The Forgotten Garden (43 page)

But still I tarry—for you need not hear of every soiree, every game
of bridge! Eliza dearest, with no further ado, I will hold my breath & write
it plain—I am engaged! Engaged to be married! & dear Eliza, I am so
bursting with joy & wonder that I hardly dare open my mouth to speak for
fear I will have little to say except to gush about my Love. And that I will
not do—not here, not yet. I refuse to diminish these fi ne feelings through
inadequate attempt to capture them in words. Instead, I will wait until we
meet again & then tell you all. Let it be enough, my cousin, to say that I
am fl oating in a great & glittering cloud of happiness.

I have never felt so well, and I have you to thank, my dear Eliza—

from Cornwall you have waved your fairy wand & granted me my dearest
wish! For my fi ancé (what thrill to write those two words—my fi ancé!)
may not be what you imagine. Though in most everything he is of the
highest order—handsome, clever & good—in matters of fi nance, he is
quite a poor man! (And now you will begin to intuit just why I suspect you
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of the gift of prophecy—) He is just as the match you invented for me in

‘The Changeling’! How did you know, dearest, that I would have my head
turned by such a one!

Poor Mamma is in a state of some shock (though improved somewhat
by now), indeed, she barely spoke to me for some days after I informed her
of my engagement. She, of course, had her heart set on a greater match &
will not see that I care not one whit for money or title. Those are her desires
for me, & while I confess I once shared them, I do so no longer—how can
I when my Prince has come for me and unlatched the door to my golden
cage?

I ache to see you again, Eliza, & to share with you my joy. I have
missed you tremendously and can hardly bear to think that once I arrive
in England there will be yet another week to wait before we’re together.

I will post this letter as soon as we dock in Liverpool: would that I were
accompanying it directly to Blackhurst, rather than languishing in the
dreary company of Mamma’s family!

I remain yours, lovingly now & evermore, cousin Rose
c

If she were honest, Adeline blamed herself. Had she not, after all, been present with Rose at each glittering event during their visit to New York? Had she not appointed herself chaperone at the ball given by Mr and Mrs Irving in their grand house on Fifth Avenue? Worse still, had she not given Rose a nod of encouragement when the dashing young man with dark hair and full lips made his approach and requested the pleasure of a dance?

‘Your daughter is a beauty,’ Mrs Frank Hastings had said, leaning over to whisper in Adeline’s ear as the handsome couple took to the floor. ‘Fairest of them all tonight.’

Adeline had shifted—yes, proudly—on her seat. (Was that the moment of her undoing? Had the Lord noted her hubris?) ‘Beauty equalled by her purity of heart.’

‘And Nathaniel Walker is a handsome man indeed.’

Nathaniel Walker. It was the first time she’d heard his name. ‘Walker,’

she said thoughtfully: the name had a solid ring to it, surely she’d heard tell of a family called Walker who’d made their fortune in oil? New 301

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money, but times were changing, there was no longer any shame in a match of title with treasure. ‘Who are his people?’

Did Adeline imagine the hint of barely concealed glee that briefly animated Mrs Hastings’s bland features? ‘Oh, no one of consequence.’

She raised one bald eyebrow. ‘An artist, you know, befriended, most ludicrously, by one of the younger Irving boys.’

Adeline’s smile had grown stale around the edges but still she held it. All was not yet lost, painting was a perfectly noble hobby after all . . .

‘Rumour has it,’ came Mrs Hastings’s crushing blow, ‘the Irving chappie met him on the street! Son of a pair of immigrants, Poles at that. Walker may be what he calls himself, but I doubt that’s what was written on the immigration papers. I hear tell he makes sketches for a living!’

‘Oil portraits?’

‘Oh, nothing so grand as that. Scratchy charcoal things from what I understand.’ She sucked in one cheek in an attempt to swallow her glee. ‘Quite a rise indeed. Parents are Catholics, father worked on the wharves.’

