Mariana (12 page)

I pushed myself to my feet, brushing the dust from my gown with fingers that shook only slightly. 'You have me at a disadvantage, sir,' I told him, in as dignified a voice as I could muster, squinting up at him against the sun. 'You know my name.'

'Ay, well, we've precious few strangers in Exbury in these times,' he explained, 'and fewer still that ... warrant my interest.' His shadowed gaze burned me where I stood, and the smile in his voice was even more in evidence. Perhaps taking pity on my eyesight, he drew the horse around so that the sun was no longer directly behind him, and lifting his hat with a flourish he bent his head in a mocking bow.

'Richard de Mornay, at your service,' he introduced himself.

'Sir.' I inclined my own head in response, partly because I could not entirely abandon my own good manners, and partly because I could not bear to look at his face any longer. It was a beautiful face, lean and darkly handsome, framed by a neatly trimmed dark beard and loose waves of natural dark hair, not one of the elaborate wigs I'd grown so used to seeing in the City.

Nor was his dress fashionably effeminate. He wore a simple black waistcoat and narrow breeches, with a long black jacket and high leather boots. The material of his clothing was very fine, and heavily embroidered, but it was
not gaudy, and thus looked all the more expensive. I found myself wondering about Richard de Mornay. He seemed quite different from the plain-speaking farmers and merchants I had met since my arrival.

'You are certain you are not injured?' he asked again.

'I am certain. Thank you.' I kept my head lowered, waiting for him to move on. When he did not, I chanced another look up at him, and found him watching me.

'Then I wish you good day, mistress,' he said slowly, nodding once more before replacing the hat on his head and turning the horse toward the village. 'Mind you take care on this road in future.'

I had the oddest impression that he was warning me against something other than being run down by a horse, but before I had time to fully register his words he was gone, and I was left standing in the middle of the path like a fool. Pulling myself together with an effort, I left the path and walked home across the fields, not wishing to chance another meeting with Richard de Mornay on the village street.

My uncle's house, viewed from the back across the roughened fields, was a dismal and unwelcoming sight. In the few days that I had spent there since my flight from London I had learned to dread the place, as I had in my childhood dreaded the forbidding sight of the Tower of London. Both, in their way, were prisons.

There was no rational basis for my impression, nor for my growing fear
of
my uncle. I had not been mistreated, I had been accepted without question into the daily life of the family, and Uncle Jabez's manner toward me was invariably courteous, if somewhat distant. But I had nonetheless begun to feel uneasy, like a child roaming the hallways of a strange house in the dead of night, expecting at every turn to encounter some indescribably hideous monster. Indeed, as the days passed, I became increasingly aware of this monster's presence; I could almost feel it, lurking beneath the facade of the daily routine, like the serpent in the Garden of Eden.
And although I could not yet put a face to it, I was certain of its existence.

With dragging footsteps, I entered the house through the back door and found Rachel in the kitchen, up to her elbows in pastry. She looked up, smiling and streaked with flour.

'Did you have a good walk?' she asked, and then, as I nodded, 'I was beginning to worry for you, you were away
so
long.'

'I went to the churchyard, to see the grave of my grandfather,' I explained, my voice absent. 'Rachel, what do you know of a man named Richard de Mornay?'

She looked up sharply, hesitating, and her eyes slid past me, widening in sudden apprehension. I had not heard my uncle enter the room, but I felt him behind me before he spoke.

'Richard de Mornay,' he repeated, his voice lingering unpleasantly on the words. 'How do you know of him?’

'We passed on the road today,' I answered truthfully, 'and he spoke to me.'

'He ... spoke to you. And that is all?'

'Yes.'

'And yet you ask after him.'

The interrogation was grating sorely on my nerves, but I controlled my temper with an
effort
and kept my voice as even as I could. 'I asked after him because I was curious,' I said, raising my chin a little. 'His clothes were uncommonly fine, and he rode a lovely horse.' I swallowed, meeting my uncle's eyes. 'I was curious,' I said again.

Jabez Howard held my gaze for a long moment before he lowered his eyes and smiled, releasing me.

