Shadow Bride

by Jane Peart

  “Yes, Jeff and I went to California—”

  “California?” Garnet’s eyes widened.

  “I was born there,” Blythe explained, “and lived there until—” She halted, leaving the rest of the sentence to Garnet’s completion. After hesitating a second, she finished, “I wanted Jeff to see the place where I grew up.”

  “Jeff?”

  “My son’s name is Geoffrey. He’s called Jeff.”

  “Malcolm’s son.” Garnet’s tone indicated a fact rather than a question.

  “Yes.”

  “Is that why you ran away?” Garnet asked bluntly.

  “Yes. I didn’t know what else to do … after Montclair—”

  “You know you hurt my brother cruelly, don’t you?” Garnet interrupted.

  Her teacup half-raised to her lips, Blythe felt her throat constrict. “I’m sorry, I—”

  “He loved you, he wanted to help you. Didn’t that matter, didn’t it mean anything to you?”

  “I didn’t think I had the right—”

  “Love gave you the right.” Garnet said coldly. “Why didn’t you at least contact him after you were settled, let him know where you were, that you had a child? Have you any idea what he’s been through all these years?”

  It was Garnet’s turn to be surprised. “I saw him once, you know, when I came to Mayfield. Mrs. Montrose thought I should bring Jeff. Quite by accident, Rod and I ran into each other at the inn.” Blythe’s voice trembled as she recalled that wrenching encounter. “I thought the best thing to do was vanish from his life forever—” She paused. “I thought by this time … Isn’t he married?”

  “No, he never married. And it’s probably a good thing. He’s never gotten over you”

  Blythe’s hand shook as she placed her cup on the saucer. “I’m sorry,” she said again, knowing she was repeating herself, unable to react to this latest news about Rod.

  “I haven’t told Rod about you,” Garnet said finally. She leaned forward, looking unflinchingly into Blythe’s eyes, and demanded, “Do you love my brother? I have to be sure of that before I tell him where you are. I don’t want him to be hurt any more than he already has been.”

  Blythe felt heat rush into her face, then the blood drained away from her head, leaving her breathless and dizzy.

  Should she tell Garnet the truth? That she had never stopped loving Rod? Or was that really the truth? Was the memory of love more powerful than the reality? Had time and distance and loss embellished her feelings for him, given them a romantic glaze that made their love seem more ideal, more perfect that if they had been able to fulfill its promise?

  As Garnet’s gaze held her ruthlessly, Blythe quickly weighed her love for Rod, realizing it had remained unchanged since she had first acknowledged it. While Malcolm was alive, guilt had shadowed and subdued it, but in spite of all that had happened, she knew her love for Rod was untouched by all the time that had passed.

  Still, Rod’s feelings for her were a mystery. While they had both grown older, become wiser or sadder with experience, the love she had known was still youthful and unsullied. That’s what made it so dangerous, what made a second heartbreak more possible. Rod would surely have changed.

  Acutely conscious that Garnet was still waiting for an answer, Blythe put her napkin down beside her plate and pushed back her chair.

  “That is something only one person should ask. If Rod wants to know or wants to see me again, that is for him to decide, isn’t it, Garnet?” Blythe stood up.

  “Then shall I tell him where you are?”

  “That’s up to you, Garnet. Do whatever you think is best.”

  With that, Blythe turned and walked out of the tearoom. It was not until she was in her own carriage and on her way back to Arbordale, that the full impact of the experience hit her.

  All the old emotions out of the past swept over her. Rod, free? Still in love with her? Was it true, or merely Garnet’s imagination, or was it a weapon employed to make her suffer for her youthful mistakes, the wounds she had unintentionally caused?

  Whatever had been Garnet’s motives, the fact remained that she knew Blythe’s long-kept secrets. Whether she would pass them on to her brother, Blythe did not know nor dare guess.

  Those who sow in tears shall reap in joy—Psalm 126:5

  chapter

  23

  Arbordale, Virginia

  November 1886

  “THERE’S A GENTLEMAN to see you, ma’am.”

