an odd sensation, something less than human to be ogled and discussed openly among those who had once called themselves my friends. The refined Lady Alicia Douglas, a somewhat obtuse and whimsical beauty I courted and once considered marrying, called on me formally at my home in early July. She didn’t offer a kind word that wasn’t trite, or a kiss to my mouth—and before that time we had certainly done our share of passionate kissing. Instead, she sat across from me, on a wicker chair in my beautiful garden, visibly repulsed by my disfigurement while she flatly announced without misgiving that she was very sorry but, regardless of my wealth and title, she couldn’t possibly marry a man who could not waltz with her on a ballroom floor.”

  Madeleine winced at that. He saw it from the corner of his eye and turned to face her fully, at last ready to reveal all. She had lowered her lashes now and was ever so slightly shaking her head in negation.

  “I wanted to die, Madeleine,” he whispered, his voice low and scratchy and wavering, reaching out for the ice-cold windowsill to hold himself steady should his knees give way beneath him. “My life was over as I knew it, and I didn’t want to exist anymore. I had nothing left personally—no self-worth, no wife, no friends. Everything I knew and cared about before I left for Hong Kong was gone from me, taken from me by my own stupidity. How could I work? How could I live the life of a cultured gentleman? Ride a horse or dance? Nobody wanted to spend time with a cripple in a wheelchair, walk with him while he limped profoundly on a crutch. I had only my son, nine years old at the time and so alive, and I felt like I’d shamed him somehow. He would do better to inherit my estate at my death, be raised by my wife’s brother, his very able and prosperous uncle, rather than to give constant care to his lonely, invalid father for years to come. I was suddenly an obligation, only to grow more dependent on his company over time, and I didn’t want that for him. I didn’t want that for anyone. I just didn’t want to live anymore, and by the middle of summer I’d convinced myself that I had the courage to let go.

  “On July twenty-ninth, trying to ignore the rude gawking and embarrassed whispers of those I passed, my private nurse wheeled me into Sir Riley’s office in the city so that I could conclude my assignment on paper, sign any lingering documents, and visit with him again for a final time. It was a dismal day, severely cold and wet, which I decided would be perfect for my last outing, my last few hours on this earth.”

  The cottage was almost dark inside now, the fire dying in the grate, lamps unlit from lack of concern or notice. Thomas’s mouth became dry as his heart began to beat hard and fast with trepidation. For the first time in ages, he desperately needed a whisky. But he refused to move, refused to curb his revelations now, to keep the secret any longer, to take his eyes from her beautiful, elegant form.

  “Instead of pursuing my cowardly death, the greatest miracle of my life occurred that unforgettable afternoon. As I sat waiting in my chair in Sir Riley’s outer office, the pain excruciating, my head and face partially bandaged as my sewn wounds slowly healed, my mind and heart bitterly accepting of my fate, the door opened, and this lady, this…breathtaking vision, glided into the office in a flurry of daffodil-yellow silk, shining like a brilliant rainbow after a spring shower.”

  His throat constricted as the memory of that momentous event came back to him in lashing waves, forcing him to stumble in his detail, the scene in his mind as real to him as if it had all happened yesterday. But as difficult as it all was, he never looked away from Madeleine.

  “I was awestruck by her beauty,” he continued in a trembling whisper he could no longer control. “I couldn’t think coherently when she turned her exquisite, pale blue eyes in my direction and noticed me, although I vividly remember cringing inside because of what I’d become, knowing that at another time I might have made an impression on this incredible woman, but by then it was too late. I was ready to bow my head in humiliation, when this gentle soul smiled radiantly into my eyes and walked toward me. And not only did she smile at me, she purposely sat beside me. I was a hideously ugly, broken mess of a man, and yet in an otherwise vacant room, this angelic creature chose, chose, to sit beside me.

  “She spoke to me,” he whispered huskily as if back in the dream. “She ignored the deep, sewn gash beside my mouth, my cuts and burns, never recoiled from my grotesque, missing leg. She so sweetly related her trip to London, told me about her home in France, all the while smiling, touching my arm, her voice velvet-soft and caring.

  “She fascinated me, this unusual Frenchwoman,” he said passionately. “So when she left two hours later and I had some time to discuss her business with Sir Riley, I was astonished to learn what she’d come to England to do. Was it possible? Could a Frenchwoman be a British spy? He informed me of all that she’d done up to that point, with no direction or funds, and although Riley was amused and took her ambition somewhat lightly, I was enthralled. He remained skeptical of the idea of placing a woman, a Frenchwoman, under his employ, but I found the notion as intriguing as the woman herself.”

