Mariel (28 page)

“She told me how her sister taunted Georgie.” He was anxious to learn more about this person, whom Mariel had conspired to keep a secret.

Miss Phipps sighed. “Ah, Georgie. Such a haunted soul he had. A brilliant child he was, but it turned within him to destroy that mind. He could not help himself. This family has had so much sorrow. I thought it was over when Georgie died. I was wrong.”

Ian was not sure how to console the usually controlled Miss Phipps as she bent her head to weep. Tenderly he put his hand on her shoulder. Sitting next to her, he patted her back awkwardly until she wiped her eyes on a lace handkerchief and waved him away.

“What worries me most,” she continued as if she had not started crying, “is her refusal to see Rosie. She adores the child. Rosie is pining for her.”

“She is ashamed.”

“Ashamed?” The idea was so at odds with what she had thought, Miss Phipps gasped, “What does she have to be ashamed of?”

Ian smiled sadly. If only Mariel would let him help her. He had struggled alone through all the darkness she experienced now. She could be spared some of the sorrow if she would accept what had happened and learn that she could be as she had been despite the changes in her life.

“Mariel is ashamed of being less than perfect.” He surprised himself as much as Miss Phipps when he chuckled. “She could allow herself such faults as obsession, inflexibility, and bullheaded determination, but she cannot tolerate being less than perfect physically.”

“She must see the child. Rosie is having nightmares. She doesn't believe me when I tell her Lady Mariel is alive. She does not understand why she cannot see her if she is simply resting at your house.”

“Have you told Mariel this?”

She shook her head. “She will not let me speak of Rosie. I think she fears the child will despise her.” Her pale eyes sought an answer in his. “Should I tell her the truth?”

“No. She will only refuse again to see Rosie. Here is what I think we should do.” He bent his head to conspire with her to help the woman they both loved. Something had to be done to help Mariel. If this failed, he feared they would lose her forever to the grip of the despair controlling her.

After services that afternoon, Ian sat on the edge of the bed and watched as Mariel unevenly moved about the room. Although the doctor had not given her permission to leave her bed, he had come upstairs to find her dressed in her robe and attempting to decipher the labyrinth of this unknown room. He said nothing of his pride at her attempt to escape from the prison of the bed. Such words of encouragement might cause more damage.

His eyes followed her intensely. She did not release one piece of furniture while she sought another. Her steps were as tentative as if she walked along the edge of a cliff.

“Mariel, how much longer are you going to delay seeing Rosie?”

“I don't know!” she cried. “Why are you tormenting me like this, Ian? Don't I have enough to feel miserable about without you harping on this?”

Anger burst from him. He had been patient and generally ignored her sharp comments, but he could not do that any longer. Grasping her by the shoulders, he swung her to face him. Her terrified expression showed him how fearful she had become of any spontaneous movement.

“Why do you act as if you are the only one to have suffered? I never thought I would see Mariel Wythe give up so easily.”

“Well, you are seeing it now!” She laughed bitterly. “‘Seeing it'? I never realized how much a part of our language such words are.”

“Sit!” he snarled. Shoving her into the overstuffed chair, he hobbled to the door. He swung it open and went out into the hall. He called over the banister to Miss Phipps.

Mariel clenched her hands on the arms of the chair. “No,” she moaned when she heard what he ordered. The eager footsteps on the stairs brought fear to her face. She could not do this. Not now.

Short arms were flung around her neck as curls scented with her favorite perfumed soap pressed to her face. Soft tears dripped on her as Rosie climbed into her lap without releasing her grip around her neck. Awkwardly, as if they were made of the same straight wood as Ian's cane, her arms moved to enfold the child.

She was startled at how familiar the child felt in her lap. So many times she had held Rosie in the dark to comfort her in the midst of some nightmare. Then there had been no light to let her see the little girl's tear dampened face. She did not need to see now to know the fear Rosie had been feeling.

In a whisper, she murmured against the twisted curls, “Don't cry, baby. Don't cry. It will be all right.”

