The Tea Rose

by Jennifer Donnelly

  Today was Saturday – a full week after they’d met again by the river. The happiest week of his life. He still couldn’t believe what had happened, still couldn’t believe that she was his again. Every morning when he woke, he was immediately gripped by panic, terrified that he’d only dreamed that night by the river and the glorious days that followed. But then he would roll over in his bed and pull her to him as she mumbled sleepy protests, reassuring himself that she was no dream, that she was real.

  He kissed her head now. Her hair was damp. They’d been walking in his orchards, looking at the river, when the skies had suddenly opened. They’d run for the house, shrieking and laughing, and had arrived in his kitchen drenched.

  He’d made a quick detour to the cellar for a dusty bottle of Haut-Brion before leading her upstairs to his bedroom. There, he’d built her a fire and poured her a glass of the rich old Bordeaux to take the chill away. They’d sat talking by the fireplace, drying off, for all of sixty seconds before he had her up out of the chair, undressed, and in his bed. He was so hungry for her. So eager to see her lovely body, to hold her and touch her, to take his time as he hadn’t been able to at the river. In her arms, looking into her eyes, it was as if they’d never been apart. Knowing that she forgave him, that she loved him and wanted to be with him, he had finally felt the sadness, his constant companion, leave him and an indescribable joy take its place.

  Rain sheeted against the windows now. He looked out of one and saw the branches of an ancient oak tossing crazily in the wind. Let the bastard blow over, he thought happily, let the whole world blow away. This room, the two of them, was all that mattered. He pulled the sheet up over Fiona’s shoulders, got out of bed, and slipped on a robe.

  “Don’t go,” she murmured.

  “I’m not, luv. Just putting another log on the fire.” He put two more on, poking and prodding them until they caught and the flames were blazing nicely. He refilled their glasses, then padded across the bedroom to rummage in his highboy. He had something for her. Something he wanted so much to give her. Anyone in his right mind would say it was too soon. Far too soon. But he wasn’t in his right mind. He was in love. And for him, it couldn’t be soon enough.

  He found what he was looking for, a small red leather box marked “Lalique, Paris.” He placed it on his night table, shrugged his robe off, and climbed back into bed. Fiona stirred. He’d meant to put the little box in her hands and have her open it. But since he’d gotten up, she’d kicked the sheet off. He looked at her. Her round, luscious breasts were as beautiful as he remembered. His eyes traveled downward, following the contours of her body. He wanted her again. Very much. The box would have to wait.

  He leaned over her and kissed her. She stretched lazily and smiled. He cupped her breast and squeezed it, bending his head down to tease her nipple with his lips. “Mmmmm,” she sighed. His hand moved down, over her waist, to her thighs, and then between them. He stroked her there, gently at first, then harder. He slipped his fingers inside of her, into the sweet softness of her, making her wet and breathless, then stopped, pausing to kiss her belly, the smooth curve of her hip.

  “You better finish what you started, lad,” he heard her whisper.

  He grinned at her, enjoying the fact that she was hot and bothered. He loved making her want him, loved knowing the heat on her skin, and inside her, and the low moans in her throat were all for him. He didn’t want to be inside her now, though. Not yet. He wanted to feel her need for him, to hear his name on her lips. To know she was his again. Only his.

  He bit her ear softly, making her giggle, then nuzzled her neck. He moved down, taking her pretty nipples into his mouth again, trailing his tongue over her rosy skin, lower and lower, until he was just where he wanted to be. Then he parted her legs and tasted her. She didn’t protest this time as she had when she was a girl, instead she opened herself to him, shivering with pleasure as he explored her. After only a few seconds he heard a small cry, felt her body tremble, heard his name whispered.

  Whispered? he thought, frowning. That won’t do. Not at all.

  She had rolled over on her side. Her face glowed, lightly sheened with sweat. He lay next to her, propped on his pillows, playing with strands of her hair. He waited until her breathing slowed, then pulled her on top of him.

