Mariana (28 page)

'Precisely.' My brother smiled into his beer, and a sly look entered Iain's gray eyes.

'Would you care to make a wee wager on it, then?'

Geoff intervened, raising a warning hand. 'Be careful, Tom,' he advised my brother. 'I've lost more money to this man than I'd care to mention.'

Tom
wavered, but only for a moment. He had never been able to resist a 'wee wager.' 'Five pounds,' he offered.

'Done.'

Iain sealed the bet with a handshake, let his eyes twinkle briefly at Geoff, and lit a cigarette. 'You look bloody awful,' he told his friend bluntly. 'What the devil have you been up to?'

'It's Julia's fault, really,' Geoff replied, passing on the blame. 'I haven't slept since I got back from London.'

I cringed mentally at his choice of words. Three pairs of eyes swung speculatively in our direction. Even Ned glanced
over at us before turning to the next page of his paper. Geoff caught his mistake and grinned broadly.

'Get your minds out of the gutter, you lot. As a matter of fact, we've been sitting up going over some of the old history of the Hall.'

Not exactly a lie, I thought, congratulating him silently on his truth-twisting abilities. Beside me, Tom lifted a dark eyebrow in an unspoken question, and I nodded imperceptibly. The message flashed clearly between us:
Yes, I've told him,
and Tom shifted his gaze from me to Geoff with new and sudden interest.

'We found something interesting, actually,' Geoff was saying, toying casually with his glass of beer. He looked at Iain. 'Remember how you always said that my courtyard felt like a tomb?'

'Aye.'

'Well, it is. We found a headstone buried in the weeds. William de Mornay's wife.'

'First or second?' Vivien asked, and Geoff frowned.

'What, wife?'

'No, William. First or second?'

'Oh.' Geoff’s face cleared. 'Second. The Cavalier chap who got sent to the Tower.'

Vivien raised her eyebrows. 'Why would they have buried her in the courtyard? Wasn't the church the usual place?'

'Don't know,' Geoff replied. 'Maybe she was a Catholic. Her first name was Louise, a French name.'

Bravo, I applauded him secretly. He was even better at this than I was.

Iain didn't appear at all surprised by our discovery. 'Either way,' he said, 'we'd best get it cleaned up a little, if there's someone at rest in there. I'll drop round tomorrow with the scythe and see what I can do.'

Vivien sighed in mingled amusement and impatience. 'What's that on your job list?' she asked him. 'Number one hundred and
one?'
I
'I like to keep busy,' he defended himself.

'I'll help him,' Geoff promised, and Vivien let it go with a toss of her fair head.

Tom was still stuck on an earlier thought. 'It's rather sad, isn't it, to think of someone being denied burial in consecrated ground?' He took a thoughtful sip of Scotch. 'The Church certainly has a lot to answer for, in history.'

'Keep talking like that,' I teased him, 'and you'll be defrocked by Christmas.'

My brother shook his head. 'Not a chance. The archbishop and I get on rather well together. Besides, there's my name to consider. I was destined to become a man of the cloth, and you know how strongly I feel about the path of destiny.'

I glanced at Geoff and
our
eyes met in a flash of silent shared communication. As Tom and Iain launched into an esoteric discussion of Christian ethics, Geoff leaned across me to order another drink, resting a Warm hand on my back between my shoulder blades. It was a touch of reassurance, of promise, of gentle apology, and my heart swelled in response.

I could wait a little longer, I told myself. For Richard, I could wait.

Twenty-eight

‘Yes, Mum, I know.' I cradled the telephone receiver against my shoulder and
reached to
straighten a tilted picture frame on the wall beside the stairs. 'Tom told me all about it this afternoon. Quite a nice surprise for you and Dad, I expect.'

'Mmm.' My mother's voice was absent, and not entirely convincing. 'Your father
will
keep entering these crossword contests, you know, so I suppose it was only to be expected. Although I'm not sure that a week's holiday in Brighton would be my idea of a truly grand prize. Still,' she said, adopting a positive attitude, 'your father is pleased as punch. You'd think we'd never been on holiday to hear him talk, and here we are barely home a month.'

She couldn't hide the smile in her voice, though. We both knew my father well enough to know it was the winning, and not the prize, that excited him—the thought of having something for nothing.

'Is Dad at home?'

'No, he's gone off shopping for swimming trunks. Imagine,' she said, chuckling, 'with his legs! I shall have to walk ten steps behind him and wear dark glasses so no one will think we're together.'
I grinned. 'They have naked bathing in Brighton, don't they?'

'Are you trying to cheer me up, or put me off going?'

'Oh, you'll have fun, Mum. And it is only a week. When do you leave?'

'Next Saturday. We'll be stopping the night at Tom's place in Elderwel, and we thought if you weren't doing anything that evening, you might want to drive down for dinner—make a family gathering of it.'

'Sorry.' I shook my head. 'I couldn't possibly. Not next Saturday. Rachel's getting married that day, and she'd be disappointed if I wasn't there.'

