The Forgotten Room

by Karen White

  Lucy shook her head at herself as she started down the narrow back stairs. What a fool she was! Most women wouldn’t consider life with Philip Schuyler too high a price to pay; two weeks ago, the very prospect would have made her feel as Cinderella must, when her prince appeared, slipper in hand.

  But that was before she had met John Ravenel.

  The third floor of Stornaway House was bustling with activity. On a Saturday, the common room was packed with residents and their guests. Some sat waiting for callers, flipping through brightly illustrated papers; others were having a gossip behind the fronds of the large potted palms Matron had brought in, in an attempt to brighten the heavy woodwork of the dark-paneled room. The mural in the narrow hallway leading to the common room, with its knight rampant and cringing dragon, was all but obscured; only the top of the knight’s spear and his surprised eyes were visible.

  Dottie was there, lounging against the wall. She eyed Lucy assessingly as Lucy walked past, and Lucy heard her murmur, “La-di-da,” to her companion, another woman, not a resident, with a too-fussy hat and suspiciously pink cheeks.

  Lucy looked for Philip Schuyler’s golden head and didn’t see it. But Matron was there, standing near one of the potted palms, speaking with a gentleman whose back was to Lucy. Lucy’s step slowed as she recognized the curly dark hair, the broad back. Her stomach gave a lurch of excitement, but Dottie was watching, so she made an effort to keep her step steady and a pleasant smile on her face.

  “Mr. Ravenel,” she said, proud of how even her voice sounded.

  “Miss Young.” He swung around just a little too quickly, the eagerness of the movement belying the calculated politeness of his voice. His eyes caught hers and Lucy knew, with certainty, that nothing she ever felt for Philip Schuyler would be half the equal of this. It was like magic, the current that leapt between them, that made the rest of the room fall away as if it had never been.

  Easily, he said, “I was just telling your good Mrs. Johnston that you were kind enough to invite me to see this architectural gem.” In a lower voice, for her ears only, he murmured, “They gave me your message.”

  Her heart was pounding, her fingers were tingling, but she managed, somehow, to say in a normal voice, “I thought you might enjoy it.” To Matron: “Mr. Ravenel is a dealer in art and antiquities.”

  “So I hear.” Did Matron actually dimple? No, that was too much. But she was looking at Mr. Ravenel with what passed for her as unqualified approval. “I have a reproduction of one of the elder Mr. Ravenel’s paintings. I had the privilege of seeing the original in the Museum of Art in Philadelphia.”

  Lucy looked quizzically up at John. She’d had no idea that his father was quite so famous. “We had to let some of the paintings go,” he said to her, as if in answer to a question. “I’ve tried, when possible, to sell to institutions rather than private individuals. My father felt strongly about art being available to everyone, not just the few.”

  “But one must make a living?” said Matron.

  Lucy wasn’t sure what magic John had wrought, but they appeared to be on excellent terms. Or maybe, she thought giddily, that was just John. He had a way of setting people at ease, making them comfortable in their own skins.

  And he had come here. For her. He placed one hand unobtrusively beneath Lucy’s elbow, just a small gesture, not the sort of touch to which Matron could possibly object, but Lucy could feel warmth rushing through her, warmth and the certainty that all would be well, was well.

  “This house,” Matron was saying, “is very much a testament to that. The carvings are in themselves works of art. It does seem rather . . . out of proportion that all this was intended, at one time, merely for the private use of one family.”

  “I understand the Pratt family used to live here?” John said, so casually that Lucy wouldn’t have known there was anything more to it but for the tightening of his fingers on her elbow.

  In the midst of her haze of happiness, she felt a moment’s doubt. But no. Just because he was pursuing his own interests didn’t mean his feelings for her weren’t just as real. She hadn’t imagined the way he looked at her, the touch of his fingers on her elbow, the subtle possessiveness in the way he stood, his body shielding hers, claiming her.

  “Their loss is our gain,” Matron said practically. “Such houses have become unwieldy as private homes, but they serve very well for communal living. We were forced to make some changes, of course, but we have done our best to retain the unique character of the house.”