  “Oh, Joe, I can’t …” she said, laughing, her voice husky, her eyes as heavy and dazed as an opium smoker’s. She sat up, straddling him, trying to get her balance. “Don’t move, I’ll fall off,” she giggled. He reached for his wineglass and handed it to her. She held it with both hands and took a big swallow. As she did, he guided himself into her. Her eyes closed. Her body arched against his. He took the glass from her just in time, before she dropped it on him, and put it down.

  He grabbed her hips, pulled her tight against him, and rocked into her, slowly, rhythmically, coaxing the heat back into her body over her weary, sated protests until he heard her moans, louder than before, and felt her skin all slick. He pushed into her, deeper and harder, and she gasped, clutching at his hands. And then he felt her sweet, shuddering spasms, harder than before, and heard his name cried out instead of whispered. And then he let himself come, her name on his own lips.

  When he could breathe again, and see again, he realized she was lying on top of him, utterly spent. She opened her eyes and looked at him. He pushed the hair out of her face and said, “That’s enough now, Fee. You’ll kill me.”

  She burst into laughter and was still giggling when he handed her the red leather box. “What’s this?” she asked.

  “Take a look.”

  She sat up, tucked the sheet around herself, and opened it. “My blue stone!” she cried.

  He nodded. It looked much different than it had the day he’d pulled it out of the river mud. He’d sent it to Paris to have it polished and set into a ring. René Lalique, the celebrated French jeweler, had designed a special setting for it, one of twining rushes and river lilies.

  “How did you find this?” she asked excitedly.

  He told her how the private investigator he’d hired to look for her had found it in the pawnshop near Roddy’s old flat.

  “It’s so beautiful!” she said, holding it up to catch the firelight. “It shines so, I can’t believe it’s just glass from the river.”

  “It’s not glass, Fee. It’s a scarab. Carved from a sapphire.”

  “You’re joking!” she whispered.

  “I’m not.” He took the ring from her. “I ’ad it set as soon as I could afford to, then put it away ’oping that one day I’d be able to give it to you myself. A week after I’d sent the stone to Paris, the jeweler himself telephoned to tell me it was a sapphire. It’s ancient. And very valuable, you know. You sold it far too cheaply.” He shook his head, remembering all the years without her, suddenly sad again.

  “Funny, ’ow you can ’old a jewel in your ’and, toss it away, and not even know what you ’ad until it’s gone.”

  Fiona took his face in her hands and kissed him. “Don’t,” she said. “No more sad memories. Only the ones we make from now on.

  He slipped the ring onto her finger. “Well then, this is the first one. An old jewel, but a new memory.” He got up to pour them more wine.

  Fiona admired her ring, then looked at him coyly. “Joe?”

  “Mmm?”

  “Does this mean we’re courting?”

  “That all depends.”

  “On what?”

  “On whether or not you’d make a good wife. Can you cook?”

  “No.”

  “Clean?”

  “No.”

  “How about ironing? Can you do that?”

  “No.”

  “What can you do?”

  “Come here and I’ll show you.”

  “Again? You’re insatiable! As randy as a goat. I’d always ’eard older women were as keen as cats for it.”

  “Older women! You little sod! I’ll show you who’s old …”

  She pulled him do
wn on the bed and loved him and as the fire burned down and they fell asleep in each other’s arms, he smiled, hopeful that what she’d said was right, that there would be no more bad memories, only the new ones they made. Nothing more to come between them. And no dark past to haunt them. Only the future they would make together. At long last, together.

  Chapter 83

  “Bobby Devlin,” Roddy said, looking up from the papers on his desk to the visitor in his doorway. “Always a pleasure.”

  “Save the malarkey, O’Meara,” Devlin said. He tossed a copy of the Clarion onto Roddy’s desk. “Tomorrow’s edition.”

  Roddy stretched and looked at his watch. Three o’clock. “Christ, is it that late already?” he said. It was a Saturday. He’d come in at nine to catch up on a backlog of work. He’d been so preoccupied with William Burton’s whereabouts during the last few weeks, he’d neglected his other duties. He motioned for Devlin to sit down. “You a newsboy now, too? Making deliveries?”

  “Thought it might be of interest. Concerns your man Burton. Don’t think you’ll be seeing him again so soon.”

