The Rose Garden

by Susanna Kearsley

  The constable, it seemed, had not been pleased to find his spy left on the shore. And despite Jack’s claims no local jury would convict the Butler brothers, I knew better than to underestimate the constable. What Creed could do within the law and what he’d dare to do outside it were, I knew, two very different things.

  The boat scraped bottom on the shingle. Fergal held it steady while I scrambled out to stand beside the waterfall, which, having passed midsummer, had thinned down to a trickle that shifted and danced down the long drop from overhead, splattering onto the already wave-wet rocks close by my feet. It was a good thing I already knew about the hidden entrance, otherwise the sudden figure stepping from what looked like solid rock might have unnerved me into jumping even higher than I did.

  Daniel touched my arm. ‘We’ll have to put the boat up. Will you wait inside a moment?’

  With a nod I sidled past him through the long cleft in the stone.

  The rush of silence struck me with the same swift force that I remembered from the day I’d come down here with Mark. The sea sounded suddenly very far off, and the lyrical dripping of water from somewhere came echoing back from the walls of wet stone.

  This was not the unused and abandoned space I’d seen that day, though. The scents of the sea and the salt-dampened rocks were overlaid here with more human ones – pipe smoke and new wooden barrels and candles that had only just been extinguished, the smell of their smoke still a sharpness that lingered unseen. The one candle they had left burning sat stuck in its own melted wax on a small tin plate set on the top of a barrel – one barrel among many others that stood stacked in staggering rows down the long curving wall to my right. I couldn’t tell from looking at the barrels what was in them, but I would have bet the bank it wasn’t anything to drink.

  More likely, I decided, they held guns or arms of some sort that were meant for the rebellion. From the articles I’d read I knew the Duke of Ormonde’s plans had been to raise a loyal army in the west of England that would fight beneath his banner in support of young James Stuart when he came across the sea to claim the throne so many in these times believed was his by right of birth.

  James Stuart would come, I knew. He would land in the north, up in Scotland, and men throughout Britain would rise in his name, and would pay with their lives, and their cause would be lost in the end. All for nothing, I thought. All the risks that these men were now taking to bring back these guns or whatever they were, and to hide them down here, it was all wasted effort.

  I felt a sudden heavy sadness in my chest, and yet I knew that, even if I did warn Daniel of what was to come, he would do nothing differently. He stood with his king, no matter what the odds or consequences, because that was where his heart and honour told him he must stand. Fergal had explained this at the woodpile when he’d said, ‘To Danny, knowing that the battle will not end the way he wishes does not make it any less worthwhile to fight.’

  I heard a quiet step behind me on the stone and Daniel’s head came round the corner of the entrance. ‘Done,’ he said. ‘Would you mind fetching me that candle, Eva?’

  Being closer to it, I nodded, and crossed to lift it from the barrel, being careful where I put my feet upon the floor with all its slippery rocks and damply filled depressions. As I lifted up the candle on its small tin plate the flame dipped briefly sideways, dancing light across a gleaming length of metal near the barrel’s bottom edge – the blade of Daniel’s dagger, lying on the floor. He must have dropped it there by accident, I thought. I nearly bent to pick it up … but then I stopped myself, remembering Mark’s treasure box, and Daniel’s dagger buried at the bottom of it.

  Here was where he’d lost it. And where Mark, in time, would find it. It was not my place to interfere.

  Daniel must have seen me hesitate. ‘Is everything all right?’

  My fingers folded to a tight fist at my side, to stop me reaching for the dagger as I wanted to. ‘I’m fine,’ I said, and turning I walked back to him, the candle held in front of me. It hardly shook at all.

  He took it from my hand and thanked me for it, then to my surprise he blew it out. ‘I would not wish to see our work destroyed by fire,’ he said, by way of explanation.

  ‘Won’t we need the light for walking home?’