  Thomas knew this was the critical moment, but he had to get the rest of it said. Pulse throbbing erratically in his temples, his stomach squeezing him hard from the inside, legs like jelly, he forced himself to lower his arms to his sides and stand perfectly still.

  “I insisted that Sir Riley hire her, and he did. Four days later. Her work was immediately praised, and the most interesting thing of all was that I was so captivated with the woman and her sudden burst into my life that my self-pity had vanished. I had a purpose, even if it was only to see her succeed.

  “I sent two men to France to discover what they could about her, from her past to the present, her likes and dislikes, her heartbreaks and joys. In this way I learned of her lonely childhood at the hands of a beautiful but selfish mother, her devastation at the loss of her father, her determination to learn the English language and then accomplishing it. I learned of her first lover, and then the next, and then the ones after that, of her experience as a common stage dancer to provide for her future.”

  Thomas could see the tears streaming down her cheeks now in two thin lines, reflect
ing what remained of the firelight. It tore through his gut, making his chest ache, and he wanted so badly to touch her, to hold her and tell her it would be all right. It had to be. That thought alone gave him the fortitude he needed to finish.

  “The hardest part of all, Madeleine,” he whispered intensely, no longer able to control his grief as his voice began to shake with it, “was when I realized, six or seven months after I’d met this beautiful, unusual woman, that I was falling in love with her—not the cultured, physically exquisite image she portrayed to all, the only part every other man she had ever known had loved and desired. But with her fighting spirit, her hidden talents, her gentle goodness and bravery and passion to make the best of the harsh life she’d been given through no fault of her own. Within a year of our meeting I’d come to know everything about her, admiring her tremendously for the woman she was inside, understanding how she’d used her beauty and charm to position herself in the world, because that’s the part of her people judged.”

  He leaned toward her and tapped his chest hard with his fist. “I know how others judge the physical beauty. I know how their ignorance damages and scars a person inside far worse than the scars on the outside. The very same judgments this brave woman had faced I was beginning to face, and I understood. Of all the things I had ever understood about life, Madeleine, I understood the pain this physically beautiful woman had endured inside because she could not help the way she looked.”

  Madeleine bowed her head and put her face in her palm, her body shaking violently, although she had yet to make a sound. Any sound. If she cried, she cried silently.

  Thomas felt himself succumb to her misery, and it nearly tore him apart. He stood only five or six feet away from her, and yet he couldn’t go to her. In all of his life, he’d never known such fear as he did at this moment, wondering if she would lash out at him for trying, despise him eternally. But he couldn’t stop now.

  “For years I waited, giving her work as she needed it, loving her from afar, enormously proud of her accomplishments, accepting but so deeply hurt each time she took a lover who was not me. I ached inside when she was alone, wanting to comfort her, to be a friend she could trust and talk to when she was lonely. I couldn’t expect anything in return for my efforts, and yet for years it was enough because I had no idea how to meet her again, how to get to know her without others around, to engage her intimately in conversation, to allow her the opportunity to get to know me. And then last summer I had an idea. If I brought her to England to work with me, just me, outside her world in France, I would have a chance, one chance, to see if she held any attraction to me, a common scholar, if she would want me as a man disabled, if she could learn to love me.”

  Thomas stiffened, fists at his sides, and swallowed forcefully. “I love you, Madeleine,” he said brokenly, looking at her silent, crying form. “I am not infatuated with your beauty, or your charm, or the sensual pleasures you have given me in bed. I love the little girl who witnessed opium addiction and sexual perversion, who had no mother to love and cherish her but one who abused her. I love the child who lost her father, the only person she had ever loved, when she was so young, who at only fifteen found comfort in the arms of a man twice her age. I love the manner in which you achieved greatness by avoiding prostitution when that was your easiest option. I love your laugh and your dignity and your cleverness. I love your elegance and your style and your disregard of the physical ugliness surrounding you, because you see innocent beauty in all things.”

  He lowered his voice with profound conviction. “I will love you when you are old, Maddie, when age finally takes your youthful glamour. I will love you when your face is wrinkled and your hair is gray and your breasts are no longer firm and your waist has thickened. I love you more than I have ever loved another living soul, but more importantly, I value you because you are so very worthy. You gave me back my life, and I will live it to make you happy.”