  Blythe looked up from the china plate she was painting, a small frown of annoyance creasing her smooth forehead. She disliked being interrupted, especially at such a creative moment. She was working on the very intricate shading of the petals of a pansy, brushing the color from a delicate violet to purple.

  “Did he leave a calling card?” she asked Bertha, her housekeeper.

  “No ma’am, he jest said you’d see him.”

  Blythe rose from the high stool on which she sat when at her painting board with a sigh of resignation. Carefully she wiped her brush on the paint rag. Her hands slid tentatively to the buttons down the front of her smock, then she decided it was not necessary to remove it. It was probably only Mr. Pruitt, the carpenter she had hired for the addition she was planning to build.

  She had decided to add a conservatory for the cultivation of year-round flowers as models for her china painting. The profusion of blossoms during the brief Virginia spring came and went too quickly for her slow, deliberate painting. Sketches were fine, but she needed flowers all year for inspiration, and having a hothouse seemed the ideal solution.

  Tom Pruitt had remodeled an unused passageway of the original house into a studio, doing a superb job, if painstakingly slow job. Like so many real craftsmen Blythe had met in the rebuilding and restoring of Avalon, Mr. Pruitt was unpredictable, his hours unscheduled, his work erratic. He came and went at will, where whim or chance took him. She had had to search him out herself twice, ferreting his out-of-the-way carpentry shop to discuss her ideas for the addition. This was probably one of his characteristic unannounced visits. She’d better make the most of it, she decided, as she started down the hall to the parlor where Bertha escorted rare visitors to Blythe’s secluded home.

  Before opening the parlor door, she paused for a moment to smooth her hair in the hall mirror although why she bothered, she didn’t know. Mr. Pruitt wouldn’t notice. The times she had been to his hideaway workshop, he had barely acknowledged her presence, but kept right on working. She had had to project her voice over the sound of his sawing and sanding even to be heard.

  As Blythe stepped into the doorway, she saw the back of a tall, broad-shouldered man standing in the bow window overlooking the sixteenth century garden, recreated from drawings of the original ones at Monksmoor Priory. Almost at once, she realized this wasn’t the stoop-shouldered figure of Tom Pruitt, bent from years of working over a sawhorse. At her footstep, the man turned and Blythe froze.

  Rod! Both hands went to her mouth as if to hush the sound of her gasp. It was Rod! She had fled halfway around the world to avoid him, and he had found her here in the woods of Avalon.

  For Rod it was a moment he had dreamed and hoped and prayed for. The woman framed in the arched entrance reminded him of Blythe, as he had first seen her, standing in the pantry at Montclair years before—shy, unsure, eager to be accepted. He knew now that something had happened even then, something extraordinary, the beginning and end of love—lost before he could possess it.

  She was still beautiful. Tall, slender, her wide eyes were the same velvety brown. Her mouth was parted slightly in surprise, soft and vulnerable, and the color rising into her cheeks was warm as peach glow.

  “Blythe!” He spoke her name, and she felt that same heart-throbbing response to his voice, the conviction that her name had never sounded so beautiful.

  “I’ve searched for you … everywhere … dozens of places … and here you were … all this time … all these years. I didn’t know—”

&n
bsp; Rod’s words fell on numbed ears. Blythe struggled with the reality that he was actually here in the flesh, standing a few feet away from her in her own hidden house.

  Her eyes moved over his face, noting the changes the years had wrought—the face that haunted her memory and invaded her dreams, the clear, truth-telling, truth-demanding eyes, the firm yet sensitive mouth under his mustache, the thick russet hair now liberally sprinkled with gray. It was Rod, and he was real, and he was here!

  Instinctively she knew he had come to ask questions she might not want to answer. How could she convince him that what she had done at seventeen she regretted a few years later, and had wept tears of sorrow and remorse for it ever since?

  But suddenly there was no need for words. In a few short strides Rod had closed the distance between them. He took both her hands in his. He was so close she could smell the clean, woodsy scent of his skin, see the depths of his eyes as they gazed into hers.

  “My dearest Blythe, my love,” he said huskily, and she was shaken to her very soul.

