The Wild Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  “Likewise. How was Aleppo?”

  “Absolutely splendid! Stayed in a palace. Dined with a pasha. Met the most extraordinary people. A Tom Lawrence among them. He traveled back to London with me. He’s staying in the Belgravia place and—”

  There was a loud, resounding boom as the house’s heavy front door slammed shut.

  Eddie smiled. “Well, that’s the end of that one. Won’t be seeing her again. What a tomcat you are.”

  “More of a stray dog, I’d say,” Seamie said ruefully.

  “I heard about Lady Caroline. It’s all over London.”

  “So I gathered.”

  Seamie had come to Highgate, Eddie’s beautiful Georgian brick house in Cambridge, to recuperate from a brief and heady love affair that had soured. Lady Caroline Wainwright was a privileged young woman—wealthy, beautiful, spoiled—and used to getting what she wanted. And what she wanted was him—for her husband. He’d told her it would never work. He wasn’t good husband material. He was too independent. Too used to his own ways. He traveled too much. He told her any bloody thing he could think of—except the truth.

  “There’s someone else, isn’t there?” Caroline had said tearfully. “Who is she? Tell me her name.”

  “There’s no one else,” he’d said. It was a lie, of course. There was someone else. Someone he’d loved long ago, and lost. Someone who’d ruined him, it seemed, for any other woman.

  He’d finished with Caroline, and then he’d hightailed it to Cambridge to hide out with his friend. He had no home of his own to go to, and when he was in England, he tended to bounce between Highgate, his sister’s house, and various hotels.

  Albie Alden, a brilliant physicist, taught at King’s College and lived in his aunt’s house. He was constantly being offered positions by universities all over the world—Paris, Vienna, Berlin, New York—but he wanted to stay in Cambridge. Dull, sleepy Cambridge. God knew why. Seamie certainly didn’t. He’d asked him many times, and Albie always said he liked it best here. It was peaceful and quiet—at least when Eddie was away—and he needed that for his work. And Eddie, who was rarely home, needed someone to look after things. The arrangement suited them both.

  “What happened?” Eddie asked Seamie now. “Lady Caroline break your heart? Didn’t want to marry you?”

  “No, she did want to marry me. That’s the problem.”

  “Mmm. Well, what do you expect? It’s what happens when you’re a dashing and handsome hero. Women want to get their claws into you.”

  “Turn around, will you? So I can get dressed,” Seamie said.

  Eddie did so, and Seamie got out of bed and grabbed his clothing off the floor. He was tall, strong, and beautifully made. Muscles flexed and rippled under his skin as he pulled his pants on, then shrugged into his shirt. His hair, cut short on the sides, long and wavy on the top, was a dark auburn with copper glints. His face was weathered by the sun and the sea. His eyes were a frank and startling blue.

  At thirty-one years of age, he was one of the world’s most renowned polar explorers. He’d attempted the South Pole with Ernest Shackleton when he was still a teenager. Two years ago, he’d returned from the first successful expedition to the South Pole, led by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen. In demand all over the world, he’d embarked on a lecture tour shortly after returning from Antarctica and had traveled nonstop for nearly two years. He’d come back to London a month ago and already he felt it, and everyone in it, to be dull and gray. He felt restless and confined, and couldn’t wait to be gone again on some new adventure.

  “How long have you been in town? How are you liking it? Are you going to stay for a bit this time?” Eddie asked him.

  Seamie laughed. Eddie always talked this way—asking a question, and before you could answer it, asking ten more.

  “I’m not sure,” he said, combing his hair in the mirror above the bureau. “I may be off again soon.”

  “Another lecture tour?”

  “No. An expedition.”

  “Really? How exciting! Where to?”

  “Back to Antarctica. Shackleton’s trying to get something together. He’s quite serious. He announced it in the Times last year, and he’s already drawn up some very detailed timetables. All he has to do now is scare up some funds.”

  “What about all the war talk? Doesn’t that worry him?” Eddie asked. “People talked about nothing else on board the ship. In Aleppo, too.”

  “It doesn’t worry him a bit,” Seamie replied. “He doesn’t give much credence to it. Says it’ll all blow over, and wants to sail by summer’s end, if not earlier.”