  Which was, I later thought, a really stupid thing to ask a smuggler who would hardly want to call attention to his presence in the woods at night. But Daniel only smiled, a smile I couldn’t see but clearly felt against my lips as he bent close to lightly brush his mouth across my own – the barest kiss, because there wasn’t really time for more than that, with Fergal waiting just outside.

  ‘Sometimes,’ said Daniel, ‘’tis better to be in the dark.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE

  We slept late the next day. Jack was up and about before any of the rest of us. I heard him moving round the house and whistling round the kitchen on his way out to the stables. In the room beside me Daniel woke and stirred. I heard his feet thump to the floor, and then the quiet movements while he dressed and went downstairs.

  I thought of drifting back to sleep, but in the end I rose and dressed as well. It took a little while, and by the time I got down to the kitchen Jack was back indoors and arguing with Daniel, though this wasn’t like the argument I’d heard them have before. More like a stubborn disagreement.

  ‘Ay,’ said Jack, ‘I know what you were thinking, but I’m saying you were better to have let the lad come with you and then tossed him over halfway through the crossing, for that might have been an accident and no one could have called it any different.’

  Daniel’s level look spoke for itself, but he elaborated anyway. ‘I do not murder beardless lads. Good morrow, Eva.’

  With a nod I took the bucket from its hook beside the hearth and slipped between them.

  Jack said, ‘Beardless lads who have been shamed in front of Creed may prove more dangerous than you might yet expect.’

  I would have liked to have hung about longer to hear what Jack thought Creed’s unsuccessful spy might try to do to seek revenge, but being on thin ice already with Jack I knew it would be best if I kept to the things that a sister of Fergal’s would logically do. And right now, that meant fetching a bucket of water to start cooking breakfast.

  The well had a simple design with a winch and a rope and a hook for the bucket, but hauling the bucket up full was more work than I’d thought it would be. I was leaning my weight on the winch in an effort to speed up the process when Jack banged his way out the back door and started across the yard.

  Catching sight of me, he changed direction and came over, saying curtly, ‘Stand aside.’ I couldn’t help but think the force he threw against the winch was more from a release of temper than from any real desire to help me. The bucket all but flew up from the darkness of the well, and when he yanked the bucket from its hook it sloshed a wave of water out to protest such rough treatment.

  ‘There.’ He thrust the bucket in my hands and turned away, strode off four steps and wheeled again to add, ‘If you do have a voice, you might use it to persuade my brother that there is a time when men must act to aid themselves, and not for honour.’

  If I could have answered back, I would have told him there’d be no point in my telling Daniel anything. He was the way he was, and there was no force that could change him.

  As I’m sure Jack knew already. With a final glare he turned and carried on towards the stables while I slowly lugged the water back across the yard.

  Fergal, newly awake and still yawning, met me at the kitchen door and took the bucket from my hands, following my backwards glance with his quick knowing eyes. ‘Don’t you worry at all about Jack, he’s all bluster. He’s only been penned up alone in the house these past days, and he’s wanting a breath of air.’

  I didn’t worry about Jack, as it happened. I knew he would live to a good age. It was the other two men that I worried about.

  ‘Breakfast,’ said Fergal. ‘And then I’ll be leaving you her
e to take care of the dinner.’

  ‘Why? Where are you going?’

  ‘Lostwithiel.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Not your business. Now, breakfast.’

  ‘Does it have to do with the guns you brought back?’

  Fergal turned then and gave me a look. ‘I do hope that I never go forwards in time, for I’d not long survive in an age filled with women so curious.’ Setting the bucket down hard on the hearth he said, more firmly, ‘Breakfast.’

  But I knew that I was right. And when he rode off in his turn an hour later, I wished hard that he would meet with no adventures on the road.

  Daniel was busy upstairs with his books.

  The pleasant scent of pipe tobacco met me on the landing when I went up with a mind to make my bed. Instead I went the other way along the corridor and found him in his study, deeply absorbed in a book that looked, even for this time, quite old. Glancing up from his seat by the window, he took the pipe from his mouth for a moment and asked, ‘Did you want me?’

