The Wild Rose (2 page)

P
ART
O
NE

MARCH

1914

LONDON

CHAPTER ONE

“Aunt Eddie, stop! You can’t go in there!”

Seamus Finnegan, sprawled naked across his bed, opened one eye. He knew that voice. It belonged to Albie Alden, his best friend.

“For heaven’s sake, why not?”

“Because he’s asleep! You can’t just barge in on a sleeping man. It’s not decent!”

“Oh, bosh.”

Seamie knew that voice, too. He sat up, grabbed the bedcovers, and pulled them up to his chin.

“Albie! Do something!” he yelled.

“I tried, old chap. You’re on your own,” Albie shouted back.

A second later, a small, stout woman dressed in a tweed suit threw open the door and greeted Seamie loudly. It was Edwina Hedley. She was Albie’s aunt, but Seamie had known her since he was a boy and called her Aunt Eddie, too. She sat down on the bed, then immediately jumped up again when the bed squawked. A young woman, tousled and yawning, emerged from under the covers.

Eddie frowned. “My dear,” she said to the girl, “I earnestly hope you have taken preventive measures. Otherwise, you’ll find yourself with a baby on the way and the father en route to the North Pole.”

“I thought it was the South Pole,” the woman said sleepily.

“It was,” Seamie replied.

“Has he told you about all the children?” Eddie asked the girl, lowering her voice conspiratorially.

Seamie started to protest. “Eddie, don’t . . .”

“Children? What children?” the woman asked, her sleepy look gone now.

“You know he has four children, don’t you? All illegitimate. He sends the mothers money—he’s not a complete bounder—but he won’t marry any of them. They’re completely ruined, of course. London girls, all of them. Three left for the country. Couldn’t show their faces anymore. The fourth went to America, the poor dear. Why do you think the whole thing with Lady Caroline Wainwright ended?”

The girl, a pretty brunette with a short bob, turned to Seamie. “Is this true?” she asked indignantly.

“Entirely,” Eddie said, before Seamie could even open his mouth.

The girl wrapped the duvet around herself and got out of bed. She picked her clothes up off the floor and huffed out of the room, slamming the door on her way.

“
Four
children, Aunt Eddie?” Seamie said, after she’d gone. “Last time it was two.”

“A gold digger through and through,” Eddie sniffed. “I saved you just now, but I won’t always be around at times like these, you know.”

“What a pity,” Seamie said.

Eddie leaned over and kissed his cheek. “It’s good to see you.”

“Likewise. How was Aleppo?”

“Absolutely splendid! Stayed in a palace. Dined with a pasha. Met the most extraordinary people. A Tom Lawrence among them. He traveled back to London with me. He’s staying in the Belgravia place and—”

There was a loud, resounding boom as the house’s heavy front door slammed shut.

Eddie smiled. “Well, that’s the end of that one. Won’t be seeing her again. What a tomcat you are.”

“More of a stray dog, I’d say,” Seamie said ruefully.

“I heard about Lady Caroline. It’s all over London.”

“So I gathered.”

Seamie had come to Highgate, Eddie’s beautiful Georgian brick house in Cambridge, to recuperate from a brief and heady love affair that had soured. Lady Caroline Wainwright was a privileged young woman—wealthy, beautiful, spoiled—and used to getting what she wanted. And what she wanted was him—for her husband. He’d told her it would never work. He wasn’t good husband material. He was too independent. Too used to his own ways. He traveled too much. He told her any bloody thing he could think of—except the truth.

“There’s someone else, isn’t there?” Caroline had said tearfully. “Who is she? Tell me her name.”

“There’s no one else,” he’d said. It was a lie, of course. There was someone else. Someone he’d loved long ago, and lost. Someone who’d ruined him, it seemed, for any other woman.

He’d finished with Caroline, and then he’d hightailed it to Cambridge to hide out with his friend. He had no home of his own to go to, and when he was in England, he tended to bounce between Highgate, his sister’s house, and various hotels.

Albie Alden, a brilliant physicist, taught at King’s College and lived in his aunt’s house. He was constantly being offered positions by universities all over the world—Paris, Vienna, Berlin, New York—but he wanted to stay in Cambridge. Dull, sleepy Cambridge. God knew why. Seamie certainly didn’t. He’d asked him many times, and Albie always said he liked it best here. It was peaceful and quiet—at least when Eddie was away—and he needed that for his work. And Eddie, who was rarely home, needed someone to look after things. The arrangement suited them both.

“What happened?” Eddie asked Seamie now. “Lady Caroline break your heart? Didn’t want to marry you?”

“No, she
did
want to marry me. That’s the problem.”

“Mmm. Well, what do you expect? It’s what happens when you’re a dashing and handsome hero. Women want to get their claws into you.”

“Turn around, will you? So I can get dressed,” Seamie said.

Eddie did so, and Seamie got out of bed and grabbed his clothing off the floor. He was tall, strong, and beautifully made. Muscles flexed and rippled under his skin as he pulled his pants on, then shrugged into his shirt. His hair, cut short on the sides, long and wavy on the top, was a dark auburn with copper glints. His face was weathered by the sun and the sea. His eyes were a frank and startling blue.

At thirty-one years of age, he was one of the world’s most renowned polar explorers. He’d attempted the South Pole with Ernest Shackleton when he was still a teenager. Two years ago, he’d returned from the first successful expedition to the South Pole, led by the Norwegian Roald Amundsen. In demand all over the world, he’d embarked on a lecture tour shortly after returning from Antarctica and had traveled nonstop for nearly two years. He’d come back to London a month ago and already he felt it, and everyone in it, to be dull and gray. He felt restless and confined, and couldn’t wait to be gone again on some new adventure.

