The Rose Garden

by Susanna Kearsley

  He didn’t try to catch the next tear, or the one that followed after that. His gaze stayed steady on my own.

  ‘Say yes,’ he said so quietly it might have been a whisper. He moved his hand against my face so that his thumb could brush across my trembling lips as lightly as a kiss. ‘Say yes.’

  As if there were another answer I could ever give him. ‘Yes.’

  I’d never seen him smile like that. I knew that for my whole life I’d remember it, as I’d remember everything about this moment – the angle of the sunlight spilling through the bedroom window and the even warmer light in Daniel’s eyes.

  And how his touch felt, gentle on my face.

  ‘Whatever time we have,’ he said, ‘it will be time enough.’

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Fergal stood behind me in the shadows of the church.

  We hadn’t needed any witnesses. Apparently the laws had not been written yet that made them a requirement. In fact, according to Daniel, we could simply have exchanged vows on our own, there in the bedroom at Trelowarth with no priest around to hear us, and then sealed the deal by making love – which had, I admitted, seemed rather appealing to me at the time.

  But he’d laughed then and gathered me close and said we had in essence already done all of that. ‘The promise is the same no matter where we choose to say it, yet it seems to me more meaningful to say it in a church.’

  ‘We’ll have to wait, then.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘Well, because we’ll need a licence, or they’ll have to read the banns, or …’ I had paused, because I’d noticed he was looking at me strangely.

  ‘All we’ll need,’ he’d said, quite certain, ‘is a payment that will satisfy the vicar.’

  He’d been right, of course.

  Finding the vicar himself had been more of a challenge, but eventually he had been traced to the house of some friends in the neighbouring parish, and Fergal, returning from Lostwithiel, had headed back out to go fetch him. And that was how I came to be here, with an hour to go till sunrise, standing in the aisle of St Petroc’s church by candlelight with Fergal at my shoulder and the vicar off discussing terms with Daniel in the vestry.

  I felt a surge of nervousness again and smoothed the skirts of my green gown till Fergal told me, ‘Quit your fussing. You look fine.’

  Obedient, I stilled my hands and then, not knowing what else I should do with them, I clasped them both behind me. I whispered, ‘They’ve been in there a long time.’

  ‘You’re meant to be my sister, and a Catholic. I’d imagine that’s what’s keeping them.’

  ‘Oh.’

  ‘You’ve no call to worry. For the price that Danny’s offering, the vicar will be sure to keep his disapproval to himself.’

  I looked away again. ‘Like you.’

  ‘What’s that?’

  I shook my head and murmured, ‘Nothing.’

  Fergal took a step around to stand where I could see him. ‘Do you think I disapprove?’

  ‘I think you care about your friend,’ I told him with a shrug, ‘and you don’t want to see him hurt again.’

  ‘I want,’ he answered carefully, ‘to see him with a woman who will love him in the way that he deserves, and know the value of the man whose heart she carries.’ In his voice I heard that same fierce challenge I remembered from the first time we had met, when we’d squared off across the corner bedroom with me in my borrowed gown and him as mad as blazes. ‘Has he found that?’

  Looking up, I met his eyes and saw that underneath the challenge lay what looked to be affection, and not sure that I could speak around the lump of pure emotion in my throat, I gave a nod.

  ‘Well, then,’ he said. ‘Why the devil would you think I’d disapprove?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  ‘So you should be. Leaping into judgement.’ There was humour in the dark glance angled down at me. ‘If I truly disapproved, you’d not be here.’

  ‘Where would I be, then? At the bottom of the well?’

  ‘Most likely, ay.’

  ‘Big scary man,’ I called him, low.

  He didn’t hide the smile, this time. But he did step back again where he had been before, behind my shoulder, where he could more clearly see the vestry door.

  The flickering candles had burnt at least half an inch lower before Daniel came through that door with the vicar beside him – a middle-aged man with stooped shoulders who looked as though he wasn’t fully awake. But he seemed game enough for the task at hand.

  ‘Have you a ring?’ he asked Daniel, before we began.

