Blackthorn Winter (9 page)

"Yes, yes," Quent was saying soothingly as we started walking away. "No one doubts that, Liza."

"That Glendenning woman does!" flared Liza.

"Forget her," said Quent sensibly. He poured water from the kettle into Liza's mug and stirred briskly with a spoon. "Here you go."

"I have my own strength," Liza mumbled drunkenly, ignoring the coffee. "I'm not like those people who need charms to be successful! Not like your Nora. She would never do
anything
without consulting her tea leaves or wearing that lucky necklace—" She broke off suddenly and stared at Quent as if she weren't seeing him anymore, but something else in his place. Then she blinked, and the baffled look was gone, replaced once more by drunken laughter.

"Drink your coffee, Liza," said Quent wearily. "You're hopeless."

Her laughter grew fainter as Duncan and I headed out the back door. "Let's start with the grounds," he suggested. "Get away from the lunatics."

I wiggled my eyebrows and laughed, trying to imitate Liza's cackle, and he chuckled. We set off side by side into the hallway and out the back door into the garden.

We wandered along the garden path, illuminated by the occasional light strategically planted among bushes or
flower beds. He pointed out the old mill wheel, a large stone wheel lying on its side in a tumbledown stone outbuilding. "Wheat was ground here a hundred years back," Duncan explained. "It was big business for the village and employed most of the villagers who weren't farmers or local fishermen. But now the main business is tourism—and art."

"You mean there aren't any more farms around here?" I asked. "And no fishermen?"

"Not as many farmers," he replied, "with the farmland getting developed for council houses. There are still the fishing boats, of course, but not as many people grow up wanting to make fishing their livelihood anymore. It's not where the money is."

"Catching tourists is more profitable than catching fish?" I giggled.

He glanced down at me with a grin. "They stink less, anyway." He directed me back along the path to the next outbuilding—less ramshackle than the mill, with modern windows and a stout wooden door. "This is Quent's studio. It's locked, but you can see through the windows. Ask him for a tour one day—I'm sure he'd love to show you the newest project."

I stepped up to the long windows and peered inside. The large room was in near darkness, but the light from the path allowed me to make out mysterious humps—sculptures-in-progress covered over with blue plastic sheeting. There was a stack of wood in one corner, and long sheets of metal leaning against the far wall. A long table held cannisters of tools; I could see hammers and chisels and files. There were machines, too: probably drills and saws for the metal and wood. "He's working on some sort of Viking project, isn't he?" I asked. "Liza mentioned it."

"Right. Sculpture inspired by the ancient boats and artifacts," Duncan explained. "Last year Quent went on a trip to Scandinavia and Iceland. He came back full of ideas. He whipped up a few smaller pieces and exhibited them in London, and the orders have been flowing in ever since. Now he's setting up a huge exhibit at the Millennium Dome for a show this summer."

"Wow," I said. "Impressive!" I thought I'd like to come back in daylight sometime and see the pieces close-up and uncovered.

We walked back to the main house for the rest of the tour, passing our cottage. I noticed how camouflaged it seemed, surrounded by trees, a shadowy bulk in the surrounding darkness. We entered the Old Mill House, skirting around the huge hall room where the party guests were still eating and laughing, and went into a smaller—though still very large—luxurious living room, then through a well-appointed study and then into a dark-paneled, booklined library. Here was the carousel horse I had seen through the window when we arrived. Duncan sank onto the window seat and patted the place next to him. I sat down, feeling happy to be with him and hoping he'd keep talking.

Since we'd been alone, curiously, Duncan seemed much less shy and much more relaxed. "Yes," he said musingly, "a stripper. Her name was Eliana, and she was somebody Liza Pethering had met at a London club or someplace."

"Liza Pethering—again!" I said. "The woman gets around."

"She's got a great knack for making trouble," he agreed. "She invited this Eliana to come to Blackthorn for a visit—you know, to see something of the English countryside
instead of just touring all the usual spots around London—and Eliana came. She stayed with Liza and Oliver a couple weeks after Liza decided to have her sit for a series of portraits. My dad met her at the pub, and the rest is history."

