The Forgotten Garden (38 page)

‘Yes, sir.’ Mary had told Eliza as much. About Uncle Linus’s attachment to his younger sister, his heartbreak when she left, his frequent trips to London. The searching that had consumed his youth and his little good humour, the eagerness with which he left Blackhurst each time, the inevitable disappointment of his return. The way he would sit alone in the darkroom, drinking sherry, refusing any counsel, even that of Aunt Adeline, until Mr Mansell would appear once more with a new lead.

‘We were too late.’ He was stroking harder now, wrapping Eliza’s long hair around his fingers, this way and that, like ribbon. It was pulling, and Eliza had to hold the edge of the desk to save herself from stumbling. She was transfixed by his face, it was that of the wounded fairytale king whose subjects have all deserted him. ‘I was too late. But you are here now. By God’s grace, I have been given another chance.’

‘Uncle?’

Her uncle’s hand dropped to his lap and his eyelids peeled open.

He pointed to a little bench on the far wall, shrouded in white muslin cloth. ‘Sit,’ he said.

Eliza blinked at him.

‘Sit.’ He limped to a black tripod by the wall. ‘I wish to take your photograph.’

Eliza had never had a photograph taken, had no interest in having one taken now. Just as she opened her mouth to tell him so, the door opened.

‘The birthday luncheon—’ Aunt Adeline’s words ended with a shrill rise. Her thin hand leapt to her chest. ‘Eliza!’ The word was passenger on a desperate exhalation. ‘Whatever are you thinking, girl? Upstairs at once. Rose is asking for you.’

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Eliza hurried towards the door.

‘And stop bothering your uncle,’ hissed Aunt Adeline as Eliza passed her. ‘Can’t you see he’s exhausted from his travels?’

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And so the day had come. Adeline hadn’t known what form it would take, but the threat had always been there, lurking in dark places so she could never fully be at ease. She ground her teeth, channelled her rage into the bones at the back of her neck. Willed herself to clear the image from her mind. Georgiana’s girl, her hair hanging loose, looking for all the world like a ghost from the past, and the expression on Linus’s face, his old face turned foolish by a young man’s desire. To think he had been about to take the girl’s photograph! To do what he had never done for Rose. Nor for Adeline.

‘Close your eyes, Lady Mountrachet,’ said her maid, and Adeline did as she was asked. The other woman’s breath was warm as she brushed the hair from Adeline’s brow, strangely comforting. Oh, to sit here forever, the warm, sweet breath of this dull, cheerful girl on her face, no other thoughts to plague her. ‘And open again, ma’am, while I fetch your pearls.’

The maid bustled away and Adeline was left alone with her thoughts.

She leaned forward. Her brows were smooth, her hair neat. She pinched each cheek, harder perhaps than was necessary, and sat back again to observe the whole. Oh, but to age was cruel! Little changes that slipped by unnoticed, that could never be arrested. The nectar of youth slipping through a blind sieve whose holes continued to widen. ‘And thus was friend turned to foe,’ whispered Adeline to the merciless mirror.

‘Here you are, ma’am,’ said the maid. ‘I’ve brought the set with the ruby clasp. Nice and festive on such a happy occasion. Who could have imagined it, Miss Rose’s birthday luncheon. Eighteen years old! A wedding next, you mark my words . . .’

As the maid babbled on, Adeline shifted her gaze, refusing to look any longer upon her own decay.

The photograph hung where it always had, beside the dressing table. How proper she looked in her bridal dress, how right. No one would guess by this photo at the fierce self-coaxing she’d suffered in 268

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order to affect this model of calm. Linus, for his part, looked every bit the gentleman groom. Glum perhaps, but that was the custom.

They were married a year after Georgiana disappeared. From the moment of their engagement Adeline Langley had worked hard to reinvent herself. She determined to become a woman worthy of the grand old name of Mountrachet: cast off her northern accent and small-town tastes, devoured the writings of Debrett’s, and schooled herself in the twin arts of vanity and gentility. Adeline knew she had to be twice as much a lady as anyone else if she were to wipe from people’s memories the reality of her origins.

