The Women of Eden (5 page)

Either way, Delane and the Times would serve to benefit.

Still disturbed by the memory of his mother, Burke glanced out the carriage window at Windsor in the distance.

Across from him, he was aware of Delane maintaining an unu-

sually long silence. But Burke was not yet ready for words, his mind and heart still occupied with the last image he'd had of his mother. He knew that she disliked his prolonged absences.

And the overriding question in his mind was how long would his imprisonment persist? And worse than that was his ever-growing suspicion that his father would never send for them, would never release him to a life of his own. Jack Stanhope's letters were coming few and far between now, and when one did arrive, it presented a grim picture of corruption, rising prices in construction, scorched fields which seemed to refuse new crops, and primitive living conditions which would surely kill his mother. "But soon," the letters always concluded.

Soon, Burke brooded with rising anger. Each letter was scrawled on the elegant stationery of the Imperial Hotel in Mobile where, Burke suspected, his father was living in irresponsible luxury.

Without warning, Burke felt a mild discomfort in his right hand and looked down, surprised to see his hand a fist and that fist pressing with undue strength into the seat cushion. He tried to relax and examined the bruised flesh of his right hand and recalled the beautiful little Maria of the Mask to whose aid he had rushed last night.

The thought that he would never see her again was a deprivation that he was ill-equipped to meet, and he pressed his head back against the cushion and closed his eyes.

"Are you well, Burke?" Delane inquired, the first words of this infant journey, but significant in that they spelled the end of the silence.

"Not well, Delane," Burke told him honestly, "but functioning."

He took note of his old friend across the way. Indulging in an old perception, it occurred to Burke that there was his true father, a highly intelligent substitute to take the place of that distant and undoubtedly drunken truant.

Under the effect of these thoughts, he sat up from his slouched position and vowed to give Delane what he wanted, a good conversation.

But as he commenced to sort through his mind in search of a suitable topic, Delane sat forward. "Your mother, Burke," he began, unaware that it was the last subject in the world that Burke wanted to discuss, "she is worse."

"I know."

"What you don't know is that she was talking quite volubly before you came in."

This was surprising news. "What was she saying?"

"It was incoherent, most of it. She mentioned your father. And you—she mentioned you as well—said that you had ridden to Mobile in search of whores."

Burke saw the sly smile on Delane's face and at first was not certain if the man was speaking the truth. Before he could inquire, Delane asked, "Were you?"

"Was I what?"

"Searching for whores in Mobile last night."

"Not likely," Burke said, glancing out the window at the passing countryside, "except perhaps in my imagination."

"It wasn't your imagination that left you with a bruised hand, was it?"

Bemused, Burke realized that the old journalist was as curious as a scandal sheet tattler. "No," he said, "this is a badge of honor."

Briefly he recounted the events of the night before.

"How dramatic!" Delane smiled. "I wish I could have seen it firsthand. And what favor did the lady give you for your troubles?"

"Nothing," Burke confessed. "By the time I went to collect she was gone."

"Ungrateful wench."

"She's quite remarkable, Delane—"

"I'm sure of it."

"—though I'll probably never see her again."

"Sad."

"She is so-"

"Beautiful?"

"More than beautiful."

"More than beautiful?" Delane repeated, clearly baiting.

Embarrassed, Burke fell silent.

"So you were in pursuit of a whore last night!" Delane smiled.

"She's not a whore, Delane. In fact I doubt seriously if a man has ever touched her."

Delane laughed heartily. "Burke, how can you be so naive? Any female who parades herself before a club filled with gentlemen knows precisely what she is doing and how to do it."

"Not this one."

Again Delane laughed. "Lord, I wish I had been there! A true virgin is a rare sight these days."

Burke took note of the grinning face and decided to drop the subject, a bit regretful that he had brought it up in the first place. He felt like a schoolboy confessing his first love. It had been a private interlude in his life, but apparently it was not a memory to be shared, and now Burke hoped Delane would leave it alone.

