by Jill Jones
Either way, he found he just didn’t care.
“That’s fine, Maggie. But I still can’t make the event.”
“You’re making a mistake, Alex. She could be a great help to your career. She’s a good ally.”
“I’m sure. Look, I’ll give her a call myself and decline. I’m sure she’ll understand. Do you have her number handy?”
Maggie read it off to him, and they said a formal goodbye. Hanging up the phone, Alex drew in a deep breath and let it out in a long slow sigh.
The following Tuesday morning, Alex noted an unusual number of visitors roaming the Parsonage. Not just the usual tourists. These people seemed to be at ease here. They acted, in fact, as if they owned the place.
Which later he found out they did.
Members of the Brontë Society were gathering from around the world for their AGM, as Eleanor Bates had called it. The Annual General Meeting. Teachers and housewives. Professionals and hobbyists. Men and women. Old and young. Rich and not so rich. They shared one thing in common. A passion for the work of the Brontës. Many of them, he learned, saved all their vacation time and money to come here once a year.
He’d thought his obsession with the Brontës was abnormal, but in comparison to some of these people, he looked like an amateur.
His work began to be interrupted frequently by staff members at the Parsonage who took it upon themselves to introduce him to various Society members. He found to his consternation they all knew who he was and what he was trying to prove. Some were open to his theory; others were openly hostile. Still, it was obvious that he was something of a celebrity among them.
He couldn’t concentrate with all that was going on around him, so he closed his books, returned the files to the librarian, and decided to take a hiatus in his academic work until the AGM was over. He was headed for the back door when he heard a woman’s voice call his name.
“Dr. Hightower! Hello there.”
He turned, not totally surprised to see Eleanor Bates hailing him from across the lobby.
“Ms. Bates. What a nice surprise. I’ve been meaning to call you.”
“Maggie told me. I’m terribly disappointed that you can’t come to the party at Harrington House. Are you sure you won’t change your mind? The place itself is worth the trip. A marvelous example of mid-eighteenth century architecture. Designed by John Carr of York. A masterpiece!”
“This is your daughter’s home?”
“Oh, good lord no. They live in Leeds. Harrington is open to the public. But it’s available for parties and special occasions. They’ve hired the best chamber orchestra in England for the evening. They’ll be playing in the gallery early on, and then later there will be a dance band. Oh, do say you’ll come.”
Alex had not one good reason to decline, except Maggie Flynn. He decided to be honest.
“Ms. Bates—”
“Please, call me Eleanor.”
“Uh, Eleanor, you of all people understand the importance of the debate in which Dr. Flynn and I will be engaged later this summer.”
“Of course.”
“And we are diametrically opposed to one another on the issue.”
“Undoubtedly.”
“Would it sound unkind if I said I would rather not encounter her until after the debate? Nothing personal, you understand. I just wouldn’t want to unwittingly give away any secrets.”
Eleanor Bates’s eyes widened. “Have you discovered something?”
He didn’t want to tell her that so far he’d turned up nothing of any great significance. Just a few new facts he might be able to use. Intrigue was part of the game when it came to debates. It was like poker. And he wasn’t about to tip his hand, especially since he held no good cards.
“I don’t know yet. It’s early. But promising.”
“Oh, dear. How exciting. Of course, I understand. But if it’s Dr. Flynn you’re worried about, she said she probably would be unable to make it as well.”
Alex thought quickly. “I didn’t bring a tuxedo.”
Eleanor stood back from him and surveyed his form. “My son-in-law has a closet full of evening wear. You look to be the same size. I’ll send something over for you to try.”
“I don’t have a car, and I imagine it would be too far to take a cab, wouldn’t it?”
“How silly of me. Of course it would. You can borrow one of my cars. Dr. Hightower, do say you will come. I promise it will be an important evening for you. I can introduce you to a lot of people you ought to know. Including the chancellor of the university. Now tell me you will change your mind.”
And he’d thought Maggie Flynn was stubborn. “What night did you say it was again?”
“The seventeenth. A week from Saturday. Then it’s set?”
Alex finally gave up and smiled into her blue eyes. “I would be honored,” he said at last, hoping down to his bones Maggie never found out.
Leaving the library, Alex decided to take the bus into Keighley. He’d dropped the SD card from his camera with the pictures he’d shot at Selena’s studio at the photo kiosk there, and the prints were supposed to be ready this afternoon. He was anxious to see what he’d been able to capture on film.
An hour later he stood at the counter of the shop, shuffling through the pictures with growing disappointment. Even using his strongest magnifying glass, he could make out almost nothing of the letter fragments. Only in the first painting, the one with the largest lettering, was it legible.
“Is there something you can do to enlarge these?” he asked the technician.
“Certainly. We can blow them up as large as you want. Well, within reason, of course.”
Alex took out his pen and carefully circled the letter in one of the prints. “Can you blow up just this part of the pictures? That’s what I’m really after.”
The man looked at one of the prints through an eyepiece. “I can try,” he replied at last. “But I can’t promise you’ll be able to read the words even enlarged. This is a snapshot, and the lighting is, well…”
“Amateurish,” Alex finished for him.
