Garden of the Moon (3 page)

“Samuel?” Sara gently poked Raina’s father in the side. “Please go inside and make sure everything is…in order?”

With a slow nod, the burly, black man jumped to the ground, climbed the stairs and then entered the house.

To avoid her maid’s questioning look, Sara pretended to be absorbed in her surroundings. No need to explain why she’d sent Samuel inside before them. If Raina thought that a strange man lay in wait for them inside the house, wild horses wouldn’t get the girl in there.

A few minutes later, Samuel emerged, descended the stairs and grinned. “Looks fine to me, Miss Sara.”

“Nothing unusual?” Sara stared hard at him.

“No, ma’am.”

“You looked upstairs?”

“Yes, ma’am.”

“You spectin’ something’ unusual?” Raina blurted, her hands clasping Sara’s in a death

grip.

Sara pulled her fingers from Raina’s grasp. “No, of course not. I was just being careful. It’s not unusual for vagrants to take refuge in these deserted homes, you know. Do you want to go in there and find some vagrant ready to pounce on us?”

“No ma’am.”

“Very well. I suggest you pull yourself together and enjoy the moment. Nothing but a wonderful future awaits us inside.”

Her explanation seemed to appease Raina. But apprehension and excitement strained at Sara’s insides. It had to have been a trick of the light on the glass panes. But that didn’t explain why, when she saw that stranger, her heart had thumped against her chest or give a reason for the warmth that had rushed over her.
That
had not been her imagination.

Samuel cleared his throat. “You ladies gonna git out da buggy or ya gonna sit there and chitchat fo the duration?” Chuckling to himself and shaking his head, Samuel stepped to the side of the carriage. “Fo as much as you gots to say and as long as you been sayin’ it, I spects you woulda said it all by now.”

The indulgent smile he flashed their way tempered Raina’s father’s deep-throated, reprimand. Both girls were used to his gentle chiding.

Samuel extended his hand to help Sara to the ground.

She rose, cast a last wary look at the upstairs windows, then gathered her skirts in one hand and took Samuel’s supporting hand in the other. Carefully, she stepped to the ground, smoothed the travel wrinkles from her voluminous, hunter-green, traveling gown, and then walked slowly toward the staircase leading up to the first floor veranda.

Her heart beat out a frantic rhythm against her rib cage. She was about to enter her own home. Sara Madeline Wade’s home.

***

The inside of Harrogate, with the exception of the white dustcovers draped over the furniture, was just as Sara remembered it. The harpsichord, the one at which she and her grandmother Alice had sat and warbled off-key Christmas carols, still filled the large, bay windows overlooking the veranda. The settee, where she’d fallen asleep in her grandmother’s arms while Alice had related stories of her courtship with Ezra Wade, still dominated the center of the room. Though dusty and in need of laundering, the drapes that puddled on the cypress floor still provided a perfect place for a young girl to hide from a frantic maid at bedtime. Wonderful memories of a happy childhood filled every nook and corner of this magnificent home. All those precious memories, all there, all preserved, all waiting for Sara to come back and remember.

“Laws a mercy. This won’t do. No, sir, won’t do a’tall.” Suddenly animated, her fears forgotten, Raina bustled around the room, a frown creasing her dark brow, her tongue clucking between sentences. With a newfound determination, she whisked sheets from the furniture and balled them in her arms. “Dey knows you was a comin’. House shudda been ready fo the mistress befo she gits here. Jes pure laziness, dat’s what it is all right. Pure laziness.”

“Papa said the house servants will arrive tomorrow with the gardeners and the field hands he’s sending over from Magnolia Run. The only house servants he sent ahead were your mother to cook and her sister Latisha to help her.” Raina’s mother, Chloe, would have her hands full in the kitchen cooking meals, and, even very pregnant, Latisha could assume some of the burden. With all the kitchen chores to be done, Sara couldn’t ask either of them to do the housework as well. “In the meantime, I can help with this.” Sara pulled a sheet from the harpsichord and began folding it, only to have it snatched from her fingers by the irate maid.

