Garden of Thorns

by Lillian Stewart Carl

  Like a clipper ship under full sail, Dolores Coburg cut through the crowd toward them. Swirls of mauve silk accentuated her slender waist, and a deep ruffle was the pedestal from which her head and shoulders emerged like a porcelain bust. A diamond solitaire glowed at her throat. Her ash-blond hair swooped in meticulous waves away from her flawless face, where a fine layer of cosmetics didn’t conceal the lines so much as make fashion statements of them. Hilary was impressed—so many older women layered on more make-up and fancier clothes, emphasizing their age. But Dolores’s taste was impeccable; at fifty, she looked fresher than her twenty-something daughter.

  “Mark, Hilary—Jenny pointed you out to me—I’m so glad y’all could join us tonight.” Her eyes were like lighthouse lamps, dispelling murk and fog and reflecting the breathtaking azure of the sea. She exuded a subtle aroma of Chanel No. 5.

  Hilary and Mark chorused a polite murmur.

  “Your father and I have been on a couple of charity boards together, Hilary. How nice that you’re coming to work at the Lloyd.”

  Oh no. Hilary couldn’t keep herself from asking, “Did you know I was applying for a job—I mean, did my father….”

  Dolores’s gentle laugh had the ring of fine crystal. “Oh no, no—Nathan told me who you were after he’d already hired you. You got the job on your own qualifications, don’t worry. Not that I have much power at the Lloyd anyway—the Foundation is negotiating to build a permanent wing for my husband’s collections, but the gallery’s main funding comes from elsewhere.”

  Hilary brightened. Dolores was not only beautiful, but also perceptive.

  Mrs. Coburg turned her amazing eyes on Mark. “I hear you’re a Fort Worth native.”

  “Yes, ma’am. It’s—er—it’s an honor to work at Osborne.”

  “I hope you aren’t put off by the ghost stories. I suppose any house with Osborne’s history accumulates a few spooky stories, embarrassing as they may be for the family involved.”

  Mark’s face exhibited nothing but unconcern. Silently Hilary applauded his reserve. To reveal doubt or fear, anger or sorrow, was to invite ridicule. Just as she had upon leaving Osborne this afternoon, she suppressed her own uneasiness about the shadowed house.

  “They say the ghost is my grandmother Vicky, complete with bodice and bustle.” Kenneth materialized at his mother’s elbow. He held a glass of wine in one hand; his other hand was concealed in the pocket of his tuxedo, giving him an air of languid elegance. “Miss Chase, I presume?”

  Dolores introduced Kenneth to Hilary. He took his hand from his pocket, shook hers, and released it. Maybe his nose and neck were a little too long for him to be candy-box handsome, but his smile admitted a genial self-absorption that reminded Hilary of a P.G. Wodehouse character. Even his appraising glance up and down her figure was light enough for her to take it as a joke, not as the threat Travis’s heavy-handed analysis had been.

  “Mother used to be an assistant here,” Kenneth confided. “That’s how she met Father. But girls don’t look at their jobs as husband-hunting expeditions any more, do they?”

  “Work is important for its own sake, Kenneth,” Dolores told him. “Go tell your sister to stop browbeating the florists and come meet our guests.”

  “Okay.” Kenneth ambled away, unabashed.

  Dolores turned back to Mark. “How long do you think it will take for your archaeological survey?”

  “Hard to tell,” he replied. “Assuming we don’t find anything that isn’t in the records, only a month or so. I know you’re in a hurry to get on with the development of Victoria Square….”

  “That’s for us to worry about,” Dolores assured him. “Since your investigation destroys the very evidence you’re collecting, you need to take the time to do it right. You won’t have a second chance.” Kenneth, with Sharon and her stiletto heels in tow, arrived at Dolores’s side. She went on speaking. They listened attentively. “Arthur used to talk about playing in the Osborne rose gardens as a child. If you find any toys or personal belongings that might have been his, you will let me know, won’t you?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Be glad to.” Mark hadn’t even blinked, Hilary noticed; he looked like an ancient Greek peasant mesmerized by a mother goddess come to Earth, not sure whether she intended to take him back to Mount Olympus as a pet or to roast and eat him on the spot.

  Dolores turned to her children. “Maybe the flower order got a bit confused, Sharon—the florist is only human.”

  “But he shorted us by two arrangements. I’ll call the manager tomorrow and have our account credited.”

