The Lady of Bolton Hill (28 page)

“But I thought the new Opera House is where most of the town’s music is going to be played.”

“It is. I bought this as a place to
live
,” he said. “My own house burned down, you know.”

“But, Daniel, you
hate
old buildings. I thought you liked everything to be new and modern.”

“I do, but I know you have a fondness for this place, so I’m willing to compromise. If you are willing to live here
with me
, that is.” She froze. She stood within the circle of his arms as the sound of hammers banging and workmen’s voices echoed throughout the bare rooms. Daniel cupped the side of her face in his hand. “Clara, I’ve come a long way in the past few days. I have you to thank for hounding me about getting my life in order. I was a foul-tempered bear every time you brought it up, because it was easier to keep charging forward without stopping to re-open old wounds. I know you would not have pushed if you hadn’t cared enough about us to brave it, and I thank God that you did. I’ve been able to accept that God has been working in my life. He did not abandon my mother, either before or after her death. And He didn’t abandon me, even though I spent more than a decade congratulating myself on my brilliance, never giving proper credit where it was due.”

It seemed almost too much to believe, but here was Daniel, her wise-cracking, irreverent friend speaking about God with warmth and ease. “If we were married, you would come to church with me?”

“Of course.”

“But would it be more than that?” she pressed. “I wouldn’t feel right about raising children together if you were merely going through the motions. They need the example of two believers.”

He smiled down into her face, his eyes meeting hers, and there was no subterfuge and no hesitation. “Clara, let me be very clear. I believe that God chose us for each other before we were even out of the cradle. He made it possible for two people of starkly different backgrounds and temperaments to share a bond of such strength that no span of ocean or length of years or even meddling relatives could tear us asunder. How else could I have found my way out of that steel mill and straight onto your doorstep? That was God’s doing, not ours.”

Clara folded her hands around his. This moment was so perfect she could barely dare to breathe. “I’ve always known that.” But now Daniel did, too, and the pieces of her life were falling into perfect place.

“I want to be married to you so I can kiss you whenever I want. So I can pull all those ridiculous pins from your hair and watch it spill across a pillow. I want to be married to you so I can roll over in the middle of the night and watch you sleep. I want to have children with you, so we can spoil them with as many musical instruments as we can fit into this wonderful old building.” He clasped her hands between his and pressed a kiss to her trembling fingers. “How about it, Clara? Are you game?”

Longing was carved onto every plane of his beloved face. There was the barest hint of a tremble in his hands, and the way he held his breath let Clara know that he was nervous. Her brash, overconfident Daniel was harboring just the tiniest fear that she might actually turn him down.

She smiled up into his eyes. “I’m game.”

Before the words were even out of her mouth, she felt herself being lifted off the floor and twirled in a circle. In the middle of the construction, surrounded by a dozen workmen and with the clattering of hammers, Daniel kissed her full on the mouth as though there were no tomorrow.

T
he dissonance pouring from the piano was completely void of any semblance of rhythm, accuracy, or appreciation of style. Rather, it was a brash assault against the very concept of musical integrity. Clara glanced at the watch hanging from a chain at her waist and breathed a sigh of relief, thanking the heavens that her son’s hour of piano practice had come to an end.

“Time is up for today, Matthew. Let’s go find something else to do.”

The banging stopped. “Can’t I keep playing just a little longer?” Matthew’s angelic seven-year-old voice pleaded with her for more time, just as he did every day at the end of his allotted use of the piano.

“Sweetheart, it is your sister’s turn to use the music room. How can Lilly learn to play the piano if you are using it all the time?” Lilly was five years old, but if possible, she showed even less aptitude for music than her brother. After a full year of piano lessons, Lilly seemed to have regressed in her skills. Both of Clara’s children had a boundless love of music and had embraced every instrument she and Daniel had placed before them, but love of music did not automatically come packaged with any identifiable trace of talent. Clara was glad Daniel had insulated their home with sound-absorbing materials so the neighbors could not hear the atrocities that emanated from their music room.