“Ain’t fo you to do.” Raina frowned heavily at her, and then tucked the sheet into the growing pile she hugged against her chest. “Masser Preston should a had dem girls here afore you came. Ain’t right fo the lady of the house to come home to dis. Ain’t right a’tall.”

A smile tugged at Sara’s mouth. Even though the two women had been friends for years, when it came to her duties and Sara’s station as her mistress and what tasks she would allow her to do, Raina had always drawn a distinct line. Evidently folding furniture covers was not one of the duties allowed.

***

“Dey’s jest some things a lady don’t do,” the diminutive maid declared hotly. “No, suh.” She shook her head firmly, making the brightly-colored
tignon
covering her hair slip down on her forehead. She pushed the coil of material back in place with her forearm.

Raina hated the
tignon
, but the laws in New Orleans required that a Negro’s head be covered at all times. Now that they were out of the city, perhaps Sara would allow Raina to forgo the hated head-covering. Of course, when neighbors came to call, that might cause some talk. But did she care? Gran wouldn’t have. After all, this was Sara’s house now. She’d have to think about that and add it to the many decisions she would be making as mistress of Harrogate.

“Ain’t seemly,” the maid continued to mumble. “Jes ain’t seemly.”

Knowing Raina’s outraged, mumbled complaints could go on indefinitely, Sara shut her ears to them and wandered over to the harpsichord. The lovingly-cared-for rosewood glowed in the afternoon sunlight like the dark honey Gran’s cook used to spread over Sara’s warm cornbread. With memories of Gran running as thick as cream through her mind and a strange compulsion driving her, Sara ran her fingertips over the keys. A discordant, high-pitched tinkle filled the air. She continued to run her fingers over the keys. But several keys reacted with a hollow
thump
, as though something prevented the strings from being struck.

She moved to the side, tipped up the lid and peered inside. A gold locket and chain lay coiled on the strings. Sara picked it up and examined the exquisite piece of jewelry. Two engraved roses adorned the front, their stems wrapped around each other so completely that it made it difficult to tell where one ended and the other began. She opened the catch and flipped the heart open. Inside an inscription read…
My Love Forever
.

***

Gran had never worn anything like this. So where had it come from? Perhaps one of her grandmother’s many party guests had lost it. Whoever it belonged to, with an inscription like that, it must be a treasured possession. Absently, she clicked it closed, and then tucked it into her dress pocket with the hope of eventually finding its owner.

***

Hours later, exhausted from an excitement filled, sleepless night, the long carriage ride from New Orleans, and the little work Raina had condescended to allowed her to do, Sara climbed into the large, canopied, custom-made bed that had been her grandmother’s prize possession.

After harvesting an ancient oak from somewhere on Harrogate land, the wood had been taken to the plantation carpenter who’d constructed a bed to fit Ezra Wade’s abnormally tall frame. As a result, Sara’s petite, five-feet-three body could luxuriate in the vastness of the down-filled mattress. After her grandfather had died, Sara had spent many nights here with her grandmother, pretending she was floating miles above the earth on a huge, white cloud.

She smiled contentedly and snuggled down into the feather mattress. The full moon spilled through the tall, bedroom windows, coating everything it touched with a silvery-blue cast. Despite her total exhaustion, Sara found it hard to tamp down her excitement and find sleep. Instead she lay awake taking in the beautifully appointed room, the large windows, and the carved door frames.

Then her gaze locked onto the portrait of the elegant woman hanging over the fireplace. She’d asked her grandmother who the woman was, but Gran had grown impatient and even a bit nervous and said she had no idea.

From childhood, Sara had always hated the portrait. She’d gotten the insane idea in her young head that the woman in the picture didn’t like her. Whenever she’d entered the room, Sara had often imagined the faint smile on the woman’s lips turning down in a frown, her eyes assessing and angry.

“She hates me, Gran. I know it.”

“Nonsense, my darling girl. How on earth can a painting hate you?” Gran’s smile had held all the indulgence she always showed her only granddaughter.

“But just look at the way she keeps staring at me. No matter where I go, she’s always watching.” Sara had moved about the room to illustrate.

Gran laughed. “Child, her eyes only seem to follow you. Good artists can do that, you know. They can make a portrait’s gaze come alive.” She’d risen from the end of the bed and taken Sara’s hand. “Now, let’s you and I go find Matilda and see if her cornbread is out of the oven yet.”

