Silver Hollow (11 page)
She’s almost too quick
, he thought with a wry grin. Her inquisitiveness she had certainly not inherited from Drustan. Poor fool only cared about three things, sex, food and his closet obsession, flowers.
“Aye, you noticed. I’m afraid
’
ti
s a part of the—”
“I know, I know
,
” she interrupted with a groan and threw her hands up over her head to link atop her loose curls
.
“
I
t’s all part of the big secret you think you can’t tell me.” Pivoting on her heel in something
akin to
a villager’s dance, she rolled her eyes at him. “Look
,
Uncle Henry
.
”
He flinched in spite of himself.
“I get that you can’t tell me everything. It’s all in the fine print, right?”
“Fine what?” He blinked, momentarily stunned yet again by her odd phrases.
“There’s some contract out there you sign when you become part of a company? I just assumed…”
He shook his head, annoyed by her outsider thinking. “You’re not ready to know everything yet, Jessamiene. Now as to your previous question, I can explain.” He pointed to the first crude rendering and smiled fondly at his favorite relative. “This poor
chuckling
is Chuck the Mad.”
“You’re kidding?” Her green eyes sparkled as they often did when something amused her. The sunlight pouring in through the tall window ten meters against his back and over her face made them gleam like freshly polished jade.
Once more he was struck by her resemblance to her namesake. Nimue hopefully would remain where she belonged, in his past riddled with warfare and strife. Shaking himself free of the memories of a darker time, he continued, “I kid you not, my dear. I believe it was the—ahem—fever
which
drove him to madness, but the term finds its root with him. A chuckling is one inflicted with madness.”
“Are they called chucklings because he was named Chuck?”
“No, because he fancied chucking random objects out the window,” he answered with a warm smile. Her laughter, hearty and rooted in her chest, flowing in waves from her lips, was the
cause of his joy. As the sweet sound ec
hoed down the hall they had
come, Henry watched the house drink her in. Already t
hings were beginning to change
like they had before. She made all things
new
. And this time Henry welcomed her brand of change.
Perhaps she is ready for a little test.
Facing her and hoping he wasn’t getting his hopes up, he offered, “Care to visit the gardens, my dear?”
…
Seven days awake, three days asleep…you’ve been here
ten
days, Wentworth!
Amie still couldn’t believe the backwards world she
had
woken up to
. She never could forget
to the
morning she found
herself lying in a canopy bed in
an English castle. The whole thing felt very Jane Eyre, minus the crazy wife hiding in the attic. Tilting her glance a few feet higher above the rafters, she grinned.
At least, I hope Uncle Henry isn’t keeping a psycho ex-wife up there.
With the hall of portraits behind them, Henry led the way back to the kitchens. She followed the trail of his Regency
-
era dress coat and breeches, returned her gaze to the back of his hair. It was black as hers. Drustan, her father’s, had been a rich chocolat
e
y brown and he claimed she inherited her hair from her mother. But Amie’s mother, while a very dark brunette, lacked the blue-black shade her curls had grown into. Seeing her hair on someone else’s head was comforting, because it reminded her they were family.
So far, Amie was learning to love being her uncle’s apprentice. She had never signed a binding contract or anything, but this
was
what she had come to think of herself as. Seeing the endless sea of faces that had lived and ruled over this estate before them was humbling and made her American roots seem childish. In the beginning she had scarcely believed she could come from such a rich legacy. Against her wishes it made her memories of her father taste bittersweet. She couldn’t help but wonder why he had never cared to share this with her. Nothing she had seen or learned warranted what he’d done. Henry rarely spoke of those darker days, when Drustan ran away from home, but even now she could see the hurt in his eyes.
“Where are we going?” Amie asked, rushing to rest her hand at the crook of her uncle’s shoulder
,
and received a genuine smile in return.
“Somewhere marvelously brimbling with things certain to snatch the nix out of you!” was his cryptic reply. Half the fun was in the game of it. In the short time she’d known her uncle Amie was happy and frustrated
that
he loved surprises as much as she did.
Amie had thought he would take her by the kitchens for sure. Two doors led outside directly from the partly underground kitchen, one on a path to the stables, the other to the gardens. Cook’s domain was Uncle Henry’s favorite place to take lunch. Cook was a gregarious
,
hefty man who enjoyed talking about the price of meat and spices in terms
which
made no sense. He had yet to explain to her what an
acornip
was, or why it was better to receive nuts than gold coins in Silver Hollow. Every afternoon they were treated to the hustle and bustle of Cook’s world before he rushed off to the market. And Amie was finally convinced the castle wasn’t the ghost town she had initially thought of it as.
Servants were all over the castle. Dressed in clothing a time apart and similar in style to
Underhill
’s costume, women sported those ridiculous white caps
while m
en wore breeches and pants, even the occasional
kilt
, yet all donned the same brown and green coattails and vests. And everyone
seemed genuinely overjoyed to see them. Their eyes lingered on her and her father’s eyes in her face, in a way Amie wasn’t used to. It made her feel heavy inside, as if they all were expecting something from her.
Lunch was devoted to teaching her all about the food they ate, how it was grown or squidgimied,
whatever that meant
, and the two crops he grew. Thus far they had kept to the house, not even venturing out to the stables in the last
seven
days, so she was very eager to feel the sun and wind on her face.