‘Would you like your green bonnet, Lady Mountrachet?’ said the maid. ‘Only it always suits this dress so well, and you’ll be wanting a hat if you’re headed to the cove. I’ll lay it out on the bed, shall I?’

Their wedding night had been nothing like Adeline expected. She couldn’t tell, and certainly there were no words to ask, but she suspected it had disappointed Linus too. They shared a marriage bed only rarely afterwards, even less when Linus started his roaming. Taking photographs, he said, but Adeline knew the truth.

How worthless she felt. How failed as a wife and as a woman.

Worse still, failed as a society lady. For all her efforts, they were rarely invited out. Linus, when he was at Blackhurst, was such poor company, standing alone most of the time, answering questions when necessary with belligerent remarks. When Adeline grew sickly, pale and tired, she presumed it was despair. Only when her stomach began to swell did she realise she was with child.

‘There you are, Lady Mountrachet. Your hat’s on the bed, and you’re all ready for the party.’

‘Thank you, Poppy.’ She managed a thin smile. ‘That will be all.’

As the door closed, Adeline dismantled her smile and met her own gaze once more.

Rose was the rightful inheritor of the Mountrachet glory. This girl, Georgiana’s daughter, was little more than a cuckoo, sent back to supplant Adeline’s own child. To push her from a nest that Adeline had fought to make her own.

For a time order had been maintained. Adeline made sure to decorate Rose with darling new dresses, a pretty sofa to sit upon, while Eliza was clothed in the previous season’s fashions. Rose’s manners, her 269

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feminine nature, were perfect, where Eliza could not be taught. Adeline was calm.

But as the girls grew older, grew unstoppably towards womanhood, things were changing, slipping from Adeline’s control. Eliza’s prowess in the schoolroom was one thing—no one liked a clever woman—but now, with the time she spent outdoors in the fresh sea air, her complexion had taken on a healthy glow, her hair, that accursed red hair, had grown long, and she was filling out.

The other day Adeline had heard one of the servants talking about how beautiful Miss Eliza was, more beautiful even than her mother, Miss Georgiana. Adeline had frozen in her tracks when she’d heard the name spoken. After all these years of silence, it now awaited her at every corner. Laughing at her, reminding her of her own inferiority, her own failure ever to match up, despite working so much harder than Georgiana.

Adeline felt a dull thump in her temple. She raised her hand and pressed lightly. Something was the matter with Rose. This spot on her temple was Adeline’s sixth sense. Ever since Rose was a tiny baby, Adeline had pre-empted her daughter’s maladies. It was a bond that couldn’t be broken, mother to daughter.

And now her temple was once again throbbing. Adeline’s lips tightened with resolve. She observed her stern face as if it belonged to a stranger, the lady of a noble house, a woman whose control was infrangible. She inhaled strength into that woman’s lungs. Rose must be protected, poor Rose who failed even to perceive Eliza as a threat.

An idea began to form in Adeline’s mind. She couldn’t send Eliza away, Linus would never permit it and Rose’s sorrow would be too great, and besides, it was better to keep one’s enemies close, but perhaps Adeline might find a reason to take Rose abroad for a time?

To Paris, or New York? Give her an opportunity to shine without the unexpected glare of Eliza drawing everyone’s attention, ruining Rose’s every chance . . .

Adeline smoothed her skirt as she went towards the door. One thing was certain, there would be no visiting the cove today. It was a foolish promise to have made, a moment of weakness on Adeline’s part.

Thank God there was still time to correct her error in judgement.

Eliza’s wickedness would not be allowed to taint Rose.

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She closed the door behind her and started down the hall, skirt swishing. As for Linus, he would be kept busy. She was his wife, it was her duty to ensure he was given no opportunity to suffer at the hands of his own impulses. He would be packed off to London. She would implore the wives of government ministers to enlist his services, suggest exotic photographic locations, send him far away. Satan would not be allowed to find mischief for his idle hands to do.