'Rachel?' My mother's puzzled voice halted me in my tracks, and my hand tightened around the receiver as I realized the significance of what I'd just said.

'Rachel Evers,' I elaborated, keeping my voice steady. 'An old school chum.'

'Oh,'

From the silence that followed I knew that my mother was systematically searching her memory for a face to match the name, and I hastened to switch the subject. 'Tom said that Dad had been having problems with his shoulder again,' I prompted, and relaxed when my mother sailed off on a new tack. She was always happy to discuss my father's health problems—brought on mainly, in her opinion, by too many evenings of wine and snooker at his club.

For the rest of the conversation I was only half listening, filling the occasional pauses in my mother's narrative with appropriate noises of agreement or sympathy.

'Are you sure you're all right?' she asked me, at the end of a particularly long anecdote.

'Of course I am. Why?'

'You haven't said two words in the past ten minutes.'

'Haven't I? Sorry. I was up rather early this morning, and it's starting to catch up with me.'

'Well, see that you get your rest,' my mother advised me, in a tone I remembered all too well. 'And eat properly. And
make sure your vitamins have iron added. You are still taking vitamins? Good. You wouldn't want to be taken ill, now, would you?'

'I feel fine,' I said again, for what seemed like the hundredth time that day. It was a lie, I admitted to myself as I hung up the telephone. I had told it to Geoff that morning, and
to
Tom that afternoon, and just now to my mother, but it was a lie. I didn't feel fine, at all. In actual fact, I was feeling rather depressed, and I knew there was only one person in the village who would fully understand the reason why.

Mrs. Hutherson's house was the second house past the old redbrick vicarage on the High Street. It was more of a cottage, really, small and square and sagging beneath the weight of its ancient tile roof. The walk was edged with lavender, and flowers dripped from the window ledges between freshly painted green shutters. Even if Alfreda Hutherson herself had not been crouching by the side fence, tending a bed of gargantuan tomatoes, I would have known that the house was hers.

She straightened as I came through the low, swinging gate, greeting me with a smile of welcome and understanding.

'I'd expected you sooner,' she said, 'but I suppose you've been having a busy day. You're disappointed, naturally.'

How wonderful not to have to explain. 'Yes, I am.'

'You wanted more.'

'I wanted the fairy tale,' I admitted with a rueful smile. 'Foolish of me.'

'Not at all,' she replied stoutly. 'But even fairy-tale lovers have some difficult moments, before the happily-ever-afters. Give it time. Trust the process, and it will all work out in the end. You'll see. Have you had your supper yet?'

'No.' I shook my head. 'I wasn't hungry.'

'Well, come inside. You'll feel better when you've had something to eat.'

The cottage was as cozy inside as out, cheerful with overstuffed chintz in bright florals, white walls, and lace
curtains letting the last of the day's sunlight pour through the square casement windows. I was not surprised to see a cat fluffed up on the windowsill; what surprised me, in a childish way, was that the cat was pure ginger, and not black. And then, upon reflection, I realized that maybe it wasn't so surprising, after all....

'I believe I saw your cat once,' I remarked, 'walking across the road by my house.'

'It wouldn't surprise me. He's a regular gadabout, that one. His mother was more the stay-at-home type, but he takes after his grandfather, I'm afraid.'

Leading me into the small kitchen, Mrs. Hutherson busied herself loading the table with sandwiches and savories, and brewing the ever-present pot of tea. If she could not give me answers, she seemed at least determined to give me comfort and to lessen the sharpness of my disappointment.

"Was that your brother I saw up at the stables with Geoff and Iain?' she asked me, unexpectedly.

I nodded. 'They gave him the grand tour, I think.'

'He's quite like you to look at. Vivien tells me he's a vicar.'

'He has a living in Hampshire. I'll introduce you next time he comes,' I promised. 'He drops in to check up on me every few weeks.'

'He worries about you, I think.' She tilted her head, studying my face carefully. 'Perhaps he has reason to?'

I brushed aside the suggestion. 'No, no ... I'm fine, really.' Under the gentle challenge of her eyes, I softened my stance. 'Well, I have been having a little problem with control, if you must know. I can't always choose the times of my regressions, sometimes I just slide backward without meaning to.'

'You're going back every day now, aren't you?'

'Nearly.' I nodded. 'It's so difficult not to. I care about them, you see. I care about what happens to them, and they're all so
real... '
'More real, perhaps, than the rest of us?' My expression answered for me, and she nodded. 'Yes, I understand. Time enough for the present, once the past has been settled. But you mustn't lose touch with the present, Julia,' she warned me. 'The past can teach us, nurture us, but it cannot sustain us. The essence
of
life is change, and we must
move
ever forward or the soul will wither and die.'

*-*-*-*

I spent the next few days quietly, working alone in the garden where the climbing rose was creeping shyly into bloom along the ruined wall. When the first pink bud unfolded, I snipped it lovingly from the vine and placed it in a vase beside my drawing board. Carefully I copied each delicate whorl onto paper and shaded the drawing with precise attention to detail. In my illustrations it would become Beauty's perfect, single rose, stolen from the Beast's garden. On paper, the flower was immortal. In the stale confines of my studio, it dropped its petals within three days.