“I-I-I thought y-y-you w-were d-dea-ea-dead,” she hiccuped through her sobs. “Miss Ph-Phipps, sh-she wouldn't l-let me come to-to see you.”

“Hush, baby.” She stroked the slender line of Rosie's back. “Don't blame Phipps. I did not want you to see me when I looked like this.”

Rosie drew back to look at the bandaged face of the woman she loved. She remembered what Phipps had told her. She must not make Mariel sad. “You look beautiful, Mariel.”

“Do I?” She laughed with honest delight for the first time since leaving the Cloister. “I thought I must look quite grotesque.”

“Your face looks like the turban of the snake charmer at the circus,” pronounced the child.

A rumble of male laughter near the door brought Mariel's head up. She had been so engrossed in greeting her beloved child, she had not realized Ian had returned to the room. She wanted to offer him her hand, but did not dare to touch him.

Rosie's voice drew her attention from the man. “What is it like to be blind, Mariel?”

She heard gasps from near the door and knew Ian was not the only one watching this reunion. She could imagine the paleness of Phipps's face as her young charge asked the one question she had likely been instructed not to ask. Ian's expression would be as strained.

Softly, she said, “Close your eyes, Rosie. Put your hands over your eyes so no light can come through. Then imagine you are in the deepest cave on the darkest night. It is something like that.”

“I am sorry you are blind, Mariel.”

Phipps said in a broken voice, “Rosie, I think you have spent enough time—”

“No, no, it is all right,” said Mariel hurriedly. She put her hand on Rosie's face. It startled her how her fingers moving along the child's damp skin reinforced the image in her mind. Rosie's cheeks, as plump as a well-fed squirrel, her pert nose and fine eyebrows. Each touch brought an answering memory. Quietly, she continued, “I am sorry too, Rosie. I am glad you are here to love me despite this.”

“Always!” she declared stoutly as she burrowed closer to Mariel's heart.

When she felt a loving hand on her shoulder, Mariel raised her fingers. She did not have to say what she wanted. Ian pressed them to his face. As she had with Rosie, she ran them along the textures of his features, features that were far more rigidly carved than the child's. She touched his forehead, scored with lines far deeper than the day he left in anger from the Cloister. Moving along his patrician nose, she smiled as she felt his upturned mouth.

“Thank you,” she whispered.

He pressed her palm against his lips and kissed it lightly. They had far to go to convince Mariel to reach out avidly for life again, but a beginning had been made this afternoon. For the first time, he believed they might succeed.

Chapter Thirteen

Ian did not speak when he took his seat at the back of the schoolroom. No one looked at him or at the empty chair at the table where Mariel should have been sitting with her papers spread before her, prepared to do battle with the stalwart resistance to change.

Mr. Gratton picked up his gavel, then lowered it to the table. There was no need to call for silence. The inside of the school was as silent as a tomb. At the thought, a pang coursed through him. Lady Mariel had been moved to Foxbridge Cloister only this morning. Although that bespoke of her expected recovery, no one wanted to jinx her good fortune with premature celebrations.

When Mr. Stadley started to call the roll, he halted abruptly. In a voice thick with distress, he said, “All present but Lady Mariel.”

Rushing through the reading of the minutes of the previous meeting, the chairman asked if there was any old business. For a long moment, no one spoke. This should have been the time for Lady Mariel to ask for a vote on the textbooks she wanted.

A chair scratched the floor at the back of the room. Each one relieved at not having to be the first to speak, the men looked to see Reverend Beckwith-Carter rising. He walked toward them and leaned on the end of the table. When he spoke with anger, they were astonished.

“She is not dead! This is not, thank God, her wake. Will you stop this mournful keening?” he demanded. “She is going to recover. Abusing yourselves because you have thought less than kindly of her in the past will change nothing. If it helps, I can tell you with total honesty that she has belittled each of you in my hearing for your refusal to see things her way. Do not beatify her because of this accident.”

Mr. Jones spoke in his bass rumble, “Is it true, Reverend, that the doctor does not expect her to regain her sight?”

