Before she reached the East Wing or the gallery, however, Hilary found herself standing before the door of the heirloom room. She opened the door and walked inside.
The first sensation to come over her was the intense quiet, not unlike the awesome hush of a great cathedral. There was a sense in which she was indeed walking upon hallowed ground, if not spiritually then in the familial sense. Many of the same feelings she had had during her previous brief visit welled up within her, though now Hilary was alone and had the chance to let the feelings in her heart have fuller sway.
Slowly she walked about, retracing her steps from before, now giving her full attention to each item she saw—clan tartans, young Maggie’s seventeenth birthday dress, ancient swords and skean-dhus and firearms, and a lovely music box given as a birthday gift to Maggie by her father.
Immediately the music box arrested Hilary’s attention, drawing her eyes to the mantel where it sat. In another moment the tiny wooden box, so ornately carved, the gift from James Duncan to his daughter Maggie, was resting delicately in the palm of Hilary’s hand. This same box had traveled to America with that young Maggie when she had been forced to flee from her father’s wrath.
Carefully Hilary lifted the lid. Instantly the strains of Brahms’ Lullaby, faint yet clear and bell-like, undiminished with age, filled the air of the large room.
Hilary stood as one enraptured by the sound, transported in her mind back through time, as if she were that little girl one hundred and twenty years earlier. When the tune ran down, she wound up the box again and listened once more to the familiar melody.
Suddenly a voice broke the stillness of the huge room. “Oh, there you are!”
But Hilary did not hear the words. Jolted so unexpectedly from her reverie, her startled jump sent the music box out of her hand. The next moment she was on her knees beside the poor thing, which had landed with a discordant crack, and was examining its broken leg.
Behind her Allison rushed forward.
“Dear Lord!” she cried as she lurched forward and sank to her knees also. A strangled sob broke from her lips. “What have you done!” she cried. Tears streamed from her eyes, and her shoulders shook with anguished sobs.
“I’m so sorry,” said a stunned Hilary, shattered by the sudden disaster. Glancing about, she found the broken piece, picked it up, and as if in mute appeal for mercy for her heinous deed, held it out to Allison.
Allison snatched it from her hand as if she were rescuing it from the clutches of the Evil One himself.
“You!” she shrieked. “You broke it! You destroyed my music box!” Her voice trembled with pent-up passions as if they had been simmering for days. “It’s your fault! You destroyed everything! Why did you have to come here! Everything was all right until you came!”
“Allison, stop!” The voice was Logan’s, coming from the doorway where he had just entered. He rushed inside, followed by Ashley.
Both women looked up at the intrusion of the sharp voice.
Logan rushed forward and laid a strong arm around Allison’s shoulders, gently urging her up. “Allison,” he said softly, “what’s come over you?” Though filled with beseeching, his voice was gentle.
“She’s ruined everything, Logan!” sobbed Allison. “We were happy before!”
“I’m so sorry,” was all Hilary could manage to say through her own tears of stinging pain. Then she turned and fled the room.
Feeling utterly helpless for one of the few times in his life, Logan glanced back toward Ashley as one paralyzed.
“You stay here,” said Jameson in response to Logan’s unspoken entreaty. “I’ll see what I can do.” With that he turned and followed Hilary from the room.
Turning back to his distraught wife, Logan sought to comfort her. She was always so strong and in possession of herself, he hardly knew what to say. He had never seen her like this.
“Ali, dear,” he said softly.
“Oh, look at it, Logan! Look at it . . . after all these years. Maggie will never forgive me! I tried so hard to keep it safe . . .”
“Ali,” said Logan, “it can be fixed.” He lifted the lid. Much to his relief, the tune played just as before. “With a bit of glue, this leg will mend like new. No one will ever be able to tell.”
“No, no! It will never be like it was!”
Logan realized the broken music box was only part of the problem. But what was the problem? What was happening to his Allison?
Tenderly he brushed back the tears on her cheeks. “Ali,” he said, almost whispering, “it’s all going to come out right in the end . . . and very soon. We must just be patient a while longer; then it will be just the way it used to be—”
“No, Logan! It will never be the same again! I know it!” But now her voice sounded faint and hollow, losing its fight. “I’m afraid, Logan . . . afraid . . .”
She collapsed, weeping like a child, into his arms. In another moment she was asleep—whether from exhaustion or a fainting spell, he could not tell.
He lifted her like a baby and left the room. When he had deposited her safely into bed, he hastened to the phone to call Dr. Connally. He knew what would be the doctor’s reply, but he couldn’t stand by and do nothing.
As he went, Logan thought to himself how pale Allison’s face was, and how cold her body felt.
41
Duplicity or Veracity?
Ashley found Hilary in her room. She had hoisted her suitcase and another bag onto the bed and was frantically throwing her belongings into them.
“You’re leaving?” he said quietly.
She spun around, her eyes filled with mingled anger, hurt, and confusion. “What else can I do?” she replied heatedly. “I don’t belong here—I never did!”
“I didn’t take you for a quitter.”
“What do you know?” she retorted sharply. “You’ve only just met me.”
