The Women of Eden (39 page)

Of course John had a private suspicion, so incredible that he'd never shared it with anyone, but after prolonged contemplation it made great sense, that Lord Ripples was John Thadeus Delane himself, that under the pseudonym the aging journalist had devised a capital way to sell newspapers and drive his competitors out of business.

If this were the case, a hearing under oath would reveal all and, if indeed the man's judgment had been impaired by senility and aging

ambition, then John would simply request a public retraction, content to let the man's punishment be his own embarrassment. But if some other Englishman were responsible for those devastating words, then further action would be taken, a civil suit, financial restitution, and ultimately complete ruin.

Warmed by these thoughts, John began to relax into the cushions, enjoying the rhythmical rocking of the carriage. In time they all would be restored to an even keel, the mutual love he shared with Andrew as strong as ever.

Thinking on love, he glanced across at Dhari, who had settled back as well during the prolonged ride.

She was aging, John thought sadly, seeing new Hues about her eyes and the corners of her mouth. She'd served him well and perhaps it was time to release her. There were others, younger, to whom he could turn, and if Andrew wanted her, then John would give her to him as a peace offering.

"Turn back!" he shouted out the window on a burst of energy, at last beginning to feel the heaviness lift. There was the key, then. Certain bridges had to be mended with those he loved. He'd never intended to hurt them. He would return and show them a different face, his old one, the one which in the past had elicited love and respect and loyalty. He could be as repentant as the next man.

"No—keep going!" he shouted, seeing that his driver was heading toward the house in Belgravia. "We're returning to Number Seven, St. George Street," he shouted further, and was aware of Dhari's look of surprise. Her eyes were fixed on him as though she had just perceived his intent, his generosity.

With mild regret, he said a silent goodbye to her. He'd kept his promise to look after her. As the carriage drew up in front of Number Seven, he said, more gruffly than he might have wished, "Go find your solicitor and tell him that his friend John Murrey Eden wishes you both well."

He watched as she alighted the carriage and looked beyond her to see Elizabeth, fully dressed, just descending the stairs.

"WaitI" he called up to his driver. On the pavement he saw Ehzabeth nod in his direction, as though he were little more than a stranger, and proceed on to her own carriage.

A/i, bridges in need of mending there as well, he thought. And, in the spirit of his newly made vows, he caught up with her in three broad strides.

"Going out again?** he asked, wanting desperately to heal this relationship.

She proceeded on a step or two, as though she had little desire to exchange words with him. "Briefly." She smiled, pulling at her gloves. "Why don't you go inside?" she added. "Alex Aldwell is waiting for you. He says it's a matter of some urgency."

Aldwell could wait. Again reminding himself that he must show all these people a new face, he took Elizabeth's arm. "Wherever you're going, can't it wait? I had hoped that we might take tea together as we used to, all of us, Dhari, Andrew, Mary—"

"You must excuse me, John," she said and moved a few steps beyond.

Then he must try again, truly humble himself before her. "Obviously Andrew has been talking to you," he began, "teUing you how— badly I behaved today."

"I've not seen Andrew," she said, still walking away from him. "Wben I returned a few moments ago he was not—"

"You've just come in?" he asked, puzzled. "Then why are you going out again so—"

"I'll return shortly," she promised.

Whatever the nature of her distress, it was increasing. An affair of the heart. He seemed to be sunounded by them today. A lovers' quarrel with Charles Bradlaugh?

Looking up, he saw that she was still moving away from him, and, in an act of discipline, he repressed the urge to command her to return and instead called after her, "Then I'll have to make do with Mary's company for tea, though we will miss you."

Her hand, extended to pull herself up into her carriage, froze in midair. Slowly she stepped back down to the pavement. "Mary has not returned home yet," she said softly, as though wishing he would not hear the words.