  A loaded question, I decided, if I’d ever heard one. Resisting the impulse to answer it, I simply told him, ‘I’ll be starting dinner soon. It’s fish – that’s all that Fergal’s left. How do you like it cooked?’

  ‘However you desire to cook it,’ was his answer, with a smile. ‘Did he gut them first for you, at least, before leaving?’

  ‘He did, yes.’

  ‘A good man.’ Setting his pipe on the table beside him, he rounded his shoulders to stretch them.

  I looked at the book he held. ‘What are you reading?’

  For an answer he turned it round, holding it open at the title page so I could read the words myself. The Sceptical Chymist. The ‘chymist’ had me stumped a moment, then, ‘A book of chemistry?’

  ‘You know the science?’

  ‘Only what I learnt in school.’

  ‘Which was, no doubt, beyond what even the greatest of our current men of science could yet fathom.’ Giving a nod to the book he said, ‘This man, Richard Boyle, had a very great intellect, although he dwelt too much I think on alchemy. But when I was naught but a babe he conducted experiments dealing with fire and combustion, chemical combustion. I had hoped to find them detailed here, but this book was published before that time. Still, it makes for fascinating reading.’

  ‘What’s got you interested in chemical combustion?’

  ‘You. Your self-igniting spills.’ He flipped a page and settled back. ‘It does occur to me that phosphorous might have some useful qualities, but as for the other chemical or chemicals that one might need—’

  I cut him off in something close to panic. ‘You can’t do that.’ But he could, I knew. It was the way his brain worked, turning everything he could not understand into a puzzle to be solved. A sort of game. Except, ‘You can’t be messing round with self-igniting matches, Daniel. They’re not meant to be invented till the 1800s.’

  He turned another page. ‘Then if I do invent them I shall swear to keep the secret in my family until then.’

  ‘Don’t joke. You can’t do this.’

  ‘Why?’ Holding his place in the book with his thumb, he closed it and faced me with an air of intellectual debate. ‘What harm can there be in increasing my knowledge?’

  ‘A great deal, if that knowledge isn’t something anyone should have in this time,’ was my argument. ‘Anything you do that you weren’t meant to do could change the future, change the way that things turn out.’

  ‘How do you know this?’

  ‘Well, it’s common knowledge. Common sense.’ The first rule of time travel, really, I thought – so ingrained in society’s psyche through novels and films that it took on the weight of a fact.

  ‘But what proof do you have?’ Daniel asked. ‘Has a man ever done this?’

  I said, ‘I don’t know, but—’

  ‘Have learned men studied the matter?’

  ‘They have theories …’

  ‘But how are they tested?’ he challenged me. ‘Theories are fine things, but I do confess that my own common sense tells me there is an order to life that cannot be so easily changed by the will of one man.’ He spread his hands to indicate the study. ‘All of this, this life that I have lived, it has already passed and faded from the memories of the people of your own time. It is rather like that poem you did speak of, with the moving finger writing words that cannot be erased. My page is written,’ he said, ‘and not even I can change a line of it.’

  I wasn’t sure which one of us was right. I said, ‘But I’m not meant to be here. I might change things.’

  Daniel looked at me a moment, then he set his book aside and stood and closed the space between us with his slow deliberate steps. ‘How do you know,’ he asked, ‘that here is not exactly where you’re meant to be?’

  I didn’t have an answer for him, partly because my mind, as always, had lost all its power to form coherent thoughts with him so near. And partly because I wanted so badly for him to be right, even though we both knew that the thing was impossible. I shook my head and repeated those words: ‘It’s impossible.’

  ‘Why is it?’ His eyes gave no quarter. ‘Where is your proof?’

  I had no hope of winning the argument, not with him standing there looking at me like that, but I still tried. ‘Where is yours?’

  Daniel took my hand and held it to his heart so I could feel its beating. ‘Here,’ he told me quietly. His other hand came up to hold my face and tilt it up while his began a slow descent. ‘And here,’ he murmured, with his mouth against my own.