'Richard de Mornay,' he said, his tone conversational, 'is the young lord of Crofton Hall. He is
of
a noble family, and holds the rank of baronet from his father, who died five years ago. He is a man to be respected, but'—he caught my eyes again—'he is not a gentleman. The devil dwells in Richard de Mornay. You will not speak to him again.'
He turned and walked into the dining room, leaving me standing by the hearth in a sudden chill. A strange noise penetrated the oppressive silence, a shrill and persistent ringing sound that grew steadily louder, coming in short, staccato bursts. The room wavered, shimmering like the horizon on a hot summer afternoon, and the walls and furniture reassembled themselves before coming into focus once more, clear and comfortingly solid.

I was standing in the pantry of my own house, facing the kitchen door, listening to the insistent ringing of the telephone in the front hall. I just let it go on ringing, staring dumbly at the open door, until the last vibration of sound had died away. Reality trickled back in slow, disjointed streams of conscious thought, and it seemed an eternity before I could summon the will to move from my spot by the pantry wall into the spacious, air-filled front hallway, where I stood looking down at the sleek black telephone as though it were a being from another planet.

And as I stood there, staring at it, with one hand partially outstretched, it began to ring again.

Twelve

The next day dawned Fair and warm, bringing with it the first faint hint of summer's approaching heat. By early afternoon the clouds that had been in evidence that morning had dwindled to insubstantial wisps of transparent white, barely discernible against the brilliant blue sky, and the sun hung like a great yellow jewel in their midst.

In the wide flowered borders that lined the gravel front drive of Crofton Hall, the bees were busily at work, single-mindedly unconcerned with the rather noisy and intrusive presence of the queue of tourists waiting in jostling, chatty good humor for the start of the one-fifteen tour.

Beside me, on the lawn, Geoff stopped walking and bent to retie his shoelace, casting a quick assessing glance at the gathering crowd.

'Saturday's always our best day,' he told me. 'We'd better give this lot a quarter of an hour's start so we don't get any stragglers joining in with our tour.' He stood, smiling. 'Care for a stroll round the rose garden?'

A week had not diminished the effect of that smile. A few curious eyes followed us as we made our way across the front lawn, but it was an idle curiosity and I doubted
whether any of the tourists realized that the handsome young man, casual in denim jeans and bright-red polo shirt, was in fact the owner of Crofton Hall.

But they might have wondered who the devil / was. Geoff had sounded so formal on the telephone yesterday that I had unconsciously ascribed that same formality to the tour itself, and had selected from my wardrobe a dignified paisley skirt, cream-colored silk blouse, and ridiculously expensive Italian shoes with foolish heels that sank into the soft lawn with every step. To keep from getting stuck, I had to adopt a slightly stilted walk that put most of my weight on the balls of my feet. I silently blessed Geoffrey de Mornay, who, chivalrous to a fault, had slowed his gait to accommodate mine.

The rose garden, I learned, occupied a goodly portion of the lawn against the northern boundary wall that divided the churchyard from the manor lands. Stretched tall against the sky, the square tower of the church peered at us over the high stone wall as we walked along the tranquil pathways. The garden itself had an aura of the Renaissance about it— very neat, very precise, very orderly; yet all the geometrically laid-out beds with their neat edges could not disguise the delightfully tangled growth that they contained.

'Of course,' Geoff conceded, 'it's more impressive in the summer, when things are in bloom....'

'It's lovely,' I assured him. 'I don't think I've ever seen a garden design this intricate before'

'Yes, well, we had a devil of a time restoring it until Iain figured out that it followed the pattern of the dining-room ceiling.' Geoff smiled. 'I'm told there was a maze around the west side of the house that was planted in the same design—big yew hedges, quite impressive—but one of the Victorian owners chopped it all down. Built a rather ugly fountain in its place. Italianate. Lots of statues.'

'What a shame.' I had a childish fondness for mazes. I still remembered getting lost in the maze at Hampton Court
on one of our memorable family holidays. My father had led us round and round in increasingly elaborate circles until Tommy, feeling hungry and not wanting to miss his dinner, had taken charge and steered us all unerringly back to the entrance....

'What's so funny?' Geoff wanted to know, so I shared the memory with him.

He had an engaging laugh—a deep, resonant baritone— and I liked the way his eyes crinkled up at the corners.

'Do you only have the one brother?' he asked me.