  “Now, it’s not worth acting ugly over.”

  “Yes, Mother.” Sharon’s smile never faltered; intriguing, Hilary thought, how she could talk with her jaw locked like a ventriloquist’s. Kenneth covertly eyed his sister, and his own smile glinted.

  “This is Hilary Chase, Sharon,” Dolores went on. “I think you’ve already met Mark Owen.”

  “Oh yes, Travis and I stopped by the excavation yesterday. Gripping, isn’t it, to see the old foundations reappear?”

  “Perhaps we can preserve a bit of them, make a little museum at Victoria Square,” offered Kenneth. “After you and Dr. Galliard have done everything you need to do, of course.”

  “No rush.” Sharon stood stiffly, her hands clasped before her.

  “Take your time,” said Kenneth. His nonchalant pose seemed to be drawn tighter by his sister’s proximity, as though her tension was contagious.

  With an apologetic grimace, like a cook embarrassed by a soufflé that hadn’t risen properly, Dolores looked back at Mark and Hilary. “Jenny tells me she took y’all through the house this afternoon. Lovely, isn’t it? What a shame it’s so run down. But Arthur couldn’t bear the thought of changing anything—despite the unfortunate memories the place held for him.”

  “Have you had any problem with vandals?” Mark asked.

  “Once or twice. When Jenny asked if she could stay in the kitchen quarters, I was only too happy to say yes.”

  “Dolly!” called a distinguished-looking man.

  “The senator has to leave early,” Dolores explained. “Please help yourself to the caviar.” With a rustle of silk she swept away.

  Dolly? Hilary repeated to herself. What an appalling nickname.

  Sharon and Kenneth stood smiling, looking like a pair of fashion dolls abandoned by their owner. Then the hapless wine steward dropped a glass. Before the pieces had skittered to a halt, Sharon was on him. At her imperious gesture he scurried away and returned with a broom and dustpan. She supervised, foot tapping, arms crossed, while he swept up. Odd, Hilary thought, how Dolores’s expressive blue eyes could look so glassily artificial in Sharon’s face.

  “You an SAE there in Austin, by any chance?” Kenneth asked Mark, easing back into his languid attitude.

  “A what—oh, the fraternity? No, afraid not.”

  Hilary refrained from pointing out that Mark was having to work his way through college.

  Kenneth shrugged and focused on someone on the other side of the room. “If you’ll excuse me. Hilary, we’ll have to get together sometime.” He backed away, barely avoiding a huge woman bedecked with faux emeralds the size of golf balls.

  Hilary’s father and brother had been in a fraternity, but she couldn’t remember which one. She’d resisted her mother’s efforts to push her through freshman sorority rush, preferring to sit sketching in the university museum. Maybe she should be grateful for Ben’s attack—her parents had forgotten all their lectures on her social obligations. Too ashamed to have her show her face in public, no doubt.

  She’d wait until Kenneth defined “get together sometime” before she worried about him. “Dolores isn’t what I expected,” she told Mark.

  “Me neither. I’ve been seeing pictures of her all my life—the ones of her sitting beside Arthur at his trial ought to go into a textbook of adoring wifely postures. But I thought she’d be a lot haughtier, a lot colder. And she might be pinching her p
ennies at Osborne, but not here.”

  “Maybe Preston’s right—she can put on shows like this because she pinches her pennies behind the scenes. Now she’s trying out for a textbook of gracious hostesses.”

  “You know something? One reason we were expecting a stingy snob is because of Jenny’s sarcastic attitude toward her.”

  “You’re right,” agreed Hilary, adding, “Kenneth and Sharon are quite a pair. What animal is it that eats its young?”

  “The human being,” Mark stated. “More wine?”

  “Oh no, thanks, that was plenty.”

  “You’re a real alcoholic, aren’t you?” he teased.

  “I’m the only one in the family who hasn’t had to dry out.”

  Mark mumbled something that sounded like “Urk.” Grimacing, he took her glass and his and set them on the table. The steward looked up with a sickly smile and went back to polishing the surviving stemware.

  Travis stood nearby, propping up a pillar. When Kenneth walked by, Travis’s scuffed shoe edged outward. Kenneth skipped around his brother-in-law’s foot without breaking stride, darting him a look of amused contempt. Travis slumped back against his support.

