The Lily Brand (30 page)

“Whoever looked after these people did a very fine job of it,” the doctor said.

Bittersweet pain sliced Troy’s heart. “My wife did,” he said.

At that, the young doctor raised his brows. “Well, well, this is most unusual. Yet as I said, she did a very fine job. All broken bones are set correctly, all wounds are properly dressed and stitched…”

Troy gave the rosy-faced young man a tight smile. “My wife is very knowledgeable in the art of healing.” Another memory sprung up. How she had tended
his
wounds that first evening, had spread salve over his torn and burnt flesh. Only now, the pain was worse than when the brand had seared his skin.

Shuddering, Troy closed his eyes.

The young doctor left with the promise to come back in a few days. Troy was grateful for this; he did not know whether his wife would be ready to care for her patients herself.

Upon Troy’s return, he found that his wife had several of her dresses dyed black. He refrained from pointing out that it was not seeming to wear full mourning for a mere servant. Mistress Nanette had clearly been more. Out of respect for the old woman, he found himself a piece of crêpe to wear around his arm.

Until the funeral, his wife sat with her old nanny, the flower fairy having reverted back to the sad, gray ghost he had met in France.

Whenever he thought of France, a vise constricted around Troy’s heart. Because of his own fear and pain he had been unable to sense hers, had been unable to see past anything other than the violence he’d suffered. And yet, all that time, Lillian had tried to help him, to protect him. She had set him free in more ways than one. Apart from Jus and Drake, she was the only person who had ever stood up for him—and that was not an easy feat in her circumstances.

He tried to envision her childhood and youth, spent in that hellish
château
in France, cut off from all human company, indeed, cut off from all humanity. How she had survived was beyond him. He marveled at her endurance in the face of the worst adversity, at the will of steel that even her stepmother had not been able to twist. And he admired the courage with which she had taken her life in her own hands when she had fled from Château du Marais, and once again when she fashioned a new life for herself here at Bair Hall. For she had clearly done that: the villagers asked after her, and his friends adored her. While his own anger and hatred had poisoned the atmosphere at the Hall, she had gone out and been happy, had made herself a flower queen of his fields and gardens. This was the girl who had freed him from Camille’s shackles and had later lied to her stepmother to protect him from her—when it should have been him protecting his wife.

It humbled him.

And it filled him with deep gratitude toward the woman he had married. With gratitude and more—so much more.

But after all that had happened, how could he expect she would ever forgive him? For ruining her, for forcing her into this marriage, for nearly raping her on their wedding night. He shuddered when he thought of that. He despised himself for it, the self-contempt churning in his stomach. How could he ever have sunk so low? Driven by a base need for revenge, all unjustified. It was indeed he who needed forgiveness. It had never been her, never been Lillian, whose only sin consisted of being a girl, as much a victim of her stepmother as himself.

How could she ever forgive him?

He watched her during the funeral as she stood at Nanette’s grave, so still as if she were one of the statues that adorned so many churchyards. A sad angel, clad in the bleakest of colors. Yet even wearing deepest black, she did in no way resemble
la Veuve Noire
. Her delicate features did not mirror her stepmother’s malice, but revealed only loneliness. Deep loneliness. He wondered how he could have ever thought otherwise.

It seemed to Troy that he had woken from a long, dark dream. And now it was time to set his life to rights and to prove to his wife that he was worthy of her after all.

~*~

How strange it was that life outside had not died, that the birds should still sing, that horse chestnuts, round and shining, would litter the park, and that the rowan tree at the gate would be aglow with a thousand red berries. Should they not all be withered and dead?

When Lillian wandered around the grounds she now knew so well, she, at least, felt withered and wilted, as if a part of her had died with Nanette. Whenever she stepped into the countess’s sun parlor, she almost expected to hear the merry clicking of Nanette’s needles; and when she stepped into the kitchen in the afternoon, she would wonder why it did not smell of melting wax, of mint and dried herbs. Never again would she feel cherished in lavender-scented embraces, would she see the petite figure of her old nanny slip through the woods with the light step of a young girl.