I nodded. 'Just the two of us. I don't think my parents could have stood any more children, quite frankly. We were enough of a handful.'

'Really?' He looked down with interest. 'You don't look like someone who was a difficult child.'

'Looks are deceiving,' I assured him. 'If I wasn't in the headmistress's office, I was in the hospital casualty ward being stitched up. See this?' I tilted my chin up and showed him the scar. 'I got that falling off the roof while playing Mary Popping. And this one'—I pushed up my sleeve and exposed my left forearm—'was from a barbed-wire fence that came between me and a football. And my brother was even worse.'

'And now you're a highly respected artist,' Geoff pointed out, 'and your brother's a vicar.'

'Yes.' I grinned up at him. 'My parents are still in shock, I think.'

'Everything's all right with your family, is it? Iain said that you'd been called away to Hampshire for some sort of emergency.'

'It turned out to be nothing,' I said quickly—a little too quickly. Funny how one small lie could make you feel so damnably guilty. 'Everyone is just fine, thanks.'

'Good.'

We walked a few more paces in silence, and then I cleared my throat and tried a new tack.
'Did you enjoy your trip up north?' I asked.

He smiled at his feet. 'I'm not sure "enjoy" would be the proper word for it,' he said, 'I had to sort out a minor labor dispute at our plant in Manchester, so I've spent the past few days locked in stale boardrooms with irate people, drinking coffee by the gallon. But it all worked out in the end.'

'You came back yesterday?'

He nodded. 'Yesterday afternoon. I must have just missed you, actually.'

I looked up, surprised. 'I'm sorry?'

'You didn't come to the house yesterday? No? I rather flattered myself you had.' He smiled again, his eyes warm. 'You were walking back toward your house, through the fields, when I drove up. I called out to you, but you must have been too far away to hear me. So I telephoned, instead.'

'I was at the church yesterday,' I explained, trying not to let him see how deeply his words had shaken me. I had known all along that my 'flashbacks'—for want of a better word—occupied real space and time; that when, as Mariana Farr, I crossed a room or opened a window, I was also repeating the same action as my present-day self. But-I had never fully absorbed the implications of this phenomenon.

What would people think, I wondered, if I walked past them one day on the High Street, my eyes blank and staring, unresponsive? What if I walked across a road without seeing the traffic, or straight through a fence that hadn't been built in 1665? The possibility of causing myself injury or embarrassment was very great. If only I could find some way of controlling the process; if only I could choose the time and place....

'Should be safe now.'

I looked up at Geoff, my eyes startled, but he was looking back at the deserted front drive of Crofton Hall.
'The tour should be in the servants' hall by now, well ahead of us. Are you ready to go back?'

I nodded and, mindful of my bothersome high heels, followed awkwardly in his wake as he retraced our steps across the wide lawn.

'I ought to begin this tour properly,' Geoff said, 'by telling you that you are now approaching the east facade of Crofton Hall, constructed in 1598 by William de Mornay the Elder.' He swept one arm out in a broad gesture that encompassed the soaring, steeply gabled building with its rows of staring mullioned windows, the ancient plaster of its walls grayed and mellowed by clinging lichen and centuries of exposure to the English climate.

'My wing of the house is older,' Geoff confided, 'and more historic, but not nearly as impressive. This is the view on all our postcards, of course.'

There were several postcards spread out on a small table near the door, to tempt the waiting tourist, along with a small stack of souvenir guidebooks presided over by a fresh-faced teenaged girl with corn-colored hair and a deliberately ingenuous smile.

'How's business?' Geoff asked her.

'Seventeen in this last group.' She beamed up at him proudly. 'We've had over fifty people through today so far. Cathy hasn't even had a break yet, but she said she's going to let me take the next tour through.'

'Fine. Cathy's our regular tour guide,' he explained for my benefit. 'Sally here comes in on weekends to lend a hand with the extra crowds. Sally, this is Julia Beckett.'

'The lady who's just moved into Greywethers? The artist lady?' The girl's eyes went round with awe, and I'd be lying if I said my ego didn't swell a little in response. 'It's a pleasure, I'm sure, miss,' Sally told me, shaking my hand with youthful fervor.

'I'll be taking Miss Beckett on a tour of the Hall,' Geoff continued, 'so keep an eye open for us, will you? We should
be far enough ahead of your next tour group that we don't get in your way, but try not to hem us in, if you don't mind.'

