Memory and Desire (24 page)

Pakenham went red in the face. Blake's moustache quivered. Clutching the umbrella, Claire stamped past a couple of flatbed trucks loaded with pipe and wooden planks and burst into the Hall.

Kate was just behind her, laughing. “Well done. That'll teach Pakenham to keep a civil tongue in his head."

“I hadn't realized I had such a rude tongue in mine,” Claire returned.

Richard was standing on the staircase looking very much at home, more like the laird of the castle than its chief steward. But he was an aristocrat. Blake was a sturdy yeoman. Pakenham was a toad.

“Kate, if you'll excuse us. Claire, please.” Richard started up the stairs, his mouth crumpled in a wry smile.

She wasn't exactly up to dealing with his mouth, her tongue, or any juxtaposition of the two this morning. However, you never put off a man who wanted to talk. Handing Kate the umbrella, Claire went after him.

She found Richard in the library standing on the hearthrug, his hands braced on his hips. Behind him gleamed the marble mantelpiece carved with partially draped figures. At his feet sat a Victorian picnic basket filled with tools—brushes, files, screwdrivers. Against it leaned the clipboard and a copy of
Architectural Graphic Standards.
“What happened to the pheasant, strawberries, and champagne that basket used to hold?” Claire asked.

“The same thing happened to the long gowns and starched collars of the people who ate them,” Richard answered. “The world moved on and left style behind. It probably gained honesty, though."

“Or crude tactlessness, take your pick."

“It can be a right juggling act, can't it?"

“Yes,” Claire agreed. She looked up at the family portraits lined up like mug shots at the post office.

Various Cranbournes inspected their property with lead-lined eyes that suggested less hidden passion than constipation. But the painting on the far wall, between the windows, was of a man in eighteenth century coat and throat-concealing stock. His face was puffy although the bones beneath the overused skin were fine and strong. The brow was clear, conscience concentrated in the sagging jowls and weary eyes—eyes that even in yellowed oil paint were bright with a self-aware intelligence. “Is that Phillip?"

“So it is,” said Richard. “By Joseph Wright of Derby. Rather contradictory features, I'm thinking."

“Take away that air of dissipation and he could be you."

“Dissipation not being all it's cracked up to be."

“No, it's not.” Not that Claire had an intimate knowledge of dissipation. What she'd tasted—or tested—was enough. What was in Richard's past she could only guess, but she doubted he'd ever been much of a rake. Like her, he looked before he leaped.

The room smelled of musty books. Her librarian's instinct kicking in, Claire traced the odor to a shelf beside the door and pulled out several volumes. Bits of leather peeled off and stuck to her fingertips. The pages were mottled with damp. “Scott, Tennyson, Dumas—what a crime, to let these beautiful books rot."

“The Cranbournes were proper Philistines,” Richard agreed. “We might could get the classics restored. Those others, the cheap romances, they're beyond redemption."

Claire checked over a couple of other books, these with cardboard bindings that fell apart in her hands. “Inexpensive, maybe, but valid reflections of their time. What's the name on the flyleaves—Vincent Cranbourne? Wasn't he the black sheep of the family?"

“By our standards only gray. He was Maud's only brother, a proper Roaring Twenties playboy. Impregnated one of the servant girls. The elder Cranbournes wanted him to give her the elbow—she wasn't their sort, was she? When he married her instead, they disowned him.” Richard shrugged. “There you are, try to do the right thing and you're disowned for making an unsuitable marriage. Mind you, nowadays there's no such thing as an unsuitable marriage."

“Sure there is. You and I both escaped making one. Melinda didn't.” Claire put the books back and wiped her hands on her jeans. “Richard, you didn't ask me in here to discuss changing manners and morals."

“No. I thought we should be saying something about Melinda."

“Yes, we probably should."

He drew himself to attention. “I hurt her. She teased me in return. She never meant to hurt me. That first letter wasn't even blackmail. More of a flirtatious, ‘I know something about you.’ She didn't even say what it was she knew, did she? My guilty conscience filled in the blank spot."

“As well as the name of the sender?” Claire asked.

“That was no secret. She gave herself away by quoting, ‘when you will, they won't; when you won't, they set their hearts upon you of their own inclination.’ Which is part of Phillip's original text, by the by."

