Mariana (27 page)

When I woke, the room was deep in shadow and the moon was full above the lawn. I was lying alone on the bed, on top of the dark-crimson coverlet, my hand outstretched toward an absent lover.

Alone on the bed, but not alone in the room. Someone was standing in the corner, a tall gray shadow with faintly gleaming eyes. As I lifted my head
from
the mattress the shadow stepped forward, and a sliver of moonlight touched the hard, elegant contours of the man's face. I couldn't see Geoffrey de Mornay's expression as he stood there with his back to the window, staring down at me, but I felt his tension.

'I think we need to talk,' he said.

Twenty-seven

In the end, it was left to me to do most of the talking. Geoff sat facing me in the richly decorated parlor where we'd first spoken on the day we met. His face looked tired in the lamplight, showing clearly the strain of his long drive from London, but his eyes were unwavering and attentive. He interrupted my rambling narrative now and then to ask a question, or clarify a point, but he didn't move from his chair except to refill our wineglasses from the bottle on the table between us. By the time I had finished telling my story the morning sun had risen, a lark trilled brightly in a tree outside the window, and the bottle of wine was empty.

Geoff didn't pass judgment immediately. He made a steeple with his fingers and looked down at his shoes, frowning.

'You think I'm mad,' I guessed.

'Of course I don't.'

'It's all right,' I said, rubbing my forehead with a weary hand. 'Sometimes I think I'm mad, myself.'

'It's not that I doubt what's been happening to you. Well'—he smiled—'maybe I doubt it just a little bit, but I don't doubt that you believe, honestly believe, the truth of
what you've seen. I'm just not sure how to take this.' He leaned back in his chair and frowned again. 'Richard,' he mused aloud. 'If only we had some record of a Richard de Mornay ...'

'There's nothing in your father's files?'

'I'm sure there isn't. I can check again, if you like, but I'm certain I would have remembered....' He rose and fetched a sheaf of papers from a nearby writing desk. When he spread them on the table at our knees, I recognized them as the same papers he'd shown me that night at Vivien's. He flipped through them silently for a few minutes, then closed the file and repeated his verdict: 'Nothing. You're sure it was Richard?'

I nodded emphatically. 'Positive. William de Mornay was his father.'

'Well, that doesn't help much. My father didn't find anything on William's children, only some portraits that look to be the right age. There might be papers somewhere, but I'm afraid I don't have them.'

'Can't you check their father's will, or something?'

'He didn't leave one.' Geoff's mouth quirked. 'Most inconsiderate, from a genealogical point of view. I only know that after William's death the next recorded owner
of
Crofton Hall is his grandson, Arthur.'

'Arthur ..." I clutched at the name. 'Richard showed me Arthur's portrait, in the gallery. Unpleasant-looking child. He lived in Holland, I think, with his mother. Oh, what was his father's name?' I asked, pressing my fingers to my eyes. 'Richard mentioned it once ... it started with an
R
as well.... Robert? Robert,' I said, more firmly. 'Robert was Richard's younger brother.'

Geoff checked his notes again. 'Sorry. You may be right, you're probably right, but there's no way I can confirm it without some sort of record.'

'There must be something,' I said. 'What about the portrait in the library? Would there be any clues there?'

He shrugged. 'It's worth a try.'

I chattered nervously while we crossed the Great Hall, trying to make conversation. 'How did you know I was upstairs?'

'I found your raincoat in the kitchen. Knew you had to be around somewhere. Freda must have let you in, did she?'

'Yes.' I nodded. I hadn't mentioned Mrs. Hutherson earlier. For some reason, I wasn't ready to share the confidences that had passed between us. Instead I said simply: 'She and I had tea together, and then I went off to look around upstairs. She must have thought I'd gone home, if she locked up when she left.'

He made a vaguely noncommittal sound and nudged open the library door. 'After you,' he invited, following me across the wide carpet to stand beneath the towering portrait. 'What sort of clues were you hoping to find?' he asked me, looking up.

'I don't know. Anything that might help me prove to you that this is Richard.'

'Are these the same clothes he's wearing when you ... see him?'