The lab tech smiled apologetically. “I’ll do the best I can, sir.”
Alex thanked him and left the small shop, greatly disappointed. He would have to wait to see if the enlargements were legible, but he didn’t hold out a lot of hope. How, he wondered, could he arrange to get another look at all of Selena’s paintings again? Tell her he’d come to pick one out for Henry Bonnell?
Outside, the earlier drizzle had turned to a downpour, and Alex was soaked by the time he returned to the small flat he’d rented for the summer. The Parsonage was packed with Brontë Society members. The weather precluded a walk on the moors. Alex didn’t feel like reading a book or watching television. But it was only four o’clock in the afternoon. Too early for a beer at the Bull.
Alex paced the floor, knowing what he wanted to do and hating himself for wanting it. He had no business wanting to sit in front of the fireplace in Selena’s studio. Wanting to hear her softly accented words, to watch her paint, drink tea with her…
No, he acknowledged, he wanted more than that. What he really wanted was to touch her hair, inhale her perfume, feel the softness of her skin as he held her body close to his own. With a groan, he leaned with both arms against the windowsill, looking out into the gloom. He’d been right. She was the kind of woman he should scrupulously avoid. But had he flown too close to the flame?
In the streets below, the lights from the shops struggled to dispel the inclement weather. He could just see the art gallery if he pressed his face very close to the glass.
The art gallery.
He couldn’t go to Selena’s, and it would be awhile until he could see the enlarged photos, but he knew one place he could encounter her spirit on this rainy afternoon. Gathering his strongest magnifying glass and a small writing tablet, he put on his raincoat and took the umbrella down from where it hung at the top of the stairs.
The woman in the gallery recogniz
ed him right away. “Did y’ come for your paintin’?” she asked hopefully.
He smiled. “I’m still thinking about it. Could I take a closer look, do you think? There’s something about that painting that intrigues me, but I want to make sure about it before I make up my mind.”
She looked at him doubtfully, but shrugged. “Suit yourself. You’re the one’s go’n t’ be lookin’ at it.”
He carefully surveyed the picture as a whole, waiting until the proprietress had shuffled back to her stool at the rear of the store. The work was good, even to his untrained eye. There was a pleasing balance of light and color that offset the startling surrealistic images.
Taking the magnifying glass out of his pocket, Alex captured what he’d come for. On the pad, he carefully copied the word fragments that were clearly legible in this painting:
no
its
Time’s wi
at land divi
n, where you a
arest when we d
The exercise took only a few minutes. When he was finished, Alex lowered the looking glass and ran his hands through his hair. He frowned. Something about these word shards seemed familiar. Or was it just the cramped handwriting which he fancied to be like Emily’s? He was struck again by the evidently poetic nature of the language, despite its brevity.
Remembering Selena’s reticent reaction when he’d questioned her about the content of the message, he wondered if it might be a poem she had written. Maybe a deeply personal piece she didn’t want to share with anyone else. But that didn’t make sense. After all, she’d painted pieces of the whatever-it-was onto every canvas he’d seen so far.
Alex thanked the proprietress, promising to get back to her, and stepped out into the darkening storm. The word puzzle fascinated him, but he found the woman behind it an even more perplexing and enticing mystery. Turning up the lane for home, he was unaware of the traffic in the streets or the steady drizzle that ran off his jacket. His mind saw only the outline of Selena in her doorway, the soft roundness of her hips when she reached for the tea mug, the coal-black eyes that looked up at him, trusting.
Raw sexual desire shot through him.
Later, he stood in the shower, feeling the warmth of the water sting against his skin. Forget the woman, he commanded himself silently over and over. You’ve blown one marriage, aborted another love affair. You’re no damn good at that kind of stuff. Leave it alone. And besides, the pain…
The pain.
But much later, half a bottle of brandy to be exact, the image of the woman was still very much with him. Alex lay back against the pillows on his bed. Outside, the “wuthering” continued unabated, with winds lashing the branches of trees and rain battering their leaves. Trying to get his mind off Selena, he picked up the copy of the issue of the Brontë Society Transactions he had intended to study before Selena had crept into his thoughts and seduced him so remorselessly. He glanced at the front page, and the title of one of the articles jumped out at him.
“Emily’s Lover.”
He studied the small booklet with brandy-blurred vision. Whether Emily Brontë had a lover was one of those perennial questions addressed by scholars of her work. He rolled the idea over in his mind. Was a love affair gone sour the cause of her distress that cold winter so long ago? Had she, too, felt the pain and confusion that was raging through him at the moment? Had it caused her to take her life? Alex laughed bitterly at the direction his drunken thoughts were taking him.
“Love sucks, Emily,” he said out loud, slurring the words. “Lucky you knew better.”
Chapter 9
His land may burst the galling chain,
His people may be free again,
For them a thousand hopes remain,
But hope is dead for him.
Soft falls the moonlight on the sea
Whose wild waves play at liberty,
And Gondal’s wind sings solemnly
Its native midnight hymn.
Around his prison walls it sings,
His heart is stirred through all its strings,
Because that sound remembrance brings
Of scenes that once have been.