  “I was admiring the mural in the hall,” said John. “Saint George?”

  “A red-cross knight forever kneeled / To a lady on his shield,” quoted Matron, unexpectedly and fancifully. Apologetically, she said, “Yes, I believe it is Saint George. But if you want to see the real treasure of Stornaway House . . .”

  There was a hullaballoo by the billiards table.

  Matron broke off with a tsk of annoyance. “If I have told Miss Brennan once, I have told her a dozen times. If her young man provokes one more altercation . . . Forgive me, Mr. Ravenel. I’m afraid I can’t offer you that tour just now. If you would care to return again during visiting hours next weekend . . .”

  “Nothing would give me greater pleasure,” John assured her. “But I’m afraid I leave for Charleston on Tuesday.”

  “You have enjoyed your stay in New York?” Matron was frowning over John’s shoulder, at the crowd by the billiards table.

  “Far more than I ever imagined.” The words were for Matron, but John looked at Lucy as he said them. “This visit has been . . . a revelation.”

  Lucy nodded mutely, not trusting herself to speak. Who knew it was possible to feel this strongly, on such scant acquaintance? She felt as though nerves she had never known she possessed had been awakened; every look, every word, awakened a delightful agony of anticipation.

  “Since you are leaving so soon . . .” Beneath the thick spectacles, Matron’s blue eyes twinkled. “It is a slight breach of the rules, but for a gentleman involved in the arts . . . Miss Young, would you be so kind as to take Mr. Ravenel up to the seventh floor?”

  “There’s a seventh floor?” Lucy’s voice came out rather more breathless than she would have liked. “That is, I always assumed the attic rooms were at the very top.”

  Matron looked pleased. “They are usually, but not in Stornaway House. The seventh floor is a well-kept secret.”

  “A secret?” Lucy felt John’s attention being diverted from her. “That sounds intriguing.”

  “It’s nothing so exciting as that, just a rather unusual little room . . . Miss Brennan! If you’ll pardon me, Mr. Ravenel, I really must have a word with Miss Brennan’s young man.” Her voice brisk, Matron said, “The main staircase doesn’t reach all the way up, but you’ll find the service stairs at the end of the fifth-floor corridor. Be sure to shut the door again when you’re done.”

  Matron didn’t mean . . . well. But Lucy felt the color rising in her cheeks all the same. Before, she and John had always been in public, in Delmonico’s, in Central Park, in Mrs. Whitney’s studio, snatching their moments of privacy in the midst of dozens of uninterested people. But on the seventh floor, they would be well and truly alone.

  There were, thought Lucy, feeling a silly giggle rising in her throat, rules about gentlemen in one’s room, but this wasn’t her room, was it? It was the secret room on the seventh floor. So that was all right, then.

  “Thank you,” said John Ravenel, snatching Lucy’s arm and speaking, for him, quite rapidly. “I surely am grateful for this opportunity.”

  “You must let me know what you think of our little treasure,” said Matron serenely, before turning, and saying in quite another voice altogether, “Miss Brennan!”

  John whisked Lucy to the stairs at a gait just short of a run.

  “Eager to see what’s on the seventh floor?” said Lucy breathle
ssly, as they rounded the curve of the stair on the fourth floor.

  “Eager to see you,” said John, pausing so abruptly that Lucy nearly ran into him. “Ever since I received your message, I’ve been hoping—” One of the bedroom doors opened, and John broke off. “Oh, for the love of— Let’s get upstairs. We’ll have some privacy there.”

  “Do you think . . . ,” said Lucy, feeling suddenly shy. “Do you think that’s what Matron had in mind?”

  “An honorable woman like Mrs. Johnston?” said John, his drawl thickening. His voice turned serious as he looked at Lucy. “She just wants to make sure a hidden artistic treasure gets proper appreciation.”

  “Or improper appreciation?” said Lucy daringly.

  “That, too.” His dark eyes rested on her lips, moved lower. “Er—where do we go from here?”

  The transition was so abrupt that Lucy laughed. “Like Matron said, the main stairs stop on the fifth floor. We’ll have to take the servants’ stairs. If you don’t feel too cheapened by that.”

