An Inquiry Into Love and Death (22 page)

I
t was full dark by the time I reached Barrow House. The damp chill of night had set in, and the first stars were appearing in the sky. My legs hurt and my feet were in pain; the sweat of exertion turned icy on my face and neck. I was exhausted in both body and mind, tired of my own thoughts and weary, and if you’d asked me I would have said that nothing could have kept me from my bed. But it seemed that, after all, something could.

I noticed it when I came through the front door. It was light, warm and cheery, coming from the doorway to the library. Someone had lit a fire in the fireplace.

I froze. Whoever it was would have heard the door; there was no way I could escape without being heard. What kind of predator broke into a woman’s house and lit a fire in the fireplace? Or did ghosts light fires? Was there anyone there at all?

There was only enough time for me to quickly eye the umbrellas in the umbrella stand—the only things within reach that looked remotely like a weapon—before a shape emerged from the library door. Even in silhouette, with the light spilling behind, I recognized him.

“I’m sorry,” said Drew Merriken.

He put his hands in his pockets and leaned against the wall. My fear dissipated and my exhaustion was forgotten as I watched him. In their place something warm bloomed deep in my body, triggered by his long legs, his broad shoulders, the gentle and capable hands I could see so clearly in my mind’s eye even when they were out of sight. I pulled off my hat and ran my hands through my hair, speechless, not wanting to come out of the darkness by the door.

“I would have waited in the back garden, just like before,” he said, his deep voice reaching through the gloom to touch me. “But when I got there I found a key sitting on the back stoop. So I let myself in.”

I hooked my hat on the hat stand. “It’s all right.”

“Where have you been?”

I shook my head. “Nowhere.”

He tilted his head at that, and I could tell he was trying to examine me. Sultana emerged from the library and twined shamelessly around his ankles, the faithless hussy.

I took a step forward, then another. “What have you been doing?”

He rubbed a hand over his face, and I heard a faint rasp of stubble. “Waiting. Wrestling with myself.”

“That doesn’t sound very pleasant.”

“It’s exhausting.”

“Have you come to any conclusions?”

“As a matter of fact, I have.”

My heart was pounding.
He’s come here for you, you fool,
said a voice in my head,
only for you. Tell him to go, or turn around and leave. You’re not a girl who does this.

But what kind of girl was I? I’d always thought I knew, but identity, as I’d learned in the past hour, was a flimsy thing. It had fallen away like tissue paper, leaving me with nothing to hold on to. Perhaps I
was
the kind of girl who would do this. Perhaps I always had been, somewhere deep down. Perhaps this girl, tonight, had always been possible.

I took another step forward. I could catch his scent now, warm and heady. I could see the reflection of the light on the planes of his face. He was looking at me, intent and still.

He pushed away from the wall, stood straight, and began to tug at his tie. In the half-light, my face reddened.

“What are you doing?” I said.

“I plan to take you to bed,” he replied. “I should have done it this afternoon, but I was too gentlemanly. I don’t feel gentlemanly now.”

My face was hot, but I didn’t stop him. I watched his fingers move, listened to the hiss of his tie against his collar as he pulled it off. “Why now?” I asked.

“I won’t sleep. Will you?”

I shook my head.

“Jillian,” he said. “Come here.”

I took another step. Then he touched me, slid his hands under the collar of my coat and pushed the garment from my shoulders. It fell to the floor unheeded as every part of my body sang. He cupped my face and kissed me.

His hands held me firmly, and his kiss was deep; yet it was a gentle kiss that asked a question. I put my hands on his chest and tilted my face up to his and answered it. My doubts fell away as his touch moved down my back, his thumbs pressing lightly into my ribs. I was tired of being alone in fear and doubt, and I wanted him.

He broke away and shrugged out of his own jacket, then began to unbutton his shirt. I stared at the hollow of his throat and chest with a naked longing I would not have thought possible. “You don’t have much of a way of seducing a girl,” I said.

“Be quiet and come to bed with me.”

“You see what I mean.”

He put his hands on my waist and leaned in, his breath hot on my neck. My every nerve ending followed his progress. He kissed my neck, hot and slow, then kissed it again, moving up toward my ear. The cloth of my dress rustled as he touched me. He gently bit the lobe of my ear, and the sting of it made me moan out loud.