'No.' I peered more closely. 'They're black, of course, but the style is different. Older, I suppose. After all, the portrait was painted nearly five years before I met him."

I felt his quick, assessing glance. 'I see.'

'He wears a ring on the little finger of his left hand,' I said. 'A fairly heavy ring. Silver. It's got the family crest on it, that hooded hawk's head on the braided wreath. You can sort of see it, in this picture.'

I pointed, and Geoff looked.

'Not that it really matters,' I went on, 'since it only shows that he's head of the family. It doesn't prove his name was Richard.'

'No,' Geoff admitted, cocking his head, 'but it might prove that someone owned the Hall in between William's death and Arthur's inheritance. Unless, of course, this is Arthur we're looking at.'

I shook my head emphatically, my curls bouncing. 'Not
a chance. Arthur has a weaselly sort of face, and looks a proper brat.'

'Watch it,' Geoff warned, grinning. 'I'm a direct descendant of that weaselly-faced brat.'

'Sorry.'

He leaned closer, until his nose was just inches from the brushstrokes. 'It's a pity the poor chap's mother didn't sew a name tag onto his jacket,' he quipped.

'That's it!'

'What's it?' He brought his head round, curious.

'Richard's mother,' I told him, my excitement mounting. 'Look, suppose I could prove to you that I knew something, something I couldn't have learned any other way than by seeing it, and suppose I could back that up with evidence, physical evidence. Would you believe in Richard then?'

'I believe in him now.'

'No you don't. Not really. But if I can show you that one part of my story is factual, then maybe you'll accept the rest of it as fact, too.'

'The law of logical deduction, you mean.' He smiled faintly. 'All right, Sherlock. What did you have in mind?'

'We'll need a shovel,' I told him, and the smile faded.

'A shovel?'

'Something to dig with.'

*-*-*-*

The sun was creeping overhead, and there were scarcely any shadows in the sleeping courtyard. I stood knee-deep in a tangle of weeds and briars and looked at the tools in Geoff’s hands.

'I'm not sure those will be enough," I voiced my doubts, and he looked down himself, frowning over the slightly rusted ice pick and trowel.

'Well, they'll have to do,' he replied. 'It's not my fault Iain hides all the tools. He's got all sorts of spades and shovels stashed away somewhere, but I haven't the faintest idea where he keeps them.'
'All right.' I shrugged, taking another step forward and shifting the matted growth with an experimental foot. 'I think it was around here, somewhere.'

'What was?'

'The tombstone,' I told him plainly. 'Richard's mother's tombstone. They wouldn't bury her in the churchyard because she was a Catholic, so William de Mornay had her buried here.'

'You're joking.'

'Not at all. It's a white slab, about this wide'—I spread my hands two feet apart—'and her name is carved on it.'

His eyes caught a gleam of my own excitement. 'Right here, you say?'

'I think so. It might be underneath a lot of soil,' I qualified, looking around us. 'The ground seems higher against the
wall
than it looked back then, but that could just be my imagination.'

'What about using that door as a reference point?' he suggested, nodding back over his shoulder toward the house. 'Where did the ground level used to be relative to that door?'

'The door wasn't there, then. The whole west passage used to be open on this side, like the cloisters in a monastery.'

Geoff accepted my statement philosophically. 'Well, we'll just have to hope for the best, then. The ice pick has a seven-inch blade, that ought to be enough.'

I felt an urge to cross my fingers as I watched him crouch down on his heels and begin to probe the overgrown earth with the ice pick, his movements cautious, half-believing. I suppose I had been secretly hoping, all along, that Geoff knew that he had once been Richard. I had envisioned in my waking fantasies a sort of euphoric moment of revelation, with both of us running into each other's arms like those hackneyed couples on television, glorying in the fact that we had found each other again after more than three centuries of waiting....
Of course, it hadn't happened quite like that. Reality rarely conformed to fantasy, in my experience. But perhaps, I thought, if I could convince him at least that I wasn't mad, that Richard de Mornay had in fact existed, then in time he might come to realize who he was. What we were.