But he did hear and looked up at the sky and determined that the hour must be approaching six o'clock, the sun beginning to set. Although his instinct was to rage, he tempered his reaction, still wanting to heal the wounds he'd inflicted in the past. As for Mary, while her thoughtless disobedience would have to be dealt with, he doubted if she were in any real danger. After all, Jason was with her, as was Doris. She'd probably ridden too far and in her witless way lost track of time.

He found himself thinking of the school in Cheltenham. How

much easier he would breathe if he could place her in that fortress for a few years.

But this was neither the time nor the place to bring up that touchy subject. Consciously striving to fill his voice with merely kind authority, he said, "No cause for worry. I'll go and fetch her myself."

"No."

"Yes!" He looked back at Elizabeth and was tempted to say, You cdlowed her to run free. How can 1 entrust you with bringing her back?

As he shouted out the destination to his driver, he reminded himself that the control he'd needed in his dealings with Elizabeth was nothing compared to what would be required of him when he found the truant Mary.

As the carriage proceeded along the edge of Green Park, he looked out the window, amazed to see how rapidly dusk was falling. Deep in the park he saw the lamplighters at work, and only a few late-evening strollers, couples mostly, taking advantage of the fading light for a whispered intimacy.

"Stop up ahead," he called out, seeing to his right the beginning of Hyde Park and Rotten Row. He was amazed at how deserted the area was. Earlier, when he'd passed this way v^th Dhari, the pavement around the bridle path and stables had been clogged with carriages and cabs, people coming and going.

Now? Only four carriages stood at the pavement. One he recognized as Elizabeth's and, standing beside it, he saw Doris and Jason.

"Here," John called, and as his driver guided the carriage in front of the others, he looked back through the small oval window, hoping to catch a glimpse of Mary. But nothing and, as Doris and Jason recognized him, he saw them lean together for a whisper. Then Jason started toward him, an expression on his face which looked ominously like concern.

"Mr. Eden," he said, bobbing his head.

"Where is she?" John demanded.

"I don't know, sir. She's never been this late before. I've just returned from searching the bridle path and found nothing."

"Does she follow a set route?" he asked over his shoulder.

"I wouldn't know, sir."

"Of course," John muttered, aware of Doris creeping up on his right.

While he was certain that her female contribution would be a

waste of everyone's time, still he summoned her forward. *TouI*' he called out. "Would you have any idea—"

*'0h, no, sir, I wouldn't, sir," the little woman gasped. ^'She's a wicked, wicked girl, though, I know that, sir, worrying old Doris like this-"

John nodded, taking comfort in one small fact. She was a superb horsewoman. The chances of her having had an accident were sHght

Then where in the hell is she?

"You go that way," he said to Jason, pointing toward the western extremities of the park, "and I'll follow the bridle path. And tell her," he added, stabbing a finger at the quietly weeping Doris, "to wait here and, if Lady Mary returns, she is to secure her in the carriage and wait for us."

He glanced up at the sky and assessed that they had about an hour of light left. "If you find her first, say nothing. Just bring her back here and wait for me, all of you."

"Yes, sir," Jason said, nodding.

John plunged his hands into his pockets and started down the bridle path, trying in the faint light to avoid the piles of manure dropped during the day's rides. Damnl He'd not intended to pass the conclusion of this day in this manner. He desperately wanted a cup of tea, wanted to see the look of forgiveness and joy on Andrew's face after he had returned Dhari to him.

Anger and discomfort rising, the chill of evening beginning to penetrate his jacket, he increased his speed, aware of his once-polished boots becoming caked with smelly manure.

A short time later he looked up to find himself at the far end of Rotten Row, an intersection which gave an uncluttered view of the bridle path in all directions, not a horse or rider in sight.

Then obviously she'd ventured off into the interior of the park, an area of merely several hundred acres, which would tax the abilities of three hundred searchers.

Standing on the deserted path, an alarming thought occurred. The park at night was aHve with thieves and footpads, whores and whores' bullies, a world wholly remote from any Mary had ever known. Perhaps a brief introduction to the dark side of day and those creatures who inhabited it would be good for her—life's fiirst installment in that classic lesson of caution.