“There is nothing,” he growled, “wrong with my technique.”

He slid down, hooked my legs around his waist, lifted me easily, and carried me down the hall toward the stairs, still kissing me. I kissed back, gripping him hard as we moved. Somewhere on the stairs he let me down and I stumbled backward, and I found myself sitting on a step, his body lowered over me, his knees on the step below mine. His hips pressed between my legs, rucking my dress up almost to my waist, and he kissed me even more, deeply and slowly, as we lay there entangled like a lovers’ knot. It was complete surrender.

He pulled back, his eyes dark, his breath heavy as he ran one palm up the bare back of my thigh. “Get up,” he said, “or I won’t make it.” I untangled myself and scrambled out from under him, but I pulled at his shirt as I went, desperate to feel his skin. In one motion he pulled the shirt off and tossed it over his head. He left it there on the stairs and carried me the rest of the way.

We made it to my little bedroom, the bed tucked against the wall, and he set my feet on the floor. His skin was hot. His shoulders were wide and muscled, his chest dusted with dark hair that narrowed in a line down his stomach. Without a word he dropped to one knee, ran his big hands up under my dress, grasped my satin underwear, and dropped it to the floor at my ankles.

My shoes and stockings followed. Now I was bare under my dress. His nostrils flared as he lifted the clothes from the floor and tossed them away. He slid one hand slowly up my thigh, taking the hem of my dress with it, his gaze intent on my skin with what looked like admiration, then kissing the flesh as he revealed it, his mouth rasping against me.

“Drew,” I managed, my voice strangled and pleading.

He put both hands on my thighs and slid the dress up now, over my hips. I unbuttoned the bodice as he stood and lifted the fabric over my waist, then off over my head. My slip followed, and my cotton brassiere.

I stood naked before him, unafraid. The dark, lifted only by the moonlight coming through the blanketed window, hid me in shadows; still, I felt bold. I’d come close to death that day. I was a stranger to myself. The way Drew’s skin burned as he touched me made me feel more alive than I’d ever been.

He pressed me back to the bed. He touched me urgently and reverently at the same time, guiding me and asking me at once. When I was lying on the bed he shed the rest of his clothes with a grace and quickness that astonished me, and then he climbed in with me.

The springs creaked under him. He dipped his head and kissed my stomach and breasts, the line of my collarbone. He seemed to have slowed for this moment, waiting for something from me. I curled my legs around his and he stopped, looking down at me. I lifted my arms over my head and realized I was shaking.

“I don’t know much about this,” I said.

He nodded.

“It’s all right,” he said, moving me under him. “I know everything.”

And to my amazement, he did.

•   •   •

Sometime later, Drew Merriken traced a finger down the curve of my spine as I lay on my stomach on the bed. “You’re keeping something from me.”

I turned my head on the pillow. I was boneless and happy, but still the touch sent deep electric shocks of excitement through my body. “You don’t know that.”

“Yes, I do.” His fingers moved down my back, then up again, and if he was aware of what it did to me, he made no sign. “My mysterious girl. Are you going to tell me?”

I leaned to the side and looked up at him. He was propped on one elbow, his hair mussed, his brow furrowed in serious thought. I could just make out his features in the shadows. I’d never seen a handsomer man in my life. I could feel the pull of him, and I could feel myself twisting, turning as I rode the current toward him, like a branch in a rushing river. It would be so easy to lose myself.

“I don’t know,” I said. “That would seem an awful lot like a connection.”

He was silent for a long time, long enough for pain to begin deep in my chest. “Jillian, you know what I am. What I offer.”

I know it isn’t enough.
“Yes.”

“It wouldn’t work. I’m in London. You’re in Oxford. Are you saying you’d give up school?”

That was easy. “Never.”

“Then you see what I mean.” His palm was flat on my back, rubbing along my skin. “Sometimes the moment is all we have, and we have to seize it. I learned that when I thought every moment was my last.”

I rolled over, ignoring the slice of pain his words gave me. We’d taken precautions so that I wouldn’t have a child. “I understand. But that’s why I won’t tell you my secrets.”