Outside the window he saw the outskirts of the approach to Reading, and in his mind's eye he projected the journey yet ahead of them, all the way to the edge of England and the North Devon coast. In an attempt to turn his thoughts to the ordeal ahead, he asked quietly, "And tell me of John Murrey Eden. . . ."

Across the way, Delane shifted his position as though the cramped interior of the carriage were already beginning to bother him. "What's to tell?" He smiled with suspect innocence.

"Oh, come now, Delane," Burke scolded, "this is not a pleasure trip and you know it! Apparently I'm to ferret something out at Eden Castle, and you can make my job a lot easier if you at least give me—"

The very picture of wounded self-righteousness, Delane lifted his hands in mock protest. "Really, Burke, what a suspicious mind you possess. Here I invite you to join me in what well may be the social event of the year, and what do I get for my troubles? Suspicion, doubt and accusations of deception."

Burke waited out the performance, amused by the protest, a talent which had turned John Thadeus Delane into the awesome journalist that he was, disarming sources which ranged from Lord Russell to Benjamin Disraeli to Lord Aberdeen with that same wide-eyed protest of innocence.

Well, it might work on those distinguished gentlemen, but not on Burke, who had known Delane too long and who had learned at his knee those selfsame tricks. In response to the fagade of innocence, Burke rephrased his initial question. "What precisely is it that you want Lord Ripples to search out in John Murrey Eden's outpost castie?"

Delane's expression changed; the fagade dropped away and only the glint of the journalist's eye remained. "Anything. Everything that strikes you as being of uncommon interest."

"For what purpose?" Burke prodded further. "Are we to bring Mr. Eden down or raise him up?"

"Neither. He's too powerful for us to do either.'*

"Then what's the point?"

Delane smiled. "Curiosity, Burke, that's all."

"Yours?"

"Mine and that of the sixty-five thousand readers of the Times." He leaned forward, warming to the subject. "You see, for all we know of John Murrey Eden, he still essentially is a man of mystery."

"In what way?"

"In every way," Delane retorted, as though mystery were the one thing a good journalist could not abide. "He appeared ten, twelve years ago, literally out of the ether, at an obscenely young age—"

"How young?"

Delane shrugged. "Scarcely twenty, at that time."

"Is youth a crime?"

"Not in itself, no. But for the pup to shake the Royal Exchange as though it were his private toy and launch forth into a series of building projects—on borrowed money, I might add."

"Still, what's the offense?" Burke persisted.

There was a pause. Delane said quietly, "No offense, except that he succeeded."

Burke stared out the window. "How dare he?" He smiled, amused and intrigued. "But so far you have told me exactly nothing," he went on, facing Delane. "Where did he come from, this man who has offended by succeeding?"

Delane adopted a mask of cooperation as though only too willing to share his limited knowledge. "Initially, no one knows for certain. Reliable sources informed me several years ago that he was the bastard son of the philanthropist Edward Eden, of whom I'm sure you have heard."

No, Burke hadn't heard of Edward Eden and he wasn't interested. It wasn't the father who was the object of this journey, but rather the son.

"And when Edward Eden was killed—"

"How killed?"

"An accident of some sort," Delane said, vaguely waving his hand in the air. "The boy John was sent to live with his uncle at Eden Castle."

Delane paused. Burke watched him, still not certain why Eden had been singled out as an object of Delane's journalistic zeal. Men made fortunes daily in America and were not punished for having

done so. Was it some dictate of the English class system which frowned on bastards overstepping their bounds?

As though coming back to himself, Delane lifted his hands and smoothed back his thinning hair. "Oh, God, it's such a muddle! For some reason he was exiled from Eden."

"For some reason?" Burke repeated, surprised at Delane's vagueness.

"I swear that I've never been able to find out why."

"And you've tried?"

Delane smiled. "John Murrey Eden has been my avocation for the past eight years."

"Why?"

Delane seemed loath to respond immediately, and when in the next minute he gruffly dismissed the question with, "My motivations are not important," Burke suspected that he had two mysteries on his hands, and that the solution of one was directly related to the solution of the other.

