have climbed to a considerable height. You may be in need of assistance."
When at first she didn't answer, he dared to hope that she might be considering his request. But instead she said, "No, I need no assistance. I climbed up and I can climb down. Besides, it's not time yet."
"And when will that time come?"
"Oh, it depends on many things. We both have much to do. There's a chance that one or both of us will not survive." Her voice fell as though she were considering her own words. "But I think we will. Now, you must go. Look! The cat's told them where I am. Isn't that just like him? To send me out here, then tattle on me?"
At that moment he heard a horse neighing in the distance. He turned about and saw a lone rider on the far hill.
"Oh, dear," she mourned. "You must hurry. Take cover deeper in the orchard."
There was such an urgency to her voice, such a complete madness to the entire episode, that before he was consciously aware of what he was doing, he found himself retrieving his satchel and running deeper into the orchard, finding a safe shelter of trees about twenty yards away and taking refuge in the shadows.
From where he crouched he could see the horseman drawing nearer. He heard a voice, slightly cracked with age and thick with worry. "My lady?" the old man called out. "Are you here? I beg you . . ."
Carefully John watched, peering out from his hiding place. Suddenly he saw a figure gowned in green drop from the tree, her hands outreaching to break her fall, a small, slim figure it was, almost childlike. As she picked herself up, he saw the rider turn in that direction and gallop eagerly forward, reining his horse in directly before the girl.
"My lady," the old man scolded. "I hope you know what you've done? You've upset the entire household. Your father and mother are—"
"I'm sorry, Max," John heard her say, approaching the horse. He had yet to see anything but her back and the long strands of fair hair, mussed by the wind. "I don't know why everyone gets so upset," she murmured. "I always tell my cat where I'm going. All you must do is ask him."
John saw the old man's face fall, as though a mantle of sorrow had just been dropped over his shoulders. "I know, my lady," he said, as
though humoring her. "But you see, I have trouble understanding what the cat says."
"I don't see why. He speaks perfectly respectable English."
Then John observed the old man's eyes moving heavenward. "If her ladyship is ready to return, permit me to . . "
As he bent over and extended his hand in assistance, she placed her slipper in his stirrup and swung up in the saddle with him, her face still obscured, but her voice clear. "Oh, Max," she said, speaking with childlike excitement "I just met the beautiful boy. He was standing right here."
"Of course, my lady. Are you secure?" There was a hint of disbelief in the old man's voice, as though he were accustomed to hearing incredible stories.
"If you had come earlier, you could have met him too, Max. But I had to send him away because it's not time yet He'll come back and you can meet him then."
"It will be my pleasure, my lady."
"Of course, he's a murderer, but in time we all will forget that"
"If you say so, my lady."
"Of course I say so." John heard a sudden sharpness to her voice, as though she were aware that she was being humored. How terrible, he thought to know that nothing you said would ever be taken seriously.
Then, "Take me home, Max," she commanded. "I must speak with Wolf."
"Of course, my lady."
As the horse started slowly forward, John dared to leave his hiding place, longing to call after her. At that precise moment she turned toward him, a smile on her face, a most beautiful face, clear wide-set blue eyes, conveying a message without words, as though thanking him for talking with her, for taking her seriously.
He had only a glimpse, then she was gone. Still John watched, thinking surely she'd turn and look at him once more. But she didn't. Not until the horse reached the crest of the down and disappeared on the other side did he venture all the way out of hiding, and even then he approached the tree where she had perched with caution. Carefully he looked up and would not have been surprised to see that same soft slipper, the hem of that green patterned gown.
But he saw nothing except the tree limbs dipping under the stress of the rising wind and saw beyond to the churning clouds. Rain by nightfall was his grim prediction.
London was still miles ahead, and suddenly he discovered that he'd lost his appetite for the open road. The adventure of sleeping in barns and hitching rides in the backs of hay wagons no longer appealed. Perhaps it would be more prudent to stop at the Red Lion tonight in Salisbury, and come morning he'd spend his remaining money on a coach ticket to London.
