On a Desert Shore (11 page)

Chapter Eleven

Penelope had been dreaming of the hothouse and those steaming cups of tea. In the dream she'd known what was about to happen but could not utter a word of warning. She stopped in front of each guest to dispense a cup of death, her face a smiling mask, until at last she approached Edward Buckler. This time he tossed the tea down his throat as if it were nothing, despite the fact that he knew its contents too. To acknowledge this courage, she kissed him there in front of everyone, watching as he crumpled to the ground. Then her dream-self drank the tea and collapsed with the others into a pile of corpses to be wept over by a single, motherless child.
Sarah
—a pang of anguish pierced Penelope's heart.
But I didn't take any sugar
, she objected, and came awake with a start.

She could tell from the angle of the sun on the curtains that she'd slept only a short time, perhaps an hour. She splashed water over her face, then penned a chatty note to her daughter, relating as many light anecdotes as she could muster, including the story of John Chase's new hairstyle. Penelope hoped Maggie was guarding her tongue and hiding her own worry so that Sarah need never know what had happened in Clapham. Since Penelope's husband, Jeremy, had left without a word three months ago, her daughter had been nervous and sometimes withdrawn. Penelope told herself again that she should not have come here. Her letter finished, she changed her gown and studied her face in the mirror. The shadows under her eyes could not be helped, she decided, though she pinched her cheeks to give them more color. Downstairs, she handed the butler her letter and asked if he knew Lewis' whereabouts.

“He and Miss Garrod are in the garden, ma'am,” the butler said with stone-faced disapproval. “Go out the library doors and follow the path through the shrubbery. No doubt you'll come upon them.”

She kept her irritation from showing. Blast it, Lewis, she thought. The girl's father suffers in agony—hardly the time for youthful amours. But it seemed Nature did not agree with her. Outside, the earth's clamor was hushed, and all was still in the perfection of the summer's day. She hurried along the path, which wound past a folly and several vantage points, finally locating her brother and Marina Garrod in an arbor, where a statue of Apollo overlooked a small stretch of water and green fields beckoned beyond the ha-ha fence. Lewis and Marina sat, heads close together, on a bench under shady trees.

“Am I intruding?” said Penelope.

***

The rest of the day was long and cheerless. Penelope endured a strained dinner followed by a vigil in the drawing room as everyone waited for word from Garrod's sickroom. Mrs. Yates conversed too loquaciously with Ned Honeycutt, who listened with only half an ear as he watched Marina, a frown in his eyes. Penelope, seeing that Lewis and Marina now avoided each other's company, felt her uneasiness grow. She didn't trust that limpid innocence.

Buckler had also dined with them, obviously ill at ease to be foisted upon the family at so difficult a time. But Penelope thought his feeling went deeper, for his eyes seemed dulled, and he was less energetic than usual. She knew he was despondent about the future of their relationship. For that matter, he sometimes seemed to reject the promise of any human happiness at all, an attitude she could neither understand nor approve. Watching him make desultory conversation with Garrod's family, she hoped he wasn't punishing himself for that kiss in Vauxhall Gardens.

After dinner she suggested they take a stroll in the garden. The sun hung low in the sky, its fading warmth touching the shrubs with gold. Buckler and Penelope paced the laurel-walk in silence, their shoulders just brushing. Assessing Buckler's mood, she decided he looked weary and sad, but she didn't know how to help him.

At length, he spoke. “Chase says Mr. Garrod won't last the night, poor devil. If something should happen, if you need me for any reason, you'll send word?” He had paid a boy to fetch him a clean shirt from his chambers and had taken a bed for another night at the public house.

“I don't see why you should remain here,” she said for the second or third time that evening. “You must have your own affairs to attend to.”

He stopped, seized her hands, and turned her toward him. “Do you mean to drive me mad, Penelope? I'm sure that must be your intention.”

Suddenly, her temper rose. “What I said is true, isn't it? You sacrifice yourself for my sake, and I can't think of a single reason why you should. I can see that our…friendship lowers your spirits, and no wonder. What do you get out of it, after all?”

“I do not view friendship—the real kind—in that light,” said Buckler tightly. “It's not a commercial transaction.”