"Go on. After Eden's exile from North Devon, where did he go?"

"To London," Delane replied eagerly, as though grateful to be back on track, "where he lived with a woman named Elizabeth, who in turn had lived with his father, Edward Eden."

"Was she his mother?"

"No—or at least she's denied it repeatedly."

"You've asked?"

"My sources have. Several times."

Burke ran his fingers over his bruised knuckles, amused at how effortlessly they kept losing John Murrey Eden.

"And after the woman named Elizabeth?" Burke went on, trying to nail down the elusive Mr. Eden.

"Well, he did a turn in the Crimea as first assistant to Mr. Thomas Brassey, though there was a falling out there as well, a disagreement which sent Brassey back to London, and John Murrey Eden to India."

His fascination mounting, Burke mused, "India. About the mid-fifties? I shouldn't think that that would have been a particularly pleasant place to be."

Delane agreed. "He was there during the Mutinies and, according to my sources, just barely escaped with his life."

"Did he go to India with the mihtary?"

Delane laughed. "Not likely. To this day his most offensive statements concern the British military."

"Then what was he doing in India?"

The blank expression on Delane's face was not encouraging. "Then after India, what?" Burke persisted. "Did he return to Eden?"

Delane shook his head. "No. According to my sources he took up residence with Elizabeth again." His mind seemed to drift again. "A unique woman, this Elizabeth," he murmured, his hands folded before him, his eyes fixed on the carriage floor.

Respectful of this new mood, Burke waited before questioning on. When still Delane seemed locked in some past reflection, Burke prodded, "How unique, this Elizabeth?"

"In the way that any woman is unique/' Delane said simply, and was content to let it go at that.

But Burke was not content to let it go. "Oh, come now, Delane," he chided. "I'm not a schoolboy. Such a pause deserves explanation. I repeat, how was the woman Elizabeth unique? Did you know her?"

The question seemed to hang unanswered on the air. At last, as though honesty were a habit which it was hard to break, he saw Delane nod.

So! Somehow there was a connection to be made between Delane and the woman named Elizabeth. Warming to his role as sleuth, and having wondered for years, along with every other scribbler along Fleet Street, what John Thadeus Delane did with the excess sexual energy provided him by an ill and constantly hospitalized wife, Burke leaned forward. "You did know her, didn't you, Delane?"

"Know her?" Delane repeated, his voice scarcely audible above the rattle of the carriage, "Of course I knew her! At one point even fancied myself in love with her."

"Go on," Burke invited, respectful of the confession and the new mood within the carriage.

But abruptly Delane shook his head. "Nothing more to tell," he snapped. "She had been a prostitute in younger days, though quite respectable when I knew her. She was living in a fine house in St. George Street which had been given to her by Lord Kimbrough—"

The name was lost on Burke, though the reality behind such a generous gift was not.

"—and she was presiding over one of the most glittering salons in all of London."

"And you were a member of that salon, I take it," Burke probed.

"I was," Delane admitted, "and I can't tell you what it meant to me, meant to all of us, to know that there was a safe harbor waiting for us each evening, presided over by one of the most generous hearts it has ever been my good fortune to know."

"Go on," Burke insisted, feeling his affection for the man vault under the effects of this confession of frailty.

But the storyteller had reached the end of his tale. "Nothing more to say," Delane said gruffly. "One evening the salon was opened to us and the next evening it was closed. All we heard was that the boy whom she had raised as her son had returned."

His voice fell silent. His eyes lifted to the ceiling of the carriage, then closed. "God, she was so beautiful," he mourned. "Difficult to describe, the manner in which she—she made everyone feel so—as though you were the only one—an inner harmony and goodness that was so surprising. Not educated, not formally, but perfectly refined, as though—"

Ultimately his incoherency took a toll and left him looking exhausted. Out of love and respect Burke waited, knowing all too well the pleasurable torment that was plaguing his friend. So! John Thad-eus Delane had been in love, and now, ten years later, he was curious to the point of obsession about the young man who had wandered back to England from India and who had shut down the only source of love and warmth in Delane's life,