Summer of Dreams (4 page)

“Jason and the Argonauts searching for the Golden Fleece,” Romulus added.

“Gutenberg inventing the printing press,” Evelyn said.

“Are the two of you always this prone to exaggeration? We’re discussing a pump, not the—”

“Stop!” Romulus said. “This greenhouse is mankind’s war against mediocrity and acquiescence.”

“We can and we
must
build something better,” Evelyn said with the dignity of a queen, but her eyes were laughing.

As the afternoon unfolded and they completed laying the
generator pallet, Clyde felt a surge of happiness unlike anything he’d ever known. Sometimes in life a person was lucky enough to stumble across someone for whom an immediate sense of camaraderie bloomed, and this was just such a moment. Times two. Evelyn and her cousin could not be more different in temperament and comportment, but he liked them both enormously. The three of them clicked in perfect harmony, and he was sorry when the pallet was complete.

“I’ll be back tomorrow with the pieces to assemble the generator,” he said, thrilled to see the anticipation in Evelyn’s sparkling eyes.

There had never been a challenge he’d set for himself that he’d failed to meet. The academic demands at college were easy. Avoiding demerits was harder, but all that would take was a little more self-discipline. And maybe, just maybe, he could aspire to win Evelyn White, as well.

Evelyn snapped awake before the sun was in the sky the following morning. Even the thought of tampering with electricity was mildly terrifying, but she’d read the chart Clyde had showed her, and it was already preserved like a photograph in her memory. Perhaps she didn’t have the makings of a natural engineer like Clyde Brixton, but she had a memory that worked better than any camera, and that was a valuable asset when working with technology. If everything went according to plan, it would take only a few days to assemble the generator, and then they would have all the power they needed to run the waterfall for as long as she wanted.

She threw on her work clothes, a simple cotton frock with an apron she always wore in the greenhouse.

Then she discarded the apron. She didn’t mind looking frumpy before Romulus, but it was different with Clyde here. The indigo
dress might have been washed countless times, but it showed her figure to its best advantage, and she didn’t want an apron messing it up. She took a few extra minutes before the mirror to coil her hair into a becoming twist at the back of her head.

The sun still hadn’t risen by the time she dashed down the staircase, but to her surprise, a wagon was already parked before her house, with Clyde folding down the back and unloading a box of equipment. She opened the door. “Have you had breakfast?” she asked.

He shook his head. “Too excited to get started. What about you?”

“You can’t do manual labor on an empty stomach. I’ll get Romulus out of bed and make us all some eggs. Then the real work begins.”

It took three days to install the generator, and Evelyn enjoyed every moment. True to his word, Clyde limited his work to the electrical components and let her take complete charge of adapting the hydraulic pump. While Clyde assembled the generator, she climbed to the top of the waterfall to fit the pipes in the spaces behind the rocks. Romulus dug a trench to accommodate the buried cable line that would feed electricity to the water pump. Clyde used coiled copper wire and clunky magnets to hook up a Beckwith motor, all of which would be set inside a metal casing to shelter it from the elements.

It was amazing how quickly Clyde fit in. She and Romulus had known each other since childhood and had their own unwritten language that could be communicated with nothing more than a glance, but Clyde seemed immediately capable of reading it and joining in. He teased Romulus for wearing a satin vest while performing manual labor, and Evelyn warned him he was treading on sensitive ground. The only thing Romulus loved more than his extensive wardrobe was a professor’s daughter named Laura, and anyone who insulted either was in peril.

“So who is Laura?” Clyde asked Romulus one day as they buried the underground cables.

Romulus threw down his shovel. “Laura is the beginning and end of every romantic sonnet ever written. Her laughter is music. She has a lethal sense of humor but the wisdom to know when to use it.”

“But who
is
she?” Clyde pressed.

“She’s the woman who has agreed to marry me as soon as I graduate. She’s studying languages at Radcliffe College, but sometimes she comes to classes at Harvard. We met in a class on botanical nomenclature. Her Latin is excellent. I never knew how attractive it was to listen to a beautiful woman reading botanical treatises in the original Latin until I met Laura Hartley. I was smitten within the hour.”