With the total dismissal of the subject, they’d left the room, but Sara had never forgotten it and made every attempt, when in her Gran’s bedroom, not to look at the painting.

Now, once more the object of attention of those frigid, gray eyes, Sara had trouble accepting Gran’s explanation. The chill of the unrelenting stare raced through her. Unable to sleep, Sara slipped from the bed and went to the window overlooking the back lawn.

Below, as though lit from within, the full moon painted the entire landscape with an eerie glow. Her gaze came to rest on a large area in the center of the lawn cordoned off by high shrubs on three sides.

On the third side, a moongate afforded an opening to the garden within. Her grandfather had brought the moongate for her grandmother as a birthday gift after his visit to the Orient. Ten feet tall and almost as wide, the circular gate, fashioned of polished, white marble glowed in the moonlight. On either side, a marble Temple Dog warded off evil from entering the garden. At the top of the circle a small plaque read:
Promise forever unbroken
.

A moongate, Gran had explained to Sara, ensure happiness to all who walked through it to enter the garden. And certainly that had been true in Sara’s case. No place had provided her with the deep love and unbridled happiness she’d always experienced in what Gran had dubbed the Garden of the Moon. And, on those rare visits her mother had made to Harrogate, the gazebo in the middle of the garden had been a haven for Sara, a place to escape to where she wouldn’t be scrutinized and reprimanded for every move she made.

Above the arch, the wide open moonflowers turned their snowy faces to the sky and invited the silvery moths to pollinate them. Their sweet scent filled the night air and drifted to Sara through her open window, bringing with it more cherished memories of the hours she and Gran had spent in the garden. It saddened Sara that by morning the flowers would have closed tight and died. Though they enjoyed a short lifespan, Sara knew that when the sun came up again, the garden would be alive with the beauty of the other flowers: magnolias, azaleas, forget-me-nots, roses, wood violets, morning glories, and camellias—all white.

On many occasions, while peeking out her bedroom window, Sara had caught site of wisps of smoke floating in the garden. The wisps, unlike the specters she’d been used to seeing, had neither substance nor form. Instead of making her apprehensive, however; they brought with them an overwhelming sensation of warmth, contentment and love such as Sara had never known, not even from Gran. The young Sara had no idea how she’d known, but she’d been sure that love lived in that garden. As she stood here now, that love seemed to rise up from the garden and fill her body, pushing away her restiveness.

Finally at peace, eyelids drooping, Sara made her way back to the bed. She pulled the covers over her, but she was still acutely aware of the steely eyes of the portrait boring into her. Tomorrow, she’d find a suitable replacement, and the hated portrait would be consigned to the attic forever. Turning her back on the picture, she pulled the covers over her head.

She could almost hear her grandmother laughing at her foolishness.

A soft chuckle escaped Sara. Lord, but she missed her carefree grandmother and the happy times they’d spent together. Sara took a deep breath and surprisingly detected the faint scent of the cologne her grandmother had specially blended in a French Quarter perfumery still clinging to the room. The scent reminded her of the creamy-white magnolias that bloomed each year throughout the grounds at Harrogate, but most abundantly in the Garden of the Moon. She was glad she’d left the window open to admit their heady scent.

Memories of Gran filled Sara’s head. Having adored her grandmother, she was seldom far from Sara’s thoughts, but tonight those thoughts were more intense, more persistent. It had to be because she was back at Harrogate. Yes, that had to be it. Sara was home.

With a contented sigh, she closed her eyes and allowed the shroud of sleep to envelope her.

***

“Sara.”

Her name being called softly came from a long way off. She stirred in her sleep and settled more comfortably under the down coverlet.

“Sara.”

The side of the mattress dipped, as if someone had sat down beside her.

“Raina?” Sara mumbled through the mist of sleep still fogging her brain and snuggled deeper into the warm bed clothes. “It’s too early. Let me sleep for a while.”

“No, my darling girl, it’s not your Raina. It’s me, and you must wake up. I can’t stay long.”

Sara’s ears pricked. Only one person ever called her
my darling girl
. Could it be…