  Eddie gave him a long look. “Aren’t you getting a bit old for the lad’s life? Shouldn’t you settle down? Find a good woman?”

  “How? You chase them all away!” Seamie said teasingly. He sat down on the bed again to put his socks on.

  Eddie flapped a hand at him. “Come downstairs when you’ve finished dressing. I’ll make us all some breakfast. Eggs with harissa sauce. I bought pots of the stuff back with me. Wait till you taste it. Simply marvelous! I’ll tell you and Albie and his boffin friends about all my adventures. And then we’ll go to London.”

  “To London? When? Right after breakfast?”

  “Well, perhaps not right after,” Eddie conceded. “Maybe in a day or two. I’ve got the most fascinating man staying in my town house whom I want you to meet. Mr. Thomas Lawrence. I was telling you about him just a moment ago, before your paramour nearly slammed my door off its hinges. I met him in Aleppo. He’s an explorer, too. And an archaeologist. He’s traveled all around the desert, knows all the most powerful poohbahs, and speaks flawless Arabic.” Eddie suddenly stopped speaking and lowered her voice. “Some people say he’s a spy.” Eddie said this last word in a whisper, then resumed her normal, booming tone. “Whatever he is, he’s thoroughly amazing.”

  Eddie’s words were punctuated by a sudden clap of thunder, followed by the pattering of rain against the mullioned windows, one of which had a cracked pane.

  “Water’s coming in,” she said. “I must call the glazier.” She sat watching the rain for another minute. “I never thought I’d miss the English weather,” she added, smiling wistfully. “But that was before I’d seen the Arabian desert. It’s good to be back. I do love my creaky old house. And creaky old Cambridge.” Her smile faded. “Though I do wish the circumstances of my return were different.”

  “He’ll be all right, Eddie,” Seamie said.

  Eddie sighed heavily. “I hope so,” she said. “But I know my sister. She wouldn’t have asked me to come home if she wasn’t terribly worried.”

  Seamie knew that Mrs. Alden, Albie’s mother and Eddie’s sister, had wired Eddie at Aleppo, asking her to return to England. Admiral Alden, her husband, had taken ill with some sort of stomach complaint. His doctors had not yet figured out what was wrong with him, but whatever it was, it was bad enough to keep him in bed and on pain medication.

  “He’s made of tough stuff,” Seamie said. “All the Aldens are.”

  Eddie nodded and tried to smile. “You’re right, of course. And anyway, that’s about enough moping for one morning. There’s breakfast to attend to and then I must call the glazier. And the gardener. And the chimney man, too. Albie’s done nothing in my absence. The house is dusty. My mail is up to the rafters. And there’s not one clean plate in the entire kitchen. Why doesn’t he get that girl from the village up here to do some cleaning?”

  “He says she disturbs him.”

  Eddie snorted. “I really don’t see how she could. He never comes out of his study. He was in it when I left two months ago. And he’s in it now, working harder than ever, even though he’s supposed to be on sabbatical. He’s got two more boffins in there with him. I just met them. Dilly Knox, one’s called. And Oliver Strachey. They’ve got blackboards and charts and books strewn all over. What on earth can they be doing in there? What can possibly be so fascinating?”

  “Their work?”

  “Hardly. It�
�s all just numbers and formulas,” Eddie said dismissively. “That boy needs a wife. Even more than you do, I daresay. He’s far too odd and absentminded to continue without one. Why is it that you have more women after you than you can possibly cope with and poor Albie hasn’t any? Can’t you push some of your admirers in his direction? He needs a good woman. And children. Oh, I would so love to hear the happy noise of little ones in my home again. How wonderful those years were when Albie and Willa were little and my sister would bring them here and they’d swim in the pond and swing from that old tree—that one right there,” Eddie said, pointing at the huge oak outside the bedroom window. “Willa would climb so high. My sister would plead with her to come down, but she wouldn’t. She’d only climb higher and—”

  Eddie suddenly stopped talking. She turned and looked at Seamie.

  “Oh, crumbs. I shouldn’t have spoken of her. Do forgive me.”

  “It’s all right, Eddie,” Seamie said.

  “No, it isn’t. I … I don’t suppose you’ve had a letter from her recently, have you? Her own mother hasn’t. Not for the last three months anyway. And she’s been writing to Willa twice a week. Trying to get word to her about her father. Well, I suppose getting letters to and from Tibet is a rather tricky business.”