Near the end of the third day, the generator had been assembled and was ready to test. Evelyn hoped that someday they could use the electricity to power a strand of light bulbs suspended from the taller plants, but the first step was to get the waterfall working. After the cable was routed beneath the soil and up into the greenhouse, Evelyn held her breath as Clyde made the final connections to the pump.

“Be careful,” Evelyn cautioned. “I’d feel terrible if you got electrocuted.”

“At least have the decency to delay the electrocution until the waterfall is working,” Romulus added.

“If I die from this, I want a monument dedicated to me in your fancy greenhouse,” Clyde said, grinning as he twisted the wires to connect them to the generator, utterly fearless. His easy confidence made him even more attractive to Evelyn, and she felt lightheaded as she awaited the final few moments before the test.

After the last connection was made, Clyde went outside to fire up the generator. He warned her not to be alarmed by the
racket, for soundproofing would be added later. Even with the warning, the bangs from the generator were startling. All four hummingbirds zoomed about the enclosure at the rackety noise, but after a few moments, the generator calmed to a rhythmic mechanical thumping, exactly as Clyde had said it would.

And a second later, the hiss and gurgling from the pipes indicated water was being drawn upward in the tubing behind the rocks. Evelyn held her breath, thrilled as water finally reached the top of the artfully arranged rocks and began cascading down the front in white, frothy streams. It was dazzling, with more than twice as much water flowing over the rocks than with her earlier effort. The patter of falling water even helped mask the noise of the generator.

Clyde raced around the enclosure to witness the waterfall in action.

“Well done!” Romulus said.

Two of the hummingbirds were still careening around the greenhouse in annoyance, but the others had disappeared into the shrubbery. Clyde moved beside her to gawk at the cascading water, and the three of them stood shoulder-to-shoulder in speechless delight. It was hard to believe that only a few days earlier the waterfall had barely enough power to dribble a little water for a few hours. Now it was a splendid sight . . . thrilling and beautiful . . . and yet she was sorry they’d accomplished it so quickly. The past three days had been the most fun in her memory.

She wished her father were here to see it.

That thought was a damper on her mood. Clyde was the person deserving of the credit for this, not she. Her hydraulic pump would never have been so impressive without Clyde’s electricity. If she bragged to her father about her brilliant accomplishment, it would endanger the credit due to Clyde, for she mustn’t forget that Clyde had been sent here specifically to help clean up his record at the academy.

“This ought to earn you goodwill at the academy. How many demerits will it erase?” She intended her question to be lighthearted, but Clyde’s reaction was the opposite. Every muscle in his face tightened, and the corners of his mouth turned down.

“I’m sure it will be adequate,” he mumbled.

Romulus pounced. “Exactly how many demerits do you have? They must be bad for you to need to work them off. Come on, how many have you got?”

Evelyn thought the question terribly rude, like asking someone about his grades or how much money was in his bank account, but perhaps this sort of teasing was normal among men.

Clyde shrugged. “I’ve got a few. Most cadets do.”

“A hundred?” Romulus asked. “A hundred and fifty? Come on, don’t be ashamed to own up to it.” The flush on Clyde’s face darkened, and he looked away. “Two hundred?” Romulus pressed.

“That’s ridiculous,” she defended. “If he had two hundred demerits, he would have already been kicked out.”

Clyde didn’t look like he was enjoying this. “I don’t have two hundred demerits,” he snapped. “I am in no danger of being expelled, I simply wanted to help with this project. Could we drop this?”

The magical feeling of just moments ago evaporated, and Evelyn wanted to shake Romulus. Mercifully, Romulus showed unusual sensitivity by quickly diverting the conversation.

“What do you think about adding a koi pond? I think the hummingbirds will fancy a little company, and Evelyn’s pump ought to provide adequate power to oxygenate a pond, don’t you think?”

To her relief, Clyde’s tension eased, and a hint of a smile lurked at his mouth. “I think it is an excellent idea.”

Another flare of attraction surged through Evelyn. She loved the way Clyde seemed ready to tackle anything. Seize any idea.
Other people laughed at the way she and Romulus tinkered with their greenhouse, but Clyde wanted to roll up his sleeves and play along.