He turned sharply and glanced toward the crest of the down where the horse and riders had disappeared.
You will spend the night in Salisbury at the Red Lion.
Then he felt the first cold pelting of rain upon his head and broke into a run, the rain increasing with each step.
My name is Lila, and you'll find me at Harrington Hall.
It was impossible for him to think any longer. The cold rain was coming at him from all directions, and the nonsensical present had been replaced by memories of the past
Harriet.
Normally at this hour they were taking tea in her chambers. In spite of the rain, he could detect her fragrance, the way her hand brushed across his forehead.
Suddenly as he ran, tears came, the first release he'd experienced since he'd left Eden. In spite of his grief, at odd moments a quiet voice sounded in his ear, along with the rain.
You'll be one of the richest men in England one day.
Had he dreamed it? Or was he too mad, his mind unhinged by past events? Still he ran, the rain increasing, his thoughts growing as blurred as his vision.
By the time he reached Salisbury, the storm had increased to dan* gerous proportions, and only a fool would have refused shelter.
Now seated on the edge of the bed in his chamber in the Red Lion, wrapped in a blanket and shivering, John watched as the young maid fussed with the reluctant fire in the grate. She was talking all the time of something or other, talking lightly, as only women can talk.
Beneath the influence of her voice, a small fire, no larger than the one in the grate, began to warm John, and something inside his heart thawed in consequence.
By nature unsuited for self-pity, he pushed the mysterious past out of his head and concentrated on the flickering red light coming from the fire and the way it played over her earnest pretty face.
He did not know her name. It was not her name that interested him. "It's going well," he suggested, referring to the fire.
"Smoking a bit too much," she worried, fanning the air with her hand. "The wood is damp."
"Everything is damp." He smiled. He lowered the blanket from his head. "Do you live in Salisbury?" he asked, observing a small roll of soft flesh beneath her chin.
She nodded, her hands still outreaching with the poker, prodding the logs to burn. "Not far from here. With me mum."
"Where's your father?"
"Ask God," she replied without hesitation, "for I'm sure I don't know."
There was no anger or regret in her voice, simply a statement oi fact.
"Have you always lived here?" John asked, enjoying the sound of rain on the roof, the pleasant lassitude that was beginning to extend to all parts of his body.
"Aye, always," the girl replied. "Least, as long as I can remember."
Then to the heart of the matter. "Would you know," John began, "of an establishment in these parts called Harrington Hall?"
She looked up at him with a roguish grin. "Coo, I'd have to be blind and dumb not to have heard of Harrington Hall, sir. They're our gentry, they are, though all of 'em's as balmy as a March day."
John allowed the blanket to fall down about his shoulders. The fire was beginning to blaze well. The warmth felt good on his bare shoulders. 'Tell
me about them," he invited, "unless of course you have duties elsewhere."
She glanced slyly up at him, her dark brown eyes catching sight of his bared torso. "The inn's full, sir," she said, "ever-body abed, 'cept you. I won't be needed, or missed, for a while."
He smiled. Obviously something she had seen had caught her fancy. 'Then tell me about them," he urged, slipping to the floor before the tire, the blanket lowered to his waist.
His closeness seemed to distract her. Carefully he charted the course of her eyes over his chest. "Ooh, what happened here, sir?" she gasped sympathetically, her fingers reaching out to the small scar in the shape of a B.
"A fall," he said, and tried to turn her attention away. "Tell me of the Harringtons," he proposed in a playful mood, "then I'll tell you about the scar."
She shrugged. "A good family they was, in the beginning. Quite
noble, till her ladyship strayed over to Ireland and brought back his lordship."
"They're Irish?"
"His lordship is. Black Irish is what we call him. But her ladyship is good solid English." She leaned close, as though to share an intimate secret. "It was the witchcraft that done it, the Catholic witchcraft. Oh, he worked it on her right enough and come back with her from Ireland."
She leaned closer. "They say he keeps the Virgin Mary's finger with him at all times."
"The . . . what?"