  “Nothing to do with you could ever be cheap,” said John.

  “Then you don’t know the cost of this skirt,” retorted Lucy, but her hand trembled on the banister. The force of his regard made her feel weak, shaky, as if she were no longer entirely in possession of herself.

  From the time she was very small, she had known she had to be strong. Her mother was so withdrawn, her father someone to be protected as much as a protector. With no siblings, her cousins largely estranged, Lucy had kept mostly to herself, a quiet, self-contained child, an anomaly in her father’s large, boisterous German family.

  For the first time, she contemplated what it would be to let herself go, to relax that stern control. It was both exhilarating and terrifying, the idea of relinquishing her own strength, allowing her to lean on someone else.

  There was something so sturdy about John, so reliable.

  It didn’t take them much time to find the stair to the seventh floor, in an alcove Lucy had always assumed to be a broom closet. The stair itself was narrow and unassuming, the walls painted with the same graying whitewash as the servants’ floor, the stairs uncarpeted.

  At the top, John paused. “Before we go in— I just wanted you to know that I would be here even if no Pratt had ever set foot in this house. I came for you. Not for them. When they gave me your message—”

  Lucy touched a finger to his lips. “Hush,” she said firmly.

  John hushed.

  “Yesterday—I knew as soon as I’d left you that I overreacted. It was just . . .” Lucy struggled for the right words. Her family had never been one for sharing their emotions; this was an uncharted vocabulary. She felt like a toddler, just learning to use language. “I was scared.”

  “I scared you?” John’s face was the picture of remorse. “Lucy, I swear on my father’s soul, I never intended . . .”

  “No, no,” Lucy said quickly. “You didn’t scare me. I scared me. The Pratts were just an excuse. I got scared and I ran away. It’s just—” She took a deep breath and said, quietly, “I’ve never felt like this about anyone.”

  John’s arms wrapped around her, folding her close, his cheek resting against the top of her head. “Neither have I,” he murmured. “Neither have I.”

  They stood in the cramped stair, neither of them feeling the heat or minding the musty smell of an enclosed space too long neglected. Lucy leaned the full weight of her body against his, her chest molding to his, her head fitting perfectly into the space between his ear and his neck, and knew that she had, at long last, come home. Wherever John Ravenel was, that was home.

  “Do you think,” she said, after a very long time, “that we ought to see that room?”

  “Most likely,” said John, making no effort to move. “We wouldn’t want to disappoint Matron.”

  Lucy thought of the twinkle in Matron’s eye. “I don’t think she would be disappointed.”

  John’s arms tightened around her. “She’s an excellent woman, your Mrs. Johnston.”

  Lightly, Lucy said, “Shall we invite her to the wedding?”

  “Mmm,” said John, and with a kiss on the top of her head, reluctantly let her go. “Shall we enter the Bluebeard chamber?”

  “You don’t think it’s full of discarded wives?” Lucy ran ahead of him up the last few stairs. Turning back, she saw a curious expression on John’s face. She burst into a laugh. “Oh, really! You don’t think we’ll find heads on pikes?”

  “Was it just the heads?” said John, abstractedly. “I don’t remember the story all that well.”

  “Neither do I,” Lucy admitted. The handle resisted her pressure; she had to push before the door gave, creaking all the way. “I just remember—oh.”

  Light. Sudden, dancing, brilliant light.

  Light poured in through long windows that made three sides of the room more glass than wall, making the room seem to float in the sky. But the most brilliant light of all came from the ceiling, refracted through the panes of a miniature dome, the prism-like panels shimmering in the sunlight. Lucy saw rainbows, a miracle of rainbows, glittering across the worn Oriental carpet, dancing across the elaborately incised tin of the ceiling, turning the dusty room into something magical and rare.

  “My God,” murmured John, behind her, his hands on her shoulders.

  Lucy’s fingers covered his. “Who would have thought?”

  Amazing to think this had been up here all this time, just above her room, and she had never known.

  “The proportions—,” John was saying.