Even better, adding a koi pond meant Clyde wouldn’t be leaving anytime soon. There would be more afternoons like this, more long summer days laughing and working together toward a common goal. More time with a man she found irresistibly attractive.

She winced at the thought. Clyde would return to West Point in August and graduate in May. He was destined for a military career. She could never, under any circumstances, align herself with a military man. She’d already lived through a childhood of abandonment and would not allow herself to become an abandoned wife, as well.

That vow had never been difficult before now. Somehow, deep in her soul, Evelyn knew she would never be able to fully erase Clyde Brixton from her heart.

T
he imposing Gothic buildings of the West Point campus looked softer in summer, surrounded by lush trees and spacious lawns of neatly trimmed grass. Evelyn always loved this walk, especially since she was headed toward the library, her favorite building in the entire area.

She was here to meet Clyde and perform research. Romulus fancied trying to make the greenhouse look like the famed Hanging Gardens of Babylon, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world. None of them had the slightest idea of what the gardens looked like, but Romulus liked the sound of it and Evelyn was game to try. Clyde had suggested she meet him in the library to research the details of the gardens. Romulus was in Boston buying supplies for a koi pond, but she secretly thought it all an excuse to sneak a visit to his beloved Laura. New York City was much closer if all he wanted were supplies for the artificial pond.

It didn’t really matter why Romulus was gone, all that mattered was that she was going to be entirely alone with Clyde. The fact that they would be surrounded by dozens of people in the library hardly mattered. She would have the chance to
work alongside a recklessly attractive man, their heads bent over a book, figuring out how to translate their far-flung dreams into reality.

And she would be a perfect lady the entire time. Just because she liked fantasizing about a dalliance with Clyde didn’t mean she intended to act on it. Clyde was forbidden fruit, and she would be as proper as the Queen of England in her dealings with him.

It was hard to remember her good intentions when she rounded the parade field and saw Clyde sitting on the wide front steps of the library. He sprang to his feet with military precision, although there was nothing military about the grin he beamed at her or the way his eyes lit with anticipation.

“Brotherly,” she muttered to herself. “Clyde Brixton is to be just like a brother.”

“Hi Evelyn,” he said as she approached. She even liked the way he said her name, a little breathlessly, as though he’d been looking forward to this afternoon as much as she. “Are you ready to rediscover the Hanging Gardens of Babylon?”

“Okay.” Couldn’t she think of anything more original to say? The wonderful ease she felt when Romulus was with them had evaporated. Now they were just a young man and the girl who couldn’t stop staring at him. Her brain contained all the intelligence of a newly sprouted lima bean.

But it didn’t seem to matter once they stepped inside and began hunting through the aisles. They were two explorers in search of knowledge, prowling through history texts, old art books, and archaeological treatises. Ensconced on the second floor beside the art history section, they undertook a thrilling quest for insights into the ancient world. It didn’t take them long to discover that nobody knew what the fabled gardens looked like, but that didn’t stop artists and historians from speculating. They found dozens of illustrations that bore little resemblance to one another.

Clyde wasn’t satisfied with the speculation. “We’ll disappoint Romulus if we come back with anything less than a fully realized master plan, possibly complete with one of those getups for his wardrobe,” he said, gesturing to the page of Bronze Age jewelry that had been excavated from a Mesopotamian tomb.

She froze. It was impossible to deny that Romulus had outlandish taste in clothes and jewelry, but she couldn’t tell if Clyde was mocking him.

“Don’t tease,” she warned. “Romulus is my best friend in the world.” Her only friend, really, aside from Clyde himself.

He looked taken aback. “I wasn’t teasing. I’ve just never met a man who puts so much thought into his clothes.”

She sighed. “I’m sorry if I’m too protective. It’s just that Romulus is the only person I had when I was growing up.”

An avalanche of painful memories stirred to life. As a child, she’d been shunted among a series of relatives who had agreed to look after her. Not wanting to impose too much on any one relative, her father never left her in a household for longer than six months. Her earliest memory was when she was five years old and being dropped off at yet another strange home an hour from West Point and being introduced to a stern-faced lady named Maude, a distant cousin of her father’s. She’d been afraid of Maude and had started crying when she understood she was to be left there. She clung to her Aunt Bess and begged not to be abandoned at this new and strange house. Maude had a teenage daughter named Caroline who was ordered to let Evelyn share her bed. Caroline didn’t seem any happier about the arrangement than Evelyn. That first night Evelyn had lain stiffly on the mattress, listening to the voices of the adults from below.