  Roddy peered at the front page. “William Burton, Impostor and Sham, Flees Country,” the headline read. And below it, “Relative Makes Plea on His Behalf.” The byline was Devlin’s. Roddy quickly opened it and read the article. Devlin had ferreted out the existence of William Burton’s elderly aunt, an eighty-year-old woman by the name of Sarah Burtt. Miss Burtt lived in a comfortable flat in Kensington. She had agreed to talk candidly to the Clarion, the story stated, because she was anxious to clear her nephew’s good name.

  In the ensuing interview, Miss Burtt completely controverted the known story of William Burton’s rise from poverty to success – that he’d been orphaned as a young boy, raised by a kindly spinster aunt, and had risen above his humble origins to become a wealthy tea baron.

  She said that she had indeed taken William in. Not because his mother had died, however, but because she had abandoned both William, who was five at the time, and his three-year-old brother Frederick. She had left the boys in a filthy room, in a rank lodging house, with no food or money. Told not to make a sound or they’d be beaten, William and Frederick had waited silently for her return. Several days elapsed before the lodgers in the neighboring room, alerted by a foul smell, figured out something was wrong. By then it was too late for Frederick. When they broke down the door, they found five-year-old William next to his brother’s decomposing body. He was delirious with hunger and illness, mumbling about rats. It was then that they noticed Frederick’s right foot had been chewed off.

  Devlin had asked Miss Burtt why their mother had abandoned the boys. Could she not care for them? Had they been unable to live on her seamstress’s wages? Miss Burtt told him that her sister, Allison Burtt, had begun as a seamstress, but ended up as a prostitute. She was a mean-tempered woman who was addicted to drink and beat her boys mercilessly. She had been disowned by her family before either of the boys was born.

  Devlin then asked if Burton’s father had really been a sea captain who’d gone down with his ship. “Could be,” the frank Miss Burtt said. “Or a butcher, baker, or candlestick maker.” She had no idea who had fathered her sister’s boys, and doubted if her sister had known, either. She then asserted that none of that was important. What mattered was that William had always been a good boy, always good to his Aunt Sarah. He had excelled in school. And he’d worked hard. He’d taken a job at a corner shop, in Camden Town where they lived, when he left school at fourteen, and by the age of seventeen he’d saved up enough to buy the place from its elderly owner. That shop had been the beginning of Burton Tea.

  Devlin then asked if a search had ever been made for Burton’s mother. Perhaps she still lived in Camden Town, he suggested. Miss Burtt replied that her sister had never lived in Camden Town. She’d resided in Whitechapel, in Adams Court. “You might recognize the name,” Miss Burtt had said. “It’s where the last of those awful murders happened. A dreadful place.”

  “I can’t believe this!” Roddy exclaimed. “Burton lived in Adams Court. That’s where Fiona’s family lived!”

  “He lied about that and everything else,” Devlin said.

  Roddy kept reading. His eyes skimmed over the part where Miss Burtt told the paper that her nephew had changed his name from Burtt to Burton because he thought it sounded grander, to the end, where Devlin had asked the woman to tell him truthfully whether she’d seen her nephew at any time during the past month.

  Miss Burtt said she had not, but two weeks ago she’d received a letter from him stating that he was going abroad. He didn’t say where. She was very worried about him. He’d always been a good man, she said, always good to his Aunt Sarah. She didn’t believe that he’d stabbed that Soames woman, or that he’d murdered a dock-worker. The interview ended with Miss Burtt appealing to her nephew to return to London and clear his good name.

  “He’s the target of one of the biggest manhunts in London’s history, and he slips right through the net. He could be anywhere. France, Italy. Might be halfway to China by now. Wonder how he did it. A disguise, maybe? A fake name? That bloke’s nothing if not clever,” Devlin said.

  “Oh, he’s clever, all right, but he’s not on the continent,” Roddy said. The prickling had started. On the back of his neck. Along his arms. Deep down in the very marrow of his bones. His sixth sense, pushed down ever since his conversation with Donaldson, had sprung back up with a vengeance.

  “I don’t follow you.”