Adeline fought the urge to scream as Mrs Hastings leaned back against her gilt chair, face pinched at the edges by one of Schadenfreude’s smiles. ‘No harm in a young girl dancing with a handsome man, though, is there?’

A smooth smile to mask her panic. ‘No harm at all,’ said Adeline.

But how could she believe it when her mind had already tossed up the memory of a young girl standing atop a Cornish cliff, eyes wide and heart open as she looked upon a handsome man who appeared to promise so much? Oh, there was harm indeed for a young lady flattered by the brief attentions of a handsome man.

The week passed, and that was the best that could be said of it. Night after night, Adeline paraded Rose before an audience of suitable young gentlemen. She waited and she hoped, longing to see a spark of interest brighten her daughter’s face. But each night, disappointment. Rose had eyes only for Nathaniel, and he, it seemed, for her. Like one in the grip of dangerous hysteria, Rose was trapped and unreachable. Adeline had to fight the urge to slap her cheeks, cheeks that glowed more fervently than a delicate young woman’s cheeks had any right to.

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Adeline, too, was haunted by Nathaniel Walker’s face. At each dinner, dance or reading they attended she would scan the room, seeking him out. Fear had created a template in her mind and all other faces were blurred: only his features clear. She began to see him even when he wasn’t there. She had dreams of wharves and boats and poor families. Sometimes the dreams took place in Yorkshire, and her own parents played the part of Nathaniel’s family. Oh, her poor addled brain; to think that she could be brought to this.

Then one evening the worst finally happened. They had been at a ball and the entire carriage ride home Rose was very quiet. The particular type of quiet which presages a firming of heart, a clearing of view. Like someone nursing a secret, keeping it close for a time before unleashing it to do its worst.

The horrid moment came when Rose was dressing for bed.

‘Mamma,’ she said, as she brushed her hair, ‘there’s something I wish to tell you.’ Then the words, the dreaded words. Affection . . .

fate . . . forever . . .

‘You are young,’ Adeline said quickly, cutting Rose off. ‘It is understandable that you should confuse friendship with affection of another kind.’

‘It isn’t friendship alone that I feel, Mamma.’

Heat rose beneath Adeline’s skin. ‘It would be a disaster. He brings nothing—’

‘He brings himself and that’s all I need.’

Her insistence, her infuriating confidence. ‘Evidence of your naivety, my Rose, and your youth.’

‘I am not too young to know my mind, Mamma. I am eighteen now.

Did you not bring me to New York so that I might meet My Fate?’

Adeline’s voice was thin. ‘This man is not your Fate.’

‘How do you know that?’

‘I am your mother.’ How feeble it sounded. ‘You are beautiful, from an important family, and yet you would settle for so little?’

Rose sighed softly, in a way that seemed to signal a close to the conversation. ‘I love him, Mamma.’

Adeline closed her eyes. Youth! What chance had the most reasonable arguments against the arrogant power of those three words?

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That her daughter, her precious prize, should utter them so easily, and about such a one as he!

‘And he loves me, Mamma, he told me so.’

Adeline’s heart tightened with fear. Darling girl, blinded by foolish thoughts of love. How to tell her that the hearts of men were not so easily won. If won, rarely kept.

‘You’ll see,’ Rose said. ‘I shall live happily ever after, just like in Eliza’s story. She wrote this, you know, almost as if she knew what would happen.’

Eliza! Adeline seethed. Even here, at this distance, the girl continued her menace. Her influence extended across the oceans, her ill whisperings sabotaged Rose’s future, goaded her into making the biggest mistake of her life.

Adeline pressed her lips together tightly. She hadn’t overseen Rose’s recovery from countless ailments and illnesses in order to watch her throw herself away on a poor marriage. ‘You must break it off. He will understand. He must have known it would never be allowed.’

‘We are engaged, Mamma. He has asked and I have accepted him.’

‘Break it off.’

‘I will not.’