  He drew her to him, bringing her hands down to encircle his waist, then pulled her into his arms. With the relief from more than decade of yearning, Blythe leaned against him, feeling the blessed comfort of his embrace. She put her head on his shoulder, felt his hand on the back of her head, then underneath her hair, caressing the nape of her neck.

  “Dearest love,” he murmured. “At last—”

  Overcome with emotion, Rod’s hand stroked the silky softness of her glorious red hair. He let his fingers tangle in it until finally, worked free of its restraining pins the satin weight of it fell loosely from the coiled knot.

  Instinctively, Blythe lifted her face for his kiss, a kiss deep with love and longing, tenderly sweet, yet demanding response. That response came without hesitation, with equal yearning and ardor.

  In that kiss was all that each had carried in their hearts all the years apart. It was renewal and commitment, an unspoken pledge and passionate promise. With it came the undeniable knowledge that they belonged together, now and forever.

  Explanations could be made later, forgiveness sought and unconditionally given, plans made, the future discussed. All that mattered now was the soaring freedom of claiming and receiving the love that had been denied so long.

  For hours they sat together in front of the fireplace in the paneled parlor of Avalon, speaking quietly, sometimes sadly of the past and hopefully of the future.

  The present was so thrilling, so unbelievable, that it was hard to express—but they tried, tongues stumbling over words.

  “I have always wondered if there could come a time when one could truly say, ‘This is a perfect moment, I am as happy as I could ever imagine or want to be’ … Now I know it is possible. This is that moment—” Blythe whispered.

  It seemed so foolish to her now, all the uncertainty she had felt, thinking that Rod might have forgotten her, ceased to care about her and love her. How close they had both come to marrying someone else, to making the greatest mistake either of them could have made.

  Blythe’s heart swelled with gratitude as she remembered the biblical prayer of Mizpah: “The Lord watch between me and thee while we are absent one from the other.” Surely the Lord had watched over her and Rod and brought them to this moment of reunion.

  I will restore the years the locust has eaten—Joel 2:25

  chapter

  24

  Mayfield

  Cameron Hall

  FROM A DISTANCE Cameron Hall looked just as Blythe remembered it, as they drew nearer, she saw that the scars left by the war had nearly healed.

  The mansion stood serene and stately, peaceful now and proud, the aged bricks turned to rosy-gold by the sun, the fluted white columns rising majestically above the wide green expanse of lawn. It embodied everything about Virginia and Mayfield that Blythe had admired, yet been awed by, loved, and yet still feared. This time is different, she comforted herself. This time, I am returning to become the wife of the master of Cameron Hall.

  Blythe turned to Rod, grasped his hand tightly. Looking into her eyes, he smiled at her, a smile full of love, understanding, and pride. Her heart lifted, and all her earlier doubts fled.

  Kate Cameron was waiting for them on the porch and embraced Blythe fondly. “Oh, my dear, it’s been so long … too very long. Welcome home, Blythe.”

  “Yes, I do feel welcome,” she said gratefully, her heart full. For the first time in her life, she truly felt she had come home.

  “There is someone who is looking forward very much to meeting you,” Kate continued as she led the way into the drawing room. “Jonathan is at Montclair now. He and Davida are coming for dinner. I thought you’d like to meet them your first night back, a real family occasion,” then added—“except for Jeff, unfortunately. When will he be here?”

  “At the end of the term,” replied Blythe. “He’s at Brookside, you know.”

  “Yes, of course. A very fine school.”

  In the drawing room Kate seated herself and pulled the wheeled tea cart toward her. “Does Jeff know about Jonathan?”

  “Yes, we’ve discussed everything—the people, his relatives, Montclair—”

  “I’m so eager to see him. Rod says he is a fine boy.”

  “Hardly a boy any more, I’m afraid.” Blythe smiled ruefully. “Nearly sixteen.”

  “Sixteen?” Kate shook her head, “It seems impossible. The years do go by so quickly, don’t they? Geoffrey. What a wonderful name! You know what it means, don’t you? Geoffrey means ‘gift of God’.” Kate smiled at Blythe. “Giving him that name was surely an inspiration.”