“I suppose it is presumptuous of me to say such a thing, though I still believe it’s true.”
“Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. I’ve given it plenty of time, and things are only getting worse.” She sighed, her anger easing slightly. “They already have the daughter they wanted.”
“Do you really believe that?”
The question took Hilary off guard. It was not the question itself, but rather the tone in which he had spoken it. There was a probing hardness to his voice, with just enough emphasis on the really to make Hilary wonder about its intent.
She regarded him seriously for a moment. Suddenly it dawned on her that she didn’t know his intent. She continued to fix her gaze upon him, her mind ruminating on all the possibilities that had occurred to her during the past few days, but arriving at an endless string of questions in the end. The outburst that finally escaped her lips, however, was altogether unexpected.
“What business is it of yours, anyway?” she asked.
He faltered, momentarily taken aback, then groped for words with which to answer. “Perhaps none,” he said, “but I care about—”
“Truth?” she shot back. “Is that what you were going to say? Ha! Truth indeed!”
“I meant those things I said before.”
“Oh yes! Truth and integrity . . . ordering our lives consistently by those principles—bosh! And you’re telling me that’s what life means to you?”
“I never said I lived truth perfectly,” he replied calmly. “But that takes nothing away from the fact that such is my desire, and such I attempt to do to the extent I am capable.”
“I see! And is that why you always seem to appear just at the most appropriate times, to start grilling me with questions?”
The interview was going much differently than he had planned. He took a deep breath, considering the best way to respond, but Hilary hardly gave him the chance.
“And while we’re on the subject, Mr. Ashley Jameson, supposed Oxford professor, I would just like to know what you’re doing here in the first place.”
“I made no secret of that. I was here
to meet—”
“To meet Ian! Of course! Who just happened—conveniently and coincidentally—not to be here and to be off where he couldn’t be reached.”
“I’m sure if Mr. Macintyre had any doubts, he could easily—”
“But there are no doubts about you, are there? Mr. smooth, polished, studious, soft-spoken Jameson whom everyone adores! Well, I would still like to know how you managed to appear just at the right moment! And while we’re on the subject of your mysterious presence, what were you doing snooping around so late last night, wandering around the place? I suppose you just happened to want some tea, and then just happened upon my room!”
“It was all just as I said, Hilary,” replied Jameson, his voice still calm, but a deep look of concern filling his eyes. “Yes, I did simply want a cup of tea, and thought I would enjoy your company, notwithstanding the hour.”
As he spoke, he scrutinized her face, as if inwardly assessing what he saw, weighing the fluid features of her emotion-filled eyes, the flare of her nostrils, the slight lift of her right eyebrow, the curvature of her forehead, the angle of her chin, the intonation of her words—all given form and a thousand nuances of subtle expression by the shape and ever-changing movements of her mouth and lips.
Just as he spoke the words “notwithstanding the hour,” a sudden look as of revelation filled his countenance. With an inward gasp, he caught his breath.
Hilary, however, remained too caught up in her own tirade of frustrated emotions that she saw none of what passed across his face.
“How convenient! How convenient!” she fired back. “Get me out of the room and down to the kitchen so someone else could search my room undisturbed!”
“What?” he said.
“I suppose you knew nothing of it!”
“Nothing, I assure you.”
“No doubt, no doubt! The fact remains that someone ransacked my room while we were in the kitchen last night!”
A grave expression came over Ashley’s face. Things were taking a serious turn. He hoped he could patch it up with Hilary later, but right now there was one more piece of confirming testimony he needed—even if it would be equally subjective to the one he’d just received. And then, once he was sure in his own mind, it was time to let his accessory in this little game fully in on what he had discovered.
“I truly am dismayed to learn of this, Hilary,” he said. “But for right now, I think it best I leave you alone. It would be fruitless of me to say anything further.”
He turned and left the room. Hilary watched him go, then turned back inside, her emotions calming in the wake of her outburst. She glanced over her things strewn about on the bed, then sat down and sighed. What should I do? she wondered. What should I do?
Thirty minutes later Hilary still sat on the edge of the bed, still pondering her fate, though by now beginning to recriminate with herself for the vicious verbal thrashing she had given Ashley. After all, he had not really been the object of her frustrations at all; rather, she had been angry at herself over the accident with the music box . . . angry with herself for coming here in the first place. Something down inside her had responded favorably to Ashley from the very beginning. The fact remained that she believed him when he spoke to her of truth. His bearing, the tone of his voice, told her that he was speaking from his heart. And Hilary prided herself on being able to read people accurately. She had not risen in the journalistic ranks by being a pushover. She knew people. She was no easy mark for a huckster. In fact, she possessed not a little of the audacity of a street con herself, and had more than once plied such trait to her advantage.
Everything in her experience with people told her that this Ashley Jameson was either everything he claimed, consistent on the surface as he appeared to be, indeed, probably just as he said, a lover and seeker after truth—he was either all this, or else he was the most bold-faced, skillful liar she had ever met, a hypocrite beyond compare, who was able to look deep into her eyes and hoodwink her utterly.
The thought almost frightened her. But there were no other options. He must be one or the other.