  Lucy let the words wash over her, just taking it all in. On a second view, the signs of neglect were clear. The carpet must have been fine once, but the sunlight had faded it in parts to gray. An old sheepskin rug lay before the cold fireplace, the wool thick with dust, and, Lucy suspected, more than a few moths.

  Someone must have removed the furniture that had once been here. All that remained was a faded chaise longue, the upholstery tattered (mice, thought Lucy mechanically), and a squat Chinese cabinet, the once brilliant gold paint filmed with dust.

  But even so, even shabby and neglected, the room had a beauty that couldn’t be denied. It was a perfect square, the high ceiling with its miniature dome making the room feel cool even in the heat of the July day. There was something magical about it, like walking through a door in a perfectly ordinary house and finding oneself in a piece of the Alhambra.

  “Look!” said Lucy, pointing. “Saint George!”

  Above the fireplace, three terra-cotta squares had been set into the wall, colored stones creating intricate designs. The two on either side were heraldic shields, vaguely medieval. But in the center square was the saint himself, the same Saint George who had watched over Lucy’s childhood bed, shield in one hand, spear in the other.

  A red-cross knight, Matron had said. Lucy moved across the room, the worn floorboards creaking beneath her sensible shoes. Despite time and dust, the cross on Saint George’s shield was still a brave crimson. Tentatively, Lucy lifted a hand to touch it—and a brick slid out below.

  No, not just a brick. A cluster of bricks. Five or six of them, all welded together, and, behind them, a shallow cavity and the pale gleam of paper, sheets of it.

  Most likely someone’s old laundry list or a pile of bills.

  For a moment Lucy hesitated. Matron might have allowed them up here, but that didn’t give her the right to rifle through the room’s secrets.

  And, then, from far away, she heard her mother’s voice, faint, gasping. Harry.

  With sudden resolution, Lucy reached into the hole. It might not be anything to do with her, but if it was . . . she had the right to know; she needed to know.

  The sheets of paper had been closely written in an angular hand, the prose tortured and oddly formal.

  January 30, 1893

  Dear Mr. Pratt,

 
; As per your request, I have discovered the whereabouts of the former Miss Olive Van Alan, once maidservant in your mother’s employ. Miss Van Alan married Hans Jungmann in a small ceremony in Brooklyn on January the tenth of this year. The couple currently reside in Mr. Jungmann’s mother’s home in Brooklyn, where Mr. Jungmann has assumed the partnership in a bakery.

  It went on, but Lucy’s eyes only skated over the rest, details, as familiar to her as her own hand, of her grandmother’s home, her father’s family, the grocery in Manhattan he had sold when he married her mother.

  Once maidservant in your mother’s employ . . .

  Her mother, her elegant mother, a maid? The letter was from a Pinkerton agent. Surely, it was a bit extreme to hire a Pinkerton agent to track down an erring member of staff? And why hide the report here, in this forgotten room on the seventh floor? Nothing made sense, nothing at all.

  With stiff hands, Lucy turned to the next page. The paper was different, thicker, richer, an embossed monogram at the top, the handwriting fluid, the ink a rich black. The date at the top read January 30, 1893.

  My darling Olive, it began. Or had almost begun. The salutation had been crossed out, replaced with a curt, Mrs. Jungmann—because I can no longer call you dear. But how can I call you anything else? You will always be dear to me, no matter how far you have run, or how you have hurt me. Why? Why, my darling? Didn’t you trust me just a little? Didn’t you know I knew, almost from the beginning— The sentence ended there, with a blot.

  Knew what? Not about Lucy. He couldn’t have known about Lucy from the beginning; there wouldn’t have been a Lucy.

  These past weeks have been a fever dream, my only hope that I might find you. But I never thought to find you married to another. How could you? How could you leave my bed and—Did you never love me as I love you? Oh, my Olive. . . .

  This house has become a prison to me; I see you everywhere, but when I reach for you, I wake, and you are gone. There is nothing for me here without you. I have packed my paints and easel and booked a ticket west. Where I go doesn’t matter, not anymore. Perhaps I shall find the lost treasure domes of Kublai Khan. Without you, they will be dim and dull.