The Women of Eden (49 page)

Behind him where he stood at the window keeping watch on the road below, he was aware of old Mrs. Pettibone's quiet fussing at the table, setting service for three, the small informal dinner having been Bertie's idea, that since Aslam had been mentioned by John in detail, then perhaps Aslam could shed more light on the disturbing letter. To that end Bertie had taken the gig about an hour ago to fetch Aslam and bring him back for a subtle question-and-answer period.

Still holding John's letter, as though somehow he'd failed to perceive some vital clue, Richard glanced down on the road below, dreading the evening. Aslam had grown so distant during the last few months, as though Richard had offended him. Yet he'd done nothing but try to fill the void caused by Bertie's move into the private rooms in town, a move which had left Richard bereft. Gradually the rooms in town were used less frequently, and slowly Bertie was moving some of his clothes back, his fears receding with the disappearance of the strange man whom he'd thought was spying on them.

Finally, for the last two weeks with Bertie's good-natured laugh filling the daylight hours in the flat and his consistently healing love filling the night hours, life had resumed, as steady and as rewarding as ever.

"Will you be taking wine, Lord Eden?**

The question had come from Mrs. Pettibone, who hovered over the table, three wineglasses in hand.

"Yes, please," Richard said.

From the window he watched, detecting something sly in her smile. Dear Heaven, he was growing as suspicious as Bertie. To be sure, the old woman was the worst sort of country gossip, but Richard paid her handsomely and doubted if she would do anything to jeopardize the source of her income.

"When you finish there, that will be all, Mrs. Pettibone. Professor Nichols and I can manage—and we don't want to keep you too late into the evening."

He saw a look of disappointment on her face, as though she'd been looking forward to staying.

"Well, I'm not finished. Lord Eden," she pouted. **I have a few more things to do in the kitchen, then, I assure you, I'll spare you my company."

"Mrs. Pettibone, I—"

But she was gone and he would have to make his apologies later, perhaps in the form of a bonus. Repeatedly Bertie had told him how unskilled he was in the handling of servants.

Bertie.

How many times in the last three days he and Bertie had studied John's letter and, with the intention of studying it again, he took it to his desk in the alcove off the front parlor, flattened the pages, drew a lamp near and commenced reading the words that he knew by heart.

The opening was a simple salutation. It was the second paragraph where the mysteries commenced:

I will be travelling back to London from Cheltenham around the first of December, after having ensconced Mary in Miss Veal's establishment. I'm not certain whether or not anyone has written to you, but Mary has suffered an illness. . . .

There the questions started. What illness? And if she were truly ill, then the rigorous discipline of school would be the last thing she needed.

Then to the third paragraph:

I will take the time to come to Cambridge for the purpose of retrieving Aslam from that unproductive atmosphere. . . .

Cambridge had been John's idea. He'd forced it on Aslam several years ago. Now what had happened to convert it into an "unproductive atmosphere"?

I require his services here to work with me in the firm and he can conclude his studies within the Temple. I count among my friends several prominent solicitors who will be happy to sponsor him.

Where was Andrew Rhoades in all of this? If Aslam was to be transplanted to London, why wasn't Andrew his sponsor?

As always, all his vague apprehensions gradually narrowed into one, the constant nightmare, the secret knowledge of what he was. It wasn't shame he felt. How could such a healing love be shameful or wrong? It was simply his awareness of the abyss between his self-concept and that of the world.

"Well, now I believe everything is in order. Lord Eden."

He looked up at the sound of the voice and saw Mrs. Pettibone standing in the door, adjusting her black bonnet. "Country cooking is all it is, but I hope it suits."

"It will," he said with a smile, joining her in the parlor. "And for your trouble, here's a bit extra," he added, withdrawing from his pocket a pound note and pressing it into her gloved hand.

"Lord!" she gasped, carefully tucking the precious note into her handbag. "Well, then," she said, looking up> "have a pleasant evening, sir, and I'll be back first thing in the morning to straighten up."

"I'm grateful," he said, nodding, and walked behind her to the door, eager to see her on her way.

