A Bed of Thorns and Roses

by Sondra Allan Carr

  “Forgive me, Jonathan. Forgive me.” Garrick was dangerously close to tears, begging absolution for sins Jonathan could not possibly know he’d committed.

  Jonathan stiffened, though whether unable or unwilling to return his affection, Garrick couldn’t tell. “I must ask the same of you,” he said, with a precise formality that bordered on the ludicrous.

  A painful knot formed in Garrick’s throat, forcing him to swallow hard. He released Jonathan and stepped back without saying a word, not yet able to trust his voice.

  Finally, it was Jonathan who eased the moment with a welcoming gesture. “I’m glad you’ve come. This is not the sort of day one wishes to spend alone.”

  Garrick nodded gratefully and took a seat in one of the pair of facing wing chairs positioned next to the front window. He looked outside. The sun shone through the clouds with a gentle luminescence, lending a nacreous sheen to their dullness.

  “Did Joseph gather a bouquet from the rose garden?” Garrick asked. He turned away from the window to accept the glass of sherry that Jonathan, already knowing his preference, offered.

  When Jonathan shook his head in answer to the question, Garrick looked around the room. “Where? I thought I smelled . . . ” He left the sentence dangling, then shrugged. “Never mind.”

  “Memory can play tricks with the senses, don’t you agree?” Jonathan took the chair opposite, then held his glass of port aloft in a brief silent toast before taking a sip. “That is to say, if a sound—or in this case, a scent—may trigger a flood of memories, why shouldn’t memories do the same in reverse? In the same manner a hypochondriac may manifest actual symptoms from an imagined ailment, why shouldn’t a strong memory produce the experience of the associated sense?”

  Garrick recognized Jonathan’s philosophizing for what it was, an intellectual defense against emotions he found too dangerous to acknowledge. “You seem to have given the subject some thought,” he commented cautiously, trying to keep his voice neutral.

  Jonathan stared out the window—avoiding his gaze, it seemed to Garrick—and spoke quietly. “I had the same sensation earlier, right before you came. A strong scent of roses pervaded the room.”

  Jonathan continued to stare out the window a moment, then turned to face Garrick, fixing him with a disconcertingly direct look while he took a long, slow sip of his port. “Of course,” he added, lowering his glass, drawing out the pause, “I may have simply been experiencing the effects of other, more easily explained causes.”

  Garrick bent over the small tray table beside his chair and set his drink down with deliberate care, hoping to conceal his alarm. He should have guessed immediately, Jonathan drinking port when he usually disdained sweet wines altogether. And why had Jonathan boldly announced his laudanum use in this manner, when he normally expressed regret, even guilt, at succumbing to the drug?

  Garrick turned toward Jonathan, studying his ravaged face for some clue to this mystery. Their reconciliation hung between them uneasily, as delicate as thistle down, and as quick to be blown away with the merest breath of discord. If Jonathan misconstrued a well meant warning as criticism, their fragile truce might vanish irretrievably.

  And yet, he had a duty.

  “There are better ways to deal with your grief.”

  To his surprise, Jonathan laughed. But it was a bitter laugh, one that shielded his deeper hurt from scrutiny.

  “You’re quite right, Richard. Much better ways.”

  Garrick sensed the danger in Jonathan’s quick agreement, but chose to ignore it. The time had come, he decided, to make a long overdue confession, one he should have made years ago.

  “The night of the fire . . . ” He paused to drain his sherry glass, suddenly wishing it held a double shot of strong whiskey instead. “The night of the fire, your mother was staying in town.”

  “There was no reason for her to remain here, when Cornelius had the gall to bring his whore under the same roof.” Jonathan’s smoke roughened voice had grown so harsh, anyone who knew him less well would have found his words unintelligible. “No decent person would expect her to tolerate his blatant infidelities.”

  Garrick propped his elbow on the arm of the chair and rubbed his forehead as though trying to erase an unpleasant thought from his mind. He sighed heavily, then straightened his back and forced himself to meet Jonathan’s gaze.

  “We were together that night.”

