That Summer: A Novel

by Lauren Willig

  Fear made Imogen reckless. “Mama would have understood. She chose you over Uncle William, for all that you were a younger son. She chose you because she loved you.”

  There were deep furrows between her father’s eyes. “Your mother and I had grown up together; we had known each other from childhood. This Grantham—”

  “I love Arthur, Papa,” said Imogen boldly. “Truly, I do. What does three weeks or three years or three decades matter? Would it have taken you that long to know that you loved Mama?”

  Her father’s hands trembled against the rough wool of the blankets. “I had not thought,” he said heavily, “that when I offered up one of my treasures, I should find myself losing the other as well.”

  Imogen scented triumph. She asked eagerly, “Does that mean you give us your blessing?”

  She wished he looked happier about it. “I haven’t much choice in the matter, have I? The thought of leaving you, all alone in the world … I have left you so ill prepared.”

  “You have given me everything I ever wanted,” said Imogen passionately.

  “No,” said her father. “I have given you everything I ever wanted. It is not the same thing.”

  Imogen brushed that aside. “You will come to London with us, won’t you?” she said. “Arthur has a little house, he says, outside the city. There is a garden and almond trees.…”

  And a seven-year-old daughter. The thought gave Imogen a moment’s unease. She brushed it determinedly aside. This would be her family now, her daughter, her husband. It might be a bit strange at first, but surely the little girl would come to be used to Imogen in time, and she would have Arthur, Arthur there by her side.

  She could imagine them in the years to come, in the library he had described to her so vividly, surrounded by rich, leather-bound volumes, a fire crackling on the hearth, working together on his grand compendium in perfect companionship. Charitably she sketched Arthur’s little girl into the picture, lying on the hearthrug with an illustrated book of fairy stories. And, perhaps, a baby, too, a baby in a cradle by the hearth.

  “Yes,” her father began. “But—”

  “And the books, Papa!” Imogen added quickly before her father could think to raise other objections. “A whole library full of treasures. Just think of the books. Why, you could spend years just on a shelf of it!”

  Fondness and concern warred in her father’s face. “There is more to marriage than books,” he said.

  Stolen kisses in the garden, eyes full of admiration, professions of love. “Yes, manuscripts, too, and quartos and folios,” Imogen said. “We’ll be as happy as two birds on a bough. What does age matter to that?”

  It still amazed her that out of all the women in the world, all the women Arthur must have met, older women, fashionable London women, he had chosen her. He made her feel special, treasured, rare.

  “Rare.” That was a word he used frequently to describe her. Have you any idea how rare you are? he would say, and Imogen would shake her head and demur, hoping that “rare” wasn’t really just another term for “odd.”

  Her father coughed, a horrible hacking cough that wracked his whole body. When he put his handkerchief away from his mouth, the white linen was stained with red.

  “I don’t have the strength to argue with you,” he said unevenly. “All I want is your happiness. If Arthur Grantham will make you happy…”

  Imogen remembered the expression on Arthur’s face, the reverence in his voice. You look like a Madonna. The memory warmed her like sunshine, pushing away all doubts and fears.

  “He will,” Imogen said with all the assurance of sixteen. “You’ll see.”

  She pushed aside the image of the rust-stained handkerchief. Surely a change of air … Her father was old, it was true, but he had been old for as long as she could remember. She had been a last-chance child, born long after her parents had given up all hope. Her father was susceptible to colds and fevers. Admittedly, never one as bad as this before, but … No. Nothing bad could happen now.

  Standing in a rustle of petticoats, she lifted her face to the watery spring sun, breathing deep of the familiar salt-stained air. Soon she would have a new home, a new garden, a new family.

  “Come with us to Herne Hill,” she said, holding out her hands to her father, “and you’ll see how happy we can be.”

  Herne Hill, 2009

  Herne Hill, it turned out, was indeed a hill. A very steep one.