  Daniel looked an apology at me and started to say something but with a shake of my head I reached over and slipped off the Claddagh ring, holding it out, and his fingers brushed warm on my palm as he took it and handed it on to the vicar.

  It was, I thought, a fitting thing to use Katrina’s ring for this. A way to feel her standing at my side, where I had always thought she would be when I married.

  With a cough the vicar set the ring with care upon the pages of his open prayer book, ready for his blessing. ‘Since I am told she cannot speak, I’d ask Mistress O’Cleary to—’

  ‘Her name is Ward,’ said Daniel, and the vicar stopped.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  Daniel said, ‘Her name is Eva Ellen Ward, and in this place of God she has a voice. For surely this is not a place where anyone should speak aught but the truth.’ He held the vicar’s gaze directly. ‘Nor where anyone should fear betrayal.’

  The vicar paused. Then nodded slowly. ‘No, indeed.’ He turned to me. ‘Now, Eva Ellen Ward, is it your wish that you be married to this man?’

  I looked at Daniel, grateful for his giving me the chance to say the words out loud. ‘It is.’

  ‘Then let us now begin.’

  The ring felt strange on my left hand instead of on my right. My thumb kept seeking out its smoothness there and twisting it around to feel the clasped hands and the heart, till Daniel caught my hand in his and held it while we walked.

  We were taking the longer way back through the fields, having let Fergal go on ahead of us. The rising sun had just begun to push its way above the hills that lay to the east of Polgelly, and over the wet grass our shadows stretched long.

  He’d been right. The words we had just said to each other had seemed much more meaningful, spoken aloud in the church, than they would have done if we’d exchanged our vows privately yesterday. Something of the solemnity of the traditional service still clung to me, keeping me silent till Daniel’s hand lightly squeezed mine.

  ‘You are lost in your thoughts. May I know them?’

  ‘I doubt they’d make sense to you.’ Turning, I showed him a smile. ‘I’m still sorting things through.’

  ‘And what is it,’ he asked, ‘that needs sorting?’

  ‘You know. How we’re going to manage this.’

  His turn to smile. ‘The same as any other married man and woman might. How else?’

  ‘But we,’ I said, reminding him, ‘are not like any other married couple, are we? We can’t really make plans for our future, not like normal people can.’

  ‘Why not?’

  I answered with a dry look. ‘We’re lucky enough if we make plans for supper. I might disappear before then.’

  ‘Life is always uncertain,’ he said with a shrug. ‘We cannot let the fear of what might happen stop us living as we choose.’ His fingers twined more tightly round my own.

  And then to lighten things, I said, ‘At least I didn’t disappear in church.’

  ‘No, you did not.’ He swung my hand a little as we walked on further, then his steps began to slow. ‘You did not disappear in church,’ he echoed. Stopping, he looked down at me. ‘Nor when we were on the Sally.’

  I knew his thoughts were travelling the same path mine already had, and coming to the same conclusion.

  ‘I know,’ I assured him, ‘I’ve noticed the same thing. Whatever’s been happening seems to be tied to Tr
elowarth itself.’ And I told him about the Grey Lady who’d vanished years before me.

  He was thinking. ‘So then if you left, it would most likely stop.’

  ‘It’s possible, yes, but I don’t know for certain. It’s only a theory.’

  ‘And theories are meant to be tested, are they not?’ Not waiting for an answer he went on, ‘Perhaps we ought to go away for a short while, to Bristol, or to Plymouth. You did say you always return to the moment you left your own time, yes? Then there is no danger. If we have guessed wrongly you’ll merely go back as you would have done had we stayed here. But if we are not wrong …’ There was no need to finish the sentence.

  ‘We could hardly be sure,’ was my argument, ‘after just one trip away. There’d be no guarantee.’

  ‘No. But we could repeat the experiment, surely. I gladly would go where I needed to go, if it kept you beside me.’

  I looked away briefly, in thought. We were standing where, three hundred years from now, the Quiet Garden would be coming into bloom with Mark’s beloved roses, safely walled to shield them from the sea-blown weather, but just at the moment there was nothing here but sloping field with wildflowers speckled through the bowing grass that tumbled down towards the roof and chimneys of the house below.