“When I first read The Play I attributed that quote to Jonathan Swift and thought it was an anachronism,” Claire told him. “But when I looked it up I saw it was an old Roman, Terence, the sort of classical reference everyone made in Phillip's day. History's full of misogynists."

“And Melinda was after doing battle with every one of them."

“If she hadn't liked men so much she'd never have bothered.” Claire walked back to the fireplace and looked as closely at Richard as he was looking at her. She detected fatigue in the skin beneath his eyes, worry in the V of his eyebrows, stress in the line etching itself into his right cheek perpendicular to his mouth. What she didn't detect any more was challenge. Last night he'd called off his guards and opened his gates. So, for that matter, had she. “Melinda would've apologized to you."

“I daresay she would've done. I owed her an apology as well, I suppose. As for you, I don't know whether I'm owing you an apology...” He shook his head. “I'm not usually this inarticulate. Sorry."

Claire smiled at him. “What you're trying to ask is whether we can go on with what we started last night when Melinda's ghost is walking around in the next room."

“Just that, yes. Not that Melinda and I could ever have had anything,” he added quickly.

“No, you couldn't. You're too much alike."

His brows tilted upwards. “Alike?"

“Intense. Intelligent. Focussed. With something to hide. And a great sense of humor, although yours is more subtle than hers. I bet she's laughing at the way we're tap dancing around each other when she went to so much trouble to bring us together...” Claire's voice died away. Put into words that sounded unbelievably lame. What else was she about to say?
Because I loved Melinda maybe someday I'll be able to love you?

Richard's eyes flickered, telling her that words only went so far.

Claire felt dizzy—she was standing on the brink of a chasm, toes hanging over the edge, the updraft ruffling her hair—if she reached far enough from her side and he reached far enough from his ... Richard blinked and stepped back from brink.

He didn't think emotional cliff diving was any more of an option than she did, not now. That was why neither one of them was like Melinda at all. “Well,” Claire said, her voice not quite steady, “we'll just have to give it a go and see how we get on."

“Oh yes. That.” With something between a smile and a grimace Richard touched her lips with his own and turned away.

Tingling gently, Claire walked back toward the staircase. Kate was looking out the window. Making a vague gesture toward the gallery, Claire headed off to work. And to what should've been some serious thinking, except she couldn't think much more seriously than she already was without blowing a gasket.

Kate sat down at the canvas without comment. Claire took up her needle and focused on a problem she could solve.

Rain began to fall outside. From somewhere in the house came a penetrating chemical odor. A variety of clinks and clunks, sounding like a preliminary exercise for
The Anvil Chorus,
reverberated in the high great chamber next door. After a time Claire and Kate went to look.

Susan was cleaning the marble fireplace with poultices of kaolin and benzene. She waved a rubber-gloved hand toward the tall windows overlooking the forecourt. “They're setting up the bleachers for The Play."

Of course. That's what the trucks with the pipes and planks were for. Claire looked outside to see Alec's and Fred's familiar faces among the strange ones of the workmen. No wonder she hadn't heard the plink plink of masonry and trowel that morning—Fred had been drafted. And apparently Alec had nothing better to do than help. She lifted her hand to wave at him, but he never glanced up from beneath the hood of his yellow slicker.

Claire and Kate went back to work. Raindrops pattered against the gallery windows. The workmen worked on. More than once a wet piece of metal tubing slipped from someone's grasp and amid cries of warning crashed to the ground. A variety of voices rose and fell in the entrance hall and faded toward the kitchen where Sarita was sewing last-minute alterations.

Claire was wondering if it was lunchtime yet when Kate looked abruptly around. “Who's there?"

Claire glanced toward the far door. The footsteps in the corridor outside were quick and light. “It's the ghost."

“Ghost?” Kate repeated dubiously.

“Sure. Any self-respecting old house has to have a ghost. This one has two, Elizabeth Spenser and her cat. I'll show you."

“Right,” Kate said. She tucked her needle into the pincushion and stood up.

Claire led the way out the door and up the stairs, thinking not of the time she'd followed Elizabeth but of Richard and Alec as boys. Richard had probably felt protective and irritated in turn, like an older brother. He probably still felt that way. And vice versa. That was part of friendship.