At the door she stopped and looked back, that same sly smile on her face which he'd detected earlier. "I was—just wondering—will Professor Nichols be moving back in—a permanent way?"

"Yes," he said, hoping that an affirmative answer would make it come true, "though why do you ask? What concern is it—"

"What concern!" she echoed. "I'm the one who straightens up after the two of you, remember? Perhaps I'd better go back and put clean linens on his bed now—"

"It won't be necessary, Mrs. Pettibone," Richard interrupted. "We can attend to that ourselves," he added, thinking with sadness of the charade they had to perform, sharing the same bed, then mussing the other for appearance's sake.

Weary and anxious before the evening had even started, Richard pulled open the door in an attempt to speed the old busybody on her way. "Again, my thanks, Mrs. Pettibone. We'll try not to leave too much in the way of a mess for you in the morning."

With growing apprehension he kept her in his sights until the door below closed and still he stood, staring down the darkened stairs, bewildered by her curiosity concerning Bertie.

Not until he heard the sound of a carriage on the cobbles beyond the garden did he abandon his position at the door and hurry back to the window.

With relief he recognized the gig, saw Bertie chmbing down, and saw-Nothing else.

He hurried to the door and was there to greet Bertie as he climbed the stairs. "Where's Aslam?" Richard demanded. "Did something—"

"He couldn't come," Bertie said. As though to halt any further interrogation he hfted his head toward the kitchen and the good odors of Mrs. Pettibone's stew. "The smells of heaven!" he exclaimed.

"Bertie, what happened?" Richard persisted, taking his cloak, knowing him well enough to be alarmed by this evasion. "What did he say?" he prodded, trying to ignore the sense of alarm growing within him.

Slowly Bertie commenced shaking his head. "The boy was polite at first," he began, "He asked me to convey to you his apologies, said that you knew John better than he and knew his impatience when people were not ready."

"What else did he say?" Richard asked, his anxiety increasing along with the mystery.

Bertie turned away and began riffling through the papers on his desk. "I've told you, Richard."

"You've not told me anything."

The hands collecting the papers ceased. "No," Bertie confessed, and the ease on his face was obliterated. "Like you, at some point I became insistent, but the more I insisted, the more belligerent he became."

"Belligerent?" Richard found the image a difficult one.

"Although I knew I was pushing too hard," Bertie added, "I felt a need to push hard, knew that something was bothering the boy. Finally he announced that the truth of the matter was that he had no desire to come."

"No—desire?" Richard murmured, wondering what had happened to that affectionate relationship he'd once shared with Aslam.

"Finally," Bertie concluded, "I pressed one last time and was told in angry tones that he had been ordered to have nothing to do with us-"

Richard suffered a sudden heat on his face.

"—that he had been told to remain in his attic, prepare his belongings, and exchange no discourse with us."

The words, so bluntly delivered, had an air of unreality about them. Though he knew the answer to his next question, he asked it anyway. "On—whose orders?"

"John's."

In an attempt to remain calm, he walked the short distance into his alcove study, aware of Bertie following behind him, his voice calm.

"He knows," he said, and in that simple manner confirmed Richard's worst nightmare.

Clinging to the last vestige of hope, Richard asked, "How can we be sure? And what difference does it make?"

"To me, none," Bertie said. "To you, I'm afraid, everything."

"What will-he do?"

"Perhaps nothing," Bertie said quietly. "Surely there are enough other complications in his life. Why should he concern himself with us? Perhaps his only concern is that Aslam not be—corrupted." Bertie shrugged. "In that case, he will come and fetch the boy and that will be that."

There was something hollow in his comfort as well as his words. John, as Richard knew all too well, was not given to simple solutions. What would he do without Bertie and where would he go and how would he survive?

"Give me your hand," Bertie commanded gently.

Richard obeyed and the contact seemed to lighten the darkness, though their hands were motionless and did not press each other. Richard even moved slightly away. But his consciousness was focused in the perception of that small area where their hands touched. And he suffered the desire to talk about the beauty and the strange power of love, but to talk without violating the silence. He thought that they ought to say something and he wanted to, but he didn't dare.