His hand, which had lifted as I moved, hovered in the air for a moment. Hesitation, perhaps, though I couldn’t be sure. Then he lowered it and I felt heat through the thin blanket as he caressed my stomach.

“We seem to be at an impasse,” he said.

My heart beat faster, temporarily dimming the pain. “What shall we do in the meantime?”

He hooked one finger over the edge of the blanket and pulled it slowly down. He leaned over me.

“I accept your terms,” he rasped.

“And I accept yours.” My breath came short. “For the moment.”

I
woke to bright morning sunshine trying its best to fight through the blanket on the window. I was alone in the bed but for a handwritten note on the pillow next to me.

Jillian—

I had to get back to the inn before Teddy noticed I was missing. He’s an early riser, damn him.

We never found William Moorcock yesterday. He didn’t seem to be home. We have to make a telephone call to the Yard this morning and go over our plans; then I think we’ll try him again.

I expect I’ll see you again. I expect I’ll have to act aloof. If Easterbrook found out about us it would make a mess of this case. Just play along the best you can.

Also—prepare yourself before you look out the window. I didn’t hear anything either.

D.M.

I washed and dressed. I made my way down the stairs to the hall. I walked into the kitchen. Then I took a breath, prepared myself, and raised my gaze out the window.

I stared for a long time, taking it in. An entire bush had been uprooted from outside the garden wall and lay sprawled in the garden, its roots exposed to the air; part of the wall itself was crumbled and flattened. Shingles had been torn from the roof, and lay around the house like petals. Worse, when I walked to the front of the house, I saw that the bonnet of my Alvis was raised, and automotive parts were strewn on the cobbles.

It was madness. I hadn’t heard a sound. Was it possible that a human had done this, at least the motorcar part, and not the ghost at all? But who would want me to stay in Rothewell quite so badly?

How had I slept through it all?

I wandered out the front door and sat heavily on the stoop, contemplating my car and feeling completely unreal, as if I were in a dream. There were no strange sounds or movements in the panorama of destruction before me. The ghost was gone; he usually was by morning. My fear settled to a low level, though I thought I could still feel an electric charge in the air.

The day was cloudy and overcast, threatening rain. I wore the last clean dress I’d brought to Rothewell, one that hadn’t been suffused with smoke, crawled in, or worn for a run through the woods. It was dark gray with a slender belt and a pattern of flowers in cherry red, the brightness of them almost glowing in the gloom. I wore my last pair of stockings that were in one piece, and heeled shoes with buckles at the ankles. I smoothed the skirt on my lap and looked down at my legs. Did I look different? I felt different. Would anyone be able to tell?

A familiar exhaled
whuff
came from around the corner of the house, followed by the heavy patter of four large feet. The dog Poseidon appeared, his ears perked in pleasure, excitement dancing in his big brown eyes. He trotted straight toward me and sat near my feet as if we’d known each other all our lives. He looked up at me, his tail shuffling in the dirt as he wagged it back and forth.

“What are you doing here?” I asked him.

The tail dragged through the dirt again. He wore no collar and no leash. He must have escaped from William’s house and was now on a mischievous doggy jaunt, running around the neighborhood. He lowered himself over his front paws and lay full on the ground, emitting a little groan of satisfaction.

I would have to return him, but instead I leaned down and rubbed one large, silky ear. Something about petting a dog—the pure, ecstatic pleasure he takes in your company—brightens even the strangest situation. He didn’t care who my parents were or where I had spent last night. I was running my damaged hands over the large, lumpy dome of his head when I heard a motorcar pull up in front of Barrow House.

I looked up. It wasn’t Drew. I knew no one else with a motorcar, but the moment the door opened, I remembered. Toby’s solicitor, Mr. Reed, had come for his promised visit.

When he approached, his steps clicking on the cobblestones, I was looking back down at the dog. I saw only the toes of his shoes come into the edge of my vision and stop. “Miss Leigh.” In his voice I could hear the confusion of the picture he was no doubt looking at: the mess in the garden, the ripped shingles, the girl coatless on the front stoop in the gloomy morning petting a smelly dog. I wondered how he contrasted this with the rather different girl he’d seen at Somerville. “Are you quite all right?”

I looked up at him. He hadn’t changed, a small, slim figure dressed in a well-tailored suit and coat. He carried a briefcase in one hand and his hat in the other. His dark hair was combed neatly down on his head.

