When Swallows Fall

by Gloria Davidson Marlow

  At home, I had been so certain he was innocent, but faced with his lack of emotion as he recounted these minimal details of her death, I felt the first stirring of doubt. It had been years since I had seen him, and even though I had once imagined myself in love with him, I hardly knew him at all.

  I met Cade in New Orleans when I was enlisted to be the summer traveling companion of Mrs. Dupree. Cade had been visiting the city with a small group of schoolmates celebrating their graduation from university. As luck would have it, we were all guests at the same hotel, along with mutual acquaintances of Mrs. Dupree and Cade’s late parents. The older couple introduced me to Cade the night we arrived in town, and as young love often is, ours was instantaneous and all-consuming. With Mrs. Dupree’s approval, Cade courted me throughout my stay, and had I not been called home suddenly to care for my father, Cade and I would have been engaged by the time we left New Orleans at the end of the summer. As it turned out, however, I was called home the week after my sister’s arrival in New Orleans, and I never saw Cade again until I stood in the foyer of Almenara. I never saw Desi again at all.

  I gave myself a mental shake, and in a voice that quavered much less than I expected, prodded him to continue. Certainly there were more details to be had.

  “She fell?”

  “No, there’s little doubt she was forced over the railing.”

  I made a small sound of denial. “How can you be so sure? Who would do such a thing?”

  He gave a bitter bark of laughter. “Apparently, I would.”

  “I don’t believe that.”

  “Really? And why is that, Ophelia?” he asked dryly, leaning back in his chair as if he couldn’t care less what I was about to say. The young man I had known had not been prone to such mocking cynicism, and I wondered what had turned him into the calloused man he appeared to be, or if it was perhaps his grief and shock that made him appear that way.

  “I don’t know,” I admitted. “I just can’t believe it.”

  “Well that will stand up beautifully in court.”

  “Court?”

  “Yes, court. When they arrest me, I’ll stand trial for murder.”

  “When they arrest you? Not if?”

  He shook his head. “No, not if, Fee. They’ll be here any minute.”

  My head was spinning, and I pressed my fingertips to my temples. What did he mean?

  “They’re convinced I’m guilty, even if you aren’t. The sheriff wanted to take me in sooner, but I persuaded him to wait until you arrived.”

  I stared at him blankly, wondering why he would have done such a thing, and why the local law enforcement would have agreed to it if they were convinced of his guilt.

  “Arresting and physically taking me in is just a formality, Fee. I should be home by tomorrow night. Everyone knows I won’t leave Almenara. I’ll be here when it’s time for the trial.” He leaned forward, dark eyes burning with anxiety. “There are things I need to tell you first. We need to make arrangements for Tabby.”

  “Tabby?” I repeated the name in confusion.

  A furrow appeared in his brow and I could see my confusion surprised him. Before he could explain, I heard the sound of booted feet in the hallway. He seemed to pale a bit beneath his tan, and I instinctively reached for his hand. Before I touched him, he jerked it away and surged to his feet.

  The door burst open and two men entered the room. The younger of the two, tall and wiry, with blond hair and worried green eyes, stepped toward the desk.

  “We’re here to bring you in, Cade. I’m sorry we couldn’t wait longer, but Calvin was anxious to get it done.” He tipped his hat at me. “I’m sorry to interrupt, ma’am.”

  “Dennis, this is my sister-in-law, Ophelia. Fee, Dennis Ames. He’ll be investigating Desdemona’s death.”

  I doubted Cade’s obvious cut to the older, larger man went unnoticed by anyone in the room, and as I shook Dennis Ames’ hand, the bearded bear of a man stepped forward. In spite of his size and the anger that rolled from him in great waves, he was an unmistakably handsome man.

  “Sheriff Calvin Scott,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ll be leading the investigation into your sister’s death. If my cousin chooses to ignore that fact, it will be his folly.”

  Cade grunted his opinion of the thinly veiled threat.

  “This is obviously a mistake, Mr. Scott,” I declared, my hand still caught in his. “Cade couldn’t have killed my sister. You must know that.”