"I'm here," Bertie whispered. . . .

Who would blame her?

Neither God nor man, for what was a sixty-seven-year-old lady to do but take from any hand that was prepared to give?

Widowed since she was forty, though that was a case of good riddance if ever there was one, Cella Pettibone had had to fend for herself in a world hostile to women and widows.

As she hurried through the night, her destination clear, she felt of the crisp new pound note tucked inside her purse, a new addition for the thirty-seven already tucked safely away in the tin beneath her mattress.

Oh, she was a smart one, all right, as smart as the half-males she served. Still, there was a twinge of conscience. She liked the gentle Lord Eden. Him was a cut above the rest of the three-legged animals she was forced to serve and clean up after.

But with thirty-seven—no, thirty-eight—pounds tucked safely away in her nesty, and with the promise of more to come, it wouldn't be too long before she could shake the dust of Cambridge from her feet forever, buy herself some decent clothes and travel to that paradise called London, where she was certain that some good gentlewoman would take her on as a lady's maid, and she'd never again have to smell a man's piss or farts for the rest of her hfe.

Buoyed by the prospects, she hurried along the cobbles of Cambridge, heading toward The Barley Man where, in exchange for information, the gentleman there would give her another pound, perhaps more considering the importance of what she'd learned this night.

Didn't even know his name, she didn't, though she'd asked often enough, only to have him respond like he was talking to a barber's cat, that names weren't the issue and all she needed to do was to bring him weekly accounts of the goings-on in Lord Eden's flat and for her troubles she'd be handsomely paid.

If it was proof the London man wanted, she could provide him with it easily enough, particularly now that the lovebirds were back in the same nest Of course, they were careful around her right enough. But still there were ways, the soiled linens for one, which she washed weekly for them, coated with the dried residue of male slime. Going against the teachings of God, it was, all that wasted seed which had to be washed out with her strongest lye soap.

In spite of her moral outrage, she suffered a second spasm of conscience. She really liked them both very much and somehow could

not make a firm connection between their kind treatment of her and the obscene tricks they performed on the bedsheets each night.

Oh, well, her head was weary with thinking. It didn't make a bit of difference to her what happened, one way or the other. Her only goal was to fill that tin beneath her mattress so full of notes that she could take herself out of this male place and spend what few years God had left her in the decent company of a noblewoman.

To that end, she hurried into the warmth of The Barley Man, past the three-legged animals guzzling at the bar and on up the staircase which led to the rooms above.

She found it effortlessly. Number Three, having been here countless times before, knocked and, to her surprise, heard the buzz of male voices coming from the other side.

Strange! The man had always been alone in the past. Suddenly she heard a cessation of voices and held still outside the door, Hstening, and was on the verge of knocking again when the door opened a crack and she saw the nameless man's face and saw more, beyond his shoulder into the room itself, saw a second man, younger, with dark skin, like an Indian nigger, seated before the table.

"Ah, Mrs. Pettibone," the man said, beaming. "Come, come in, please."

When she hesitated, the man laughed.

"Don't be afraid, Mrs. Pettibone." He grinned. "We're all friends here."

Cheltenham Late November 1870

They were dressed in black, like penitents, their faces pale, their hair pulled uniformly back in rigid knots, their hands folded in their laps. Twenty-five, perhaps thirty young women, varying in age from seventeen to twenty-six, all staring up at him like ghosts.

"The schoolroom," Miss Veal announced. 'The desks purchased, Mr. Eden, if I may point out, with your last generous donation."

"It's chilly," he observed, and wondered how soon he could exit this grim place.

Nothing that he had seen thus far of Miss Veal's School for Females had been as he had expected, and when he'd caught his first glimpse of it from the road over an hour ago he had been convinced that his driver had made a mistake, thinking nothing human could inhabit that ominous old Tudor mansion sitting in the middle of nowhere, well beyond the edges of Cheltenham.