"They went off together—to Brazil?"

"That's right. Well, not straight away. My dad spent a lot of time with Eliana while she was here, having dinners at the pub and keeping her company during the portrait sittings. And when the paintings were done, he followed her back to London, and then on to Brazil. And they haven't been back since. Oh, my dad sends me the odd birthday card and such, but I haven't seen him for years and don't expect to. Then, after my mum died two years back, he wrote to say I could come live with them in Rio de Janeiro if I wanted, but Granny put her foot down. She said I was to stay right here in Blackthorn and live with her and Grandad, or else stay with Quent. They're my legal guardians now, since Mum died. I mean, I live with Quent, but it's not like he ever adopted me or anything official."

It was on the tip of my tongue to tell him I was adopted—but then I figured he'd probably already have heard that detail from Liza.

"Anyway," he continued, "Granny's never forgiven my dad for leaving my mum—which is rather funny, really, because Mum herself never was all that upset, I don't think. She and Dad weren't terribly well suited to start with—at least that's how it seemed to me. There were always tons of rows. Granny is still furious at Liza Pethering because she blames Liza for introducing Eliana to my dad."

"Liza's got loads of enemies," I observed. "Does she have any friends? Besides my mom, I mean?"

"My stepfather likes her, and my mum did," he replied,
shrugging. "It's all madness. But just melodrama rather than tragedy, really. I mean, Mum soon enough took up with Quent, and we moved here. They got married the following year and lived happily ever after, each one growing more famous every month with her painting and his sculpting." He looked at me and his eyes grew dark. "Well, happily ever after until the car crash that killed her."

"I'm so sorry," I said, and I truly was. Something twisted inside me at the very thought of dead moms.

"No, I'm sorry. Sorry to be running off at the mouth this way."

"Don't be sorry!" I said quickly. "I asked because I wanted to know."

"I was supposed to go with her that night. The night of the crash. She was going to London to be on a program on telly about amazing new artists—and she'd promised I could come and watch the filming."

"But in the end you didn't go?"

"Well, she left without me. Something must have come up, so she had to leave earlier than planned—I don't know what it was. But, whatever, it probably saved my life."

"So that's good," I said with a smile. But the bleakness in his face touched me. We were both without our birth mothers and our birth fathers; it was a bond between us. "You must have loved your mother very much," I said quietly.

"Yeah." Duncan sighed, then smiled at me. "Well, now that you've heard my tale of woe, don't you have to get revenge and tell me yours?"

"You don't know what you're asking," I teased, but really he
didn't
know, and I wasn't sure I should mention my unusual history. "Let's get on with this house tour."

We stood up and left the library and wandered on through the whole, amazing house. It was huge and elegant, but still felt comfortable. "Thirty-two rooms," Duncan told me. "I counted 'em myself once, just to make sure."

"Your stepfather must be a
hugely
successful sculptor," I said, impressed.

"He is," Duncan agreed. "But he actually inherited this place from his great-uncle. I think it takes most of the money Quent makes just keeping it up. There's always something springing a leak or breaking down or getting woodworm. My mum was glad when her own work started winning awards and stuff so she had extra money to add to the house fund." He stopped in the doorway of another room. "She loved this place," he said. "The whole house. In fact, she's the one who redecorated it and made it a real home instead of a museum. This room here was her special retreat—her parlor, she called it. I think her parlor was her favorite place—next to the studio out in your cottage, of course."

I stepped into the parlor and looked around. It was painted in a soft rose, lined with low bookshelves, and furnished with deep, soft couches, the sort you just want to sink into with a book in your hand. The windows looked out to the garden, and through the darkness I could see a light on upstairs in our cottage, in the sunroom. Maybe Duncan's mum had sat here, looking over at the cottage, thinking about a project and then walking over to her studio to paint it. This room had some of the same found art touches that I'd seen up in the sunroom: pinecones lined up on the window ledges, and a bare branch in a pot, hung with tiny crystals, tied with thin slivers of colored ribbons. "I'd like a room like this one," I murmured.

"Mum often sat in here to read," Duncan said softly. "And it's where she would sit when she was making jewelry, rather than up in her painting studio."