After reaching a tapestry of scrawling flora, Henry pushed it aside and led her down a dark narrow passage. The door they soon came to was old and rusted with some mysterious light seeping through its large key hole and the space beneath it. Now certain she was being kidnapped to Wonderland, Amie threw her arms over her face. Henry opened the door and sunlight poured over her like a broken wave. Laughing low, he took her by the arm and pulled her further.
She stumbled blindly through the rose-hedged archway and along a petal
-
covered pathway. Immersed in the power of the sun and flowers and the rich sweet air, Amie couldn’t blink enough to see clearly.
Uncle Henry’s voice called above the song of the fowl and wind sneaking through the hedge. “One would think you had never seen the sun before
,
Jessamiene! And you a Wenderdowne!”
“I’m a Wentworth,” she stubbornly insisted. Henry had filled her in on her rightful name and heritage
all morning
, but Wentworth was the surname her father
had
chose
n
in America. She had never felt so far from him as she did now, staying in the home he grew up in, because the Drustan Henry spoke of was nothing like the father she had known. Keeping his name, and his ring on the chain around her neck, was her way of keeping him close to her.
Her vision faded in and out as they continued through the long hedge. She hesitated when they stepped over a tiny stream, rocks and mushrooms circling beneath its darkest recesses. Stone archways intersected with the rose
-
littered hedge, crumbling from weather and marked with fading ancient carvings. On one side the foliage grew tight and thick until it nearly obscured the oldest arches, and when she peered deep enough, she could see a door hidden at its far end. Etched between the two largest stone arches, it was drawn from the naked eye by the white trunked trees in front of it. As they passed the wind kicked the white trees’ scarlet and magenta petals into her eyes.
Shadows of the thin, spider
-
like hedge interspersed with brilliant pockets of sunlight. The shadows covered Amie’s skin and she felt as though she were walking through one of her odder dreams. The dreams had not ceased since her arrival, thanks to forgetting her prescription sleep meds. In fact, they only seemed more tangible, like living another life. When she awoke she was surprised to find the transition between worlds was not as difficult as it had been before. Everything about this place felt eerily familiar.
“Here we are!” Henry proclaimed once they faced the bright opening at the other end. “This was Drustan’s pride and joy, you know, his secret passion.” When he turned to look at her and found her nod, a curious frown creased his brow. “You aren’t surprised?”
Amie shook her head and
,
holding a hand over her eyes against the afternoon rays
,
stepped beyond the hedge. “We had a garden when I was little. It used to be our thing…until we moved.”
Henry nodded. “Drustan was most a Wenderdowne here. To everyone outside of our home he was a
rake
,
as they called it then.”
“Rebel without a cause, huh?” Amie grinned as she tried to picture her father in a biker gang, wearing expensive leather
,
and came up short. They both laughed at the same time before continuing her tour.
The gardens were vast, drafted into sections by thick rose
-
littered hedges much like the one they had come through. It fence
d in the garden with high walls,
occasionally betrayed the gray stones beneath.
A
ll Amie could see of the manor’s grounds were the tops of the forest and a large slice of open orange
-
tinged sky. She grinned wryly at the irony. Finally she had been given the fresh air she’d been craving but nothing of the grounds she had not seen.
Amie stared at the flowers choking themselves in the effort to be the boldest, the most beautiful. She walked amid a painting of pure color, richer than anything she had ever seen back home. The emerald green of the leaves and vines made her think of her father’s eyes.
S
he pushed his face
and the painful memories
from her mind. “So what are we doing here? Are you planning on teaching me the tricks of the trade or something?”
“Yes,” he replied with a beaming smile. “Come, I have a plot for you just around the bend.” After another twist of the path they passed the squatty statue of a bow
-
legged gnome. Henry inclined his head to the left and swept his right palm to the side, saying, “Pleasure and a pinch of nutmeg, ye kin.”
Amie frowned as she paused, her eyes lingering longer on the statue. Gooseflesh rose over her arms as the stony eyes seemed to follow her, altogether too lifelike for Amie’s comfort.
Rushing after to catch up with Uncle Henry, she stumbled into the circular garden. At its center sat a fountain and what she suspected to be the same babbling brook cutting its narrow way through. Amie followed the spiral carved stepping-stones, clutched her father’s ring hidden beneath her dress and stepped onto a clover-covered hill.
Henry was already on his knees in the middle of a mound of dirt and Amie grinned to see the tools nearby. “Here we are…good old Periwinkle
,
always senses when I’m coming,” he said while examining something akin to a spade.
Amie’s brow furrowed with confusion before she brushed the comment aside. “Finally something I understand,” she said to herself, thinking of the sea of corsets, skirts and shirtwaists up in her new wardrobe. Always a tomboy at heart
,
she had no trouble pushing up her sleeves and getting her skirts dirty. She reached for the gloves and frowned to find none waiting. “Don’t you use gloves? You’d think with all the other archaic traditions you people follow…?” Amie looked up only to see Henry’s usual whimsical grin meeting his eyes.
“You are a
Wenderdowne
, Jessamiene. You will find you do not need gloves at all to make things grow!” As he promptly dug his hands
in
to the dirt and ignored the tools between them, a transformation took place. Her uncle’s usual pleasant, albeit hard, demeanor was slowly stripped away to reveal the man beneath. Out here beneath the sun, even wearing a period film costume, he looked almost human.