I took advantage of my semiseclusion to finally read the reams of information Tom had gathered from his librarian friend, on the subject of reincarnation. The writings ranged from New Age nebulous to bone-dry academic, but the whole package was nonetheless interesting. I was especially intrigued by the different ways in which people remembered their past lives.

To some, like myself, it happened quite unexpectedly, out of the blue. Others as young children had a vivid awareness of their former lives, only to lose the memory as they grew older. Occasionally, it took a major trauma or hypnotic trance before the memories surfaced. And some people ... some people never remembered....

'I don't feel anything,' Geoff said bleakly, as the week drew to a close. We were standing in the courtyard, staring down at the neatly swept white stone, pristinely edged all round. The tangle of weeds had fallen beneath Iain's expert scythe, revealing tender patches of fragile green grass and a
few low-growing wildflowers that hugged the ground for protection. Geoff dug his hands into his trouser pockets and stared harder, his brow furrowing. 'Surely I would feel
something.
..."

We spoke very little of what had happened the week before. Geoff seemed to be turning the whole thing over in his mind, exploring his own thoughts and feelings at leisure. Outwardly, we went on just the same as before. Our days were as full and his touch as warm and his eyes still smiled at mine, but somehow a part of him had withdrawn from me. I let it go, both because I was sure it would return, and because my growing obsession with Mariana Farr's life overshadowed my own petty problems.

When the day of Rachel's wedding arrived, there was no question of my being sociable. Before the first faint light of dawn came stealing over the downs, I up and dressed, took my telephone off the hook, and settled myself in comfort to await the inevitable.

The inevitable was a long time coming. The day began fairly enough, a glorious late-summer Saturday spread beneath a rare blue sky, but as the hours ticked past, the clouds began to gather and the sun was gradually extinguished by a veil of cheerless gray. The darkness that followed in mid-afternoon was almost prophetic, and the gentle wind swept past my windows with the low voice of a weeping woman.

I found Rachel in the cramped front bedchamber which had so lately been her own. The narrow bed was stripped and bare, no mark of her occupation remaining. She would spend her wedding night in the comparative luxury of the corner chamber, in the great four-poster bed that had been my grandfather's. It would be the last night she slept in this house.

How I would survive the days without her I did not know, and the thought weighed heavy on my heart. Her thoughts, I knew, were heavier still than mine, yet she did not share them. She touched the window with a steady hand, staring with unseeing eyes toward the road.
'It will be rain by nightfall,' she said, aware of me standing in the doorway. 'Our guests will get a wetting.'

'They'll scarcely notice, like as not.' I stepped into the room, closing the door behind me to shut out the sounds of music and merrymaking below. 'In spite of Uncle's disapproval, they've already drunk two barrels of the ale he set by.'

She smiled faintly at the news. She still wore her best gown of pale-pink silk, ruched and embroidered, in gay contrast to her husband's somber attire. Elias Webb had proved a dour bridegroom, and in the church that morning the minister himself had hesitated over the words of the service, as though it troubled him to join a young and vibrant girl to such a man.

'My husband does not drink, I'll warrant,' Rachel said. 'He is Puritan in his habits. Know you what the hour is?'

I shook my head. "Tis approaching supper time, but I do not know the exact hour. Will you be coming down, soon?'

'Presently. I—' She broke off suddenly, flattening her palm against the window glass. I was standing close behind her, close enough to see what she saw approaching by the road. The huge gray horse and rider were unmistakable. Beside them, Evan Gilroy sat tall and determined on his own bay steed, leading behind him a spirited black mare that seemed to dance above the rutted road.

'He came,' Rachel breathed, on a kind of ragged sigh. 'He actually came.' She turned to face me, her eyes shining with a wildness I could not understand. 'Grab you your happiness with both hands, Mariana,' she advised, her lip trembling, 'and hold it tightly, for you cannot tell when you might lose it.'

I wanted to hold her, comfort her, but before my arms could move she brushed quickly past me with downcast eyes, and I heard but the echo of her footsteps descending the staircase. Below me in the yard, Navarre gave a toss of his gray head as Richard dismounted. Evan led all three
horses to the crooked pear tree by the south wall, and tethered them there. Downstairs, the sound of revelry swelled and dipped and swelled again, unaffected by the arrival of the new guests.

Richard's voice floated upward through the floorboards beneath my feet, bringing me away from the window and down the stairs to rejoin the general company.

'My lord,' Rachel's voice cut clearly across the din of babble, her smile wide as she crossed the floor to greet them. 'You do us honour with your company.'

Richard doffed his hat and bent gallantly over her outstretched hand. 'Your company, madam, would do honour to any man,' he countered smoothly.

Her smile did not falter as she turned her attention to the man beside him. 'Mr. Gilroy,' she acknowledged, offering her hand again.