“She’s not usually so whiney,” Aunt Bess had said. “And she’ll only be here for a few months until the general can make other arrangements.”

Evelyn wanted to start crying again, but it would wake up the older girl beside her, and Caroline didn’t seem very nice.

On that night she’d resolved never to cry or complain again in Maude’s house, no matter how scared she felt. No one seemed to want her, so she’d tried not to be any trouble. At meals she sat at the dining table quietly, listening and trying not to make any noise. She ate whatever was set before her, even though her tummy hurt whenever she had something with tomatoes in it, and Maude served tomatoes a lot.

She knew her sixth birthday was coming up soon, because Maude kept a calendar from the
Farmer’s Almanac
hanging on the wall of the kitchen. If Maude asked what she wanted for her birthday, Evelyn planned to ask for new shoes. Her shoes had been too small even when Aunt Bess had brought her here, but now they’d gotten so small her toes had to crinkle up just to fit inside. Her feet hurt and grew blisters, but it was important not to complain since Maude was doing her father a big favor by letting her stay here.

Maude never did ask what she wanted for her birthday. It seemed no one even knew it was her birthday until two weeks later when a package arrived from the Dakota territories, where her father was helping build a railroad. It was a box for her birthday, containing toffee candy, picture books, and a brand new doll with three different sets of clothing.

But no shoes.

No one noticed she didn’t have proper shoes until a picnic on the Fourth of July. They went into town and she saw her cousin Romulus, who was nine years old and preferred kicking around a ball with the other boys, but he always made a point of welcoming her whenever she joined a family gathering. When he saw she didn’t have anyone to play with, he offered to teach her how to skip stones on the pond. It was so nice to have someone to play with again, and she babbled nonstop as they skipped
the stones. Romulus was a lot better at skipping stones than she, and she wanted to impress him somehow. The only thing she could think to do was recite all the states and their capitals in alphabetical order. Memorizing things had always been easy for her, and Romulus pretended to be impressed.

“Listen to you, Smarty,” Romulus said, but he was smiling as he said it, and she liked the way it made her feel. “I’ll bet you’re going to make good grades in school, probably way better than mine.”

That was when he’d noticed her shoelaces were untied and the flaps pulled as wide as they would go.

“You’ll trip if you don’t tie your shoes,” he cautioned.

She shrugged. “It’s okay.”

But his eyes narrowed, and he told her to sit down and take off her shoes. He gasped when he saw the blisters running across the tops of her toes. “How come you don’t have shoes that fit?”

She didn’t know how to respond, but a few days later Maude took her to a shop and purchased new shoes for her. She didn’t know what Romulus did to make it happen, but from that day forward he had been her hero.

No matter where she lived over the coming years, Romulus would come visit. “Hello, Smarty,” he would say as he breezed in the door, and she secretly loved that he called her Smarty. It was a special name between the two of them, and it made her feel good whenever he said it.

Over the years, she was sometimes sent to live with Aunt Josephine, who was Romulus’s mother. Those had been the best times, for it meant she and Romulus were like a real brother and sister. They walked to school together, ate meals at the same table, and had chores together. It wasn’t quite as good as living in her own house, but at least she wasn’t scared at Aunt Josephine’s house.

She didn’t want to share any of this with Clyde. There were
plenty of genuine orphans who’d been left with nothing, and she never bemoaned her migrant childhood. What good would dwelling on it do? But that didn’t mean she would let anyone belittle Romulus.

She lowered her voice so the people reading at the next table couldn’t hear. “Romulus may dress like a dandy and pretend he doesn’t have a care in the world, but he is one of the kindest men you’ll ever meet,” she said. “Even when we were children, he was always looking out for me. I’d do anything in the world for him.”

Clyde gazed at her, a troubled look on his face. “I didn’t mean to insult him,” he said. “And I’ve never seen a bond like the two of you have. I’m in awe of it. That kind of friendship is rare in the world, and I’m glad the two of you have made room for me, even if it’s just for a few weeks.”