Lilly seemed to know precisely when her turn in the music room arrived and she materialized beside Clara, gazing with sheer rapture at the piano. “My turn now?”

“Yes, sweetie pie, it is your turn now.” Clara could not help but smile at the delight she could see rolling through Lilly’s compact little body. The child’s eyes grew round with anticipation as she raced to the piano, both hands outstretched.

Matthew clung to the bench. “Do I have to get off already?”

“Yes, you do,” Daniel said from behind her. “Now head outside and fetch the mail like a good lad.”

Clara turned to see Daniel standing in the doorway of the music room, his tall frame filling the space. Her heart skipped a beat at the sight of her husband, still dashingly handsome with his flashing eyes and enigmatic smile. She watched as Daniel lifted Lilly onto the piano bench. “What would you like to play for us today, Lilly-pad?” he asked her. He pulled down a few sheets of simple tunes he had written for her.

Lilly ignored the sheet music. “Play my own songs,” she said with relish. Lilly commenced mashing the keys, heedless of accuracy or rhythm. Daniel tried to hide his wince, but he met Clara’s eyes over the glossy dark curls of his daughter. After eight years of marriage, Clara knew exactly what Daniel was thinking, and no speech was necessary to translate the bewildered look on his face.
How could such a thing have happened to us? How could we have produced these ham-fisted, tone-deaf offspring?

She leaned down to kiss Lilly’s forehead. “Daddy and I will be back in an hour to listen to your new song,” she said. It was a relief to close the door on the music room as she and Daniel took refuge in the oversized study where they retreated at the end of each day.

“Maybe it will just take a little more time,” he said as he took a seat behind his desk. He pinched the skin on the bridge of his nose and massaged away the tension brought on by Lilly’s thrashing at the piano, but Clara could detect the laugh lines beginning to form along the side of his mouth.

“It is hopeless,” she said. “When I was Lilly’s age, I was playing Schubert.” Not that Clara minded her children’s lack of musical abilities. They were healthy and delightful children who were oblivious to the horror they were visiting on the world each time either of them picked up a musical instrument. She had learned enough from her father to know that someday her children’s true talents would emerge, and when they did, she would be ready to help.

Matthew bounded into the room. “Here is the mail,” he said. “Can I go upstairs and practice my guitar?” Last month Clyde had sent the boy a guitar from Mexico, but Matthew was no more skilled on strings than on keys.

She looked pointedly at the mail in his hand. “Practice your reading first. Then you can play your guitar.”

Matthew looked at the first envelope. “This one is for Mister Daniel Tremain,” he said as he carefully read the address line.

“And read the person it is from,” Clara prompted. The return addresses were always more difficult, and Matthew finally sounded out the name of a bank where Daniel did business. Whenever the letter hailed from any place outside of Baltimore, Daniel took Matthew to the oversized globe in the corner and helped him locate the city. The next envelope was from the Patent Office in Washington, D.C., which Matthew was quite accustomed to seeing in the mail. The boy easily twirled the globe to the appropriate spot and showed Daniel how he could locate the city.

When Matthew reached the last piece of mail, he looked up at her. “This one is for you, but there is no return name on the outside.”

Clara glanced at the letter. “That’s odd. What is the city written in the left corner?”

Matthew struggled over the unfamiliar letters, until Daniel helped him sound it out. “London,” Matthew finally said. Daniel took Matthew to the globe to show their son where London was, while Clara opened the letter with curiosity. It had been over eight years since she had lived in London, but she still corresponded with Mr. Benjamin, her former editor at
The
Times
.

Inside the envelope was nothing but a newspaper article. No letter, no personal message. It was an article printed in
The
Times
about an incident involving the U.S. Marine Corps in Bombay.