  “No love lost there,” commented Mark.

  “Was Travis’s marriage to Sharon arranged, do you know?” Hilary asked. “I mean, with the parents giving a dance at the country club and making sure only suitable spouses are invited, that sort of thing.” She thought, I’m never invited to those any more. No longer suitable. Damaged goods.

  Stop it, she ordered herself. She’d gone months without letting those thoughts and memories get through her carefully constructed barricades. It wasn’t Mark’s fault, it was just that she was beginning to realize how much she despised the pretense she’d once embraced.

  “Like the ancient Spartans herding all their unmarried citizens into a dark room with orders not to come out without pairing off?” Mark chuckled. “A hundred years ago the Wards were running cattle west of town. Today they’re real-estate barons—Ward and Meyer, Inc. I think Travis has some sort of position on the board, but he’s known for his cutting horses.”

  “Cutting horses?”

  “Like sheepdogs. The rider hardly has to use the reins. The horse will separate whatever cow you want and hold it until you’re done with it. There are even cutting horse contests these days, like rodeos. Making a sport out of what used to be bloody hard work.”

  Hilary sighed. “I should’ve been nicer to him.”

  “No you shouldn’t,” Mark told her. “You didn’t see the belt buckle he was wearing yesterday. A sculptured couple—er….” His hands made a quick, explicit gesture and then opened in a shrug.

  “Oh.”

  They strolled along the periphery of the carousel, avoiding the arc where Sharon was working the crowd, and tried to guess what basic foodstuffs on the buffet were camouflaged by the truffles, sugared rose petals, and shimmery aspics. Across the way Hilary glimpsed Jenny’s brunette head. Kenneth was hovering over her, oozing charm and expensive after-shave from every pore. Her smile was as starched as his shirt.

  “Didn’t Jenny say Dolores asked her to stay in the house, not the other way around?”

  “Yes, she did,” Mark answered. “I think I’d rather trust Jenny’s version—not that it matters.”

  “Miss Chase?” Hilary turned to see a plump, black-haired man in his thirties whose tuxedo and prominent nose gave him a benign resemblance to a penguin. “I’m Nathan Sikora. Welcome to the Lloyd.”

  “Thank you. Nice to be here,” she returned with perfect sincerity, and introduced Mark.

  Nathan’s hand was smooth, soft, and yet firm, that of a laborer in the fields of the intellect. Behind his glasses his hazel eyes were crinkled at the corners by years of squinting at palimpsests and rubrics. “You got quite a reference from the directors of the Rudesburn dig. They spoke very highly of your knowledge of medieval art.”

  “They always gave me the benefit of the doubt. Let’s just say I enjoy studying medieval art.”

  “Then you should enjoy working with the Regensfeld artifacts.”

  A twinkling rush of static poured through Hilary’s body. “Me?”

  Nathan’s face pleated with an engaging smile. “Oh yes. The artifacts have to be catalogued and packed before Mr. Vasarian takes them back to Germany the first week of April. I need someone who can work on them full time.”

  “Oh, wow,” Hilary murmured, dazzled. “That’s great.”

  “And you didn’t even have to kill anyone,” said Mark, grinning wickedly. He added to Nathan, “She’ll make you a fantastic assistant.”

  “Mark,” Hilary admonished, both for repeating her intemperate words and for advertising her abilities. But her heart was beating too fast, her red corpuscles dancing like bubbles in champagne, to be angry at him.

  “Your enthusiasm is as valuable as your knowledge,” Nathan told her. “I’ll bring you some photographs before you leave this evening. And Mark, I’ll see you at Osborne—I’m working on a biography of Arthur Coburg.”

  “Anything I can do to help, just let me know.”

  “Well, there is one thing…. Oh, excuse me, there’s Mr. Vasarian.” Nathan bounded off after a tall, elegant man who looked as though he’d climbed from his coffin at nightfall and hadn’t yet had his wake-up plasma cocktail.

  “Is that the guy from Germany?” Mark stage-whispered.

  “From Europe somewhere,” replied Hilary. “The art expert-detective who tracked the artifacts to Arthur and then represented Regensfeld during the court case. I’m surprised Dolores isn’t leaving him to pick through the garbage cans outside, since she lost.”

  “A tidy ransom will make anyone a good sport.”