'Yes, Mr. de Mornay.'

'She's a good kid,' Geoff told me, as we passed under the great
stone
porch and through the open front door. 'Her mother is the local chemist, quite a formidable woman.' He grinned. 'She's determined that I'm going, to marry one of her daughters, so I thought the least I could do was employ one of them.'

'How very noble of you.'

'Well, it's all part of the "lord of the manor" bit. I'm young, I'm well-off, and I'm not married. That makes me fair game in a place like this.'

I glanced over at him, eyebrows raised. He was either incredibly modest or incredibly thick. He wasn't simply young and well-off—he was downright gorgeous and a millionaire into the bargain. Small wonder that the mothers of Exbury
were
maneuvering on behalf of their daughters.

We emerged from the entrance into a room that rendered me momentarily speechless.

Walls hung with exquisitely cut velvet soared upward to meet an elaborately plastered ceiling, at least twenty feet above the gleaming oak floor with its covering of priceless Persian carpets. It was a room designed to impress, and it achieved its objective with relative ease; but what clinched it for me was the fireplace.

I had never seen a fireplace like that before, not even in films. It was large enough for two tall men to stand in with their arms outstretched, fashioned of a glorious white stone. Richly carved, fanciful figures twined their way up the sides and across the heavy mantelpiece, and above the
mantel,
crowning it, was a beautifully carved and painted coat of arms.

'The Great Hall,' Geoff said, beside me. 'Quite something, isn't it? That's a Genoa cut velvet on the walls, late
Elizabethan and rather rare, I'm told. We had a conservator come in and patch it up for us—it's amazing the whole thing didn't fall to shreds centuries ago.'

I lifted my hand involuntarily, then let it fall to my side again. I knew better than to touch it. One of my neighbors in London had worked as a guide for the British Museum, and had frequently bemoaned the irreparable damage done by ignorant hands and flash photography. Clasping my hands behind my back, I looked round in awestruck, appreciative silence.

'The fireplace, of course, is absolutely unique,' Geoff continued his commentary. 'The white stone comes from Compton Basset, just a few miles from here, and the carving was done by a local mason.'

'Is that your coat of arms, above it?' I asked.

'Yes. Well, my family's, anyway. The arms were granted to William de Mornay, the Younger, in the seventeenth century. As a direct male descendant, I've a right to use them if I want—put them on my stationery, that sort of thing. But it always seemed to me a little snobbish. Besides, there's the matter of differencing to think of.' To my blank look, he explained: 'Arthur de Mornay—that's my ancestor—was, by his own account, William's grandson, but without proper records we've no way of knowing whether Arthur's father was a first or second son, or even a third or fourth. They'd all have had to use different marks on their coats of arms— roses and crosses and crescents and such-—depending on order of birth. Cadency marks, they're called. Only the head of a family is entitled to use the full coat of arms.'

'I didn't know that,' I confessed, moving closer for a better look. 'I'm afraid I'm a little rusty on armorial bearings. I had a teacher at art school who did work for the College of Arms, so I learned a little about the design and terminology. ...'

'Well, let's see how you do, then,' Geoff said, stepping up behind me. 'What can you tell me about the shield?'
It was a direct challenge, and I had never been able to resist a direct challenge. I clasped my hands harder and gazed thoughtfully up at the painted carving. I knew enough to know that the shield was only part of the coat of arms, and that the two terms were not synonymous.

'Well,' I began, 'it's been split along the middle horizontally, which in heraldic language is party per something, isn't it?'

'Party per fess.' He nodded.

'And the bottom colour is gold, but I don't recognize the top color.'

'Sanguine,' Geoff supplied. 'Blood-red. It's not common.'

'So the bottom part would be "or a rose gules, barbed and seeded proper,"' I told him, looking up at the red rose with its green thorns and gold center, bright against the gold background. 'How am I doing?'

'Wonderfully well,' he admitted. 'What about the top half?'

I frowned, studying the two hooded hawks gleaming gold against the deep blood-red, their hoods a shining silver, their wings and talons outstretched. 'Sanguine, you said? Then it would be "sanguine two hawks or displayed ... hooded argent"?'