“How long have you been in town? How are you liking it? Are you going to stay for a bit this time?” Eddie asked him.

Seamie laughed. Eddie always talked this way—asking a question, and before you could answer it, asking ten more.

“I’m not sure,” he said, combing his hair in the mirror above the bureau. “I may be off again soon.”

“Another lecture tour?”

“No. An expedition.”

“Really? How exciting! Where to?”

“Back to Antarctica. Shackleton’s trying to get something together. He’s quite serious. He announced it in the
Times
last year, and he’s already drawn up some very detailed timetables. All he has to do now is scare up some funds.”

“What about all the war talk? Doesn’t that worry him?” Eddie asked. “People talked about nothing else on board the ship. In Aleppo, too.”

“It doesn’t worry him a bit,” Seamie replied. “He doesn’t give much credence to it. Says it’ll all blow over, and wants to sail by summer’s end, if not earlier.”

Eddie gave him a long look. “Aren’t you getting a bit old for the lad’s life? Shouldn’t you settle down? Find a good woman?”

“How? You chase them all away!” Seamie said teasingly. He sat down on the bed again to put his socks on.

Eddie flapped a hand at him. “Come downstairs when you’ve finished dressing. I’ll make us all some breakfast. Eggs with harissa sauce. I bought pots of the stuff back with me. Wait till you taste it. Simply marvelous! I’ll tell you and Albie and his boffin friends about all my adventures. And then we’ll go to London.”

“To London? When? Right after breakfast?”

“Well, perhaps not right after,” Eddie conceded. “Maybe in a day or two. I’ve got the most fascinating man staying in my town house whom I want you to meet. Mr. Thomas Lawrence. I was telling you about him just a moment ago, before your paramour nearly slammed my door off its hinges. I met him in Aleppo. He’s an explorer, too. And an archaeologist. He’s traveled all around the desert, knows all the most powerful poohbahs, and speaks flawless Arabic.” Eddie suddenly stopped speaking and lowered her voice. “Some people say he’s a
spy
.” Eddie said this last word in a whisper, then resumed her normal, booming tone. “Whatever he is, he’s thoroughly amazing.”

Eddie’s words were punctuated by a sudden clap of thunder, followed by the pattering of rain against the mullioned windows, one of which had a cracked pane.

“Water’s coming in,” she said. “I must call the glazier.” She sat watching the rain for another minute. “I never thought I’d miss the English weather,” she added, smiling wistfully. “But that was before I’d seen the Arabian desert. It’s good to be back. I do love my creaky old house. And creaky old Cambridge.” Her smile faded. “Though I do wish the circumstances of my return were different.”

“He’ll be all right, Eddie,” Seamie said.

Eddie sighed heavily. “I hope so,” she said. “But I know my sister. She wouldn’t have asked me to come home if she wasn’t terribly worried.”

Seamie knew that Mrs. Alden, Albie’s mother and Eddie’s sister, had wired Eddie at Aleppo, asking her to return to England. Admiral Alden, her husband, had taken ill with some sort of stomach complaint. His doctors had not yet figured out what was wrong with him, but whatever it was, it was bad enough to keep him in bed and on pain medication.

“He’s made of tough stuff,” Seamie said. “All the Aldens are.”

Eddie nodded and tried to smile. “You’re right, of course. And anyway, that’s about enough moping for one morning. There’s breakfast to attend to and then I must call the glazier. And the gardener. And the chimney man, too. Albie’s done nothing in my absence. The house is dusty. My mail is up to the rafters. And there’s not one clean plate in the entire kitchen. Why doesn’t he get that girl from the village up here to do some cleaning?”

“He says she disturbs him.”

Eddie snorted. “I really don’t see how she could. He never comes out of his study. He was in it when I left two months ago. And he’s in it now, working harder than ever, even though he’s supposed to be on sabbatical. He’s got two more boffins in there with him. I just met them. Dilly Knox, one’s called. And Oliver Strachey. They’ve got blackboards and charts and books strewn all over. What on earth can they be doing in there? What can possibly be so fascinating?”

“Their work?”

“Hardly. It’s all just numbers and formulas,” Eddie said dismissively. “That boy needs a wife. Even more than you do, I daresay. He’s far too odd and absentminded to continue without one. Why is it that you have more women after you than you can possibly cope with and poor Albie hasn’t any? Can’t you push some of your admirers in his direction? He needs a good woman. And children. Oh, I would so love to hear the happy noise of little ones in my home again. How wonderful those years were when Albie and Willa were little and my sister would bring them here and they’d swim in the pond and swing from that old tree—that one right there,” Eddie said, pointing at the huge oak outside the bedroom window. “Willa would climb so high. My sister would plead with her to come down, but she wouldn’t. She’d only climb higher and—”

Eddie suddenly stopped talking. She turned and looked at Seamie.

“Oh, crumbs. I shouldn’t have spoken of her. Do forgive me.”

“It’s all right, Eddie,” Seamie said.

“No, it isn’t. I . . . I don’t suppose you’ve had a letter from her recently, have you? Her own mother hasn’t. Not for the last three months anyway. And she’s been writing to Willa twice a week. Trying to get word to her about her father. Well, I suppose getting letters to and from Tibet is a rather tricky business.”

“I suppose it is. And no, I haven’t heard from her,” Seamie said. “But I never have. Not since she left Africa. I only know as much as you do. That she nearly died in Nairobi. That she traveled through the Far East afterward. And that she’s in the Himalayas now, looking for a way to finish the job.”

Eddie winced at that. “You’re still pining for her, aren’t you?” she said. “That’s why you go through women like water. One after another. Because you’re looking for someone who can take Willa’s place. But you never find her.”