“I’m quite all right, thank you,” I said. I looked at the scene around me. “Rothewell’s ghost is rather insistent.”

The color faded slowly from his face, bleaching it white, and I felt remorse. What I’d said sounded as if I wanted to deliberately provoke, though I hadn’t meant it that way. “Ah. I don’t—” he began.

“I’m sorry. I’m not thinking what I’m saying. This looks rather strange, I know. It startled me, too. But you mustn’t worry. He only comes out at night.”

I had to give him credit; he merely cleared his throat and said amiably, “May I sit down?”

I moved aside on the stoop. Mr. Reed folded himself next to me as Poseidon shuffled his tail again, getting that particular appendage ever filthier in the dirt of the ruined garden. The dog looked at both of us, pleased to have more company, then lowered his head to his front paws.

Mr. Reed put his briefcase on his knees. He seemed to take a moment, looking out at the laneway, the trees still beautiful with their dying leaves, the sunlight filtering through the lowered clouds. The air carried its cool, salty smell and the cry of faraway gulls. As always, in the quiet when the wind was down, we could hear the rush of the sea.

“You’ve had,” he said finally, “a rather difficult time of late, I believe.”

I smoothed my skirt over my legs again.
Courage, Jillian.
“Mr. Reed, have you come to tell me about Elizabeth Winstone?”

He sighed, as if the topic gave him actual pain. “So you know, then. How? Was there some memento of hers among Toby’s possessions?”

“No, nothing. I pieced it together myself. I found a photograph in the archives. The postmistress knew her. The old man she used to work for thinks I look like her. And I know she had a baby girl, born on my day of birth, that she gave away.”

“That is correct; she did. That baby was you. Elizabeth Winstone was your mother. And Toby was your father.”

The words hung in the air, blunt and looming with physical weight. “You knew,” I managed. “That day at Somerville, you knew.”

We were sitting side by side, looking out at the yard and the lane, not at each other. “As to that, if it matters, I’ve known for about six years, ever since I took over Toby’s file from my father. Confidentiality can be the greatest burden of my profession.”

“Then why tell me now? You sent me to Barnstaple to see his body. I’ve been blundering around here, figuring it out myself. Why did you wait?”

“Toby had very specific instructions,” he replied calmly. “He had a sealed letter for you placed in his will. No one was to tell you anything until the will was read. There are legalities—certain matters to resolve—before the will could be officially read and the information given, so you had to wait a few days. But he did try. He wanted you to know, you see, in case he died before he had the chance to tell you in person.”

“I’m twenty-two,” I said bitterly. “How long was he going to wait?”

“Ah, well. I can’t really comment on that in too much detail. But that had more to do with your parents than with Toby.”

I had a cold stone in my stomach. My parents—my adopted parents—had not wanted me to know. “He wanted to tell me,” I said slowly, “and they said no.”

“More than that, actually,” Mr. Reed replied. Overhead, a lark flew up from its perch in a tree, crying. “He wanted to take you back and have you live with him. Your parents refused outright. They fought rather bitterly over it, and it ended with Toby being forbidden to see you at all.”

“That was why he disappeared from my life when I was fourteen.”

“Yes, it is.” He sighed. “It’s a very difficult issue. Your parents were doing what they thought best. Toby was . . . eccentric, as you know. He had no intention of giving up his unusual living, even if he took you back. He wasn’t entirely the best candidate to raise a girl.”

I pictured myself being taken from place to place, year after year, looking for ghosts. “It doesn’t matter,” I said. “They should have
told
me. I should have been given the choice.”

“You’ll have to talk to your parents about that.”

“Yes, of course. I’ll pop over to Paris and do just that.”

He ignored my rudeness; he must deal rather often with people upset beyond anything they’d ever imagined, and took nothing personally. “As it happens, your parents are currently in London.”

I turned and stared at him. “London?”

“Just for tonight, mind you. Your father has a speaking engagement at the Royal Society, and then they’re back to Paris. They’re at the Savoy.”

Mr. Reed didn’t look at me as he spoke; he turned his gaze down into his lap, as if speaking directly to his briefcase. He knew that he was only making it worse by admitting he knew my parents’ schedule when I did not, but this was—finally—a time for honesty, and he would honor it. “Thank you,” I said, “for the information.”