His voice drifted over my thoughts. 'You think I'm Richard, don't you?'

'What makes you say that?'

'Deductive reasoning, again,' he said, slanting a smile in my direction. 'If you
were
Mariana, then ...' He paused, significantly.

'I can't say the thought hasn't crossed my mind,' I admitted, choosing my words with care. 'We did hit it off rather well, you and I, and your last name is de Mornay, and you love France nearly as much as he did.'

'How do you know he didn't come back as a Frenchman, then?'

I gazed down at that dark head, bent low over his work so that I couldn't see his expression. 'And you look exactly like him,' I finished in a quiet voice.

He let that one pass, moving his exploration a little farther from the house. 'It may not be here, anymore,' he warned. 'The tombstone, I mean. It may have been broken, or someone may have dug it up in later years and got rid of it, sacrilegious as that sounds. Or it may be down deeper than seven inches.' He glanced at my face and grinned. 'But you're going to keep me out here until I find the blasted thing, aren't you?'

My eyes implored him to be serious. 'It's important.'

'Well, then,' he said, 'I guess I'd better find it, hadn't I?'

He took an energetic stab at the soil by his knee, setting loose a shower of tiny wildflowers that scattered to the wind, and we both heard the sharper, ringing sound as the ice pick's blade struck stone.

For a full minute neither of us spoke, and then I was on my knees beside him, both of us tearing into the earth with pick and hands and trowel, ripping away the turf to expose
the smooth white stone beneath. When Geoff reached past me to brush the clinging dirt from the worn inscription, his fingers were not altogether steady.

'Louise de Mornay,' he read the words out loud. He brushed more dirt from the surface, and sat back on his heels, turning his head to meet my eyes. 'My God,' he said.

'I know. Join the club.' I brushed the hair from my eyes. 'You ought to try it from my angle.'

He squinted up at the sun for a moment, then rubbed his dirt-stained hands against his jeans and rose slowly to his feet. 'How be we take a bit of a breather?' His voice was deliberately light. 'Have some lunch. It'll give me time to absorb all this.'

'All right.'

Back in the west passage, I headed automatically toward the kitchen, and Geoff caught me by the elbow.

'Not here,' he said. 'I'd rather get out of here for an hour or so, if you don't mind. Let's go to the Lion.'

It was a short walk, and a silent one. I was so lost in thought that I nearly walked straight past my own brother seated on one of the bar stools, and probably would have done if Vivien hadn't said something to me.

'Look who's here!' was what she said. 'He couldn't get an answer up at the house, so he came down here to keep us company.'

'I figured you'd turn up sooner or later,' Tom said. His kiss smelled of Scotch, and as we drew apart I turned to cast a faintly accusatory glance at Iain, sitting in his usual place at the bar, one stool over.

'Have you been getting my brother drunk?' I asked him.

'Have a heart,' he told me, with a slow wink. 'I'm trying to keep up with him.'

'Hmmm. Another day off?' I asked Tom, and he smiled.

'Yes. Aren't curates wonderful.' His gaze slid past me. 'It's Geoff, isn't it?' he said, holding out his hand in greeting. 'Nice to see you again. Can I buy you a drink?'

How like my brother, I thought warmly, to dip into his
own shallow pockets to treat a millionaire to a pint of beer. Geoff accepted the offer graciously, and within minutes we were all four settled in a row along the bar, with Vivien leaning on her elbows facing us. Iain lifted his drink, nudging Tom's arm.

'What's that you were saying about Morrisey?' he asked my brother.

'He'll never stand up to Conner.'

Geoff looked inquiringly at Vivien, and she rolled her eyes back at us. 'Chess match,' she explained, 'if you can believe it. We've run the gamut of conversation topics this past hour.'

Tom wasn't listening. 'Ned,' he called along the bar, 'what does it say in there about Morrisey's chances?'

Ned flipped a page of his newspaper and answered without lifting his head. 'Doesn't have a snowball's chance,' was his summation, and Tom looked vindicated.

'See?'

'You're way off beam.' Iain shook his head. 'Morrisey is a Scotsman, after all.'