  “I suppose it is. And no, I haven’t heard from her,” Seamie said. “But I never have. Not since she left Africa. I only know as much as you do. That she nearly died in Nairobi. That she traveled through the Far East afterward. And that she’s in the Himalayas now, looking for a way to finish the job.”

  Eddie winced at that. “You’re still pining for her, aren’t you?” she said. “That’s why you go through women like water. One after another. Because you’re looking for someone who can take Willa’s place. But you never find her.”

  And I never will, Seamie said to himself. He had lost Willa, the love of his life, eight years ago, and though he’d tried, he’d never found a woman to come close to her. No other woman had Willa’s lust for life, for adventure. No other woman possessed her bravery or her passionate, daring soul.

  “It’s all my fault,” Seamie said now. “She wouldn’t be there, a million miles away from her family, her home, if it hadn’t been for me. If I’d handled things properly on Kilimanjaro, she’d be here.”

  He would never forget what had happened in Africa. They’d been climbing Kilimanjaro, he and Willa, hoping to set a record by being the first to climb the Mawenzi peak. Altitude sickness had plagued them both, but it had hit Willa especially hard. He’d wanted her to go down, but she’d refused. So they went up instead, summitting much later than they should have. There on Mawenzi, he’d told her something he’d felt for years, but had kept to himself—that he loved her. “I love you, too,” she said. “Always have. Since forever.” He still heard those words. Every day of his life. They echoed in his head and in his heart.

  The sun was high by the time they’d begun their descent, too high, and its rays were strong. An ice-bound boulder, loosened by the sun’s heat, came crashing down on them as they were heading down a couloir. It hit Willa and she fell. Seamie would never forget the sound of her screams, or the twisting blur of her body as it flew past him.

  When he finally got to her, he saw that her right leg was broken. Jagged bone stuck through her skin. He went down the mountain to their base camp to get help from their Masai guides, only to find they’d been murdered by hostile tribesmen. He’d had to carry her off the mountain, and through jungle and plains, alone. After days of walking, he’d found the train tracks that run between Mombasa and Nairobi. After flagging down a train, he managed to get Willa to a doctor in Nairobi, but by the time they got there, the wound had turned gangrenous. There was no choice, the doctor had said; it would have to be amputated. Willa begged and pleaded with him not to let the man cut her leg off. She knew she’d never climb without it. But Seamie hadn’t listened to her pleas. He’d let the doctor amputate to save her life, and she’d never forgiven him for it. As soon as she was able, she left the hospital. And him.

  I wake up every morning in despair and go to sleep the same way, she’d written in the note she left for him. I don’t know what to do. Where to go. How to live. I don’t know how to make it through the next ten minutes, never mind the rest of my life. There are no more hills for me to climb, no more mountains, no more dreams. It would have been better to have died on Kilimanjaro than to live like this.

  Eddie reached for his hand and squeezed it. “Stop blaming yourself, Seamie, it’s not your fault,” she said resolutely. “You did everything a human being could have done on that mountain. And when you got her to Nairobi, you did the only thing you could do. The right thing. Imagine had you not done it. Imagine standing in my sister’s drawing room and telling her that you did nothing at all, that you let her child die. I understand, Seamie. We all do.”

  Seamie smiled sadly. “That’s the hard thing of it, though, Eddie,” he said. “Everyone understands. Everyone but Willa.”

  Chapter Two

  “Pardon me, Mr. Bristow,” Gertrude Mellors said, poking her head around the door to her boss’s office, “but Mr. Churchill’s on the telephone, the Times wants a comment from you on the trade secretary’s report on child labor in East London, and Mr. Asquith’s requested that you join him for supper at the Reform Club this evening. Eight o’clock sharp.”

  Joe Bristow, member of Parliament for Hackney, stopped writing. “Tell Winston if he wants more boats, he can pay for them himself. The people of East London need sewers and drains, not dreadnoughts,” he said. “Tell the Times that London’s children must spend their days in schools, not sweatshops, and that it’s Parliament’s moral duty to act upon the report swiftly and decisively. And tell the prime minister to order me the guinea hen. Thanks, Trudy luv.”