  There was a pause while the ticking of the mantel clock seemed to fill the room. Finally, Jonathan nodded, then said cryptically, “Ah.”

  Garrick knew he needed to make a clean breast of it. At least, to the extent his promise to Simonne allowed.

  “You are right, Cornelius was blatant in his infidelities, while Simonne and I were discreet. In fact, we had been discreet for a good fourteen years before the fire.”

  “But . . . ” Jonathan was shaking his head, seemingly at a loss for words. “But why? Why hide your feelings for such a long time?” He leaned forward in his chair, and his voice took on an accusatory tone. “Especially knowing that my father made her life an unholy hell.”

  Garrick winced, though not at the profanity. “Simonne was a devout Catholic. She considered adultery a sin—of course. But divorce? To her, divorce was unthinkable.”

  Jonathan slumped down in his chair, as if his spine had suddenly turned to rubber. Garrick didn’t need a stethoscope to hear his own heart thumping at an accelerated rate, set racing by his anticipation of Jonathan’s anger. He had been ready to deal with anger, but not this—not this obvious despair.

  “I’m sorry, Jonathan.” Pitifully weak words, but they were all he had.

  Jonathan tilted his head to one side as though he hadn’t the energy to hold it upright. His gaze drifted up languidly. “For what? For what you did or didn’t do?”

  Jonathan held himself like someone in the throes of a deep depression. Garrick couldn’t tell whether his confession had brought about the change, or whether he’d simply missed the symptoms until now. Or perhaps it was the drug taking effect. Whichever, Jonathan’s mood had begun to infect him as well.

  “For everything. I’m sorry for everything.”

  Garrick waited for a response that didn’t come. He debated with himself if he should introduce the subject of Alfred Tate, whether the news of his death would distract Jonathan from his troubles, or further disturb him. As the silence stretched on, he decided he might as well take the risk.

  “I suppose Isabelle may have already written to tell you—”

  Jonathan cut him off. “Written?”

  “Yes, I—”

  “She promised most convincingly that she would write every day.” Jonathan laughed his bitter laugh again. “More fool I. Not a single letter has arrived from her.”

  “Not one?” Garrick echoed stupidly. He couldn’t think how to answer.

  Isabelle, then, was the source of Jonathan’s despair. He’d been looking at Jonathan’s problems from his own perspective. Seeing them now through Jonathan’s eyes brought a different focus to his previous assumptions, like reading for the first time through a new pair of spectacles.

  “She’ll never return. I was a fool to think otherwise.”

  “Had you . . . ” He needed to tread lightly here. What was the gentlest way to phrase his question? “Had you come to an understanding?”

  Jonathan glared at him as if he were to blame.

  “It isn’t as though you had made a firm commitment, then.” Incongruously, Garrick thought of Jenny’s adoring smile. “As though you had agreed to marry.”

  Jonathan half rose from his chair, suddenly energized. “We are—”

  He fell back onto the chair as if he’d physically collided against his own words. After a pause, he began again in a whisper, correcting himself. “We were lovers.”

  Garrick had the strangest sensation of drunkenness. As if he’d been clubbed in the head. He gripped the arms of his chair and took a deep breath, waiting for his mind to clear. When it did,
he discovered that his overwhelming emotion was not surprise, but anger. Despite her protests to the contrary, Isabelle had been toying with Jonathan’s affections. Did she know how little it would take to destroy him? To utterly crush him beyond repair?

  The sudden heat in his face and neck felt as though he’d stuck his head inside an oven. The more he thought about Isabelle’s self righteous objections to his own marriage, the angrier he became.

  But no, he wasn’t angry. He was furious.

  “I’ll speak with her, if you like.” Amazingly, his voice sounded steady, even calm. “Ask her to declare her true intentions.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. She has made her decision. I won’t hound her.”

  Garrick nodded. Jonathan was right. But that wouldn’t stop him from calling Isabelle to account for her heartless disregard of Jonathan’s feelings.

  He let the matter of Alfred Tate’s death drop. It would be inconsequential to Jonathan now.