She nodded broadly. "Her finger. He carries it with him in a little gold and jeweled case and it gives him magic powers. Devil powers, some say."
John listened to the madness and mourned the loss of her good sense.
"'Course, like I say, they're harmless enough," she went on, "though some think different. And generally they're kind as well. Once, twice, on some special festival day, Catholic day," she added, clearly condemning, "they open the gates at Harrington Hall and invite all us plain folk to come in." Somberly she shook her head. "I went once with me mum when I was little. A spooky place, it is, with Mary statues all over, and candles burning." She stared glumly into the fire. "We ain't been since that once. Me mum says they're after our souls, that's what."
John watched her closely and wondered to what degree her bizarre tale was truth or fiction. "Are there . . . children?" he asked.
"One," the girl replied, drawing her knees up, enjoying her position of authority. "Last Easter they found her before the altar of the cathedral, meowing like a cat. On all fours, she was, crawling around through the arrangements of lilies, and meowing like a cat"
"How old is she?"
"Oh, a child is all, really, thirteen, maybe fourteen by now."
"Would you know her name?"
"Who doesn't? Lila, they named her. And there ain't been no more since."
Lila. You'll pass this way again. Next time, look for me at Harrington Hall.
"Lila, yes, that's what they call her," the girl went on. "And she's forever gettin' loose. There's an old man who is supposed to keep his
eyes on her, but sometimes she's too quick. Once they found her all the way over to Stonehenge."
It was several moments before he realized she'd ceased speaking. Then he saw her face, a frightened expression. "Gawd, I hope I ain't said too much. You . . . wouldn't be friends of them, now, would you?"
The earnest nature of her inquiry made him laugh. "No, I assure you, I'm not a friend of theirs. I was just passing through and heard the name and was curious."
Relieved, she clasped her knees and carefully tucked her long black skirts about her legs. "Well, if you wish, sir, I could go on all night about the Harringtons, but. . ."
No, he had no desire for her to go on all night. Now his close proximity to the fire made the blanket altogether unnecessary. In fact, if anything, it was overwarm. Slowly he unwrapped the blanket and pushed it to one side.
At first he thought he saw shock in her face, a tentative movement backward, which he halted by reaching for her hand. Would it be the same, he wondered, or was that mysterious ecstasy only possible with . . . ?
Harriet. He merely thought her name and suffered a small death and withdrew his hand from the girl's arm.
No longer retreating, she knelt before him, one hand fumbling with the buttons on her high collar. "I ain't a . . . virgin, sir," she whispered. "Don't pretend to be one . . ."
He looked at her, his memories still punishing him.
"Generally," she went on, "it's old men we get here, trying to outran their wives, or merchants whose bellies protrude beyond the reach of their. . ."
Her hands were still moving down the buttons, the black fabric falling away, revealing freckled shoulders. "Most always," she went on, not looking at him, "I tell 'em they must put a bob on that table there."
"I have no intention of leaving a bob on any table," he said quietly.
The dress undone, she pushed it off her shoulders, revealing small breasts. "I have no intention of asking you." She smiled. "A girl does it for herself now and then, if you get what I mean."
Then because she was near and apparently willing, and he was in need of finding out if it was a matter of one woman, or if any woman would do, he guided her gently backward on the floor before
the fire and tried to approach her slowly as Harriet had taught him. But his need was great, and hers apparently greater. As her legs wrapped about his waist, he closed his eyes and felt the release, but little else.
"I'm . . . sorry/' he whispered close to her ear.
Apparently no apology was necessary. As he raised himself above her, she grinned. "What for, sir? We've the whole night, we do," and she wrapped her arms about his neck and again drew him downward.
Amazed that he'd brought her pleasure without half-trying, he tried again, hearing that distant soft voice of instruction in his ear.
A few minutes later, "Oh, lord, sir," the girl beneath him cried out.
Smiling into the darkness of her hair, he sent the instructor's voice away and the loneliness with it, until the sound of the rain blended with their thrashing, and nothing mattered but the fire and the warmth and the receptive female body beneath him.