Clara’s brow wrinkled. The United States didn’t have any sort of military presence in India, but she knew that the Marines guarded American embassies all over the world. She continued reading the story, and when she finally understood what the story was about, she gasped and her eyes grew round in astonishment.

“What was in the letter?” Daniel asked.

Clara glanced at her son, still standing beside the globe. “Matthew, go upstairs and practice your guitar.” The boy needed no prodding as he raced out of the room. She waited until she heard the clatter of his footsteps tracking up the stairs and the closing of his bedroom door. Clara looked back to Daniel.

“I’m not exactly sure who sent it . . . probably Mr. Benjamin, my editor at
The
Times
. He knew I was intensely interested in the story of a young girl who was sold into prostitution in India. It was a terrible incident in which the girl’s mother was addicted to opium. The girl was thought lost forever, but apparently she has been rescued after all these years.” Clara held up the story. “It seems that a contingent of U.S. Marines went looking for her, and she was finally discovered in Bombay. Poor child.”

She passed the article to Daniel, and was about to discard the envelope when something rolled from the open flap and bounced on the floor near her feet. Clara looked down to see a tiny diamond earring winking up at her from the oriental rug.

A shiver raced down her spine.

Clara’s heart pounded as she stared at that diamond, and when she was finally able to draw a breath, she grabbed the article back from Daniel’s hands, reading it again with far more attention. Her gaze raced over the lines until she found the passage she was looking for. In a trembling voice, she summarized the passage for Daniel.

“It says here that the Marines were under the command of Second Lieutenant Alexander Christian. He led a team of six soldiers through the rural villages of eastern Maharashtra following rumors of a white child who had been sold into slavery. It says that Lieutenant Christian personally escorted the child to the British embassy, where she was reunited with members of her paternal family.”

Her gaze flew to Daniel, who was looking at her with a quizzical expression on his face. “It is
Bane
,” she said breathlessly. “Alexander Banebridge. He had warned me that half the world would be looking for him, so clearly he has changed his name.” She reached down and retrieved the tiny diamond stud from where it had rolled at her feet. Its mate, which Bane had given her just hours before he had left her so many years ago, lay in her jewel box upstairs where she saw it every day. In all these years she had never heard a single word from Bane, but the sight of that diamond in her jewel box served as a daily reminder to keep him in her prayers. She had not known whether he was alive or long dead, but each night she prayed for Bane’s safety.

“Well, Bane, it looks like you really can do anything.” Sunlight flashed off the diamond between her fingers, and she remembered the night when she had stood at the side of a ship and watched his face as he turned his back on his old life forever.

“I suppose the fact that he isn’t dead or in jail is cause for astonishment,” Daniel said. His tone was dry, but Clara knew there was no rancor in Daniel’s attitude toward Bane. Bane had earned Daniel’s reluctant admiration long ago. “You’ve got that longing look on your face,” Daniel said. “Like a mother hen missing one of her chicks. I’ll track Bane down for you, if you have a hankering to see him again.”

Clara strolled to the window, still reeling with the knowledge that Bane was alive and flourishing. “I don’t think he wants to be found,” she said. “The article is dated from almost two years ago. He probably wanted time to cover his tracks before sending us this letter. I suppose he could be anywhere in the world by now.”

Daniel snorted. “I don’t care if he is at the South Pole. If you want to see Bane, I’ll find him for you.”

She rolled the diamond stud between her fingers and stared at the shadows that lengthened across the lawn. “I think I’d like to see him again,” she finally said. “I’ve always wanted to know what happened to Bane. He is like a great, unsolved mystery in my life.”

Daniel reached for her hand and tugged her down onto his lap. He buried his face against the side of her neck and she squealed when she felt his teeth nip her earlobe. “If Bane is the great mystery in your life, then what am I?”

She smiled. “You are my rock, Daniel. You are the beginning and end of every dream I ever had.”

And as she settled into his lap, Clara was bathed once again in the feeling that she was exactly where she belonged. A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth, and she gave thanks for the simple joys that blessed her life.