The muscles in her body eased, for his apology was genuine. Clyde’s straightforward way of expressing himself made him even more appealing to her. All her life, she’d been cautious and reserved, and she wished she could be as open and trusting as he was. And the way he gazed at her was mesmerizing. His eyes were so blue . . . although to call them
blue
was something of an understatement. They were cerulean, or maybe azure, or something close to the shade of cobalt she had seen at the mineral shop.

She tore her gaze away.
Brotherly
. She must maintain a brotherly relationship with Clyde, nothing more. Scooting her chair a few inches away, she turned her attention back to the books spread before her. She scrambled for something to say. “If we can’t find any reliable images of the Hanging Gardens, perhaps if we know why they were built we would have a better idea of what to include.”

Clyde reached across the table for a text from the ancient historian Diodorus Siculus. She loved watching the intensity
on his face as he flipped through the pages until he landed on a passage. He scooted closer to her as he read in a quiet voice. “‘The Syrian king built the gardens to please his wife, Queen Amytis, for she, being a Persian by race and longing for the meadows of her homeland, asked the king to emulate her native land through the artifice of a planted garden.’”

Evelyn looked at a hand-colored engraving of how an artist imagined the gardens might have looked. It had alabaster columns and terraced beds brimming with flowering blooms and trees laden with fruit. There were staircases spiraling up to ever higher levels, each draped with fruiting vines and lush plantings. The effect was like a mountainside, each level more spectacular than the one before.

She traced a finger along an edge of a terrace. “It’s hopeless,” she sighed. “We can never emulate this kind of terracing. Last summer, Romulus and I worked for an entire month to install a single terrace, and it’s only three feet from the ground.”

Clyde drew closer, his leg almost touching hers as he peered at the engraving. His eyes softened as he scanned the lavish gift from a long-dead king to his beloved wife. Then he turned to her, his voice so low she could barely hear it. “If it were in my power, I’d build you a monument like that.”

She drew a quick breath. There was no mistaking the implication of that sentence, and there was nothing brotherly about it. A nervous glance at the cadets studying at nearby tables showed that no one was paying them any mind, even though her heart thumped so loudly it could probably startle the crows in the belfry.

“I can’t . . .” How could she put this into words? She’d spoken softly, and Clyde leaned even closer, expectation in his eyes that hurt to see. “I can’t become close to any cadet,” she whispered.

His brows lowered. “Is it because of your father?”

Her father would sing from the mountaintops if she married
into the army and became a respectable officer’s wife. It had been hard enough being the abandoned child of the army, the last thing she wanted was to become the wife of such a man.

“I know what is expected of officers’ wives,” she said. “Most of the aunts and relatives I’ve lived with over the years were like widows when their men left them for years at a time. Their children had no real father in their life. There were times I couldn’t even recall my father’s face. That’s not the kind of life I want. All I’ve ever wanted was a stable home where I could set down roots. Preferably with a husband who lives with me.”

And that meant someone free of military obligations. The hopeful light in Clyde’s face faded, and his head dipped a bit, but his eyes were still gentle. “It doesn’t have to be that way,” he said. “Some wives travel with their husbands. It can happen.”

She shook her head. “I know, but I want children who aren’t uprooted with each new season.
I
don’t want to be uprooted with each season. You can understand that, can’t you?”

He stared at her a long time before nodding. “I understand. Pretend I never said anything.”

His tone was light and his smile was easy, but it didn’t quite reach his eyes. A moment later, even the smile dropped from his mouth, and he turned away, pulling a book before him. He looked demoralized. Deflated. As though the sun had just slid behind the clouds with no hint of relief on the horizon.

He scrubbed his hand across his jaw, and that was when she noticed his hand was trembling. She clenched the seat of her chair, wishing this conversation had never happened. She struggled for something to say.

“We’d better finish our planning so it can be ready when Romulus gets back, right?”

She feared he might push away from the table and leave. Or perhaps he’d ignore her completely, as Maude had done whenever Evelyn had displeased her.

But he did none of those things. He gave a resigned nod and a gentle smile. “Yes, we will do precisely that.”