Authors: Michelle Wan
The Orchid Shroud (44 page)
But he remained deeply troubled over Mara. The “orchid nerd” taunt and her accusations about his running from reality still stung. Maybe she had a point. He knew she wanted more from him than he had been prepared to give, his pronouncements on permanence notwithstanding. And maybe he really did have to look at this. Or maybe not, because, after their last exchange, things were probably washed up between them anyway.
At this moment in Julian’s reflections, Bismuth appeared downstream, splashing across the water and galloping toward him up the path. The dog was wet and muddy as usual, but he looked excited. He scampered around, eyes alight, ears flying.
“Earn your keep,” said Julian, with something almost approaching affection. Bit by bit, the dog had dug itself into its master’s soft spot. “Find some truffles.”
“Too early for them,” said a voice he knew. Mara appeared, breaking through the trees on the other side of the stream. Jazz came pushing through the bushes beside her.
Julian stared at her in amazement. “Hello, stranger.” He lurched gladly to his feet, then checked himself. “Er—what are you doing here?”
She appeared hesitant, uncertain of her welcome. “Looking for you. I spotted your van parked off the road and figured you’d be around here somewhere.” She tried to speak with her normal briskness, but her tone was forced. “Actually, Bismuth found
us
. So. Discovered any rare orchids?”
“Not a single one.”
“Didn’t think so. Without wanting to sound judgmental, I think you need help.”
“Is that an offer?” he asked cautiously.
She paused, giving it serious consideration, her eyes crowded with unspoken questions. “If you ask pretty.”
Pretty? He tugged at his beard, wondering how to put it. There were so many things he needed to say to her, and none of them would be easy. May as well get it over with. He opted for the unadorned truth. “All right. The fact is, Mara, we’re very different people. You like buildings and moving things around. Tearing down walls just seems damned destructive to me. You have no real feeling for the things I care about—flowers, trees, orchids. All this makes it very hard for us to see eye to eye …” He stopped, unable to go on because suddenly he no longer knew what he wanted to say.
“‘To him who keeps an Orchis’ heart, the swamps are pink with June.’” The lines from Emily Dickinson came softly and unbidden to Mara’s lips.
He regarded her earnestly. A vision of wetlands, ablaze with
Orchis laxiflora
, flashed through his mind. Fancy her knowing that. But he sensed that her words held some far deeper meaning.
“I don’t have an Orchis’ heart,” she said sadly. “But I appreciate beauty in my own way. Who knows? Maybe one day I will see a swamp as a sweep of color rather than a muddy bog …” She found that she could not look at him. Instead, she stared into the swiftly running stream between them. A leaf, riding the current, swirled past and was lost to view. “I hope this isn’t your way of saying goodbye.”
Julian considered this. Very gently he said, “I think it’s my way of saying that we should stop trying to make the other into what neither of us is.”
Now she looked across at him. “Do we do that?”
“Yes.”
“What should we do instead?” Profoundly, Mara realized that this was the knife-edge on which their relationship balanced.
“Build on what we have. On who we really are.” He took a deep breath, certain now of his words. “I want to work things out between us, Mara. I want to be with you. Over the long term, through all the seasons.” His sudden grin was boyish and self-deprecating. “How’s that for pretty?”
A rush of relief followed by a great gladness of heart, radiant with all of nature’s colors, swept over Mara.
“It’ll do, Julian Wood,” she said, her eyes filling with laughter as she looked for a way to cross the water. “It’ll do very well.”
23 FEBRUARY 1872
The beast raised its head, ears alert, its long muzzle freshly bloodied. A pale moon hung huge above a frozen landscape of silvered fields and shadowed forests. The sound drew nearer, the rumble of wheels, the flinty clatter of hooves on a stony roadway. The beast growled low in its throat, crouching over its nocturnal feast. A moment later, the light gig rattled past, swerving off in the direction of the dark mass of a structure, outlined on a rugged prominence against the night sky
.
In a downstairs chamber of Aurillac Manor, a woman stood before a dying fire. Her face was pale and expressionless against the somber tones of her dress, her dark hair coiled tightly around her head like a cap. With a crackle, the log in the hearth flared, momentarily catching the whites of her eyes and illuminating features that were small and regular, but without any real beauty. She had been waiting—hours, it seemed—for something, a cry, a rushing of feet, anything to signal the inevitable discovery. She did not hear the arrival of the gig that came to a rocking halt at the rear of the building, or the hurried footsteps of the maidservant who ran gasping up the narrow stone stairway leading to the upper story of the house
.
When the first faint wail reached her, the woman raised her head sharply. She tensed. Disbelief replaced incomprehension. Quickly, she moved in the direction of the cry that hung, like a wisp of devilish smoke, in the air. Gathering up her skirts, she ran, stumbling up the dimly lit stairwell, rushed through the antechamber at the top, and burst without knocking into the room
.
Henriette was seated beside a table on which burned a single lamp. She looked up, turning scornful blue eyes on the intruder. The woman in the doorway wavered
.
“It’s you, then,” Henriette said. “I wondered which of you it would be.”
Eloïse’s harsh intake of breath was almost a strangled cry. “It’s not possible,” she whispered. “Your son is dead. Hugo is now childless—”
“And the Verdiers will take back what belongs to them? Oh, my dear.” Henriette smiled like a golden cat. “Once again I must disappoint your hopes. Hugo is already dead. He died half an hour ago. But”—the mother shifted the precious burden in her arms—“as you can see, he leaves an heir. My son, Eloïse, lives and is eager for the breast.”
The wolf resumed its feasting, worrying its kill with tooth and claw. In a rush and with a sudden expulsion of air that was as gentle as a sigh, the torn belly yielded up its prize of steaming guts. Eyes rolling to the moon, the wolf threw back its shaggy head in a primeval valedictory over its dead
.
Copyright © 2006 Michelle Wan
Anchor Canada edition 2007
All rights reserved. The use of any part of this publication, reproduced, transmitted in any form or by any means electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, or stored in a retrieval system without the prior written consent of the publisher—or, in the case of photocopying or other reprographic copying, a license from the Canadian Copyright Licensing Agency—is an infringement of the copyright law.
Anchor Canada and colophon are trademarks.
Library and Archives Canada Cataloguing in Publication
Wan, Michelle
The orchid shroud : a novel of death in the Dordogne / Michelle Wan.
eISBN: 978-0-385-67345-7
I. Title.
PS8645.A53O73 2007 C813′.6 C2007-901981-1
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales, is entirely coincidental.
Published in Canada by
Anchor Canada, a division of
Random House of Canada Limited
Visit Random House of Canada Limited’s website:
www.randomhouse.ca
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