“Oh!”
Garrick sat upright, startled by the unexpected intrusion, and more than a little embarrassed that he’d been caught in an attitude of despondency. When he saw who it was, he stood, tugging his jacket into place in an awkward effort to hide his surprise. Isabelle was already backing away.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to barge in.”
“Please.” Garrick interrupted, raising a hand to stop Isabelle’s apology. Her timing could not have been more perfect. “If you will be kind enough to stay, you are the very person I wanted to see.”
Isabelle’s brows lifted, her eyes betraying a flicker of alarm before her features settled into a carefully schooled expression of calm neutrality. The color slowly drained from her face.
“Of course, Dr. Garrick,” she replied guardedly, in a voice of single noted caution equally as colorless as her complexion.
Garrick smiled, adopting the reassuring but solemn look he reserved for those patients who, because they feared the worst, could more easily be told the merely bad. When he gestured for her to take a seat, Isabelle positioned herself at the far end of the bench. Garrick followed her example and sat at the other end, putting the greatest possible distance between them.
A moment of silence ticked by. Garrick filled his lungs, willing his heart to return to its normal rhythm. He had expected this encounter to be difficult, but the sudden onset of nerves took him by surprise. He cleared his throat, swallowed hard, then forged ahead with what promised to be an unpleasant conversation.
“I need to discuss with you a matter of utmost importance.” He heard the stiffness in his voice, but could do nothing to soften it. “I have already spoken to Jonathan about the matter, and he—”
“You have nothing to fear from me concerning Jonathan, Dr. Garrick.” Isabelle threw back her shoulders and lifted her chin as though he had just hurled a scathing insult in her direction.
“Why should I?”
Isabelle’s interruption had been puzzling, but the speed with which she colored a bright scarlet at his question was nothing short of alarming.
“Please, say what you must and get it over with.” Isabelle stared straight ahead of her when she spoke, refusing to meet his eye.
“Very well.” Garrick cleared his throat again, buying some time to recall the speech he had planned to make before Isabelle’s interruption threw him off course. “I know that you are concerned about Jenny’s future and that you wish to provide for her.”
Once again, Isabelle cut in unexpectedly. “And you think the worst of me for my concern? Do you actually believe I am manipulating Jonathan’s affections to that end? That I intend to rob him of his wealth for my own selfish purposes? Is that what you fear?”
Garrick shook his head, frowning, his lips pressed together so hard that his bluntly trimmed moustache irritated the skin beneath his lower lip. Isabelle seemed to think he was accusing her of some sort of wrongdoing, and he was at a loss how to dissuade her.
“I don’t fear you at all,” he began carefully. “Perhaps you are not aware of the fact, but I control Jonathan’s inheritance. His mother appointed me his trustee and, I assure you, she had the best attorneys. Her will is incontestable.”
Isabelle’s high color had faded. She stared at him with a frozen expression, her voice as cold as her features when she spoke.
“Now that particular matter is settled, please tell me what you wish to discuss.”
“I did not mean to offend you, Miss Tate.” Garrick tugged at his collar, which felt like a noose around his neck. “I know how much you care for your sister. You have been both mother and father to her, with scarcely any help in shouldering the burden.”
“My sister is not a burden to me.”
No matter what he said, she seemed determined to take it the wrong way.
“Of course not, that wasn’t my meaning.”
Garrick bent down to retrieve his walking stick. He sat quietly for a moment, thinking how to proceed, worrying the grass with the tip of the stick.
“I mean to say, what I came here specifically to say to you, out of respect for what you have been to her . . . ”
To keep himself from fidgeting, Garrick folded both hands over the cap of his walking stick. He didn’t realize how heavily he was leaning on the stick until the silver tip sank out of sight beneath the sod. Garrick glanced across at Isabelle to see if she had noticed. She looked back at him steadily, provoking a slow heat that inched up his neck.
“From this day on, Jenny no longer need be your responsibility.”