As though to retract the thought before it became a reality, John

started off across the park at a walk that rapidly became a trot, then a run, no longer concerned with the condition of his boots.

"Mary!" he called, and heard his own voice in echo.

"Mary!" he called again, and spied ahead a place where two paths intersected, one leading back to the pavement beyond Rotten Row, the other leading down into an arbor, completely obscured in shadows caused by early evening and the dense foliage overhead.

He paused for breath at the intersecting paths, looking down toward the arbor. The path was narrow. Surely she would have had better sense than to lead her horse there.

He held his position, thinking he'd heard something.

Listenl

The soft whinny of a horse? Not a sound of distress, rather satiation, as though he'd had his fill of grass.

Cautiously, in the event he'd stumbled into a den of night people, he took a few steps toward the arbor and the concealment of the garden beyond. From this new angle he saw that it was a horse. No, two horses, tethered to the trunk of a tree to give them grazing room. In the diminishing light he observed that one was gray, a sturdy well-built animal.

And the other-He blinked, half-convinced that his eyes in the semidarkness had deceived him. No, he'd seen that one before at Eden, two, three years ago, a handsome black stallion.

Cautious! Be cautious!

He started slowly down, staying well behind the concealment of bushes, listening, his eyes fixed on the darkness ahead, half-afraid of what he might see, half-afraid of what he wouldn't see. . . .

If God elected to give her nothing but sorrow for the rest of her life, she would not complain, for at least He had been generous enough to give her one unbroken interval of happiness, a series of afternoons so perfect that she could feed on the memories for the rest of her life.

Looking up in the diminishing light of day, she wondered precisely when it had happened, when had this small garden become a temple and that gentleman strolling a few feet ahead of her, head down, a god? How curious, the sense of pain which moved in tandem with her sense of happiness.

Now it was late and they both knew it was late, but neither was

capable of doing anything about it. Would it be asking too much to ask the sun to stop moving for just a short interval, to turn back the clock to two-thirty, or better still, go back to yesterday or the day before when he'd kissed her?

"Burke?"

Was there ever a more remarkable name?

He didn't respond, though he stood less than ten feet from her where she sat on their bench. And she didn't want him to respond, for she'd simply breathed his name, as though to test it against the man himself, the face, the form, the name all conspiring against her these past weeks, forcing her to view her entire life before now as something fraudulent and bankrupt.

Her little pleasures no longer brought her pleasure unless they involved him, and the hours away from him were ordeals to be endured, and the hands on the rosewood clock in her bedchamber were frequently her most deadly enemies, refusing to move except at a snail's pace. Then at last it would be two o'clock and she could legitimately leave the house, with two albatrosses about her neck named Jason and Doris. But no matter. She always shed them quickly enough.

Then freedom, and the brief canter to the intersecting paths where he was waiting for her, his horse already secured, where without words he would lead her down into their garden and they would find themselves alone, and he would turn sideways on the bench and kiss her hand and she would brush back a strand of loose hair from his forehead and allow her fingertips to linger on his flesh and try as best she could to deal with the immense love she felt for him.

She shivered in the cool of early dusk and spoke his name aloud this time, in need of his warmth and closeness, and was not at all prepared for the sight of his face, like a beacon in the night as he looked back, perceived her need and sat close beside her, his arm about her shoulders, his hand stroking her hair.

"It's late," he whispered. 'The chill is bad for you."

"Separation from you is worse."

Then she was in his arms, that miraculous face obliterating her view of all else. But it didn't matter. Nothing mattered but his closeness, his lips, his hand pressing gently on the small of her back, a feeling so glorious that she was trembling, not from cold but from the sheer need to record every detail against the day when she would have to rely on memory alone.

At the end of the kiss he continued to hold her, her face nestled sideways against his shoulder, the rough texture of his jacket a pleasant sensation against her cheek.

''It is late/' he reminded her, his voice close to her ear.