  “I knew Desdemona well, Miss Garrett, and I know Cade. I can assure you that he is the only person who is a suspect in her murder, the only person with any motive at all.”

  “Motive?” I repeated in surprise. “What motive?”

  The man looked at Cade through dark, hooded eyes, watching for a reaction. When none was forthcoming, he sighed in barely concealed exasperation and turned back to me. His dark gaze shone with appreciation as it ran the length of my body, before returning to my face, which I felt heat with embarrassment.

  “Desdemona was an extremely beautiful woman, as are you. She was a friendly sort, and I’m looking forward to learning just how similar you are in ways other than appearance.”

  The reaction he’d obviously been trying to garner from Cade was instantaneous and so violent I fell back against the desk with a cry of alarm.

  Cade pushed his cousin against the wall, his arm pressing across Calvin’s throat.

  “Don’t you dare touch her,” Cade ground out, his face inches from the other man’s.

  “I’ve never been a man who had to initiate the touching,” Calvin sneered. “I doubt that’s going to change now.”

  Cade’s fist connected with his nose in a devastating blow. Dennis Ames was on Cade in an instant, but there was no need for him to be. As soon as his cousin sank to the floor, Cade seemed to deflate.

  “Let’s get this over with, Dennis,” he said wearily and let the younger man handcuff him without further incident.

  He lifted his eyes to mine, and I couldn’t mistake the banked fury in their ebony depths.

  “Do you still believe I couldn’t have killed her?” he asked.

  I knew he expected his violent outburst to have changed my opinion, and even though I had questioned his innocence only moments before, I didn’t give my answer an ounce of thought.

  “Yes.”

  Chapter Three

  I followed Cade and Dennis down the hall, past the room where my sister was enclosed in the glossy wood coffin, and through the front door I’d entered barely an hour before.

  “Excuse us, miss,” a man’s voice said from behind me, and I stepped out of the way of two young, brawny grooms who hefted Calvin’s limp form between them. Blood trickled from his nose and, as they passed, one crimson drop hit the floor at my feet.

  For a moment, it all seemed too much, and I fought a wave of dizziness that caused me to sway where I stood.

  “Don’t do it, Cade!” Dennis shouted from what seemed a mighty distance.

  “See to her, then, damn it!” Cade’s roar cleared some of the fuzz from my brain, and I looked up to see Dennis hurrying toward me as Cade fought against the men who held him in place beside the deputy’s wagon. Dennis’s arm encircled my waist and he led me back inside the house.

  Mrs. Hartley met us in the foyer, tea tray in hand, and I wondered if she could really have missed the uproar of the officers’ arrival and Cade’s arrest. With a gasp, she set the tray on a table and took Dennis’s place at my side, guiding me to a room off the nearest corridor.

  “I’m fine,” I insisted, but Mrs. Hartley just clucked kindly.

  “It’s been a trying day for you, dear. You just need a little rest and refreshment.”

  “I’ll check on you later, Ophelia,” Dennis said. He blushed sheepishly. “I mean, Miss Garrett. I’ve heard so much about you, I feel like I already know you.”

  “Ophelia is fine. Fee is even better,” I told him. “My father, bless his soul, gave Desi and me both nicknames as
soon as he recorded the names our mother assigned us.”

  “Quite good of him,” Mrs. Hartley said as she pushed me gently into a chair.

  I became aware of the tears on my cheeks only when the woman pressed a handkerchief into my hand and hurried from the room to retrieve the tea from the hall table.

  I dabbed at my eyes, scanning the airy room around me. Where Cade’s study had been decorated with dark wood and leather furniture, this one was decorated with white walls and soft shades of blue and yellow that dispelled the darkness outside its windows and walls. A large painting hung above the mantel, and I knew without asking that it had belonged to my sister. The artist had caught a bird in flight as it circled over a vast expanse of sand and rock I felt oddly certain looked exactly like the place where she died. The fact that the artist had quite definitely been looking down at the bird made me think it had been painted from the top of the lighthouse. Wherever he had been, he had managed to catch the very essence of Desi’s love of soaring birds.

