The Last Camellia: A Novel (27 page)

Flora

November 5, 1940

“W
hat’s America like?” Nicholas asked me at dinner.

I felt a pang of homesickness as I recalled the way New York looked from the bakery’s window, thinking about Papa standing behind the counter and Mama fussing with the dinner rolls in the window display. “It’s a wonderful place,” I said.

“Will you take us there someday?” he asked.

I gave him a squeeze. “Maybe someday,” I said. “Now, run along upstairs with your sister. I’ll be up to meet you in the nursery.”

I carried their plates to the kitchen, and nearly ran into Mr. Humphrey, who was dropping a sack into the rubbish bin.

I brushed against the side of his coat. “Pardon me,” I said, as an envelope fell from his pocket.

He scrambled to pick it up, but recognizing the handwriting immediately, I grabbed it first: one of my letters to Mama and Papa. It had been torn at the edge. “Mr. Humphrey,” I said, startled. “I don’t understand. This should have been mailed weeks ago. Why do you—”

“I’m ever so sorry, miss,” he said. “I didn’t want you to find out, but now I have no choice but to tell you. Lord Livingston asked me to keep them.”

I shook my head. “Why?”

He shrugged apologetically. “He asked me to keep them all. He read this one in the car on his ride back in from London.”

“It’s despicable,” I said, scowling.

“You have every right to be angry.”

“Well,” I said, collecting myself, “I’m glad to know his true colors.”

“The telephone’s right here,” Mr. Beardsley said, pointing to a table in the butler’s pantry. He smiled apologetically as if he knew all that had happened. “If Lord Livingston has a problem with it, I’ll have the cost deducted from my paycheck.”

“You’re too kind,” I said before dialing the operator and asking her to connect me with the dry cleaner next to my parents’ bakery. Eli could get a message to them.

“Eli!” I cried. “It’s Flora. Flora Lewis. . . . Yes, listen, Eli, I’m calling from England. . . . Yes, England. . . . Yes, I’m fine. . . . I need you to go get my mother. Can you do that?”

I put my hand over the receiver. “He’s going to get her! I can’t believe I’ve waited so long.”

A moment later, my mother picked up the phone. “Flora?” Her voice was like medicine for my soul. My knees weakened, and Mr. Beardsley pulled his chair out for me.

“Mama!” I cried. “It’s so good to hear your voice.”

“Oh, Flora,” she said. The line crackled, reminding me that we were separated by an ocean. “We’ve been so worried.”

“Oh, Mama, I have so much to tell you,” I said. “I don’t know where to begin.”

“Where are you?” I could hear her muffled sniffles. “Are you safe?”

“Yes, yes, I’m safe. I took a job as a nanny caring for three children in the English countryside.”

“Why didn’t you write?”

“I did,” I said. “But the letters, well”—I looked at Mr. Beardsley—“the letters were never sent. But please know that I have thought of you every day. I just assumed you were too busy at the bakery to write.”

“Oh, honey,” she said. “When you left, I was so frightened for you. But I hoped you were making an adventure for yourself. Your father believed you would. I’m more thickheaded.”

“How is Papa?” I asked.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Your father’s taken ill.”

“Mama, what is it?”

“His lungs. They’ve weakened, probably from breathing in flour for so many years. The doctor says that with rest, he might recover.” She began to weep. “Oh, Flora. I pray he will.”

“Oh, Mama!” I cried. “I’ll come home. I’ll do anything I can to get home.”

“But how will you, honey? The war’s shut down all ship passage.”

“I’ll find a way. I have to.”

The next morning, Mrs. Dilloway looked after the children in the nursery while I went up to Lord Livingston’s study. “Oh, Flora,” he said as he looked up from his desk, a bit surprised. “So nice to see you this morning.”

“I know about the letters,” I said quickly, getting right to the point.

He looked down at his desk.

“How could you?” I continued. “And now I learn that my father is sick. He may be dying, and I didn’t even know it!”

“Well, then I shall turn the tables,” he countered. “How could
you
?”

I sat down in the chair in front of his desk. “You know?”

“I do,” he said.

“For how long?”

“I’ve known for some time now,” he said. “Of course, I only became suspicious after you found Anna’s book. And then my man in London traced you to a con man by the name of Philip Price.” He leaned back in his chair, grinning at me as if this amused him very much. “I wanted to see if you could go through with it. I wanted to see if you had it in you.” He reached into a desk drawer and withdrew a folded square of paper. He placed it on the desk and unfolded it so I could see it. “Were you looking for this?”

It was the missing page from Lady Anna’s book.

“I decided a long time ago that I could never betray you or the children,” I said. My chin quivered.

Lord Livingston smiled coldly. “But you thought about it, didn’t you?” He crumpled the page and tossed it in the wastebasket below his desk.

“No,” I said. “That’s not true at all. I fell in love with them; I fell in love with all of you. And Desmond.”

“And what will he think of you now,” he said, reaching into his desk again, “after he finds out the hideous truth about you?”

My heart beat faster. “And what about the truth about
you
?” I countered. “All those women, and the ones who disappeared?” When I saw the look on his face, I wished I could retract the statement.

