ft was not unwelcome news. Caroline was colorless and weak, but she had a reasonably pleasant disposition and I could not help feeling that, given time, we might become friends. She was close to my own age, although she looked years older, her hair already whitening with the strain of her miserable existence.
I smiled at her, but she did not respond.
'A man came to the house,' she said to me. There was no interest in her voice. 'A servant from the manor. He left a parcel for you. Said you dropped it in the marketplace. It's there, on the table.' She pointed, careful not to disturb the nursing baby.
I looked. It was a small, flat parcel, tied up with colored string in bright paper. I was, frankly, astonished by its presence, but I had no wish to let Rachel or her older sister view my reaction.
'How wonderful,' I exclaimed brightly. 'I thought I had lost it. Thank you, Caroline.'
My aunt eyed the package with a flicker of curiosity, glanced at the book in my other hand, and raised a pale eyebrow, but she said nothing. Nor, to my relief, did Rachel.
A short time later, alone in my upstairs room, I set the parcel on my bed and carefully unwrapped it, my blood racing with anticipation. I could feel the hard outline of the contents through the paper before I had removed even half the wrapping.
Still, I was unprepared for the actual sight of the beautiful bracelet, ringed with the blue-eyed birds of paradise, spilling out across the plain, homespun coverlet.
Sixteen
‘Julia.’
I was shaking all over, or at least I felt as if I were. Perhaps it was the room itself. Certainly the walls seemed something less than solid; they shimmered and danced as if the subtly shifting daylight was being reflected through a thousand swaying prisms.
'Julia.' Again the voice spoke, and I turned my head slowly, with a great effort, toward it.
At first, I could see nothing but the open doorway of my bedroom and a curious gray, shapeless thing that blocked my view into the hall. A gray, shapeless thing that swelled and drifted, cloudlike, toward me, addressing me in a male voice that was growing decidedly sharper in tone.
'Julia.'
My first thought was, that's not my name, and then I thought, but I know that voice, and then I thought, Oh, it's Tommy, and sure enough, there was my brother standing over me, wearing on his face the same expression our father had assumed whenever one of us had fallen ill. It was an expression of dismay and concern mingled with a sort of piteous helplessness, and my response to it was automatic. 'I'm all right, Tom. Honestly.' Then, as reality took a stronger hold, 'What in heaven's name are you doing here?'
He ignored my question, and went on staring down at me with eyes that now seemed more fascinated than concerned. 'You weren't here,' he stated in a tense voice, 'were you? You were somewhere else. Someone else.'
I was still kneeling on the floor. I pushed myself stiffly to a standing position, feeling my joints creak a protest. Mutely, I nodded my head.
There was certainly no doubt in my mind as to what had just happened. My hair, when I pushed it away from my face, was wet, and there was mud on my shoes and on the hardwood, smeared where I had walked across the floor of the studio. My hands were stiff and reddened with cold, and I looked down at them stupidly, as if surprised to find that they belonged to my body.
'My God,' Tom breathed, his eyes still fixed on me.
It was the first time I had heard him say that since he had come down from Oxford. He tilted his head and narrowed his eyes. 'Do you have any brandy in the house?'
'What?' Puzzled, I glanced down at my wristwatch. 'Tom, it's barely half-ten. Don't you think it's a little early yet? Especially for a man of the cloth.'
My brother grinned irreverently. 'I'm certain God would forgive me if I drank an entire keg of brandy, given the circumstances. But it isn't for me. It's you that needs the brandy, my love. You look bloody awful.'
'Vicars can't say "bloody,"' I reminded him woodenly.
'Then it's a good thing the bishop isn't here to hear me,' Tom retorted, steering me by the arm across the room and into the upstairs hallway, where he turned me toward the stairs.
'I don't have any brandy in the house,' I told him, caving in, 'but I think there's some Grand Marnier in the cupboard over the stove.'
'Capital,' said Tom. 'That'll do.'
I had some trouble negotiating the stairs because of a curious stiffness in my legs, a condition that baffled me until I realized that, as Mariana Farr, I must have walked over eight miles that morning.
Tom seated me unceremoniously at the kitchen table, located the Grand Marnier, and poured a generous measure into a tumbler for me. Under his stern, insistent gaze, I drank. The liqueur prickled warmly through my insides, bringing a sharp flush to my skin and driving the numbness from my fingertips. I drank again, pushed the damply curling hair out of my eyes, and raised my head to face my brother.
'You still haven't told me what you're doing here,' I reminded him.
'Visiting you,' was the simple reply. 'I didn't have any pressing business to attend to today, so I left my curate in charge and drove out here. Thought I'd see how you were getting along—make sure everything was all right. And I wanted to deliver these,' he added, looking down at a thick sheaf of papers on the table between us. The title of the article on top showed plainly that this was the information that Tom's librarian friend had unearthed for us. Tom was looking at it now as if it had lost some of its importance, as if it had been somehow made redundant by what he'd just witnessed.