Garrick let out his breath, only then aware that he’d been holding it. His relief at having his say proved short lived. Isabelle turned on him with an indignant glare.
“Of course she is!”
Once, on a hunting trip to the north woods of Canada, Garrick had unknowingly stepped between a mother bear and her cubs. Judging from the look Isabelle was giving him now, he had just committed an equally grave error. He raised his open palm in front of him, trying to placate her.
“Yes, certainly, I never meant to imply. That is, I should say . . . ” His words trailed off, and he cursed himself for a bumbling oaf.
“What, exactly, do you mean to say, Dr. Garrick?”
Their eyes met. Isabelle held his gaze for an uncomfortable length of time, never once blinking. He was the first to look away.
“I suppose there is really no good way to lead up to this.” Swallowing hard, he forced himself to meet Isabelle’s eyes. His words seemed to have swollen inside his throat, stuck there like a gob of phlegm that needed to be coughed up. “I have asked Jenny to marry me, and she has accepted.”
Isabelle stared at him blankly. She opened her mouth as though to speak, then snapped it shut so hard that he heard her molars clack together. Her look of shocked disbelief was soon displaced by a she bear’s protective rage. She bolted to her feet.
“What?”
Isabelle had heard him perfectly well. There was no need to repeat himself, and yet he did so simply to fill the silence, a terrible, ugly void between them that burned with the heat of Isabelle’s anger.
“Jenny and I plan to marry, and we would like your blessing.”
Garrick stood slowly, afraid to make a sudden move. It was difficult not to back away from Isabelle, the way he had from the mother bear.
“I must be going mad.” Isabelle shook her head violently. “I can’t believe my ears. You—you’re old enough to be her grandfather!”
Though he had expected it, Garrick winced at her response, one he had already heard that day from Jonathan.
“I love her.” He struggled to keep his voice even. “And I plan to make her as happy as humanly possible for however many years are left to me.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“I have never been more serious about anything in my life.”
Isabelle shoved at the empty air between them with both hands. Garrick knew the gesture was a weak substitute for what she really wanted to do, and that was to push him out of her life—and Jenny’s—forever.
“You’re both insane.” Isabelle flung her arms out wildly, as though grappling with an invisible foe. “The whole world has gone mad.”
She turned and, immodestly lifting her skirts, ran from him with unladylike speed, failing to slow when she careened into the hedge as she exited the garden.
“No!” she flung back over her shoulder, then disappeared from sight, calling out to him again on her way to the house. “Never!”
Garrick dropped onto the bench, letting his weight take him with an abandon that bruised his pelvis when he landed on the hard stone. He waited for the pain to subside, glad for the distraction, however brief, from the inevitable self recrimination to come.
What had he been thinking? What other response had he expected?
He was forced to laugh at himself, old fool that he was.
“Well,” Garrick said aloud in bitter self mockery, “that could have gone better.”
Chapter Forty six
Isabelle ran toward the house, toward the one person who could help her. Images of Jenny’s childhood flashed through her mind the way a drowning man sees his life pass by during his last moments.
Jenny, skipping in the park, chattering away in her high child’s voice, suddenly dashing across the green, unable to contain her energy, her sheer joy at being out of doors. Jenny, pretending to be a spinning top, twirling round so fast her braids whipped through the air like two golden ropes, circling until she collapsed, overcome by dizziness. The bright, clear notes of her laughter a joyful melody.
And herself, making a game of hide and seek so Jenny wouldn’t be afraid when their father came home drunk. Making certain if one of them was found, it was her. Taking the beating so Jenny would never have to bear the brunt of their father’s drunken rage.
Then later, bruised and shaking, sneaking into Jenny’s room just to watch her sleeping, to see her yellow curls strewn across the pillow like bright coins, the promise of a future that could one day be bought by all her sacrifice. She had hoarded her hopes for Jenny the way a miser hoards his gold.