She gazed up into his face, which seemed to her dearer than it had ever been before. She read fire in his tawny eyes, steadfastness in his nose and chin, anxious love on his lips—and felt a powerful grief.

“I know that,” she answered.

“I don't stay just for you, Penelope. There's John. Don't you see how worried he is, how beset by doubts that he ought to have prevented Garrod's death? He is my friend too.”

“Of course, he is, but you know very well that wasn't what I meant.”

“Yes,” he said with some bitterness and released her hands, “you want to end it, don't you? I suppose you've decided, all on your own and without consulting my wishes, that it would be best for both of us.”

“And so it would,” she said, pleading now, though the desolation was keen and she found it torture to deny him when she wanted to throw herself in his arms. “All I do is drag you into turmoil and scandal at every turn. What can I give you in return? Nothing but sorrow and frustration and loneliness. How do you expect me to live with that? You deserve a woman with bright and fresh hopes to share with you. An entire life to share with you, not a half-life.” Her voice sank lower. “And children. When I see you with Sarah, I wish with all my heart that she were yours. But it cannot be.”

“I suppose there's nothing more to say. I will not add to your troubles, Penelope.”

“You seemed determined to misunderstand me. I am thinking of you.”

He shook his head, his expression turning remote. After kissing her hand, he went away without another word. She watched his upright figure retreat down the path to the gate and thought her heart would break.

In no good humor she returned to the drawing room, sitting next to her brother on the sofa. “Lewis,” she said in an undertone, “we must help Mr. Chase and leave as soon as possible. We don't belong here. If Miss Garrod has confided in you—”

“We can't go. There will be an inquest. You will be asked to testify. As for Miss Garrod, I'm not a fool. I know she needs to speak to Mr. Chase—and soon.”

“Why hasn't she asked for help? Can't she see that her secrecy only encourages others to think ill of her?”

“I've told her that. Give her a little longer. She's had no one for so long, Penelope. She's grown used to acting for herself. You see, I know what that feels like.”

She put her hand in the crook of his arm and leaned against his shoulder. “Yes, I know you do. Still, I don't want you involved in this. It's not your affair. People will say—”

He grinned down at her. “Say what? That bad blood will tell? That I saw a chance to take advantage of a troubled girl? Maybe even that I conceived a plot to murder her father and elope with the heiress?”

“It's not a joke!”

“Since when do we care what people think, Penelope?” He pressed his hand over hers, but she saw he would not be swayed.

“John Chase deserves better than this from us, Lewis,” she said.

***

Eager to escape, she went early to bed and fell into a dreamless sleep to the company of a gentle patter of rain on the window. Some hours later a thump from the corridor brought her fully awake. Her ears caught the rustling of cloth, soon followed by a bang on the wall. Startled, she sat up to listen. Thinking it was probably the nurse on some errand to the kitchen or someone in quest of one of Mr. Garrod's fancy water closets, she was about to lie down again when she heard a low murmur that sounded so close it might have been in the room with her. Her pulse quickened with fear, but then she realized the sound came from just outside in the corridor. It came again, and this time the voice started low and rose to a high pitch.

She swung her legs over the side of the bed, donned her dressing gown, and slid her feet into slippers. Padding to the door, she edged it open to peer into the corridor. It must have been very early in the morning, several hours before sunrise. Though the house seemed peaceful, Penelope distinctly heard uneven breathing and hushed footsteps on the thick carpeting. Then she saw a flash of movement and caught sight of a figure moving away from her.

The figure was slight—that of a woman, or rather, a girl—and Penelope knew at once it was Marina Garrod. Penelope watched her list to one side and stumble into the wall. In the moment before she righted herself, something dropped from her hand. She went on, more quickly and surely, until she reached the stairs and disappeared, a white blur in her nightgown.

Penelope set off in pursuit. She considered fetching John Chase—he'd told her where his room was on the floor above—but didn't want to lose Marina. She did pause to fumble for what the girl had dropped, her fingers grasping a round, smooth object. A bead? Stowing it in her pocket, Penelope followed Marina down the stairs.

