The Rose Garden

by Susanna Kearsley

  I paused at a thick book whose title intrigued me, and was lifting it down when Claire finished her prelude, the final note drifting to silence.

  I told her, ‘Don’t stop, that was lovely.’

  ‘I wasn’t sure I would remember it all,’ she confessed with a faint smile. ‘I haven’t played that one in years. Not since I was your age, in fact.’

  ‘And when was that?’ I teased her. ‘Yesterday?’

  Her smile grew warm at my flattery. ‘Seems like it, sometimes.’ She looked to the window. ‘Is Susan not back yet?’

  ‘Not yet, no.’

  ‘Oh, well. One can’t rush a decision like that.’

  I decided that made a good opening for what I’d wanted to ask her. ‘Aunt Claire?’

  ‘Yes, darling?’

  ‘When you met Uncle George … I mean, it must have been a change for you, to move here. And not only geographically. You were changing your whole way of life, taking on Mark and Susan and everything. How did you … that is, when someone is making that big a decision, how … ?’

  ‘How do you know it’s the right one to make?’ She was watching me kindly. ‘Are you asking on Susan’s behalf, or your own?’

  Before I could answer, a door somewhere opened and closed and the sure tread of footsteps approached from the back of the hall, and we turned to the doorway as Oliver entered the front room.

  On cue, from the small knowing smile on Claire’s face. She greeted him with, ‘Didn’t we get rid of you once today?’

  He’d changed his clothes at least, although the jeans and T-shirt he now wore weren’t that much less revealing than the biking shorts. ‘I’ve just had a delivery that I thought might interest Eva,’ he explained, and held a small wrapped packet up to show us. ‘Mark said I should come right in.’ He looked around the room. ‘Is Susan not back yet?’

  Claire answered as I had done, ‘Not yet, no.’

  Oliver lifted an eyebrow. ‘You don’t think she’ll actually marry him, do you? I mean, he’s a nice enough bloke, Nigel, but he’s not right for her. I could have told her that, first time I met him. They’re chalk and cheese, aren’t they?’ He sauntered across for a look at the book I was holding. ‘What’s that?’

  I angled the cover to show him.

  He read out the title: ‘The Wife’s Guide for Keeping a Garden and House?’

  ‘Newly revised in …’ I flipped to the title page, briefly consulting the date, ‘1692.’

  ‘That would explain why it’s falling to pieces, then.’

  ‘Only the binding. The pages are fine.’

  He looked at the page I’d been reading. ‘“For Making a Stirabout”? What’s that?’

  ‘A stew, sort of.’

  ‘Ah. And it doesn’t concern you at all that the next item down is “A Cure Against Vomiting”?’

  I cast a dry look up over my shoulder. ‘It’s meant to be a full instruction book for housewives. Home remedies, recipes, how to do laundry and clean things.’ All useful, I thought, for a young woman setting up house at the end of the seventeenth century. Or for a woman who found herself thrust back in time to the start of the eighteenth.

  Oliver said, ‘If you’re wanting to read something, try this instead.’ And he gave me the packet.

  As I took it from his hands I felt the quick touch of excitement and I knew what it must be before I’d even got the wrapper off and seen the book inside, bound in smooth leather with faded gilt letters that spelt out the title: A Life Before the Wind. Jack Butler’s diary. ‘Oh, Oliver! Wherever did you find it?’

  ‘I have sources.’

  And he must have had to pay them well. The book was an original edition, from the look of it. ‘You’d really let me borrow this?’

  ‘I wouldn’t, no,’ he told me, and then smiled at my reaction. ‘You’re to keep it. It’s a gift.’

  I shook my head. ‘I’ll buy it from you.’

  ‘Sorry, no. A gift’s a gift,’ he said. ‘You’re stuck with it.’

  I would have argued further if I hadn’t been distracted by the sound of tyres on gravel from the drive outside. All three of us fell silent while we listened, waiting.

  One car door banged shut. And then the tyres rolled off again.

  When Susan came to join us, she was on her own.

  ‘I’ve told him no.’ She stood within the doorway, looking tired. ‘Our lives are just too different, it would never work.’ Her weariness seemed more pronounced as she glanced round the room. ‘Mark’s in the gardens, I expect? I’ll go and hunt him down and let him know, so he’ll stop worrying.’