His soul has left the storm below,
And reached a realm of sunless snow,
The region of unchanging woe,
Made voiceless by despair.
And Gerald’s land may burst its chain,
His subjects may be free again;
For them a thousand hopes remain,
But hope is dead for him.
Set is his sun of liberty;
Fixed is his earthly destiny;
A few years of captivity,
And then a captive’s tomb.
—Emily Brontë
Darkness surrounded Alex, a cold, dank, stone-hard darkness. He could feel the icy roughness of a wall against his face and hands. The air was stale, suffocating. Terror left a sheen of clammy perspiration on his skin, chilling him to the marrow. His fingers groped along the wall in the inky blackness, seeking in vain for a door latch. He tried to call for help, but found himself voiceless.
The night was soul-deep, and he was alone.
Escape. There must be a way out, his mind told him logically. But there seemed to be no exit. He turned his back to the wall and faced the infinite void. What lay in wait there? Dread poured through his bloodstream and settled heavily in his stomach. He was trapped, he knew, but he was also aware that it was his own fear that held him captive. His choices were suddenly clear. Stay here and die, or wrestle with whatever devils awaited him in the eternal night.
Whatever might befall him, nothing could be worse, he decided, than the hellhole of his present existence. Summoning all of his courage, Alex took one step into the void, and then another and another.
And then he was running, fast as the wind, down a path that led away from the darkness. Behind him a soot-stained church guarded the souls of the dead and the undead. Ahead of him lay the open moors…and freedom.
Sharp, cold air filled his nostrils, and his heart beat hard. But he kept on running until he knew he was safely away from the terrifying darkness. Only then did he stop to catch his breath.
He found himself deep in the high moorland, surrounded only by the wind and the wide, wide sky. Far below him, villages lined the valley where once a river ran. Derelict farmhouses were scattered like so much windblown debris across the vast expanses of the moors on either side.
But here there was no darkness. Here, freedom was borne on the wind, and he raised his face to it.
He inhaled the animal smells, the scent of the sodden undergrowth. From a distant hillside he heard a sheep bleating into the wind and, from still farther on, the plaintive answer of another. His terror subsided, giving way to a sense of accomplishment and relief. Strangely, out here in the open, he felt safe, protected. Around him, tall gray-brown grass rustled in the breeze.
And then he heard a whisper. “It’s here,” it said.
Startled, he turned to see if someone had followed him. But there was no one. Must’ve been the wind singing in the reedy grass, he thought, and began walking down the path. Sunshine and shadow played chase across the barren land.
“Look. Look. It’s here.” He heard the whisper again.
He stopped. “What’s here?” he called out, but there was no reply. He listened intently, but the earth was silent save for the sighing of the wind as it hurried past.
Then, from far away, came an animal’s keening howl. Alex looked in the direction of the mournful cry and saw a large, yellow object. His earlier terror returned when he saw it move. A wolf? Were there wolves in these parts? He began to walk briskly down the path, away from the animal. Were there such things as yellow wolves?
Looking back over his shoulder, he saw the beast pursuing him at a run. It wasn’t a wolf, but rather a large dog, a mastiff mixed breed of some sort. He looked around for a stick or a rock, just in case, but found nothing with which to arm himself.
When he looked up again, the creature was almost upon him. But before he could cry out, the dog brushed past his legs as if he didn’t exist and ran on ahead, its gaze focused on the distant horizon. Alex turned and continued to watch in amazement.
High above on the hillside across a ravine, Alex discerned another figure. A woman wearing a long, old-fashioned dark brown dress stood watching the dog unerringly make its way toward her across the matted heather. She was tall, slender, with dark hair wisping from beneath a plain bonnet. Her skirts blew loosely in the wind.
And Alex knew her.
“Emily.” He breathed her name in disbelief. He tried to follow after the dog, but suddenly the path down which he had been traveling disappeared. The grasses and heather tangled in wild array around his boots, clinging to him, forbidding him to go on. But still he struggled with all his might to get over the hill. The effort left him gasping painfully for breath.
The sky grew dark, and large drops of cold rain began to splash against his face. “Emily?” he called again, louder, stumbling through a patch of low scrub. A heavy, misty rain began to fall, obscuring his view momentarily. His eyes searched the hillside opposite the ravine, straining for a glimpse of the figure.
His heart leapt as he saw the dog. It had reached the woman’s side and was happily wagging its tail and licking her in greeting. She bent to pet the brute’s head. She was close. So close. Could he catch her?
“Emily!” he cried into the wind.
If she heard, she paid no attention, but rather turned and began to climb the steep hill, moving away from Alex. “Wait!” he called. “Wait. I must talk to you.”
The woman in brown muslin climbed surefootedly, without hurry. It was as if she floated above the grass and the wiry black heather that snagged Alex’s every move. I must reach her, he thought desperately.
To save time, he leapt across the ravine, finding it surprisingly easy to gain the far side. He simply stepped off the side of the crevice. The wind supported him, and he landed lightly on the soft grass on the other side, where the figure had stood petting the dog. But she had moved on. He looked up to see her silhouette against the sky at the top of the slope.