  The silence became deafening when he finished speaking. For several long, excruciating moments he was aware of nothing but the woman before him, her shiny hair coiled up into perfect braids, her day gown smooth and silky as it draped over her legs, her straight, trembling back, her face in her hands as she cried. Darkness loomed, coldness intensified as the fire died slowly in the grate, but he remained focused solely on her. Only her. Hoping.

  “Madeleine—”

  “Why?” she asked in a breath of anguish.

  Tears filled his eyes then, tears he could no longer control. “Please—”

  “I asked you why!”

  Her scream of vehemence startled him, rocking him to the core. She looked into his eyes at last, and it was then that he realized his confession had shattered her.

  He took a step toward her, and in that instant she flung her arm wide and put every ounce of strength she possessed into scattering the chess pieces across the room, each of them striking the floor with a sharp piercing stab as a knife to his chest.

  “This is a lie! Everything is a lie! All of it!” She stood, rage enveloping her, hands fisted at her sides as she faced him. “You are the greatest lie, Thomas, and the greatest liar! Do you know what you’ve done? Do you have any idea? You manipulated me to your advantage. I am a lie created by you, an identity created as easily as those you created for yourself, the shipbuilder, the simple scholar. I am now the person you wanted, not the woman I chose to become. I believed for years that I was admired for what I did, that I was wanted, needed, for something other than how I looked. Now I learn, through some…some…selfish scheme of yours, that I am laughed at, probably ridiculed constantly because I am really nothing more than an audacious Frenchwoman attempting in vain to be an English subject. How absurd I must look each time I contact the Home Office. How much fun it must be for all the men to mock my feminine qualities as I parade them around France in the name of British national security.”

  “That’s not true,” he said harshly, trying desperately to control his rising panic, feeling the walls around him closing in. “None of that is true. Nobody has ever laughed at you or scorned your abilities while you’ve worked for the Crown.”

  She hugged herself, crying out in a wail of agony. “Oh, God, don’t you understand? You’ve humiliated me, not just now, but in front of others, in front of my superiors, my colleagues! Can’t you comprehend how difficult it was for me to get here? How exhausting it’s been to stay in this position all these years? How hard it is even now to be accepted? I believed what I did was worthwhile and highly regarded, but now you tell me it has all been a lie. You’ve made me a fool and my work meaningless! You’ve played with my life, Thomas, and I am nothing! Nothing!”

  He stared at her, stunned and dazed, blinded by her pain. “I gave you a life, Madeleine. You would have had nothing to support you if it hadn’t been for me.”

  “You arrogant bastard!” With that she lashed out, crossing the space between them in the course of a second to slap his face soundly, to hit him squarely in the chest with palms and fists, over and over, crying, wailing. It was the first time he had ever witnessed her out of control, clawing, striking, and after a moment he grabbed her arms, holding them to her sides while she used all of her strength against him to attempt her release.

  He refused to let her go. He deserved her rancor, her hostility, and the unrestrained sobbing that ripped his dreams into shreds.

  Eventually she calmed, and he wrapped his arms around her and held her tightly, listening to her uneven breathing, inhaling the clean scent of her, feeling the thundering beat of her heart against his chest.

  “My life for the last six years has been a lie, Thomas,” she whispered against his shirtfront, standing now stiffly in front of him, “and I will never forgive you for what you’ve done. I have nothing now, can you understand that? My work isn’t mine, it’s yours. I didn’t secure it by my own cleverness, you did. I feel nothing for you but contempt.”

  A sob tore from his throat as tears welled up again in his eyes, and he closed
them to the wetness on his lashes.

  “I have loved you for six years, Madeleine, six years,” he whispered fervently, his lips against her forehead. “I had one chance to give it to you openly, without constraints and interruptions. Please—oh, God, please believe that every feeling I’ve ever expressed to you has been the truth. I never wanted to hurt you. I only wanted to bring you happiness.”

  For moments she didn’t move, didn’t speak. Then she gradually pulled away from him, and he let her go.

  “I am leaving England tonight, Thomas, for good, and I don’t expect to see you again,” she stated coldly, spine erect and tight, face to the window, her features taut with misery, but her facade of grace and undaunted composure returned. “Since you carry such an interest in my future, let me assure you, sir, that I will be fine. You need no longer concern yourself with it.” She didn’t look at him as she stepped past him and around the sofa. “If you’ll excuse me, I think I’ll retire to pack my wardrobe now. I wish you well, Lord Eastleigh. Thank you for your work on my behalf.”

  He watched her retreating back as she turned the corner, the soft click of her heels on the wooden floor like a slowly ticking clock, the bolting of her door like the strike of a chisel into his heart.