He shook his head. “I don’t know what you mean,” he said, turning to his desk drawer, where he pulled out my letters to Mama and Papa. Months’ worth of information, tied up in twine. My cheeks burned as I reached for the stack of letters, before running out the door.

“Wait, Flora,” he called after me.

I ran to the foyer.

I ran past the driveway and down the hillside, without knowing my destination. And then I saw the orchard. It was snowing again, but I didn’t care. With each step I took, I distanced myself from the sadness of the house. I couldn’t bear it anymore. Had Anna felt such sorrow when she escaped into her beloved orchard? I gazed out at the camellias. They looked like confections dusted with powdered sugar.

I continued on the path, turning toward the old carriage house. I ran to the door, pulling it open. It wasn’t locked this time. Inside, the hooks along the walls held rope, a saw, garden shears, and other tools. A large burlap sack lay on the ground near a small interior door in the far wall. I opened the door and looked inside, gasping when I saw a cryptic message painted in deep red on the shiplap of the back wall: “For the flowers shall be anointed with her blood, and spring forth beauty.”

I heard the crack of a branch outside. My breathing hastened, sending out puffs of fog into the frigid air.
I have to get out of here.
I opened the door slowly, stepping outside, and I noticed a second set of footprints in the snow. Fresh footprints. I looked right, then left, and decided to follow them. “Who’s there?” I called out. My words immediately evaporated into the snowy air.

Behind the south side of the carriage house, I spotted a camellia I hadn’t noticed before. And just under a lower branch, a speck of pink caught my eye. I walked closer. And, there, dangling on a dainty branch, a flower emerged. It was just a small blossom, but stunning nonetheless, white with pink tips. I gasped. The Middlebury Pink.

“A snow flower.” The deep voice reverberated in the air behind me.

I spun around to find Desmond.

“It’s why she loved camellias so much,” he said. “They bloom when nothing else does.”

“What are you doing down here?” I asked, a little frightened.

He took off his coat and wrapped it around me, as he always did, before turning me to face him. I looked up at his face, so strong and sure, a face I could look at for a lifetime and never grow tired of, and yet, could I trust him? He took my hands in his. “Your fingers are like ice,” he said, rubbing my hands briskly between his, just like the night he told me he loved me, except everything felt different now.

“I’m going home,” I said.

“I don’t understand,” he said, obviously wounded. “Why?”

“My father is ill. He needs me. I don’t know if I’ll be able to board a ship, given the war, but I’m certainly going to try.”

Desmond turned away from me. “You know you’ll break my heart if you go,” he said. “Break it into a thousand pieces.”

“I don’t want to.”

He turned back to face me. “What can I do to convince you to stay?”

“I’m sorry, Desmond,” I said, “I have to go.” As deeply as I cared for him, I was weary, too weary. And frightened.

He reached into his pocket. “I want you to have something.” He opened my hand and let a cool silver chain fall into my palm.

“What is this?” I asked.

“A very special necklace. It was my mother’s.”

I held it up, taking a closer look at the locket attached to the chain. A flower that looked like a camellia had been engraved on the front. There was no doubt it was the necklace Mrs. Dilloway had described, the one she believed sheltered a precious item inside.

“Desmond,” I said, shaking my head, “where did you find this? Mrs. Dilloway said—”

Desmond smiled to himself. “Mum never took it off. It was her mother’s. It’s quite an antique. Pure silver. They don’t make them like that anymore.”

I tugged on the clasp of the locket, but it was jammed.

“Let me put it on you,” he said. “She would have loved for you to wear it.”

I shivered as his cold hands touched my neck. My heart beat faster as he fastened the clasp.
How did he get it?

“Take it off,” Lord Livingston said, appearing from behind us. “That necklace belonged to my wife.”

“But I, I—” I stammered.

“Mum would have wanted Flora to have it, Father,” Desmond said.

Lord Livingston’s eyes narrowed. “What do you know about what your mother wanted? You were just a spoiled child. You were purely a burden to her.”

I hated hearing such ugly words.

Desmond took a step toward his father, fist drawn. “How dare you!”

Anger churned in Lord Livingston’s eyes. I looked away. “You convinced your mother that she didn’t love me,” he said. “You planted the seed in her heart.”

“I didn’t have to plant the seed,” Desmond countered. “It was already there.”

Lord Livingston lunged at him, and the two fell to the snowy ground. I hovered over them, pleading for them to stop. The older man’s eyes swelled with deep sorrow, madness, even. He leapt to his feet, stumbling to the carriage house. When the door wouldn’t open, he kicked it down, pushing his way inside. A moment later, he returned holding an ax.

“No!” I screamed. “What are you doing?”

He walked toward us, but his gaze was fixed on something behind us. The camellia. I gasped.
The Middlebury Pink.

“I should have destroyed this tree a long time ago,” he said. I hardly recognized his voice, rough with urgent desperation. “She had too much time to think about life down here. Too much time to grow apart from me.” He wielded the ax over his head. “Step aside!” he shouted.