  Centrifugal force spun Jenny off the carousel in front of them. Mark’s eyes bulged. Not that she was an ugly duckling even in her T-shirt and straw hat, but tonight she was certainly a swan. Hilary recognized her long gold-embroidered burgundy gown as a Chanel, and her dangling earrings as copies of those displayed at the Topkapi Museum in Istanbul. The combination was as self-confident as Jenny herself.

  With judicious application of cosmetics, Jenny’s face was transformed from interesting to striking. Her dark eyes and the fringe of dark hair across her forehead reminded Hilary of Josephine, Empress of France. Except Jenny didn’t have Josephine’s soft, compliant mouth and chin. If Jenny had been married to Napoleon, she wouldn’t have been a wife but a Field Marshal.

  Awed, Hilary felt small and plain. Maybe when I’m her age and directing a museum, she told herself, I’ll have that kind of presence.

  But Jenny’s look at Hilary wasn’t nearly as regal as her bearing. “What a posh dress,” she said with a smile Hilary could only interpret as wistful. “I could never wear a frock in that style—I’d look like a sack of potatoes. Are you enjoying your first look at the Museum? A grand place to be starting out—especially since you get only one chance to start out.”

  Jenny’s envious of me! Hilary realized, and murmured something polite. That someone like Jenny could feel insecure was rather encouraging.

  Mark waded in. “We finally got to meet your Madame Coburg. Not what we’d expected.”

  “Over the top, the lot of them.” Jenny sipped from the glass she held.

  “How’s Graymalkin?” Hilary asked.

  “Greedy little beggar scoffed her milk and went to sleep straightaway. I’ll bathe her tomorrow.”

  “Better you than me washing a cat,” said Mark. “But you said you and your mother had lots of cats.”

  “We lived in a thatched cottage in Wiltshire—we had to have cats, it was part of the image.”

  “Wiltshire?” Mark exclaimed. “Avebury and Stonehenge? No wonder you’re an archaeologist.”

  Nathan ushered Nicholas Vasarian toward them. Oh my, Hilary thought again, as Nathan made the introductions and Vasarian bowed with antique courtliness over her and Jenny’s hands.

  “Have you seen the artifacts yet, Miss Chase?�
�� he asked. “They are superb works of art. I can hardly blame Arthur Coburg for falling in love with them. You do believe, don’t you, that it’s possible to love an inanimate object?”

  “Is it love for the object itself,” Hilary asked, “or for what it symbolizes?”

  “For the materials from which it is made,” Vasarian said with a short laugh. “Gold, precious stones—amazing, isn’t it, how throughout history man has managed to put a price on his love?”

  Hilary glanced over her shoulder. No Coburgs were within earshot. Nathan’s face puckered slightly, whether in accord or disapproval she couldn’t tell. Mark’s quick grin signified agreement.

  “I’ve always felt any ancient object deserves respect,” said Jenny. “Even a comb or a cooking pot is evidence of human aspiration. And art objects, particularly religious ones, can’t be divorced from the emotions, the intellect, that produced them.”

  Nathan nodded. Vasarian inspected Jenny as narrowly as a scientist would a microbe. “Dr. Galliard, have we met before?”

  “No.” Jenny took a step backward and moderated her brusqueness by adding, “Of course, I’ve heard of your work.”

  Hilary thought for a moment that Jenny was going to add something derogatory like “treasure-hunting”, but she was too polite to bait him.

  Vasarian’s accent was upper-class British, except for its sprinkling of Eastern European gutturals like paprika on a crumpet. He had a Roman profile, his nose and forehead one plane. An elusive slackness beneath burnt brown eyes and square chin hinted of hard use, and pain, and vices tried and then rejected as unnecessary or perhaps unworthy. “I doubt,” he said, smiling just enough to show his teeth, “that Arthur Coburg was as impressed by the spiritual aspects of the artifacts as he was by their materials and their workmanship. Objects without material value seldom survive long enough for esthetes to appreciate.”

  Jenny inhaled for a riposte. Dolores Coburg glided to Vasarian’s side. She smiled on everyone impartially and said, “Nicholas, I’d like you to meet the chairman of Panhandle Petroleum.”

  “Certainly, Dolly. My pleasure.” They walked off arm in arm, Dolores’s gold head bent close to Vasarian’s silver one. Her clear voice blended with the chime of wineglasses and plates, and the faint pulse of music, words unintelligible but tone light and bantering.