  “In a way,” Blythe conceded. She had chosen Jeff’s name for other reasons, but somehow this unknown one seemed best.

  “Is he … is he at all like Malcolm?” Kate asked impulsively. Then she glanced almost apologetically at Rod for bringing up Blythe’s first husband. But Rod seemed oblivious to anything but Blythe, gazing at her as if he thought she might disappear, holding her with the strength of his love.

  By way of answer, Blythe asked, “Would you like to see his picture?” Her hands already on the clasp of her handbag, she opened it. “It’s his latest, taken for the school yearbook.”

  “Oh my! Yes, indeed!” Kate replied. She took the small photograph Blythe handed her and studied it intently for a moment, then lifted her head. ‘They’re very much alike, Jonathan and Jeff. I think you’ll notice. The same features, the same dark curly hair. Except for the eyes. Jonathan inherited Rose’s eyes, but Jeff has the Montrose look about him, I think.”

  Kate poured the tea from the silver pot, then set it down suddenly, her eyes bright with tears. “Oh, I cannot tell you how happy I am! After all this time, here we are together! The Lord is so good, so gracious. I feel so blessed.”

  She reached out a hand to each of them. Rod took the hand extended to him, lifted it, and kissed the fingertips.

  “So do I, Mama,” he said, his eyes only for Blythe. “So do I.”

  “And have you set a date for the wedding yet?” Kate asked as she gave them their cups.

  The two exchanged a look, but it was Blythe who replied. “June, when school is over for the year. I—I’ve asked Jeff to give me away.” The color deepened in her cheeks, and beneath the long curve of lashes shadowing her eyes, she gazed shyly at Rod.

  With a tiny catch of her heart, Kate realized that this marriage for Blythe was as if the first had never existed. Rod was her first love, her forever love, the love of her womanhood, not the girlish infatuation her “love” for Malcolm Montrose had been, a blind attraction that had been disillusioned and shattered by the man himself.

  “I will restore the years the locust has stolen—” Kate quoted to herself. Surely the Lord has done just that for Rod and Blythe, she thought gratefully.

  chapter

  25

  Mayfield

  Cameron Hall

  ROD WAS IMPATIENT to get married immediately and had to be persuaded to wait
until the announcement could be made and invitations sent out, allowing time for Edward and Lydia Ainsley to make travel arrangements for their trip to Virginia, since Blythe had asked her old friend to be her matron-of-honor. Finally Rod conceded that for Blythe to have the wedding of her dreams, time was needed, and he would grant it, albeit reluctantly.

  If the time dragged for the eager bridegroom, for Blythe there seemed not enough hours in the day to accomplish all she had to do—making a dozen lists, planning flowers and menus, shopping, fittings—

  At last it was May, nearly six months since they had found each other again, and Blythe spent the two weeks before the wedding packing her personal belongings and arranging for the move of some of the furniture, paintings, and other possessions from Avalon to Cameron Hall into the wing she and Rod were to occupy after their marriage.

  In spite of her renewed happiness, Blythe felt some sadness at leaving the house that had come to mean so much to her. Of course, the property had been deeded to Jeff and would become his when he reached twenty-one. In the meantime there were the years of his continued education ahead when he would come home to Cameron Hall instead of Avalon. Blythe did not want the house to stand empty and thus deteriorate, but she had not yet decided whether or not to rent it.

  Suddenly there were so many decisions to make. Just when everything seems to be working out, why does life have to become so complicated? she wondered.

  There were the Montrose jewels. Were they still hers now that she was marrying a Cameron? Blythe unwrapped the silk cloth in which she had kept the betrothal ring all these years. Crafted generations before in Scotland of heavy gold worked with clasped hands under a crown holding a glistening deep purple amethyst, it symbolized all of the heraldic grandeur of the gallant Grahams, the clan to which the Montrose family belonged. Sara had given it to Blythe when she had come to Montclair as Malcolm’s bride, but Blythe had never worn it.