  Julia lugged her bags from the train station, sweating in the June heat. Too much to hope that Aunt Regina’s house would have air-conditioning? Probably. The wheels of Julia’s suitcase scraped against the pavement, and the strap of her computer bag dug into her shoulder. She could feel the sweat creeping down under her shirt, long sleeved, button-down. Heat rose off the red and black graveled road in waves, adding the stench of tar to the strong scent of overripe foliage.

  For some reason, she had assumed England would be chilly.

  To be fair, she hadn’t really given it much thought. She had deliberately avoided thinking of it as she went through the motions of subletting her apartment, packing her things, meeting with various friends for good-bye drinks before she left for the summer. Just for the summer. That was what she kept repeating to everyone. Her apartment was rented out through the middle of September.

  It was, when she looked back on it, a little unsettling how easy it had been to pack up her life in New York, her entire existence post-college reduced to a suitcase and a sublet. Her work friendships had disappeared along with her job; sure, they’d all pledged to stay in touch, to meet for drinks, but they had quickly scattered, absorbed into their own private lives without the physical confines of the office to hold them together. Her apartment had been easy enough to clear out for a tenant. Books and clothes and mementos had been bundled into boxes at the back of the bedroom closet. The books mostly dated back to college; ditto for the pictures.

  Shouldn’t she have something more than that to show for the past eight years?

  The one person she would really miss in the city was Lexie, her college roommate—but even there they saw each other, what? Once every month? If that. Lexie was a fifth-year associate at a firm, with two children under the age of four. Somehow, she’d managed to do what Julia hadn’t. Lexie had built something real and solid for herself. Julia was beginning to suspect that everything with which she’d surrounded herself had been nothing more than a cardboard stage set, convincing until you gave it a shove and watched it all topple over.

  She didn’t really miss her job—financial analysis had never really floated her boat—but she missed what it represented.

  Okay. That was enough of that. Julia gave her suitcase a wrench as it caught in a crack. That was jet lag talking. Or maybe the heat. She’d been in transit since ten o’clock New York time last night, which made this the technical equivalent of an all-nighter, thanks to a seatmate with particularly sharp elbows and strong perfume. Julia had dozed a little on the plane, but they had been strange, unsettling dreams. She was following her mother through a garden, but the garden was tangled and overgrown, thorns ripping at Julia’s clothes, catching in her hair. Somewhere, through the foliage, she could see the gleam of water; somewhere, just past the thicket, dragonflies skimmed over the surface of the lake and butterflies danced on brilliantly yellow blossoms; somewhere, her mother had a picnic laid out for her by a gazebo gleaming with white paint; Julia could hear her laughing, somewhere, just out of reach, but the thicket held her fast.

  She had woken with a pounding headache and the cloying scent of flowers in her nostrils, thinking very nasty thoughts about people without the common courtesy to go light on the perfume before a seven-hour flight. It was no wonder she had dreamed of gardens. Of gardens and of thorns.

  Julia paused, swiping the sweat off her brow with the back of one hand. Up ahead she could see a small commercial oasis, the striped awnings of shops a welcome break in the otherwise unbroken residential terrain.

  Sho
uldn’t she be at the house by now? Number 28, the solicitor’s letter had said. What he hadn’t bothered to specify was that the numbers on the hill ran backward, highest to lowest, with the hundreds down in the shallows by the train station and the PizzaExpress. Up and up the road ran, past Victorian terraced houses, recently refurbished, if the smell of paint was anything to go by. That boded well for real-estate values in the area, if not for Julia’s calves, which were protesting the unexpected exercise.

  She probably could have used some of the past six months of idleness to reacquaint herself with the gym. But in the beginning, she had just assumed this was all temporary. After all, she’d made the responsible choice out of college; she’d turned her back on the chimera of grad school and gone, instead, lemming-like, into consulting. She hadn’t been quite sure what consultants actually did, other than fly around and look harried and important, but it paid well and, more to the point, it was about as far as she could get from med school.

  From McKinsey it had been easy to stumble along the well-trodden track from consulting to business school, and from business school to a position as an equity research analyst at one of the big banks.