He nodded at his briefcase. “You’ll need to read the letter. And then we’ll go over the will.”

“What happened?” I said. “Can you tell me?”

“Toby came here as a young man. He stayed for a time, investigating accounts of this Walking John.” Mr. Reed raised his head and gazed around the yard, then looked down again. “He met Elizabeth Winstone while he was here, and they fell in love. I don’t know very much about the relationship except that he was deeply in love with her, and he never stopped. She was the only woman he ever loved in all his life.”

Oh, Toby,
I thought. “Go on.”

“Well, they were young, I suppose, and when he left she was pregnant. She wrote and told him. She was terrified of losing her position, of raising a baby alone while trying to live as a servant. No one would have hired an unwed mother; no one would still, in fact. She had no family and no other way to support herself. But she did not want to get rid of the baby.”

He glanced at me and reddened, but gamely continued on. “Toby was, as I say, not a good candidate to care for an infant. But Charles and Nora wanted a child and couldn’t have one. Toby came to them, and they agreed to take you.”

“Why didn’t Toby marry her?”

“I believe he would have, but she refused.” Mr. Reed reddened again. “Toby never said much about that. I believe it was particularly painful for him. It had something to do with the fact that she did not want to leave Rothewell. And then she had, er, another offer.”

“The butcher,” I said. “He wanted to marry her.”

“I believe she did marry, yes.”

“So she threw Toby over.”

I was being most unfair, requiring this poor man, who was only doing his hired job, to explain the many sins of my parents. I couldn’t seem to help myself. “I’m not certain,” he said, choosing his words carefully. “I think, if you look at it when you are calmer, you’ll see that her choices were rather limited. But I never knew her, so I’m not entirely qualified to say.”

“And before anything could be made right,” I said, “she died.”

“Yes, she died soon after, in childbirth. Toby tried to stay in your life, as much as he was able to. But he found it difficult being around you. He did the best he could.”

“Mr. Reed,” I managed after a moment, “you’ve turned my life upside down.”

“I have,” he agreed instantly. “I do apologize. Perhaps you’d like to read the letter now.”

“Yes, thank you.”

“Shall I leave you alone?”

I took the envelope he handed me. “There’s no need.”

“I’ll just sit here, then.” He reached down and rubbed a hand along Poseidon’s back, and the dog raised his head, giving him a pleased look.

I looked at the envelope, its unremarkable cream paper, my name in Toby’s distinctive handwriting on the front.
There’s nothing for it,
I thought, and I tore it open.

Dear Jillian,

If you are reading this, then I am dead, and someone has told you, probably Reed. I’m very sorry we lied to you. For we all did—Charles, Nora, and I. All I can say for us is that we did what we thought was best, from what we could see in our limited vision. Perhaps we were right, and perhaps we were wrong. It’s too late to do anything about it now.

Reed is a decent sort, so just in case he’s fudged it in an effort to save your feelings, I’ll put it bluntly: I fathered you when I was a young man, with a woman who was even younger, and as we didn’t know what to do, and as neither of us was much fit to give you any kind of a life—and as my brother and his wife wanted you, and couldn’t have children of their own—we gave you away. Thus in one neat transaction your father became your uncle Toby, and your uncle Charles became your father. It sounds very tidy when I put it like that, when it wasn’t tidy at all.

As I write this, you are nearing the age of twenty. That is already three years older than your mother was when she had you, and one year younger than I at the time. If you think of it that way, perhaps what we did will make some small amount of sense. The fear we felt at the time was monstrous. I was perfectly unfit father material—I had no money, no permanent home, barely any possessions, and a disreputable career. Charles was always the responsible one. Your mother was a serving maid in a local home. I believe she was even more afraid than I, for she had even more to lose.

She looked exactly like you, and she remains the most beautiful woman I’ve ever seen.

You know what I do for a living. I saw it in your face when you were thirteen, though of course Charles and Nora wouldn’t talk to you about it, and you were too shy to ask me. (That’s my fault—I know nothing about children, and so our visits were always conducted in utter silence, which on good days I fool myself into thinking you enjoyed.)