  “This was Mrs. Scott’s morning room,” Mrs. Hartley informed me as she entered with the tray of tea and iced cakes. She looked around and her eyes settled on the picture. “She did love the birds, you know. She would sit up in the lighthouse all day watching them fly.”

  “She always did love them,” I agreed as she bent to fill my cup with tea. “Did she have the picture painted?”

  “Oh, yes, miss. She commissioned a gentleman from up north to paint it. Devlin was his name. Quite the ladies’ man, he was. All the girls were head over heels for him.” As if remembering her place and mine in the household, she straightened and stepped away. “I’ll just be seeing to supper, then. It’s being served a bit late tonight.”

  “There’s no need to serve it formally on my account, Mrs. Hartley. I’ll be happy to eat in my room, or even the kitchen if you and the others will have me.”

  She looked at me oddly. “That won’t be necessary, of course. Miss Eleanor, Mr. Calvin, and Mrs. Lorraine must dine as usual. You will join them in the dining room, unless you prefer the solace of your room for tonight.”

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Hartley. I have no idea who those people are.” At her look of surprise, I sighed. “My sister and I hadn’t spoken in nearly six years.”

  “Oh, dear,” she gasped. “Well, you’ve already met Mr. Calvin, of course. Lorraine is his wife and Eleanor is his sister.”

  “Calvin? The man who came to arrest Cade? He lives here?” I was shocked when she nodded her head. How could two men with such obvious animosity as Cade and Calvin Scott live under the same roof? What kind of household could withstand the violent dislike that simmered between them?

  “Oh, yes. Mr. Cade has lived here all his life. He was not quite a year old when his mother died, and he and his father moved to Almenara. Mr. Calvin and Miss Eleanor were born and raised near Charleston. Their father was killed at Appomattox, and there was no word of them or their mother for several years afterward. The elder Mr. Scott was about to go out of his mind with worry when they finally showed up on the doorstep. I declare, miss, a more ragtag bunch you’ve never seen. Mr. Calvin was ten by that time, Miss Eleanor was six, and Mr. Cade had just turned five. Mr. Cade was as fine a little gentleman as you’ve ever seen, but the others? Well, they’d had a hard lot of it since their daddy died, and they arrived as dirty and starved as you can imagine. Sad to see, but they straightened out quick enough. Now you can’t tell which ones were raised here from the get-go and which ones weren’t.”

  “And they’ve all continued to live here together all these years?”

  “Of course, miss. I believe their grandfather set things up so that Miss Eleanor and Mr. Calvin would always have a home at Almenara, although Mr. Cade inherited it after his father’s and grandfather’s deaths. The house is certainly big enough to house them all.”

  I wondered if any house was that accommodating, but I could hardly say so to the housekeeper.

  “Miss Garrett,” she began hesitantly, as if unsure how to say what she wanted to say. “Before he was taken away, did Mr. Cade happen to mention Miss Tabitha?”

  “Tabitha?”

  “Your sister’s daughter.”

  Desdemona had a child? A daughter she’d named after our late mother?

  Somewhere deep in my heart, I’d always hoped, prayed even, that when it came time for us to be mothers, when I had found someone to ease my aching loneliness and make my love for Cade seem like nothing more than the summer infatuation I tried to convince myself it was, my sister and I would be friends once more. Countless times I had stared out over the fields where Desi and I had once run wild, and imagined raven-haired children playing there, their laughter echoing through the yard of our father’s home. I had let myself believe that we had time to forgive and live as sisters once more.

  Now I knew how wrong I had been. Time had run out, Desi was dead, and even when she’d been alive and given birth to a child of her own, she had kept it a secret from me.

  “You didn’t know?” Her decorum forgotten, the housekeeper sat beside me, resting a soft, sympathetic hand on my back. “The child is already down for the night, and I suspect you’re worn out from your travel and all the excitement. If you’d like, I’ll have a maid bring a supper tray to your room. After a good night’s rest, you can meet Miss Tabitha first thing in the morning.”

  I would have preferred not to wait until morning, but I understood the need to conform to the child’s schedule, and I hated to wake her if she was already asleep.

  “Do you think it will upset her when she sees me looking so much like her mother?”