  Telecom didn’t precisely consume her soul—all right, if she was being honest, half the time it bored her silly—but there was a certain kick to being one of the few women in a man’s world. She’d proved that she could play with the boys.

  There was a time when that had mattered to her. Right now, she wasn’t quite sure why. Either way, it had brought her where she was now. Kind of ironic that after all these years, after all her work, all her degrees, here she was, back in England, unemployed, alone.

  So much for doing everything right.

  Julia bumped her suitcase past a restaurant, a dry cleaner, a grocery store. Good to know there was somewhere to get sustenance around here; the bottom of the hill was a long way down and she didn’t have a car. There was even a wine shop, suitably Yuppie-fied, to go with the newly refurbished Victorian brick houses, and a real-estate agent, with tantalizingly touched-up pictures of glossy wood floors and souped-up washing machines in the windows.

  Number 28 was just across the way.

  Julia’s steps slowed as she approached. She wouldn’t have known it but for the numbers on the gateposts, 26 on one side, 28 on the other. The house took up two plots, although it was hard to tell if there even was a house back there. The trees had grown thick in the yard, blocking whatever lay beyond. In the bright sunshine the yard lay in shade, the light crowded out by the thickly clustering trees.

  Julia rested her computer bag on top of one of the gateposts, the one that said “26,” the “6” listing slightly to the side where a nail had come loose. There was no actual gate, just a four-foot gap between the gateposts. The wall was brick, modern, and ugly. It looked as though it had been thrown up merely to serve as a nominal barrier, a sign to the uninvited to keep out.

  Not that it was needed. The close-grown trees, the general air of dilapidation and decay, were deterrent enough. The houses on either side seemed very far away. It was hard to tell how far the plot went back. Some ways, she guessed. She could just make out the chimney pots above the trees, four of them. Ahead of her, a walk twisted its way to what she presumed was the house, the bricks cracked and overgrown.

  Julia had a sudden image of that same path in autumn, red and orange leaves slick under her feet, as she hopped from brick to brick in a complicated pattern of her own devising. There was someone holding on to her hand; she knew that even though all her attention was focused on the pattern of the bricks beneath her patent-leather Mary Janes. Just ahead, up a small flight of stairs, the door of the house opened, spilling out light and warmth and—

  The sun was shining painfully into her eyes. Julia blinked, hard, and the illusion vanished. It was just jet lag, that was all. Nothing more. Her contacts were practically glued to her eyes from sleep deprivation; it was a wonder she could see anything at all.

  Yanking her computer strap higher on her shoulder, Julia hauled herself and the bags through the gap in the gate. Her wheelie skittered and bumped on the uneven surface of the walk, wheels catching on bits of cracked brick. It seemed longer than it was, twisting and curving coyly through hedges that might once had been decorative edging but had since run amok, catching at her ankles, prickling against the hems of her jeans. For a moment, she remembered her dream, the thorns pricking at her as she fought her way through.

  Just a dream, Julia told herself, and shook her ankle free, marching down the path with a little more force than necessary. Some people liked old houses. Somewhere, surely, there would be someone who would want to take this one off her hands, preferably for a satisfyingly large amount of cash.

  Up close, the house was larger than she had realized, covered in a muddy stucco that might once have been white but had darkened over time to a sort of dun. It was a tall house: three main floors, an attic floor, and what looked to be some sort of basement area, the top of the windows just visible from ground level. The front door was up a flight of stairs, flanked on either side by long windows, draped in dirt and damask. The sun couldn’t compete with the thick growth of foliage around the house; it was almost chilly in the shade, chilly and very quiet. It seemed odd that the road was just a few yards back, smoking in the July sun. Just down the block people were buying lottery tickets and picking up their dry cleaning. But here all was still and silent.

  Julia marched up the stairs, hauling her wheelie with her, wincing as it clunked against the old stone steps. The door had once been painted, but the paint was gray and peeling, the panels of the fanlight grimed with dirt.