"I saw some of her jewelry," I told him. "Or—one piece, anyway. Up in her studio in our cottage—a really pretty necklace made of flowers and beads."

He nodded. "One of her talisman necklaces, I'll bet. She made them for friends, and no two were alike. I still have the one she made for me, and I always wear it before a big test at school. It has a big brown nut attached, and Mum said I should rub it before I started the test. That's what she did with hers—before a big exhibition or interview. Mum was terrified of audiences the way I'm scared of essay questions. She would rub her lucky pink quartz like I rubbed the nut. She made her necklace from dried blackthorn blossoms because the blackthorn branches used to be burned in the olden days to ward off evil spirits. Mum half believed in magic, I think. I never did, really—but I wanted to! It used to feel magical, just watching her work. I would sit up in her studio in the cottage—just watching while she painted..."

I wanted to reach over and smooth that pained expression off his face, but I just sat there. It was sometimes good, not having memories. Memories could make you sad.

"I guess that's why the thought of another family moving into the cottage and using that studio bothered me," he said, glancing sideways at me. "I didn't mean to sound angry yesterday."

After a short silence, I asked, "I hope you don't mind very much that we're living in the cottage now."

"Well," he acknowledged, glancing at me, "Quent and I had a row when he first told me he planned to rent it to
your mum. But now that I've met you, I'm glad you're there."

"Me, too," I said slowly. "I mean, I'm getting gladder. But it's hard being away from my dad. It doesn't feel right. I miss him."

"Are your parents divorced?" Duncan asked gently.

"No," I said, "not yet anyway." I spun away from him because I really didn't feel like talking about Dad. "It still feels magical in this room, somehow, don't you think?" I asked, as much to change the subject as because it was true. "As if your mother left behind a good feeling—" Then I broke off because there was suddenly something else in the room besides a good feeling.

That sweetly sickening smell.

I remembered—

Wake up! Oh, please, please wake up!

I dashed out of the parlor.
No!
I remembered
nothing.

"Juliana?" Duncan's voice was insistent. "What's wrong? Are you all right?"

I looked up at him in a daze. I put my hands up to my head and scrubbed my fingers into my hair, massaging my scalp as if I could rub the voice away and banish the smell....

"What's wrong?"

Dizzily I stood up. I needed to leave, I needed to leave right now. "I feel so ... strange. I have to go—"

"Wait—come with me," Duncan said, and he put his arm around me and walked with me out of the room and up a staircase—not the main, curving, dramatic staircase in the front hall but a smaller, narrower staircase.

Maybe the servants' staircase,
I mused foggily. I liked the feel of Duncan's arm around my shoulders, and I leaned against him as we walked. Quickly I felt fine again.

"Better now?" he asked worriedly, looking down at me.

"Yes," I said. "Sorry about that. I was just—dizzy for a minute."

"Oh, good. I thought you'd seen a ghost or something!"

"Are there ghosts in this house?" I asked teasingly, knowing fully well that if what I'd smelled and heard were ghosts, they were my own ghosts. But—something had triggered them here. What had it been?

I couldn't think what, and I felt completely better with Duncan's arm around me, so we continued the house tour, shyly touching shoulders as we walked. The place was incredible. Huge. There was a games room with a huge pool table in the center of the floor, and a conservatory with glass walls and a glass ceiling and a zillion blooming plants, and even a ballroom on the third floor, where I whirled around, arms out—imagining dancing someday with Duncan in our own personal version of a waltz. I spun the frightened child's voice right out of my head.

"And now I'll show you my lair," said Duncan when I'd finished dancing. With my head still spinning, I followed him down the stairs. As we were heading down another corridor, we saw Quent ahead of us, carrying someone—Liza Pethering!

He stopped when he saw us and smiled ruefully. "I'm afraid she's had a drop too much," he said in a low voice. He pushed open a door with his foot.

"Need help?" asked Duncan.

Quent shook his head as he moved into the shadows. "Nothing to do," he said over his shoulder. "She's totally soused. We'll let her sleep it off in the guest bedroom till Oliver can come back for her."