  The problem was, he had nothing else to talk about. He couldn’t very well relate his plans for the wedding, or for his trip abroad with Jenny. Besides, how could he leave the country now, knowing of Jonathan’s hopelessness?

  Garrick stayed another twenty minutes, minutes that felt like hours while the two of them awkwardly pretended to make conversation. He took his leave with a heavy heart, grateful, at least, that Jonathan seemed to have forgotten that they’d ever argued.

  “I’ll come again tomorrow,” he offered when he reached the door, knowing the anniversary of Simonne’s death would no doubt send Jonathan into an even deeper despair.

  Jonathan shook his head. “Don’t bother.”

  “It’s not a bother.”

  “Don’t worry about me, Richard. You can rest assured, I’ll be fine this time tomorrow.”

  “Good.” He studied Jonathan a moment before offering his handshake. “I certainly hope so.”

  Jonathan grasped Garrick’s extended right hand with his left. The result was less a formal handshake than a clasping of hands, both men reluctant to let go. Jonathan studied Garrick’s face as though he meant to memorize it.

  “I—” he began, then stopped short, withdrawing his hand from Garrick’s. “Adieu, mon ami.”

  Garrick followed Jonathan’s example and answered in Simonne’s language. “Au revoir.” Forcing a smile, he added, “Until we meet again.”

  Garrick left then, wondering as he made his way downstairs about what had just transpired, still puzzled as he untethered and mounted his horse. It was like a mysterious illness that he couldn’t quite diagnose, the feeling left by their farewell. Something about it disturbed him, although he couldn’t say quite what.

  Garrick looked up. Jonathan was standing in the window and, seeing that he’d been spotted, waved once, tentatively, a sad, lop sided smile distorting the undistorted side of his face. Garrick saluted him with a touch to his hat brim, then turned his horse around and headed toward town, feeling Jonathan’s eyes on his back until he rode down the far side of the hill, out of sight.

  Chapter Fifty

  Isabelle sat next to the parlor window, sewing a veil onto one of Jenny’s hats. She squinted at her work, straining in the late afternoon light to see the stitches she’d just made. The black thread disappeared into the black felt, compounding her difficulties.

  Jenny had wanted an appropriate outfit to wear as a token of her mourning but was superstitious about being fitted for funeral clothes while gathering the trousseau for her wedding. Isabelle solved her dilemma by offering to alter one of Jenny’s old dresses, a deep maroon and black that was suitably drab for a grieving daughter. She was grateful for the task, which gave her something to do besides fretting over Jonathan and his persistent silence.

  Jenny bolted from the sofa and hurried to the window. The sudden movement startled Isabelle. Her needle slipped, pricking her finger and drawing a bright red bead of blood. She sucked at the wound, which hurt out of all proportion to its severity. Still holding her injured finger between her teeth, Isabelle scolded her sister.

  “What on earth is it this time, Jenny? You gave me a fright.”

  Jenny had been up and down all afternoon like a Jack in the box. Isabelle had resigned herself to the fact that her sister wouldn’t relax until Richard returned. Neither of them, however, said a word about the reason for her skittishness.

  Jenny stood on tiptoe, peering through the glass toward the direction Richard would come, as if by willing it to happen, she could bring him back. “I thought I heard horse’s hooves,” she said brightly, before turning away from the window. When she met Isabelle’s eyes, her artificial smile slid from her face, and she added pathetically, “I thought it might be Richard.”

  Somehow, Jenny had learned the significance of the day’s date, as well as the purpose behind Richard’s visit to Nashe House. Isabelle knew because Monique had warned her that Simonne’s birthday was always a difficult time for Richard. They had both agreed that this year it would probably be difficult for Jenny as well.

  Thinking of her friend, Isabelle couldn’t help wishing Jenny were more like Monique. The woman hadn’t a jealous bone in her body.

  Of course, Monique wasn’t in love with Richard. When Isabelle asked if she’d ever been in love with anyone, Monique laughed and brushed aside the question as though it were a joke. Isabelle suspected there must be a story behind Monique’s uncaring attitude. Perhaps one day her friend would trust her enough to disclose the secret.