  It was a thorough and persuasive kiss that made my senses spin until I couldn’t think of any reason not to be convinced.

  When he drew back, the look he slanted down at me was so intense it stopped my breath. Intense, yet somehow questioning. He held my face still warm within his hand and asked me in a slightly roughened voice, ‘Would you desire more proof than that?’

  I knew what he was asking, then. Knew, too, that I’d be complicating things beyond repair if I said yes. Because if I already found it difficult to leave him as things were, that would be nothing to the wrenching loss I’d feel when I was forced to leave him after this.

  Looking up, I gave a nod and watched the question in his eyes give way to warmth. And then he lifted me, the trailing gown and all, and he was kissing me again and we were moving from the study down the corridor towards the corner bedchamber.

  The door swung open with a crash and Daniel kicked it closed again behind us, and I heard the scraping of the key turned in the lock, and we were on the bed together and to tell the truth, I wasn’t much inclined to notice anything besides that for a while.

  * * *

  Time hung suspended. And for once, I had no question of my place in it. I was exactly where I was supposed to be, where I belonged, with Daniel Butler lying in the bed beside me. I could hear his even breathing, feel his warmth, the shifting of his weight against the mattress as he turned. His face in sleep was not so hardened as I’d seen it look. The lines were there, but smoother, and the slanting shadows of his lashes crossed his tanned skin peacefully.

  Then as I watched his face, his eyes came slowly open and he saw me too, and smiled.

  I closed my own eyes tight to hold the moment. Until I remembered how I had come into the past from the present this last time, and quickly I opened my eyes again.

  He was still there.

  Misreading my relief, he asked me, ‘Are you back to doubting whether I am real?’

  His tone was dry, and so I kept my answer light. ‘After what just happened, yes, I might be.’

  ‘I shall choose to view that as a compliment.’ The smile deepened briefly. ‘Or did you intend the opposite?’

  My gaze still held by his, I gave my head the slightest shake against the softness of the pillow and replied, ‘It was a compliment.’

  I watched the green eyes darken in that now familiar way, as Daniel bridged the space between us with a kiss that somehow managed the imp
ossible and left me with an even stronger sense of longing than I’d had before.

  He drew back, his expression turning serious, and let his head fall to the pillow close beside my own, his one hand sliding from my face into my hair where he absently wound a long strand round his finger as though he were making a curl. ‘I have known many women, Eva, but for all that, I have only loved but twice. I cannot say that I am well accomplished in the way of it, nor that I was the very best of husbands. I do hold the things I love too closely, sometimes, and I can be contrary for nothing but the sake of it, and I know well that I am not the easiest of men to make a life with.’

  I held my breath and lay there watching him, and waiting.

  He was studying my hair, now loosely spiralled in his fingers. ‘I have only loved but twice,’ he said again. ‘The first I took for granted, and now she is in her grave and gone. I would not wish …’ His hand closed briefly, tightening. ‘I would not wish to make the same mistake with you.’

  I’d held my breath too long and had forgotten how to let it out, and when I did my head felt light. ‘Did you just say you loved me?’

  ‘Ay.’ His eyes were back on mine again. ‘And I would have you marry me.’ He must have thought that sounded too imperious, because he caught the words and phrased them differently. ‘I’m asking,’ he said, gently, ‘will you marry me?’

  I felt my eyes fill hotly with the unexpected depth of my emotions, and I tried to blink the wetness back, to hold to that last ragged edge of reason. ‘I love you, too,’ I said. ‘But …’

  Daniel waited through the moment’s silence, finally prompting, ‘But?’

  ‘I’m hardly ever here. I come and go, I can’t control it. You can’t want to have a life like that.’

  His face relaxed. ‘’Tis you I want.’ He trailed his fingers warmly down my cheek and brushed away the single tear that had escaped my lashes. ‘I care not on what terms.’