Page 18 of Felicity Cabot Sells Her Soul
“It’s December,” she said irritably, and there was the rustle of her clothing, that wretched grey coat being wrenched tighter about her.
“I know.” It didn’t matter that it was December, that half the plants were dead and the other half were frozen. Felicity had always had a particularly vivid imagination. She would be able to see it anyway. He knew she would. “Wait,” he said, stretching out one arm to block the path through the door. “My kiss. I haven’t received it today.”
A sound of exasperation curled up her throat. Quick as the strike of a snake she popped up onto her toes and planted a perfunctory peck upon the side of his jaw—half a kiss at best, since she’d got a sliver of the collar of his shirt along with it.
“May I now go?” she inquired, the icy tone of her voice somehow evenmore frigid than the breeze that blew inside through the open doors.
“By all means,” he said, and strode out into the night, confident that she would follow. Just as he thought, her breath caught as she crossed the threshold behind him. Her hand stretched out, snatched the lamp from his hand—and she continued on past him without a second thought. In moments all he could see of her was the glow of the lantern, the occasional flicker of the light across her face, the stunned wonder she could not hide.
Ian settled himself beside the door, his shoulders pressed to the cold stone of the outer wall. Watching in silence as Felicity wandered the garden—and waiting, pocket watch in hand, for the last of his allotted time to wind down to nothing once more.
∞∞∞
This washergarden.
It hadn’t been obvious at first in the darkness, with only a dim corona of lamplight to pry the details of it from the dark of the night. Less obvious still in the natural decay of winter, with barren branches abundant and ice clinging to frozen stems. The roses—those tended to dominate any proper English garden; unremarkable. The boxwood, too, was an obvious choice for perfect perennial hedges. But the wisteria she’d discovered draped along the rear stone wall and twisted into deliberate coils to wind itself through the towering roof of a pergola felt pointed, familiar—toofamiliar.
It wouldn’t bloom again until spring, but she could see it already in her mind; the profusion of vibrant purple flowers which would provide shelter from the sun and a lovely floral scent that would perfume the air. Felicity sat abruptly upon the stone bench set beneath the pergola, the lamp trembling in the weak grip of her hand as she drew in a harsh breath, the icy bite in the air stinging her lungs.
Hergarden. Hers.
She had sketched it out years ago upon the back of a scrap of paper; an idle musing back when she had still had dreams for a future with Ian. It had never been real—at least, she had never thought it would be. But it had been a lovely dream, that garden she had imagined that was something only for leisure, for pleasure. A far cry from the simple kitchen gardens that she had dutifully tended, first at home and then at Nellie’s school. A place that wasmeant only for respite and peace, even amongst the thrum of the city.
Ian had promised it to her, once. Back in those days that they had had nothing but dreams shared between them. She would have been satisfied with only the kitchen garden so long as she had had him into the bargain, but—
He hadpromisedher this. He had promised her that when he had made something of himself, she would have everything she had ever wanted. Only to pull the rug out from beneath her the very minute his own dreams had given some vague sign of materializing. The fingers of her left hand curled over the edge of the stone bench, her nails scraping the rough underside of it.
If he thought she could be bought with this, he was sorely mistaken. Perversely, it kindled that bitter burn of anger within her chest once more—herdream,stolen. Commandeered. Realized without her, as if it were nothing more than set design, a backdrop to prop her up against as he pulled her strings and made her dance like a marionette.
It hurt a part of her heart she had not known was still vulnerable. A trap she had set for herself, unknowingly, years and years ago and triggered now by this unwelcome reminder of the past they had once shared. The dreams they had once shared, and which he had crushed in his hands as if they were of little more substance than seafoam.
He would not get another opportunity to yank that rug out from beneath her. She shot to her feet, trudging back across the winding stone path, past rows and rows of perennials that had withered with the winter, but whose images as they would be in spring were cast up before her mind’s eye as she passed. Columbines, hollyhocks, hydrangeas, delphiniums—she doubted he would be able to name them himself.
Shecould, however. And he’d used that. To prove some sort of point, to score a victory against her in this war that was their inconvenient marriage. A succession of excoriating words spilled across her tongue, filling her mouth behind the purse of her lips. She held them there, sealed tightly behind them as she stalked back toward the doors.
Only to find Ian gone.
Every word she had carefully corralled slipped out her mouth as she deflated. The bitter cold chased her back inside once more, and she closed the doors behind her as she wandered back the way they had come.
It wasn’t until she passed a longcase clock she hadn’t noticed before that she realized that the time had gone past eight. Ian must have vanished at the turn of the hour exactly, as she had been exploring the garden and discovering for herself the treachery that lay within.
And when she returned to the bed chamber, it was to find it, too, deserted, but for a single slice of cheesecake on a plate upon the nightstand—the missed dessert she had complained of—weighing down an old, crumpled scrap of paper beneath it.
Yellowed with age and worn to a near-fabric softness, she spread it out with her fingertips to reveal the faded remnants of the sketch she’d done a lifetime ago—hergarden, rendered in streaks of graphite now blurred from the touch of careless fingers.
All these years he’d kept it. But it was too damned late to make good on those dreams he’d ruined. Years and years too late.
In the overwhelming silence of the room, there was only the muted sound of soft paper falling to shreds beneath the pressure of her fingers as she knelt upon the floor near the hearth, feeding the scraps to the fire within. And she burned her once-cherished dream to ash as it had been used to burn her.
∞∞∞
She’d drawn up her knees again, the rumpled counterpane a testament to the disquiet that had plagued her well past the point of consciousness and into the realm of sleep. As if she had had to fight for the sleep she had finally attained, though it did not appear at all restful.
The counterpane had slid almost entirely off the bed, one corner tenaciously clinging to the mattress like a desperate hand clawing at the edge of a cliff face, the clear loser in Felicity’s unconscious battle for supremacy. And Felicity huddled in a ball near the head of the bed, her knees drawn up to her chest, obscured beneath the voluminous folds of her nightgown, conserving heat in a room that had gone just a bit chilly with the banking of the fire.
Ian wrenched at his cravat as he crossed the room to the coal scuttle, casting the fabric aside as he spread a fresh layer atop the dimming embers. A tiny shred of paper floated over the toe of his right shoe as he rose, and he bent to retrieve it, squinting at the feathery, worn scrap—until he recognized the bubbly shape of a hydrangea sketched upon it.
So. She hadn’t liked the garden, then. It was something of a disappointment, given that he’d put quite a lot of time and money into it. His fingers curled around the small scrap of paper, the last remnant of a treasured relic oftheir shared past. He’d known, he supposed, how deeply her grudge against him ran. He’d expected her to lash out, to strike at him in whichever way she could.