  “Somet’ing’s not right, Bobby. It’s all too neat and tidy. The doddery old aunt. His letter. It’s all too convenient.”

  “You think the letter’s a setup?”

  “I do. I t’ink he realized that sooner or later someone would discover Sarah Burtt’s existence. The police or the press. He made sure she had that letter to show them. It’s a false lead. He wants us to t’ink he’s gone abroad, but he hasn’t. He’s been here all along. Waiting. That smug bugger of a Donaldson! I knew he hadn’t left. I bloody well knew it!”

  Roddy stood up and shrugged on his jacket. His sixth sense wasn’t just prickling anymore. It was tapping him on the shoulder. With a sledgehammer. He wanted to show Fiona the Sarah Burtt interview. Since her scar had healed, and since she’d met Joe again, she’d been going out and about with much greater frequency. He had to warn her, to tell her that she must continue to be extremely cautious. She was even talking about dismissing Andrew. He couldn’t let her do that.

  “Where are you going in such a hurry?” Devlin asked.

  “To Fiona’s house. To show her your paper. She doesn’t believe Burton’s still here, either. Says it’s too dangerous for him. That he has no home here anymore, no tea company, no reason to stay. She’s wrong, though. He does have a reason. And she’s it.”

  Davey O’Neill sat in his local, where he’d been drowning the voice of his conscience nightly for the past ten years, and fingered a crisp fifty-pound note. It was enough to send his daughter, eleven now and still not strong, to a sanitarium in Bath for a year. Paid to him for yet another task he hadn’t wanted to do. He smiled bitterly at that. What had he ever wanted to do for that man except bash his rotten head in?

  Davey tucked his money safely away, ordered a pint, and downed it. He immediately ordered another, trying to silence the voice inside that nagged at him, asking him over and over again what the consequences might be of the delivery he’d just made.

  I don’t know and I don’t care, he told the voice. It was an errand, that’s all. Nothing to do with me. And besides, it was the last one. He said he was going away. I’m finished now. I’m free.

  Free? the voice mocked. You’ll never be free, Davey. You sold your soul. You sold her, too. For a handful of silver. Like the Judas you are. Only Judas had the good grace to hang himself.

  “It’s only a letter,” he muttered angrily. “For God’s sake, leave me alone!”

  “What’s that, Davey?” the publican asked. “You ready for another
?”

  “What? No. Sorry, Pete. Talking to meself.”

  The publican moved off to dry some glasses. Davey caught sight of himself in the mirror behind the bar. He was gaunt, hollow-eyed. His face was lined. His hair had gone gray. He was only thirty-four.

  He scrubbed his face with his hands. He was weary. It had taken him days to find Fiona Finnegan. He’d tailed her. Twice from Oliver’s, and three times from Mincing Lane – losing her carriage in traffic each time. Then, on the fifth try, he’d gotten lucky. His cabbie had managed to stay close behind her all the way to Mayfair. He’d seen her carriage pull onto Grosvenor Square, seen her enter number sixteen. And after he had her address, he’d gotten Joe Bristow’s at Covent Garden. Then it had just been a matter of finding out where Bristow landed his tea shipments.

  He means her harm, the voice said. You know that, don’t you?

  It’s just a letter, Davey said again, silently. What harm can there be in a letter?

  It’s a death warrant. That’s blood money in your pocket.

  I did it for Lizzie. Everything I’ve done, I’ve done for Lizzie.

  Did you kill for Lizzie, too?

  “I didn’t kill anyone!” he said aloud.

  You stood by when he killed her father. And now you’re doing the same thing all over again.

  “No!” he shouted, slamming his fist on the bar.

  “Davey, lad, what’s ailing you?” the publican asked.

  “N-nothing, Pete. ’Ere’s for me pint,” he said, tossing a coin on the bar. “I ’ave to go.”

  Davey left the pub walking, but soon broke into a run. He had lived the last ten years of his life knowing that he’d played a part in Paddy Finnegan’s death and the knowledge had eaten him alive. He wouldn’t spend the rest of his life knowing he’d helped Burton to murder again. He figured he had one slim chance – only one – to stop what he had helped put in motion. And he was going to take it.