  Oliver stepped forwards, not the charmer any more but the dependable old friend who could be leant on in a crisis. ‘You don’t need to hunt him down, I know exactly where he is. Come on, I’ll take you to him.’

  When they’d gone, I looked at Claire and noticed her expression, and I said, ‘You’re not surprised.’

  ‘No. Nigel wasn’t the right man for her.’

  ‘Because the gap between them was too great?’

  She shook her head. ‘Because it wasn’t meant to be.’ Her eyes were wise. ‘Every relationship has its own obstacles, darling. And as you said, your Uncle George and I had our share of them. As would you, if you were to meet someone here.’ From her smile I assumed she meant Oliver. ‘There would be practical choices you’d have to make. Where you’d live, that sort of thing. Where you’d work. And there’d be differences in lifestyle that might take some getting used to. It’s one thing to spend a summer at Trelowarth, or let a cottage for awhile, and quite another to live all year in Polgelly,’ she said knowingly. ‘The social structure here is … well, you’d find it rather different from America, I’m sure. It’s never easy, changing how you live.’

  I gave a nod of understanding, looking down.

  ‘But,’ Claire continued, ‘all of that amounts to nothing, if you love him.’

  As I raised my head, she met me with a smile.

  ‘Believe me, Eva dear, if I was able to adapt, there’s hope for anyone.’

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  I heard the voices speaking low to one another from the wall behind my bed.

  ‘You’ll need my help, I’m thinking.’

  ‘I’ve enough men aboard the Sally.’ Daniel’s voice.

  I drifted in that drowsy plane between sleep and full consciousness, not wanting to wake up and lose the moment.

  Daniel said, ‘I cannot take you.’

  ‘So then take Jack.’

  ‘And waste the whole night arguing which one of us will take the helm? I thank you, no. Nor can I send Jack in my place,’ he went on, as though cutting off an argument, ‘because the message clearly states it must be me.’

  A pause, then, ‘For one woman,’ Fergal said, ‘she can create uncommon difficulties.’

  ‘I rather think you put it in her nature when you made her an O’Cleary.’

  They were talking about me, I realised. And their voices were very distinct, not as muffled as they’d been before with the distance of time in between us.

  Rising to awareness like a diver pushing upwards from the depths, I brushed aside the clinging fog of sleep and forced my heavy eyelids open.

  It was morning, fully light, and I was lying on the linens of the big four-poster tester bed, and though the doorway to the corridor was closed, the one connecting Daniel’s room to mine was open. Fergal stood square in it with his back to me.

  I blinked for a moment, adjusting, and tried to remember.

  I’d fallen asleep in my own bed last night. I’d been reading. I’d started Jack’s memoir, but after ten pages or so of his exploits I’d started to drift, and then …

  ‘I pledged her my protection,’ Daniel said, and from his voice I judged that he was standing just the other side of Fergal, in his room. ‘I’ll not feel easy in my mind unless I know that you are here to guard her if she should return.’

  Which would have been my cue to say something, had not another male voic
e spoken up before I had the chance to. From the next room, Jack’s voice asked, ‘Return from where?’

  I hadn’t heard his footsteps in the corridor, or heard the door of Daniel’s room swing open, but from Fergal’s quick reaction I could only guess that Jack had somehow caught them by surprise.

  ‘I was about to say,’ said Daniel quietly, ‘should she return to health.’

  In my doorway Fergal shifted so he blocked the view more solidly, his shoulder all but welded to the door frame.

  Jack used a phrase I’d never heard, but it must have been rude because his brother told him, ‘Mind your tongue. We have a woman in the house.’

  ‘Do we, now?’ The floorboards creaked as Jack stepped forwards, and I looked round frantically to find a blanket, anything to cover my modern pyjamas, as he went on, ‘These past days you have sent me twice on errands to do nothing of importance, and in all that time I’ve neither glimpsed nor heard your sister, Fergal. And yet both of you keep telling me she’s here, and only ill.’

  ‘And what would either of us have to gain by saying so, were it not true?’ asked Daniel.