Claire opened first the closet door, then the sliding panel, and stood back so Kate could step into the secret room between the chimneys. “We assume this was originally a priest's hole,” she said, and wondered where that “we” had come from, like the flip side of Pakenham's incessant “I."

“Well, well.” Kate inspected the rafters, the bench, the table.

The rain on the roof sounded like slow, aching tears. The smell of decay was milder than Claire would've thought. She listened but heard no footsteps. “This might have been Elizabeth's private room. You know that embroidered cloth in the cardboard box? It was on that table. She probably stitched it. Richard says the Laceys kept it all these years, unlikely as that seems when you consider what they did to Elizabeth to begin with. Why Richard would leave the cloth in here I don't know. At least he gave me the go-ahead to do some conserva..."

“What's all this in aid of?"

Kate and Claire spun around so fast they collided. Claire gulped. “Oh hi, Alec. I was just showing Kate Elizabeth's room."

No wonder she hadn't heard him coming. He was wearing thick wool socks, probably having left his wellie boots in the entrance hall. His jeans were wet to the knees, his brown hair, usually a russet-gold, was a damp burnt umber, and his cheeks were pink. When he stepped through the door he exuded a cold, fresh scent. One more person, Claire thought, and they'd be wedged so tightly in the tiny room they'd have to pried out with a crowbar.

“Elizabeth,” said Alec. Or perhaps he asked, talking to some memory of the betrayed girl. “She'd sit here and.... Where's the shroud?"

“Shroud?” Kate asked. “You mean the embroidered cloth?"

Shroud?
Well, that answered that question, Claire told herself. Richard had let Alec put the cloth in here, as Exhibit A in the Museum of Elizabeth. “I have it. It's in the gallery."

Alec's head swiveled so fast she felt sympathetic whiplash. But his green eyes were closed and locked just as tightly as they'd been all this week. “Melinda told you, did she?"

“No, I followed Elizabeth up here one afternoon and then I asked Richard. He said it was all right to take the cloth. I was going to clean and mend it and surprise you with it—ah—I should've let you know I had it. I'm sorry."

“Oh. Well then, no need to apologize.” Alec looked down at his feet.

“Would you like to see it?"

“Yes, if you don't mind."

Exchanging a nonplussed glance, Kate and Claire strolled into the outer room and waited while Alec carefully closed the doors behind them.

As they started back downstairs Claire asked, “Shroud?"

“So I'm thinking,” Alec answered. “But she wasn't laid out in it properly, being taken untimely and all."

“Isn't that the truth.”
His heart belongs to another,
Claire repeated silently. Alec had a crush on Elizabeth. He was in love with a woman who'd been dead over three hundred years. Now there was an unrequited romance. If Melinda had trusted him enough to tell him about her past, then he must've trusted her enough to tell her about Elizabeth. Claire tried, “Melinda's novel, about Elizabeth's trial and everything."

“Yes?” returned Alec, waving Kate through the gallery door.

“She would've done it right, you know, treating Elizabeth with the respect she deserved."

“I know.” Alec paced down the creaking floorboards.

She wouldn't have exploited your feelings, either, Claire added to herself. But Alec might not believe that, especially if he was remembering the way Melinda jumped out at him and Richard right before the cast party...

Oh my, Claire thought, darting a sharp glance at Alec's sober face. Janet had seen Alec and Melinda kissing right after dress rehearsal. Which meant Melinda had probably been wearing Elizabeth's dress. Over and beyond playing the part, she might have been playing the part for him specifically—trying to get into Elizabeth's head, maybe, or trying to seduce him. And then what? Had he rebuffed her, too, not because he didn't want a relationship but because she wasn't the relationship he wanted? She'd jumped out at him for the same reason she'd sent Richard that letter, as a joke gone overboard.

Maybe his blackmail letter threatened to reveal his infatuation with Elizabeth to—whom? Was it Diana or Elliot who'd been twitting him about “his Elizabeth?” His crush was hardly a secret. Admitting it might be embarrassing, but it wouldn't get him into any sort of legal and ethical tangle. Claire tried again. “Blake's decided Melinda only sent the first letter, the one teasing Richard, and someone else sent the others."