“Dr. Sawyer is unsure. As soon as she is well enough, he wants her to see a specialist in London.” Ian glanced around the table to view each long face. When his fist struck the top, the men sitting there started. “Dammit!” he snapped. “You are so shortsighted you will let this accident ruin everything she has attempted. Vote on the appropriation for the books, but don't change your minds because of the accident. You know as well as I what Mariel would be saying if she was standing here.”

“That we are pigheaded reprobates.”

Ian grinned at Mr. Gratton's muted humor. “Exactly.”

When they urged him to sit at the table with them, he shook his head silently. “I will leave you to your deliberations. I came only to observe so I could take her the news of the vote.” He crossed the room to resume his seat in the back.

Although he let them think he did not want to intrude, he could not imagine sitting in the only empty chair at the table. It was Mariel's, and it sat as a silent reminder of what should never have happened. Many were asking questions about why the automobile had failed. Some said it was simply that such modern toys were too dangerous and should be banned by Parliament. Others wanted to know how the steering and the brakes could malfunction at the same time. They would never know, for little of the vehicle had survived the ferocious heat of the fire.

The twisted metal remained by the curve at the bottom of the shore-road hill. No one knew what to do with it. Nothing like this had ever happened in Foxbridge or the surrounding shire. It was a monument nobody wanted to see, for it reminded them how easily it could have been a memorial to a young woman whose life was part of theirs.

Ian did not look at the men speaking quietly at the table. The sorrow that burned directly behind his eyes all the time now might embarrass him in front of them. With Mariel gone from the rectory, it might be days between each time he could see her.

He leaned his head on his fist and listened to the muted debate at the table. The words he spoke so vehemently to others he could not heed himself. He could not pretend Mariel would be the same. Although he knew the accident would change many things, he did not want that to happen.

Those thoughts remained in his head as he drove to Foxbridge Cloister. The starlight guided him and helped to keep his eyes from going to the wreckage by the stone fence. He refused to look at it again. He kept his eyes on a spot directly in front of his horse's nose until the buggy had passed through the gate.

Dodsley greeted him at the door and took his hat. “Good evening, Reverend. Miss Phipps said you may go directly up to Lady Mariel's room.”

“How is she doing?”

The butler lost his professional demeanor. “It's like Lady Mariel left here last week and someone else came back today. I don't know how to explain it, sir, but …”

“I understand,” he said quietly. “She needs to mourn for what could be. Only then can she rebound.”

“Will she?”

An expression of fierce determination hardened his face. “If I have anything to do with it, she will.”

The sound of his cane preceded him up the stairs. He tried to keep it as quiet as possible, for he knew Rosie would be in bed, but stairs had been his bane since his accident. What he could do easily on a flat or sloped surface seemed much more difficult on these steep steps.

Miss Phipps met him at the door and told him she would be back in a few minutes with a tea tray. She scurried away before he could say anything other than a hurried “Good evening.”

He looked about with interest as he entered Mariel's private rooms in the Cloister. It did not surprise him to note the two portraits hanging over the fireplace. The style of clothing and the shape of the faces told him these must be the portraits of Mariel's parents that were missing from the gallery. She must have kept them here to ease the loneliness she had known before he and Rosie came into her life.

That sense of being adrift alone sent a pang through him. Even in his darkest days, when he had been abandoned by the one he thought he could always depend on, he had had his mother and grandfather to comfort him and urge him to do what he thought was impossible. Then his grandfather had died. A feeling of being bereft swept over him again.

His thoughts were interrupted as he heard a soft voice from the next room. “Ian?”

“Yes, Mariel.” He went into the luxurious room to see her propped among the pillows on the wide bed. The hopefulness in her voice brought a painful memory from him. He remembered lying in his bed, praying that someone, anyone, would come to break the monotony of the days.

He moved to the bed and sat in the chair by its side. When her hand, nearly hidden beneath the wide lace of her chamber robe, sought his, he put his fingers where she could find them easily.