  Jack came closer still. ‘You see, I cannot tell you, and that troubles me. It troubles me as much as does the memory of her voice.’

  The only blanket I could see lay folded out of reach across the clothes-press, so instead I scrambled underneath the sheets and pulled them to my chin. The sound, though slight, caught Fergal’s ear. He turned to look towards the bed as Jack asked, ‘How is she this morning, then?’

  My gaze stayed locked with Fergal’s as I marvelled once again at his ability to show no outward sign of his reactions when he wanted to conceal what he was thinking. His expression hadn’t changed, though he did wait a moment before telling Jack, ‘She is asleep.’

  I took the hint and closed my eyes.

  ‘She is a quiet sleeper,’ Jack remarked.

  ‘See for yourself, then, if you’ll not believe us.’ Fergal must have stepped aside because the floorboards creaked much closer to the bed, and in the pause that followed I tried hard to concentrate on breathing lightly, evenly.

  After what seemed an eternity Jack broke the silence and whispered contritely, ‘I’m sorry, I—’

  ‘Call me a liar again,’ Fergal said, ‘and you’ll wish that you hadn’t. Now out with you. Both of you. Give her some peace.’

  I felt someone’s fingertips trace lightly over my cheek, maybe brushing a stray bit of hair aside, and I knew whose touch it was even before Fergal said, ‘Danny, both of you. Out.’

  Daniel said, close above me, ‘I think she looks better this morning.’

  ‘She does, ay,’ said Fergal. ‘I’d not be surprised to see her up and about by the afternoon. But now she needs her rest, so out.’

  He left no room for argument, not with that tone.

  The light touch left my face and I heard both the brothers retreat through the next room and, trading muffled arguments, start down the stairs. Fergal crossed to shut the connecting door firmly behind them.

  I opened my eyes as he turned round to face me, his own dark eyes crinkling with laughter. ‘I have to confess,’ he said, low, ‘I’m beginning to think that you may be a witch after all, for you do have the devil’s own luck with your timing.’

  Returning his smile, I felt suddenly, heart-expandingly happy in a way I hadn’t felt for years, the way I’d felt when I’d awakened on those childhood summer mornings at Trelowarth with Katrina in the bed beside me and a day of new adventures spreading bright before us.

  This felt so exactly like that, in fact, that for an instant I had to sit still while I took it all in, the warm familiar blend of sounds and smells and half-remembered sights that strummed a chord within me deep as instinct, wrapped me comfortingly in the certain knowledge I was home.

  Fergal was saying, ‘And more luck for you that I haven’t yet eaten your breakfast, it’s still on the tray.’

  He had brought me a thick slice of bread spread with cheese, and a cup of cool ale. Fetching the tray from the desk in the corner, he set it on the bed and stood, arms folded, while I sat upright to eat.

  ‘You did that very neatly,’ was his comment. ‘How the devil did you manage it?’

  Daniel and Jack were downstairs, now. I heard the occasional tramp of a boot or the swing of a door underneath us, and knew it would be safe to talk if I kept my voice quiet, like Fergal’s. ‘I’m sorry?’

  ‘Turning up like that, in the bed.’

  ‘I don’t know,’ I said honestly. ‘I just woke up, that’s all.’

  ‘This is your room in your own time, then?’ Seeing my nod, he gave one of his own, as though he’d suddenly made sense of why Daniel had given me this room to sleep in.

  Curious, I asked, ‘How long have I been gone this time?’

  ‘Eight bleeding days.’

  ‘And Daniel has to go somewhere?’

  ‘He does. And he can tell you all about that for himself, I’m thinking, once you’re up and dressed.’ At which he stopped, as we both noticed something obvious.

  Tugging at my T-shirt sleeve, I said, ‘I’m sorry, I—’

  ‘You’ll need the wardrobe of a queen, if this keeps up,’ he told me drily. Leaving me a moment on my own he went next door to Daniel’s room and came back in through the connecting door weighed down by the most beautiful gown I’d yet seen, of a quiet green colour that shifted when catching the light like the leaves of the trees shaded deep in the woods.

  I touched the fabric as he laid it on the bed beside me. And I couldn’t. I just couldn’t.