  The solicitor had sent the keys, in a package padded around and around with tape that had taken forever to pick off. Julia wished she had more confidence that they might work. There were five in all. Three had small tags attached reading “front door: lock,” “front door: bolt,” “back door.” The last two were unlabeled.

  That was going to be fun, trying to figure out what they belonged to, if they belonged to anything at all.

  She was stalling, she realized, reluctant to open the door. Really, what did she think was going to be on the other side? Dracula? Frankenstein’s aunt? Julia mocked herself, digging in the pocket of her computer bag for the keys. At worst, she might face a bad smell. She hadn’t thought to ask the lawyer if anyone had remembered to empty the fridge. Assuming there was a fridge and not just an icebox, or whatever it was. No, that was silly. People had been living in this house more recently than that.

  Her mother had lived in this house.

  Ignoring a wave of light-headedness, Julia fumbled the key out of her bag. It was a normal key, cheap and flimsy, not a baronial clunker. The bottom lock turned without a protest; the bolt squeaked slightly, then gave way.

  Julia pushed the door cautiously forward, feeling as though she were intruding, as though, at any moment now, someone was—

  “Hello?” It seemed silly to be speaking to an empty house, but Julia did it anyway, feeling slightly sheepish.

  She nearly fell down the stairs when she heard someone answer, “Yes?”

  THREE

  Herne Hill, 1839

  “Who is she?” The stairs creaked as a woman stepped out onto the landing, a candle held aloft. She looked at Imogen with visible consternation and no little surprise. “Arthur?”

  Spattered with the mud of a fortnight of travel, unsteady with the sudden cessation of the motion of a coach, Imogen looked from the woman on her stairs to her husband. “Arthur, didn’t you—”

  Evading her eyes, Arthur leaned past her, waving at the man with their baggage. “Yes, bring it through there. Cook will see you’re fed in the kitchen.” That dealt with, he lifted his cane in greeting to the woman on the stairs. “Ah, Jane! Meet my bride.”

  “Your bride,” the woman said flatly, without leaving her perch at the head of the stairs.

  Imogen tried to muster a smile, but her body ached with travel and the expression on the
woman’s face made her feel like a tradesman who had wandered in by the front door.

  The woman on the stairs was perhaps a decade older than Imogen, her fair hair worn in an elaborate coiffure of curls and braids. There was a brooch at her throat, a large cameo, framed in gold. Her dress was a deep purple, in a fabric that shimmered in the light, banded in an intricate pattern of gold braid, perfectly fitted to her narrow, fine-boned form. The richness of her raiment made Imogen feel even more battered and travel stained.

  This wasn’t how she had imagined her arrival at her new home.

  In her imagination, it was daylight, flowers blooming all around and Arthur’s daughter running forward to greet them, face alight with excitement. Instead, they had arrived at Herne Hill hours later than expected. Spring rains had turned the roads soggy and rutted, the wheels of their hired chaise mired in mud. Imogen’s first view of her new house was by torchlight, the lanterns of the coach sending strange shadows along the walkway and walls. There was a smell of spring in the air, of grass and growing things, but she could see none of it through the mist and the fog.

  A maid reached out to take Arthur’s hat and cloak. “Welcome home, sir,” she said, with a bobbed curtsy.

  “Thank you—er,” said Arthur. It was clear he couldn’t remember the maid’s name, but he beamed genially all the same.

  “That will be all, Anna,” said the woman on the stairs, and the maid retreated, with a curious backward glance at Imogen, still in her coat and bonnet.

  Imogen took a step forward, her damp cloak heavy against her shoulders. “You must be Miss Cooper,” she said as engagingly as she could. Arthur had mentioned her in passing, his wife’s sister, who had kept house for him all these years. “I have heard so very much about you.”

  Imogen’s husband’s sister by marriage gave her a narrow-eyed look. “How curious. I heard nothing at all about you.”

  Imogen directed a quick, quizzical glance at her husband. She had assumed he had written, just as she had written to her family—what little family she had—to inform them of her and Arthur’s nuptials.