With Nanette, Lillian had lost the last bridge to her childhood and to happier years. Now there was nobody on this whole wide earth who had been present when Lillian had taken her first step or smiled for the very first time. Forgotten was the first word she had spoken, the first drawing she had made and the name of her first doll. Everything was lost in the past, the memories gone like sand in the wind.

And so, the coldness returned to reach for Lillian, to envelop her in its icy embrace until it had dimmed the pain.

What did it matter then that her husband wanted to leave for France? She did not know why he wanted to return there. She did not care. It did not touch her. Nothing ever would. Never again.

On the day he left, she stood on the front steps of Bair Hall together with his friends and their dogs, while the servants hovered in the entrance hall behind them. She noticed how the sun glinted on her husband’s hair, little dark flames dancing around his head. Her gaze wandered on, to the bright blue sky, which was dotted with a few white clouds, sheep of the air.

“My lady,” her husband said.

She blinked.

He stood in front of her, on the step below so that their eves were almost level. She had not heard him come so near.

“Lillian,” he said. His warm, large hand cupped her cold cheek, and for a moment she was tempted to snuggle closer to that warmth. But then, the coldness from the stone beneath her seeped through her shoes, into her flesh, traveled upward until the cold erased his tempting warmth.

His thumb slowly rubbed over her skin, and she saw that his eyes were as blue as the sky. “Before I leave I wanted to tell you…” Even his voice was soft and warm. “I know it is too late this year, but I wanted you to know that you can fill this house with flowers if you wish. And that, should you prefer to change the decoration, you can do that, too.” He regarded her solemnly, and his thumb rubbed over her cheek. Again she was tempted to cuddle closer to the warmth he offered.

Yet warmth, she knew, was an illusion. It was better to reach for the cold, to cloak oneself in ice. Feelings made one vulnerable, and Lillian could not afford vulnerability. Therefore she stood unmoving, proud and erect, until his hand dropped away and something like sorrow shadowed his eyes.

She watched how he hugged his friends, a display of camaraderie and affection, how he patted the dogs’ heads and set their tails wagging. She watched how he climbed into his carriage, how the footman closed the door. She heard the cracking of the reins, the crunching of the gravel when the coach drove off. Her husband lifted his hand, waved, and then he was gone, too.

Lillian closed her eyes.

It seemed to her that the wind picked up and caressed her cheek until it had chilled her flesh and, like a jealous lover, had wiped out all memory of another’s caress.

She went into the gardens then, roamed the grounds without aim, the wind her only companion. In time, the days and weeks blurred and melted into one. She watched the leaves of the trees turn yellow and fall, the Michaelmas daisy wilt. She saw the birds gathering and watched them leave for the warmer regions of the south. And when her gaze followed their path, she would sometimes pause and stand on the hill where the fourth earl’s artificial ruins stretched to touch the sky. She would stand and look toward the south and remember the expression in her husband’s eyes when he had taken his leave. She would pray for his safe return then, and told the birds to take her greetings with them.

~*~

To track down the single golden locket he had sold months before, proved remarkably easy. All it took was time and patience to find the ship that had brought him back to England. Troy bought himself a mean-tempered brute of a horse and rode along the coast, traveling mile after mile in search of his treasure. The wind blew into his face, the land rushed by, and frequently his stallion would attempt to take a bite out of its master. Troy thumped its nose and boxed its ears, and with time, they came to an understanding. He would catch himself talking affectionately to the mean old horse, his only companion on this quest.

As he slipped easily back into French, and because the months at prison had roughened his tone and accent, the fishermen in the small villages and the sailors in the bigger ports never suspected that he was one of the hated English. They threw him a curious glance or two, but a man who wanted to repay another a favor done in the past was not such an oddity that they would not help him. He found his captain in Roscoff, where the white chapel of Saint Barbe stood guard over the Roscovian sailors, pirates all, if legend was to be believed. This was the land where Saint Pol had overcome a horrible dragon, where Perceval had searched out the Holy Grail. A golden locket might not be as precious as the chalice that had held the blood of the Lord, yet it was precious enough to Troy, a magic talisman to heal and start anew.