  ‘Fergal, I can’t wear this.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’ve lost two gowns so far. Ann’s gowns. It’s just not right. And if I lose another—’

  Fergal cut me off. ‘This was not Ann’s.’

  I stopped. My hand fell still against the fabric as I looked at him.

  ‘Last week,’ he said, ‘Danny took the Sally down to Plymouth on some business. He came back with this.’ He flipped one sleeve so it lay straight across the bodice. ‘There are slippers to go with it.’

  ‘For me?’

  ‘Well, fair to say it wasn’t meant for me.’ Straight-faced, he said, ‘The colour is my favourite, but the cut would never do me justice.’ Digging briefly in a pocket he produced a handful of hairpins. ‘You’ll need these as well, will you not?’

  ‘Thanks.’

  I would have said more but a sudden rise of voices underneath us made him lift a warning finger to his lips, until the hard slam of the front door and the crunch of footsteps outside on the path made him relax. Crossing to the window, Fergal watched whoever had just left stride off towards the road.

  ‘That’s Jack away to lick his wounds,’ he said with satisfaction. ‘You can come down when you’re ready, then, for Danny will I’m sure have things to say to you.’

  And taking up my finished tray he left me on my own to dress.

  The gown was of a different design than the others. More modern, I supposed. Just as the fashions I was used to changed each year, so too the fashions of this time must have evolved as well according to the current style. The sleeves were still close-fitted to the elbow and turned back above the wrists to show the ruffles underneath, but the bodice had a different shape and cut and fastened at the side instead of at the front, which made it difficult to manage on my own.

  I’d nearly reached the point of giving up when Daniel’s voice behind me asked, ‘Do you need help?’

  I hadn’t heard him coming up the stairs. I hadn’t even heard the door between our two rooms open, but the thing that marked a smuggler, I supposed, was his ability to move round without drawing much attention to himself.

  He’d changed his own clothes slightly from the last time I had seen him. The leg-hugging breeches tucked into his boots weren’t the brown ones he usually wore but a dark navy blue, and the full white shirt left open at his throat was new as well, and of a finer-looking linen than the ones that I remembered. But h
is smile was just the same.

  I was foolishly pleased to see him, but after the moment we’d shared in this room after lighting the fire I also felt a new degree of nervousness.

  I looked away, still fumbling with the fastening. ‘It’s a little bit difficult.’

  Taking that as a yes, he left the doorway and came to help. His fingers gently moved my own aside and did the task with expert ease.

  ‘It suits you well, this gown,’ he said. ‘I did not know for certain it would fit.’

  I stood quite still beneath his touch and thanked him. ‘It was very thoughtful of you.’

  ‘And expensive. This one garment cost me a full case of brandy,’ he said, ‘and a dance with the seamstress’s daughter.’

  The lightness of his tone relaxed me slightly. ‘I hope she was pretty.’

  ‘She danced like an ox, but I reasoned a gown that was bought for the price of a dance could not help but have happiness in it.’ He’d finished. ‘There,’ he said, and turned me round to face inspection.

  I kept my gaze hard on his shirt lacings. ‘You shouldn’t have gone to so much trouble, you know. Once I go back to my own time it’s as good as lost, just like your wife’s clothes. I can’t seem to find a way to bring them back.’

  He gave a shrug. ‘And that is why I bought you this one.’

  ‘So I wouldn’t lose any more of hers?’ I said it wryly, but he didn’t take it as a joke.

  ‘I bought the gown,’ he told me very carefully, ‘so that you could be done with borrowed things.’ His hand still rested on my waist. ‘I thought it time that you had something you could know was yours alone.’

  My chin came up at that, and as my gaze met his I knew he wasn’t talking any more about the gown itself. The constable had told me once that Daniel only let me wear Ann’s clothes to bring her ghost to life, and even though I’d known Creed’s words were poison there’d been part of me since then that couldn’t help but wonder just who Daniel really saw when he was looking at me.

  Looking at the darkness of his eyes now I saw nothing but my own reflection there, and felt those doubts begin to fade.

  His eyes asked a brief question, asked it and searched mine to read the reply before his one hand slid slowly under my hair to the back of my neck and he lowered his head.