  “I don’t think you need to worry about her being confused. I think perhaps it is only at first glance that you look so much like Mrs. Scott. Below the surface, there appears to be something quite different, and that is what Tabitha will see.”

  I hoped she was right. Most people didn’t notice the differences between us, but they were there nonetheless, and to anyone more than a casual onlooker, they were probably startlingly obvious. As Calvin Scott had said, Desi was beautiful, and I had enough sense to deduce that since we were nearly identical, I could hardly be considered plain. Unlike my sister, however, I had attracted only one man in this lifetime. Unfortunately for me, when I left his side to care for our ailing father, I was quickly and easily replaced by my dear sister.

  The fact that the memory could still cause me pain was reason enough for me to have stayed away from Almenara.

  ****

  The large bedroom Mrs. Hartley assigned to me was lovely, with pink cabbage roses on the wallpaper and a sleigh bed covered in a matching quilt. A small table and two chairs sat before bow windows which, according to Mrs. Hartley, overlooked the flower gardens below.

  I was sitting there an hour later when there was a light knock on the door, and a maid entered carrying a tray of steaming food. I quickly removed my journal and pens from the table so that she could set the tray there.

  “Good evening, miss,” the girl said, her eyes avoiding mine as she put the tray down and hurried for the door.

  As soon as the door clicked shut, I heard the sound of her footsteps running for the stairs. Obviously, the staff had yet to overcome the shock of my arrival, and I wondered if, by the time I returned home next week, they would be any less inclined to look at me as if I were the ghost of their late mistress.

  I enjoyed the steaming plate of well-flavored roast and potatoes, bathed away the dust of my journey, and crawled into bed. I was asleep within moments, and slept soundly through the night, except for several times when the wind wailing outside my window roused me to semi-awareness. Storms had never frightened or disturbed me, so I paid it little attention as I rolled over and slept again.

  Chapter Four

  I woke early the next morning and went to the windows to survey the garden Mrs. Hartley had told me about. I expected to see some slight wind damage and puddles from the night’s storm. The ground was dry, however, and there wasn’t a blade of grass
or a limb out of place in the beautifully landscaped flower garden.

  A gardener knelt beside a raised-bed garden filled with blooming mums and orange asters. As if feeling my gaze on him, he turned and looked up at my window, his hand shading his eyes. He stood to his feet, his eyes never leaving my window, as he crossed himself and backed away. He disappeared somewhere past the gate that led around the side of the house, and I imagined him running, anxious to tell everyone he had seen Desdemona’s ghost.

  I pulled an unadorned black crepe dress from my case and dressed with some care. I would meet my young niece for the first time today, and I was quite certain I would not be able to avoid meeting Cade’s relatives for much longer. Our father had drilled into our heads the importance of first impressions, and as I looked in the full-length mirror standing between the lavatory door and the fireplace, I was satisfied with the impression I would give. No one would mistake me for a socialite, with my plain, unassuming attire and carefully arranged chignon. Neither would they mistake me for a pauper, for my dress was of a good quality for a woman of my station. I was, after all, not an inhabitant of Almenara, but the orphaned daughter of a modest and frugal country vicar.

  Mrs. Hartley arrived with a breakfast tray just as I finished my morning prayers and devotional, and we agreed I would ring for her once I had eaten.

  I was so excited at the thought of meeting Tabitha I barely tasted my food and was done in short order.

  “I’m surprised there wasn’t some damage from the storm last night,” I observed as Mrs. Hartley and I passed the wall of windows in the long corridor outside my door. The windows opened onto a wide veranda that looked out over a courtyard and the pebbled paths leading down to the shore.

  Mrs. Hartley shook her head. “There wasn’t a storm last night, miss.”

  “Of course there was. Didn’t you hear the wind howling about outside?”

  She gave me a strange look, and shook her head. “I didn’t hear a peep of it.”

  “Oh. Perhaps I was dreaming then.” I knew I hadn’t dreamed the wailing of the wind, but I didn’t argue the point. Perhaps she was a heavier sleeper than I was, or perhaps her room let in less sound.