Therefore he sat patiently in the shabby tavern, stood jug after jug of the cheap sour wine, listened to the captain's tales of woe, and finally added some placating gold to the wine. The captain, he found, had sold the locket to a pawnbroker in Le Havre, but the man would have had to send the locket inland, to Paris, perhaps. Sailors did not buy their
bien-aimées
such a golden trinket.

So Troy rode on to Le Havre, while his clothes took on the grubby look of one who lived on the roads. He ignored the dull throbbing in his leg as he pressed his horse on day after day in an easy rhythm that carried them from dawn till dusk. Dust and dirt darkened his hair to a dull brown. Yet while the knights of old could expect a hot bath after a day on the road and a servant who scratched the rust and dirt off their skin, the small pitchers of water Troy found in the rooms of the dingy inns on the way were barely sufficient to clean his hands and his face. When he finally reached Le Havre, he felt like one of the Roscovian pirates himself, grubby, limping, his face covered with several days’ worth of stubble.

In one of the town’s narrow winding roads, he eventually found Monsieur Fatras’s neat little pawnshop, stuffed up to under the roof with small boxes, meticulously labeled. Monsieur Fatras himself was a small, spindly man, peering at Troy through a pair of round spectacles. With his tufts of white hair, he looked rather like an Irish leprechaun and turned out to be as cunning and wily. Yet he still had the
médaillon d’or
, for apparently he had been charmed by the portraits inside, carried out with loving attention to detail. In the end, though, Monsieur Fatras was much more charmed by the small heap of gold that Troy left on his counter; ten or twenty times as much as the pawnbroker had paid the captain for it. And so the locket Troy had been given on a muddy road in the waning light of a rainy day almost a year ago, came back into his possession.

No, not into his possession.

Into his keeping.

He took his treasure and his horse and looked for an English ship that might carry them across the channel. He arrived in Portsmouth, reeking of old fish and the sea. After the time on a rocking ship, his horse was meaner than ever—and who else would ever want to buy such a brute of a horse? If Troy sold it, the stupid beast would likely end as an ingredient of fake French sausage: not the fate a man wished for a horse that had carried him to the treasure of his heart. Thus, selling was out of the question. A tough, tenacious animal, the stallion would carry him back home just as it had carried him through Brittany and back again. Besides, he had grown fond of the beast; it seemed to him a Brueberry reborn. And never had there been a more faithful companion than Brueberry the Horrible.

So Troy pressed his horse on, northward this time, English roads adding to the layers of French dirt and dust. It was exhilarating, this ride. With the wind in his face and the weight of the golden locket in his breast pocket, Troy felt freer than he had in months, years even. As the past slipped from his shoulders like an old, discarded cloak, his thoughts flew ahead of him, to the woman at Bair Hall, his wife.

His brave, beautiful wife.

And then he urged his horse on, to go just a little bit faster, until finally, finally the towers of Bair Hall rose in the distance like loyal guards.

Troy reined his stallion in to enjoy the view, to treasure the moment.
I’m home
, he thought, and deep gratitude filled him.
I’m finally coming home.

When he rode through the gates, thrown open as if in an embrace, he saw that the rowan tree had shed almost all its leaves and was now adorned with bright red berries. The sight made him smile.
Rowan tree, witchen-tree, guardian of the house…

His smile deepened when he heard Nolan’s voice behind him. “Afternoon, Master Troy. Happy return home.”

Troy turned in the saddle to greet the old gatekeeper. “Good afternoon, Nolan. And thank you.”

As he rode on under the mighty oak trees up the drive, he remembered the old woman, small and frail, who had reminded him of a fairy godmother from a children’s tale. Her voice seemed to whisper on the wind that brushed trough the trees above and rustled in the fallen leaves along the way.
For no evil shall come to a house that is guarded by a rowan tree…

Happiness let him forget his tiredness and the dust of the road. Never had there been a more beautiful sight than lit entrance of Bair Hall when he came out of the tree-lined walk. He slid out of the saddle, careful of his bad leg. Yet even as his feet hit the ground, he realized that the pain was almost gone. All that remained was a small, niggling ache as if of sore muscles.