She hadn’t saved, she hadn’t worked and sacrificed all these years for a lascivious old man to take Jenny’s innocence, then toss her aside when he’d tired of her. To think that such a thing could happen to a young girl—it was an outrage.
By the time she got to the house, Isabelle was wheezing for breath. She flung open the front door and raced for the stairs, calling out for Jonathan, sucking in noisy gulps of air, then calling his name again. The others were bound to hear, but she was beyond caring what they thought.
She was panting when she reached the second floor, forced to stop a moment to rest. It wasn’t long before her conscience shamed her. How could she think of herself when Jenny needed help? Isabelle threw her arm across her stomach and forced herself to go on, her body bent over by the knot of pain beneath her ribs.
Nellie suddenly appeared at the top of the servants’ stairs, carrying Jonathan’s afternoon tea tray. The maid let out a startled shriek and fell back against the wall. Tea sloshed out of the pot and onto the china cup, which clattered dangerously against its saucer.
“Lord, Miss, you gave me a fright,” Nellie croaked, still leaning against the wall as if she needed the support to remain upright.
“I’m sorry.” Isabelle glanced at Nellie, barely slowing her pace.
“Miss!”
Isabelle stopped, impatient with the delay. Nellie had gone as white as her starched apron.
“You can’t—” Nellie caught herself as soon as the words were out of her mouth. She looked horrified at having presumed to issue an order. “I mean, the master don’t want—what I means to say, just me, and I just leaves the tray outside of ’is door.”
“I know, I know.” Isabelle waved her away. She didn’t have the time to spend on explanations. “Just go.”
Nellie stood gripping the tea tray, slack jawed in amazement. Isabelle knew that as soon as the woman recovered from her shock, she would go straight to Cook. In a matter of minutes, the entire household would be talking about her scandalous behavior.
But that was the least of her concerns at the moment. Isabelle hurried past Nellie, leaving her to think what she would.
Once arrived at Jonathan’s door, Isabelle began pounding on it with both fists, calling his name. “I have to talk to you.” She kept pounding when he didn’t come. The wait was intolerable. “Hurry!”
The door opened and Isabelle lurched forward, carried by the force of her own momentum. Jonathan deftly caught her by the elbow, then darted a furtive glance into the hall before pulling her into the room and slamming the door behind her.
Isabelle fell against him, beating his chest with her fists. “You can’t let him do this! You have to stop him!”
Jonathan made no effort to fend off her blows. Her other self—the rational one—stood somewhere on the far shore of her reason, mouthing silently that he didn’t deserve her anger. But a fury had taken possession of her. The years of poverty and sacrifice and despair tore through her with a force that demanded release. She railed at Jonathan. “You can’t let this happen! You mustn’t!”
Then, as quickly as it had possessed her, Isabelle’s anger vanished, taking with it all her strength. She collapsed in Jonathan’s arms.
“Calm yourself,” he said soothingly, pulling her head against his shoulder. “Tais toi.”
It was a foreign experience, being the one comforted instead of the one expected to provide comfort. Isabelle wrapped her arms around Jonathan’s waist, afraid that if she let go, she might sink to the floor, unable to stand.
“I don’t know what to do.” She moaned the words, almost singing them. “I don’t know what to do.”
Jonathan led her to a divan pushed against the wall. He sat, pulling her down beside him, hesitating an instant before taking her hand in his.
Isabelle studied their joined hands. Jonathan’s fingers curled around hers, his grip so weak as to be scarcely detectable.
Of course his grip was weak. He had reached for her with his right hand, the deformed hand. The one he normally tried to hide. It was her first clue that Jonathan, too, was upset by Dr. Garrick’s news.
“We argued,” he said without further elaboration, as if he had read her thoughts. As if she could read his.
“About Jenny?”
He nodded, then bowed his head, appearing to study their joined hands as she had done earlier. When he suddenly tensed, Isabelle knew he’d realized his mistake. Before he could disengage, she grasped his forearm with her other hand, refusing to let him go.