  He turned back to the elderly man seated on the other side of his desk. Nothing, not newspapers, not party business, not the prime minister himself, was more important to him than his constituents. The men and women of East London were the reason he’d become a Labor MP back in 1900, and they were the reason why, fourteen years later, he remained one.

  “I’m sorry, Harry. Where were we?” he said.

  “The water pump,” Harry Coyne, resident of number 31 Lauriston Street, Hackney, said. “As I was saying, about a month ago the water started tasting funny. And now everyone on the street’s ill. Lad I talked to works down the tannery says they’re dumping barrels of lye on the ground behind the building at night. Says the foreman don’t want to pay to have the waste carted away. Water lines run under that building and I think the waste from the tannery’s getting into them. Has to be. There’s no other explanation.”

  “Have you told the health inspector?”

  “Three times. He don’t do nothing. That’s why I came to you. Only one who ever gets anything done is you, Mr. Bristow.”

  “I have to have names, Harry,” he said. “Of the tannery. The man in charge. The lad who works there. Anyone who’s been ill. Will they speak to me?”

  “I can’t answer for the tannery man, but the rest will,” Harry said. “Here, give us that pen.” As Harry wrote down names and addresses, Joe poured two cups of tea, pushed one over to Harry, and downed the other. He’d been seeing constituents since eight o’clock that morning, with no break for lunch, and it was now half past four.

  “Here you are,” Harry said, handing the list to Joe.

  “Thank you,” Joe said, pouring more tea. “I’ll start knocking on doors tomorrow. I’ll pay a personal visit to the health inspector. We’ll get this solved, Harry, I promise you. We’ll—” Before he could finish his sentence, the door to his office was wrenched open. “Yes, Trudy. What, Trudy?” he said.

  But it wasn’t Trudy. It was a young woman. She was tall, raven-haired, blue-eyed—a beauty. She wore a smartly tailored charcoal gray coat and matching hat, and carried a reporter’s notebook and fountain pen in her gloved hands.

  “Dad! Mum’s been arrested again!” s
he said breathlessly.

  “Bloody hell. Again?” Joe said.

  “Katie Bristow, I’ve told you a hundred times to knock first!” Trudy scolded, hot on her heels.

  “Sorry, Miss Mellors,” Katie said to Trudy. Then she turned back to her father. “Dad, you’ve got to come. Mum was at a suffrage march this morning. It was supposed to be peaceful, but it turned into a donnybrook, and the police came, and she was arrested and charged, and now she’s in jail!”

  Joe sighed. “Trudy, call the carriage, will you? Mr. Coyne, this is my daughter, Katharine. Katie, this is Mr. Coyne, one of my constituents,” he said.

  “Very pleased to meet you, sir,” Kate said, extending a hand to Mr. Coyne. To her father she said, “Dad, come on! We’ve got to go!”

  Harry Coyne stood. He put his hat on and said, “You go on, lad. I’ll see meself out.”

  “I’ll be on Lauriston Street tomorrow, Harry,” Joe said, then he turned to his daughter. “What happened, Katie? How do you know she’s in jail?” he asked her.

  “Mum sent a messenger to the house. Oh, and Dad? How much money have you got on you? Because Mum says you need to post bail for her and Auntie Maud before they can be released, but you can do it at the jail, because they were taken straight there, not to the courts, and crikey but I’m parched! Are you going to finish that?”

  Joe handed her his teacup. “Did you come all the way over here alone?” he asked sternly.

  “No, I have Uncle Seamie with me and Mr. Foster, too.”

  “Uncle Seamie? What’s he doing here?”

  “He’s staying with us again. Just for a bit while he’s in London. Didn’t Mum tell you?” Katie said, between gulps of tea.

  “No,” Joe said, leaning forward in his wheelchair and peering out of his office. Amid five or six of his constituents sat Mr. Foster, his butler, upright, knees together, hands folded on top of his walking stick. Upon seeing Joe looking at him, he removed his hat and said, “Good afternoon, sir.”

  Joe leaned farther and saw his usually brisk, no-nonsense secretary fluttering madly around someone. She was blushing and twisting her necklace and giggling like a schoolgirl. The someone was his brother-in-law. Seamie looked up, smiled, and gave him a wave.