Adeline felt her back against the wall. ‘You will be shunned from society, unwelcome in your father’s home.’

‘Then I will stay here where I am welcome. In Nathaniel’s home.’

How had it come to this? Her Rose, saying such things. Things she must have known would break her mamma’s heart. Adeline’s head was spinning, she needed to lie down.

‘I’m sorry, Mamma,’ Rose said quietly, ‘but I won’t change my mind, I can’t. Don’t ask me to.’

They didn’t speak for days after, excepting, of course, such banal social pleasantries as would have been unthinkable for either of them to ignore. Rose thought Adeline was sulking, but she was not. She was deep in thought. Adeline had always been able to bend passion towards logic.

The current equation was impossible, thus some factor must be changed. If it wasn’t going to be Rose’s mind, it would have to be the fiancé himself. He must become a man deserving of her daughter’s hand, the sort of man people spoke about with awe and, yes, with envy.

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And Adeline had a feeling she knew just how such a change might be effected.

In each man’s heart there lies a hole. A dark abyss of need, the filling of which takes precedence over all else. Adeline suspected that Nathaniel Walker’s hole was pride, the most dangerous pride, that of the poor man. A hunger to prove himself, to rise above his birth and make of himself a better man than his father. Even without the biography so greedily supplied by Mrs Hastings, the more Adeline saw of Nathaniel Walker the more she knew this to be true. She could see it in the way he walked, the careful shine of his shoes, the keenness of his smile and the volume of his laugh. These were the traits of a man who had come from little and glimpsed the gleaming world swirling far above his own.

A man whose finery was hung upon a poor man’s skin.

Adeline knew his weakness well, for it was her own. She also knew exactly what she had to do. She must ensure that he received every advantage; she must become his greatest champion, promote his art to the best in society, ensure that his name became synonymous with portraiture of the elite. With her ringing endorsement, with his good looks and charm, not to mention Rose for a wife, he couldn’t fail to impress.

And Adeline would make sure that he never forgot who was responsible for his good fortune.

c

Eliza dropped the letter beside her on the bed. Rose was engaged, was going to be married. The news shouldn’t have come as such a surprise.

Rose had spoken often of her hopes for the future, her desire for a husband and family, a grand house and a carriage of her own. And yet Eliza felt odd.

She opened her new notebook and ran her fingers lightly over the first page, blistered by raindrops. She drew a line with her pencil, watched absently as it switched from dark to light according to whether its base was damp or dry. She began a story, scribbled and scratched out for a time before pushing the book aside.

Finally, Eliza leaned back against her pillow. There was no denying it, she felt unusual: something sat deep within her stomach, round and 305

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heavy, sharp and bitter. She wondered whether she had taken ill.

Perhaps it was the rain? Mary had often warned against staying outdoors too long.

Eliza turned her head to look at the wall, at nothing. Rose, her cousin, hers to entertain, willing co-conspirator, was to be married.

With whom would Eliza share the hidden garden? Her stories? Her life? How was it that a future so vividly imagined—years stretching ahead, filled with travel and adventure and writing—could prove so suddenly, so emphatically, a chimera?

Her gaze slipped sideways to rest on the cold glass of the mirror.

Eliza didn’t often glance at the looking glass and in the time that had elapsed since last she met her echo, something had gone missing. She sat up and moved closer. Appraised herself.

Realisation came fully formed. She knew just what it was she’d lost.

This reflection belonged to an adult, there was no place in its angles for Sammy’s face to hide. He was gone.

And now Rose was going too. Who was this man who had stolen her dearest friend in the blink of an eyelid?

Eliza could not have felt so ill had she swallowed one of the Christmas decorations Mary made, one of the oranges spiked with cloves.

Envy, that’s what this lump was called. She envied the man who had made Rose well, who had done so easily what Eliza sought to do, who had caused her cousin’s affections to shift so swiftly and completely.

Envy. Eliza whispered the sharp word and felt its poisoned barbs prick the inside of her mouth.