  I asked, ‘You’d leave Trelowarth?’

  ‘I can serve the Duke of Ormonde and the king aboard the Sally just as well as I could serve them from on land, mayhap a good deal better. And rebellions all must have an end.’ With a faint smile he brushed back the hair from my eyes where the wind kept on blowing it. ‘Ill or fair, I mean to be alive to see the end of this one. And there has been talk that if this new attempt to set King James upon his throne should founder, he will send the Duke of Ormonde to the Spanish court for aid, and I should think the duke will need assistance there.’

  ‘In Spain.’

  ‘Have you been there as well?’ His eyes crinkled with humour.

  ‘Well, actually, yes.’

  ‘Did you like it?’

  I lifted my chin. ‘Very much.’

  ‘Then,’ he said, ‘we will take it in small steps. Beginning with Bristol.’

  Sealing the bargain, he drew me in close for a quick kiss that lengthened to something more, making me hold to his waist for support, and my hand touched the top of the knife handle slung at his belt.

  Drawing back in surprise, I looked down at the dagger, and Daniel’s gaze followed mine. ‘What is the matter?’ he asked.

  It was not the same knife. This one had a bone handle, a cruder design. I said only, ‘You have a new knife.’

  ‘Yes. I’ve mislaid my favourite, but ’tis not a matter for concern. Most likely it is somewhere on the Sally.’

  I should tell him, I thought. I should tell him I knew where it was. But I couldn’t, because if I did, then it wouldn’t be there in the cave for the boy Mark to find it, as he was supposed to. And if I changed that, then what else …?

  ‘Eva?’ Daniel was holding me, watching my face. Waiting.

  I shook it off. ‘Sorry.’

  And then for the first time I realised the way he was watching me; noticed the look in his eyes as the landscape around us began to change, wavering.

  I tried to cling more tightly to him, knowing that I couldn’t, and my voice this time was no more than an anguished whisper. ‘Sorry.’

  Daniel’s arms came more closely around me. I saw his mouth moving, and knew he was telling me something. I thought he was saying he’d wait for me, but he had already started to fade and I only caught one faint word: ‘Wait.’

  Then the wind rose and swirled and collapsed on itself in a rush of unbearable stillness.

  My eyes were shut tightly.

  I kept them that way, not only because I knew if I opened them I’d only see the green walls of my empty bedroom at Trelowarth, and the empty bed that I was lying on alone, but because I felt them filling with the stinging heat of tears.

  I thought I’d learnt the pain of loss, but this was nothing like I’d ever felt before. I’d never in my life felt so alone.

  I turned my face into the pillow just in time to catch the first sob rising from this newly hollow place inside me, and the tears came with it, swelling in behind my eyes and spilling over with a force I couldn’t stop or fight.

  And through it all, the thing that seemed to me the most unfair was that the birds outside my window went on singing as though it were just like any other morning.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE

  That whole week was horrible. My emotions stayed close to the surface, and I had to concentrate hard to not vent them at every small irritant. Susan had noticed I wasn’t myself, but I heard her explaining to Mark it was likely a mixture of grief and fatigue.

  She was right.

  Her solution was, too. She kept giving me things I could do round the tea room, unchallenging tasks that would keep my mind busy without really needing much effort. I wiped down the newly bought tables and set them at just the right angle and clipped on the tablecloths, placing a bud vase for one single rose at the centre. I sent all the glasses and cups through the new built-in dishwasher, stacking them clean in their place on the shelves.

  Wednesday morning I sat with Felicity, folding the menus.

  She was, if it were possible, more quiet and absorbed in thought than me, and since this seemed so foreign to her nature I was finally stirred to push my own self-pity to the side enough to ask, ‘Are you all right?’

  ‘What?’ Glancing up, she said, ‘Oh, yes, I’m fine.’ She focused on the menu’s fold. ‘I’m really fine.’