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Linus leaned back against the garden seat and hooked his cane beneath the decorative arm. The sun was setting and dusk spilled, orange and pink, across the western edge of the estate. There had been plenty of rain throughout the month and the garden glistened.

Not that Linus cared.

For centuries the Mountrachets had been keen horticulturalists.

Forebear after forebear had travelled far and wide, spanning the globe in search of exotic specimens with which to augment their plot. Linus, however, had not inherited the green thumb. That had gone to his little sister—

Well, now, that wasn’t completely true.

There had been a time, long ago, when he had cared for the garden.

When, as a boy, he had followed Davies on his rounds, marvelling at the spiky flowers in the Antipodean garden, the pineapples in the hothouse, the way new shoots appeared overnight, taking the place of seeds he’d helped to lay.

Most miraculous of all, in the garden Linus’s shame had disappeared.

The plants, the trees, the flowers, cared not at all that his left leg had stopped growing inches short of his right. That his left foot was a useless appendage, stunted and curved, freakish. There was a place for everything and everyone in the Blackhurst garden.

Then, when Linus was seven, he’d become lost in the maze. Davies had warned him not to go inside alone, that the way was long and dark, full of obstacles, but Linus had been dizzy on the thrill of being seven years old. The maze with its dense lush walls, its promise of adventure, had lured him. He was a knight, off to do battle with the fiercest dragon 271

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in the land, and he was going to emerge triumphant. To find his way to the other side.

Shadows came early to the maze. Linus had not foreseen how dark it would become, and how quickly. In the dusk, sculptures came to life, leering at him from their hiding places, tall hedges turned to hungry monsters, low hedges played nasty tricks: made him think he was heading in the right direction, when in fact he was doubling back. Or was he?

He had reached as far as the centre before his slide to despair was complete. Then, to add injury to insult, a brass ring attached to a platform on the ground had leapt up and tripped him, tossed him to the ground so that his good ankle was twisted like that of a cheap rag doll. There’d been little choice for Linus but to sit where he was, ankle aching, angry tears spilling hot down his cheeks.

Linus had waited and waited. Dusk became dark, cool became cold, and his tears dried up. He later learned that it was Father who had refused to send anyone in for him. He was a boy, Father said, and, lame or not, any boy worth his salt would find his own way out of the maze.

Why, he—St John Luke—had made it through when a mere four years old. The boy needed to toughen up.

Linus had shivered in the maze all night before Mother finally convinced Father to send Davies in after him.

It took a week before Linus’s ankle healed, but every day for a fortnight thereafter, Father marched Linus back to the maze. Set him to finding his way through, then berated him for his inevitable failure.

Linus began to dream of the maze and when he was awake drew maps from memory. He worked at it like a mathematical problem, for he knew there must be a solution. If he were worth his salt he’d find it.

After two weeks, Father gave up. On the fifteenth morning, when Linus appeared for his daily test, he didn’t even lower his newspaper.

‘You’re a great disappointment,’ he said. ‘A fool of a boy who will never amount to anything.’ He turned a page, shook the paper straight and scanned for headlines of note. ‘Remove yourself from my room.’

Linus had never gone near the maze again. Unable to bring himself to blame Father and Mother for his shameful failings—they were right, after all, what kind of a boy couldn’t find his way through a maze?—he 272

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blamed the garden. He took to breaking the stems of plants, removing flowers, stepping on new shoots.

All are shaped by things beyond their control, traits inherited, traits learned. For Linus, the piece of his leg bone that had refused to lengthen defined him. As he grew, lameness begot shyness, shyness begot a stammer, and thus Linus grew into an unlikeable little boy who discovered that attention came his way only when he behaved badly.

He refused to go outside, so his skin grew pallid and his good leg thin.

He put insects in his mother’s tea, thorns in his father’s slippers, and gladly took whatever punishment came his way. And thus, in such predictable form, Linus’s life continued.

Then, when he was ten years old, a baby sister was born.

Linus despised her on sight. So soft and fair and bonny. And, as Linus discovered when he peered beneath her long lacy frock, perfectly formed. Both legs the same length. Dear little feet, not a useless, wizened piece of flesh among them.