London, Late June 1852
With the proliferation of railways, the coach companies, sensing the end, had clearly allowed their conveyances to go to seed. John had considered the comfort of one of the new shiny trains, but had lacked the fare.
Now, after the most torturous journey he'd ever made in his life, he alighted from the Salisbury-to-London stage and limped toward the White Bear Terminus in Piccadilly.
As he moved through the crush of foot traffic, he wondered bleakly if he even had enough coin in his pocket to cover the modest cost of a pint of ale. His throat was parched, the late-June sun high and hot at midafternoon. Clearly he did not have enough for the comfort of a conveyance, so he'd have to walk all the way to Ber-mondsey, and God only knew what hideous poverty he'd find when he got there, Elizabeth still trying to operate his father's Common Kitchen, undoubtedly half-starved herself.
His annoyance mounting, he stepped to one side out of the crush of foot traffic and into a quiet harbor near an old costermonger hawking onions. He plunged one hand down into his pockets, his fingers finding a single halfpenny. In the heat of the pavement, with the smell of pickled onions filling his nostrils, he closed his eyes and felt momentarily defeated. What a strange journey it had been.
He keeps the Virgin Mary's finger with him at all times . . . LUa's her name . . . they found her meowing before the altar of the . . .
He shook his head, dismissing the curious interlude, preferring to recall instead the willing little serving maid who had stayed with him all night.
Standing on the crowded pavement, he was aware that only in her embrace had the past released its hold on him. Then he must remember the antidote and pray that the world was filled with willing and able females.
Of course the relief hadn't lasted. No sooner had he climbed aboard that dismal coach than the feelings of grief had returned, the realization that with each turn of
those coach wheels he was being carried farther and farther away from Eden, that golden dream which had obsessed him for most of his life, now denied to him, perhaps for all time.
By dusk he'd reached the Thames, and all his thoughts were moving in one direction, toward Bermondsey, toward that small timber-frame house that his father had purchased years ago with the remainder of the moneys from the sale of the house on Oxford Street. And to Elizabeth, perhaps the only true mother he would ever know.
As the river rushed beneath him, fresh sorrow rose within him, and he thought again of Elizabeth. Hadn't she always comforted him as a child, loved him out of his sadness, spoken coolly to him of God and grace and duty?
Hungry for that saintly presence, he pushed away from the side of the bridge and the currents of water—like his thoughts, moving too fast for coherent understanding—and he ran all the way, not stopping once for breath until he rounded the corner and saw the house, as humble and as simple and as good as Elizabeth herself, his refuge, his last hope.
Curious, how heavy her thoughts had been all day of Edward. She'd kept four appointments—Lord Kimbrough, Lord Bolton, Sir Embry, and Reverend Hawkins—good lovers, all, any one of whom in the past had been able to coax her out of her loneliness.
But today they had been simply ordeals to get through, though they'd been most generous with her, Lord Bolton arriving first, this morning at ten, bearing three dozen red roses in a silver urn. Then Lord Kimbrough, with his constant pleas that she accept without further hesitation the handsome rooms on Park Lane, overlooking Hyde Park.
To the new flat, she'd said no. There still was too much of Edward in these rooms. To the pearl necklace, she'd said yes, and had lovingly tucked it away in her rosewood jewel box, a gift from another client.
Now, weary at dusk, she eased down into the elegant brass hip-
bath, a gift from Mr. Jeffries, and allowed the perfumed fragrance of steaming lavender water to envelop her. To one side, her eye fell on the hand-painted Japanese screen, another gift, and from there she indulged herself in an inspection of her bedchamber.
A splendid bedchamber it was now, not at all in keeping with the plain exterior of the house. And in all honesty she could not say that her new luxuries had been "hard-earned." This life suited her very well, allowed her to fight off the loneliness which still affected her, evil moments when, on thinking of the past, her heart seemed to sit like a stone in her breast. Only in her awareness that others suffered as much, if not more, had she been able to find relief.
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