About twenty feet ahead and gaining, the girl passed the landing between the first and ground floors. Here she stopped to glance over her shoulder, and for the first time Penelope saw her clearly in the square of moonlight framed by the large window. Her face floated in an unearthly way, her eyes like two holes.
Ay but
their sense is shut
, Penelope thought, and she understood with a shiver of fear that Marina Garrod was not aware of her surroundings. The girl raised one hand, and a second object fell from her grip. Then she slipped lightly down the rest of the wide, curving staircase, her hand on the banister. Hard on her heels, Penelope retrieved the object Marina had dropped—another bead like the first—but there was no time to do more than snatch it up and hurry on. Marina reached the ground floor, where a light burned in the entrance hall, and turned left.

The girl entered one of the rooms, closing the door behind her. Penelope reached the door and put her hand to the knob, wishing she knew more about the geography of this house. She recalled that the picture gallery, dining room, morning room, and drawing rooms were all at this level. This was not the main drawing room, where they had assembled before dinner; she knew that much. She opened the door and paused on the threshold. The curtains at the long windows opening onto the terrace were not drawn so that a stream of moonlight washed the room in a serene glow. This glow illuminated a desk, bookshelves, and two easy chairs that looked like beasts crouched in front of the hearth. A masculine room: an office or study.

Marina stood in the center of the hearthrug near an ornate marble chimneypiece, her back to Penelope. The girl stood quietly, as if she listened to a melody played only for her, and when Penelope reached her side, Marina turned an empty gaze upon her. Penelope hesitated, uncertain what to do. Hadn't she read somewhere it was unwise to awaken a sleepwalker? She must guide Marina back to bed.

She took the girl's arm, but Marina shook her off and moved to the French doors. A instant later she was outside, running in her bare feet down the terrace, her hair streaming behind her, her nightdress hiking up so that her bare limbs were visible. Penelope kicked off her own slippers, not wanting to risk tripping over her feet on the rain-slick stone. She negotiated some shallow stairs to stand on an expanse of lawn, which formed a smooth carpet under her feet. Flowerbeds sprouted from this carpet, and a path stretched off into a shrubbery. The flowers were uniform gray ghosts, some in indistinguishable masses, some bending on their stalks and stirring in the breeze. What did Marina intend?

Penelope had her answer when the girl ran past a large tub on wheels and halted at an ornamental vase to caress a large bloom. Penelope froze, caught in the beauty of the moment. She knew she must persuade Marina to return to the house before she injured herself, but she couldn't help but stare in fascination at the girl in the shadowed garden that seemed to welcome her as if she belonged here under the cold light of moon and stars, among the sweet night scents. Marina lingered over the bloom with a butterfly's touch; then her hand plunged down in a sudden motion that made Penelope rear back in shock. Marina had the flower in her grip, and earth was spilling down the front of her nightdress. Her hand descended to rip up another bloom.

“Marina, no,” said Penelope. There was something indescribably horrible in this destruction.

Before Penelope could react, Marina ran to stand over a bed of roses. She ran her fingers over the petals, the sleeve of her nightdress snagging on some thorns. Without warning, she made one of those wrenching motions and yanked out a fistful of tendrils and flowers, the petals fluttering down around her. Now there was blood on her nightdress and hands as a dozen thorns tore her flesh.

***

Chase snatched a few hours of rest, expecting to be called to the dying man's bedside. He had discarded his boots but not his wrinkled shirt and pantaloons. Propping a pillow under his knee, he'd started to read a silly novel borrowed from the library as his eyes drifted closed. But three hours later they flew open.

He wasn't sure what had awakened him, for the quiet of the house surged around him like a living thing. He could hear no signs of the activity in Garrod's bedchamber on the floor below. He sat up and pulled on his boots. After dashing some water on his face, he relit his chamberstick with a spill thrust into the lamp he'd left burning on the dressing table. He crossed the room and glanced out the window, observing that the rain had stopped. Beyond the flowerbeds directly beneath him, he could see, outlined in the moonlight, a stretch of greensward broken up by clumps of trees and, farther off, a small bridge that spanned a stream. He was about to turn away when a spark of light appeared, blinked out as it was swallowed up by the trees, and appeared again. His eye traced its sinuous progress. He grabbed his coat, stowed his pistols in his pocket, and left the room.