  While Isabelle pondered the mystery of Monique’s past, Jenny had paced the length and width of the parlor, traveled to the front door and back and, having just returned, was about to embark on another circumnavigation of the room. Her restlessness had begun to wear on Isabelle’s nerves.

  “For goodness’ sake, Jenny, sit down. You’ve probably covered the same distance by now as if you’d walked to Bear’s Ford and back.”

  Jenny wheeled on her sister with a look that told Isabelle she had been better off to hold her tongue. “It’s all well and good for you to sit there without a care in the world and criticize me, when you couldn’t possibly know what I’m feeling.”

  Isabelle bit her lip to keep it from quivering. She wanted so badly to tell Jenny everything, to confess her love for Jonathan, to make her sister understand that she knew only too well how it felt to be uncertain of someone’s love. Even though Jonathan had told her plainly that he loved her, she couldn’t help but have her doubts when more than two weeks had passed without a single letter from him. At the very least, he could have sent a message by Roger. But she’d heard nothing from him, not a word.

  Jenny uttered an undignified squeak and ran to the window. This time it was more than an overwrought imagination. Isabelle heard the sound, too. She stood to see, allowing the hat to slide from her lap, forgotten. Jenny pressed both palms against the glass and bounced up and down on her toes in excitement.

  “It’s Richard,” they both said at the same time.

  Jenny waved frantically to get his attention. Isabelle wanted to tell her to show some restraint, but feelings between them were already stretched thin. More likely than not, Jenny would perceive her advice as criticism, and take offense.

  Richard dismounted recklessly, sliding to the ground before his horse had come to a halt. He tethered the animal to the wrought iron fence with such haste that Isabelle thought he must be as anxious to see Jenny as she was to see him. Her sister was already opening the front door when Richard lifted his eyes, giving Isabelle an angry look that caused her stomach to lurch.

  She stood rooted to the spot, afraid to move, and listened to Richard slam the door behind him on his way in. His greeting kiss for Jenny must have been brief, indeed, because the next moment he came striding into the parlor, his hat still in hand.

  “How dare you?” Richard tossed his hat in the direction of the sofa. It bounced off a cushion and rolled on its brim, coming to rest near Isabelle’s feet. He advanced on her, red faced in his fury.

  Isabe
lle instinctively stepped back. The man bearing down on her resembled her father more than the kind doctor she had come to know and trust.

  “The longer I rode, the angrier I became,” he said, as if that explained everything. “How could you?” His voice sounded more like Jonathan’s harsh rasp than his own.

  “I have no, no idea,” Isabelle stammered. She meant to say she had no idea what on earth he was talking about, but Richard was looming over her now, truly intimidating in his anger.

  “You’ve done the very thing you claimed all along you would never do,” Richard went on, looking as if he wanted to grab her by the shoulders and give her a hard shake. “Can you understand the hurt you’ve caused him?”

  “Who?” Jenny asked. She stood to the side, wringing her hands, looking back and forth between her fiancé and her sister. They both ignored her.

  “What have I done?” Isabelle stiffened, at last finding her backbone. “What right do you have to accuse me?”

  Richard shrugged off his dusty riding cloak and tossed it aside. “If you had no intention of returning, you could have had the decency to write at least one letter telling him so. A single letter to let him know, rather than prolonging his agony. Would that have been so difficult?”

  “But I did.” Isabelle was shaking her head. Where had Richard gotten such an idea? “I’ve written to him every day.”

  Richard went on as if he hadn’t heard. “I wish to God I’d never brought you into his life. You put a face to his loneliness, gave him false hope, only to snatch it away. And now—” He choked on the word and had to suck in a deep breath before he could go on. “Now he is much worse off than before.”

  Richard’s anger appeared to leave him all at once. He threw his arms out to the side like a man casting down his weapons. “For God’s sake, Isabelle, he loves you.”

  “And I love him.”

  Jenny gasped, a sound that was more like a scream she’d managed to swallow than a simple cry of surprise. Richard and Isabelle turned toward her as one. Forgotten in the heat of their argument, now she held their attention, her expression an arresting confluence of shock, remorse, and outright terror.