She rose and walked slowly away from the bed, chiding herself for being so hard on him. He was just trying to help, she thought.
As she approached the window, Hilary looked out on the lawn below.
She could hardly believe her eyes!
There were Ashley and Jo, walking slowly toward the back of the castle, close together, lost in what to all appearances was a lively discussion!
He is a liar, after all! she cried, half audibly. How could she have been so easily duped? Why, he’s nothing but a spy for Jo!
Hilary spun around and ran from the room. She flew along the hall, down the stairs, and out the front door. Before she realized where she was going, she had left the gates of Stonewycke behind her and was walking hurriedly along the estate driveway toward town.
42
The Old Garden
As Hilary came around one of the sharp bends in the driveway, paying little attention to her surroundings, in front of her she spied Emil von Burchardt walking briskly toward her.
“Ah, Hilary!” he exclaimed in the greeting she had already come to associate with him. “A pleasant morning to you!”
She smiled, forcing down her vexation with Ashley, and approached him. “This is a pleasant surprise,” the viscount went on. “As a matter of fact, I was just on my way to the castle for a visit, hoping to see you, I might add, but I did not anticipate so immediate a granting of my wishes as to meet you while I was still on the approach!”
“I was out for a walk,” said Hilary lamely.
As von Burchardt reached her, they stopped and shook hands. His look took her face in for a moment or two, then spread over with concern.
“But you look upset, Hilary! Or perhaps just flushed from the walk? May I be so bold as to ask if there is anything wrong?”
“No, nothing! Thank you,” answered Hilary, rather too quickly. “Yes, I’m sure it is the morning exercise. I’ve been walking fast,” she added, puffing as if in confirmation of her words.
“I can see that,” said the viscount, still seeming to peruse her. “Well, would you care to accompany me back to the castle?”
Hesitating only momentarily, Hilary replied, “Why, yes, thank you,” turning as if in resolution. She took his arm and began walking back the way she had come, as if secretly hoping to encounter Ashley that she might make a show of her own independence and disinterest in him.
Beaming with his good fortune, von Burchardt strutted forward with the aplomb of a peacock in full feather, crowing to himself for the fine piece of work he had done in winning over this lovely chickadee. In less than five minutes they passed the gates and entered the courtyard, chatting amiably. Hilary’s reactions were perhaps a bit too animated and her laugh a little too loud to suit von Burchardt’s half of the dialogue. When she saw that they were alone on the grounds, however, her tone and exhilaration abated slightly.
“So tell me, Hilary,” said von Burchardt, “have there been any changes in your fortunes?”
“Only that I am planning to leave soon.”
“Oh?”
“There have been no changes, so I think it’s time for me to beat a retreat. It was probably a mistake to come in the first place.”
“Hmm. Now that is an interesting turn,” said the viscount, his matter-of-fact tone revealing far less interest in the disclosure than he was feeling inside. “Then perhaps I might interest you in that cruise aboard my yacht, after all.”
“What, Emil? No attempt to talk me into staying?” rejoined Hilary, cocking one eyebrow as she glanced in his direction.
“Why should I do that?” he replied jovially. “It’s your life, not mine.”
“I suppose I expected it because that’s all I get from the other two men around here—exhortations to stay till it is resolved.”
“You mean Mr. Macintyre and that Jameson fellow?”
Hilary nodded.
“Ah well, as I say, it’s your life to do with what you will. It seems to me that everything would be rather neatly tied up, so to speak. You and I could sail off for a couple weeks. I could deliver you back to London. And we could leave these people here with their problems. What do you say?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t say I had made up my mind yet.”
“A little of the fight left in you?” he asked, throwing her a glance meant to be merry but full of meaning. “Protect your interests, eh?”
“I don’t think it’s that. I just have to be sure, that’s all.”
By this time they had walked around by the side of the castle. Hilary had been paying little attention to the direction their steps took, and all at once they found themselves abreast of a small iron gate toward the distant back of the house. Through its bars they could see a little-used garden that neither had visited before. Hilary paused before the gate, then suddenly reached up into a broken piece of rock in the stone wall to which it was fastened, where, in a crevice, her fingers clutched an old and rusted key.
“I see you have become quite familiar with the estate,” commented von Burchardt.
“No,” said Hilary in a bemused tone. “Actually, I have never been to this place.”
“Quite a lucky stroke then, finding the key.”
Hilary glanced down at the key in her hand, just as an unsought image flickered through her brain, lasting but an instant:
Standing before a gate, which appeared to be this very one, a little girl grasped the hand of an older woman. Then the child wriggled free from the larger hand which held hers, and began jumping up and down in front of the iron bars, reaching up toward the broken stone in the wall. But even her outstretched arm fell far short.
“Grandma! Grandma! Key! See garden!”
As quickly as it had come the phantasm faded. The faces of the two figures had been turned away from her, and Hilary had been able to discern no details of either person or dress or mannerism. Yet something within her shivered with a recognition of the older woman which she felt rather than saw. The apparition had been but a fleeting snatch of something whose purpose or origin she could neither ascertain nor guess. She turned her perplexed countenance toward von Burchardt.
The Treasure of Stonewycke Page 29