Jonathan met her eyes. His own flared with a bright shame he quickly tamped down, though not quickly enough to hide it from her. Blushing at her boldness, blushing, too, at her regret for unjustly directing her anger against him, Isabelle leaned toward Jonathan.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, then leaned in closer. “I . . . ”
They both pulled back at the same time. When Jonathan withdrew his hand, she didn’t stop him.
Their silence grew increasingly awkward. It was as if they had discovered an invisible barrier that neither of them had known existed, and neither could surmount.
It was as if the previous night she’d spent in his bed had never happened.
Isabelle stood and walked to the front window. She pulled aside the curtain and looked out on the garden with unseeing eyes. “This marriage has to be stopped.”
“What can be done?” he asked cautiously.
Isabelle turned away from the window to glare at Jonathan. His response was entirely too bland, considering the seriousness of the problem. “Dr. Garrick is your friend. Can’t you do anything to stop him?”
“I do something?”
“I thought Dr. Garrick was a gentleman.”
“He is a gentleman.” A rasp of defensiveness ruffled the edges of Jonathan’s voice. “Only—”
“A gentleman does not seduce seventeen year old girls,” Isabelle interrupted.
“We don’t know that he—”
She cut him off again. “Seventeen. Doesn’t that concern you? Doesn’t that shock you in the least?”
“I am just as surprised as you.” Jonathan was making an obvious effort to keep his voice level, with only partial success. “I pointed out to him the discrepancy in their ages.”
Jonathan lifted one shoulder in his characteristic shrug. Whereas before Isabelle had thought the habit harmless enough, even endearing, now it seemed dismissive.
“Jenny is underage. I shall have to find my father and have him put a stop to this madness.” Isabelle wrung her hands, trying to stifle the urge to strike something. Or someone. “There must be laws against such an outrage.”
“There are states where the legal age of consent is as low as fourteen.”
Isabelle moved behind the wing chair and dug her nails into its shoulders. “Laws made by men, for men. For their own disgusting purposes.”<
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“I didn’t make the laws. I’m merely saying there is no legal way we can stop your sister from marrying Richard.”
“I have sacrificed my entire life so Jenny might have a brighter future than my own. And now—now she is throwing it all away.”
“Isabelle, don’t fret so.” Jonathan turned his palm up in a gesture that resembled a lawyer begging a jury to exercise reason. “Richard is an honorable man. He will provide well for her.”
“And when he tires of her? After he has taken her innocence and wants to go back to his mistress?”
Jonathan’s head jerked back in surprise. “His mistress?”
“Monique.” Isabelle waited a beat, then added, “Miss LaValle.”
Jonathan stared at her, not saying a word.
“Surely you knew.”
“Richard—” Jonathan stopped abruptly, shaking his head from side to side with the dazed incredulity of a man who has heard news too devastating to comprehend. He began again, this time measuring each word carefully. “Richard has been my best friend—my only friend—for years. But we could be talking about a stranger.”
“All the more reason to save my sister from him. Please, Jonathan, say you will speak to him and dissuade him from committing this . . . ” She wanted to say crime, but tempered her language. “This grave error.”
Jonathan drew in a deep breath, then let it out slowly. “I told you, we argued,” he said, as if that settled it.
His was a coward’s excuse, and she was tempted to say as much. But she hid her true feelings, hoping to persuade him. “Nevertheless, you might still speak to him.”
“Judging from the words we exchanged, I should be surprised if we ever spoke to one another again.”
Jonathan shrugged, this time without the insouciance that had so irritated her before. She was far from pitying him, though. What was the loss of a friend compared to a sister? One who was about to make a mistake that would destroy any future chance at happiness?
“If you cannot make Dr. Garrick come to his senses, then I must return home and try to persuade Jenny of her folly.”
“No!”
Isabelle gasped, startled by Jonathan’s sudden, vehement exclamation. It resonated within her like a warning shouted down a well, echoing familiar fears that seemed to carry on and on forever.
A Bed of Thorns and Roses Page 40