  She wasn’t, though. Her hands shook very slightly and I recognised the barest hint of puffiness around her eyes. She had been crying.

  When the door swung open at our backs Felicity looked swiftly up, face wary and yet hopeful, then her eyes dulled. ‘Hello, Paul,’ she told the plumber.

  ‘What’s the problem?’ he asked cheerfully, his muscled shoulders and broad chest set off to good advantage in a black T-shirt this morning. In his fitted jeans and workboots, with his handsome face, he looked like the embodiment of most young women’s fantasies, and yet it seemed Felicity could barely spare a glance for him as she explained the difficulties Susan had been having with the sinks.

  She clearly was preoccupied with something – or with someone – and I had a good idea what. And whom.

  I found Mark working in the field. The weather had been dry this week and he’d been busy T-budding the root stock that he’d planted this past spring.

  Budding was a learnt skill and not everyone could do it as efficiently as Mark could. Moving doggedly along the rows of plants, he bent at each to make a shallow T-shaped cut above the root, and into that he tucked a single bud stripped from the stem of the variety of rose he wanted this one to become. Protected by a rubber patch, the tiny grafted bud would hopefully begin to take by autumn, and lie dormant through the winter months until Mark came next February with his shears to prune the whole plant back to just above the bud.

  From that new stump, the bud would grow and flourish, and become a rose as lovely as the ones that were now blooming in the next field over. Some things only needed time to find their proper footing. Time and patience. Others, sometimes, needed a swift kick.

  Mark glanced up as I came across the field towards him, and he gave a nod, but didn’t break the rhythm of his work.

  ‘What did you do,’ I asked him bluntly, ‘to Felicity?’

  He’d been treading lightly round me all week long, uncertain of my mood, and when he looked up now I read the caution in his gaze. ‘What did she say I did?’

  I told him, ‘Nothing.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘You made her cry.’

  He looked away and took a deeper interest in the plant that he was budding, though his tone remained a shade defensive. ‘All I did was tell her that I didn’t have the time to see an art show with her Saturday, in Falmouth. She had pieces she was showing there, and—’

&
nbsp; ‘What the hell,’ I asked him, plain, ‘is wrong with you?’

  ‘I’m sorry?’ Mark had raised his head again, surprised.

  ‘You heard. You’ve got this lovely, lovely girl who’s totally obsessed with you, and you’re too blind to see it.’

  He looked down again and said, so low I nearly didn’t hear it, ‘I’m not blind.’

  ‘What?’

  ‘I’m not blind.’ Emphatic, with an edge of rare impatience. ‘I can see she likes me, and for what it’s worth, I like her, too.’

  ‘Then why …?’

  ‘Is this your business?’

  ‘No.’ I met his glare head-on. ‘But someone needs to sort it out.’

  ‘It’s sorted.’

  ‘I can see that. You’re all angry, and she’s crying, and—’

  ‘It wouldn’t work.’ He threw the words down with a hard finality that left no space for argument, but my emotions were already raw and I was in a mood to argue.

  ‘Why is that?’

  ‘Because Felicity’s an artist.’

  ‘And?’

  ‘She needs her freedom,’ he explained. ‘Like Claire.’ Then, seeing I was looking unenlightened, he went on, ‘When I was young, Claire used to go away for days, for weeks, sometimes, to do her work. She’d up and take her canvases and off she’d go. She still does, every now and then.’ He raked the hair back from his face, a gesture of control. ‘I used to hate it, waking up to find she’d gone. Some men can live like that. My father could. I can’t.’

  ‘Felicity’s not Claire,’ I said.

  ‘Felicity’s a butterfly.’ Unmoved, he pointed out, ‘She’s barely been down here a couple of years, who knows when she’ll be off again.’

  I had known Mark long enough to know his body language, and from how he held himself I knew his inner conflict was a real one, but the memory of Felicity’s sad eyes spurred me to say, ‘Your famous theory, yes. The butterflies. There’s just one little problem with it.’

  ‘Is there, really?’ Mark was probably as close as I had ever seen him to the loss of his own temper, but he held it in. ‘And what would that be?’