A Christmas Gathering Read online

  She turned the corner at the end of the walkway and saw two people ahead of her. Even at this distance she recognized Narraway immediately. She always did. No one else stood exactly the same way, slender, immaculate, the light catching the silver in his hair. He was talking earnestly to his companion, his head bent a little toward her, as if what he said was intensely important.

  Vespasia froze. What on earth would she say to either of them?

  Narraway put his hand on Iris’s arm gently. She was facing him, standing about a foot or two away. She laughed, and he held her arm a little more tightly.

  Vespasia turned and retreated the way she had come. She did not look back at all, rounding the corner into the rhododendron walk, hardly aware of where she was. Perhaps James was not so absurd as he seemed only a few minutes ago.

  * * *

  Narraway had tried a couple of times to speak alone with Iris, but each time he had been foiled by trivial circumstances. At least, he thought it was that. He had no way of knowing who he could trust and whether these interruptions were by design. It was possible, of course, that Iris’s protector also didn’t know who to trust, nor did Iris herself. Discretion was the only way forward.

  On the first occasion, the previous evening, he had been looking at some of the family portraits in the long gallery, going back to a more interesting period in art, and Iris had come in alone, possibly to escape unwanted attention or tedious polite chatter. But she was followed within a few minutes by Allenby, who looked annoyed at finding Narraway there.

  The second time had been earlier today, when they had met in the garden room on the way outside. This time he’d been interrupted first by a manservant collecting boots to be cleaned, and then by Dorian Brent, who had persisted in remaining with them, even though he must surely have been aware that he was intruding. Perhaps he did not care?

  Or perhaps he was here to watch over her—the position Narraway had been in with Edith all those years ago? But how could Iris possibly pass him even the least bulky package of blueprints if they were never alone?

  An ugly thought intruded into Narraway’s mind. Could the failure all those years ago still be known? Was he used as an example to warn a person delegated to guard a dangerous passing of papers or a physical package? Was Narraway a byword for failure, and he had just never realized it?

  Now he was being absurd. He had been head of Special Branch for years, one of the most successful chiefs they had ever had, and certainly the most feared. He knew too much, and not only knew it but understood it. It was both empowering and endangering to know other people’s secrets—another reason why he must succeed, and also a reason why he must not put Vespasia at risk by telling her anything of his mission! At least until it was all over, when he had the package, had passed it on, and Iris was safe.

  Why the hell did they so often choose women to pass these packages? Because they were clever, discreet. One discounted them. In a way, they were invisible. But, God, they were vulnerable!

  Could they not have found a better way without involving a courier at all? He knew the answer before he had framed the question. They would not depart from the usual way because someone outside the system might be the one they were really looking for, and any change would alert them.

  He was glad to be out of the whole deadly game of anarchists, spies, saboteurs, and traitors, and yet part of him missed it. Other than the episode in Normandy, he was good at it. How that failure still hurt! It was mainly the tragedy of the loss of Edith, but he had to admit it was also a wound to his self-esteem. Vespasia believed in him, seemingly without shadow. What would she think of him if she knew of that? He admired her so profoundly, he needed her to admire him, too. Was that what he was worth? His mind, his knowledge, his courage, his unsurpassed abilities? Perhaps so. He had excelled, had been admired and feared for his skill. He had no family status or connections. Did that still matter? Was love such a fragile thing that image was more important than intense, vulnerable reality?

  He had barely spoken to Vespasia this morning. Conversation at breakfast had been general but full of undercurrents. On the surface, the water was as still as a stagnant pond, but underneath, currents ran deep and surprisingly strong, a river with eddies unknown until it was too late.

  He asked a footman if he had seen Vespasia.

  “I believe she went for a walk in the garden, m’lord,” the footman replied. “Up toward the beech avenue. If you take the path along the herbaceous border, you come out at the end of the trees.”

  “Thank you.”

  “But, sir…”

  “Yes?”

  “It’s a very big garden, sir, about twenty-five acres.”

  “Really!” Narraway said. “I will try. Thank you.” He turned and went toward the garden door to take the man’s directions. He might try to meet Vespasia as she came back.

  He was walking fairly briskly along the gravel path, the clipped winter lawn on one side and the dug-over and cut-down herbaceous border on the other. It was weeded and nearly bare, ready, in time, for the perennials to spring up again, the bulbs to show, and new annuals to be planted. There was probably a head gardener and a handful of juniors to do the digging and bending and weeding. They must restart at one end as soon as they had finished at the other. Hard and intricate work, creating beauty and harming no one.

  He was thinking about that when he almost bumped into Iris, standing at the end of the path.

  “I’m sorry,” he said. “I was daydreaming….”

  She smiled. “So was I. I’m glad we’re here for Christmas. A garden like this is the right sort of thing to remind one of what matters. Don’t you think?”

  “Yes. And that we are entrusted with preserving it, tending it, and…protecting it,” he observed.

  “Pulling the weeds?” Her expression was mildly amused, her eyes direct, quite undisguised by pretense, even of good manners. She knew he was the one to whom she had to give the package—of course, she had to know—but did she know who was there to protect her? Or had she been given only the information she needed to know? He was chilled by another thought, as if a cold wind had arisen: He thought he knew what the package was, its purpose to deceive a potential enemy and trip the traitor who had given it to them. But why had he assumed he himself had been told the truth? All of it? How naïve of him. How arrogant to think he was above being used!

  Iris was looking at him curiously. How much did she know, as opposed to thinking she knew? “Where would be safest for you?” he asked. Let her choose.

  She gave a twisted little smile. “How about the orangery at midnight tonight? Or is that too obvious? Too early?”

  “No, it’s excellent. I shall have had enough dinner conversation long before that.”

  “I have had enough already,” she said with a slight shrug. “Lady Ammonia…Oh! Sorry. I said what I was thinking. I apologize. She isn’t a cousin or something of yours, is she?”

  “God, I hope not!” he said fervently. “I think I can safely say that, other than my wife, I have no relatives in the aristocracy.”

  “Lady Vespasia is quite different,” Iris said with feeling. “As Lady Ammonia keeps saying, she is a lady by birth, not marriage. Lady Vespasia is a lady by nature.” She looked slightly surprised. “And birth.”

  “And marriage,” Narraway added with pleasure.

  “Yes.” Her face shadowed. “I must go, or James will think I am flirting with you. I’m sorry, I apologize for him. He is very sweet, really. He just has too much imagination. Most people have too little.” And with that remark, she turned and walked quite casually down the path and round the corner.

  Narraway continued along his original path. He had no wish to meet anyone and be obliged to make conversation. It was a time and a day when he needed to think of the things that mattered. On this bleakly beautiful winter afternoon, when the trees
were stripped of all their summer lushness that masked their bones, he saw a deeper loveliness, a truth of form. Winter, with its wind-torn clouds, its clean hard light, had always pleased him. The land was bleached of color and, among the blacks and whites, the plowed earth of the fields was accentuated in curves and folds.

  Narraway had spent too long thinking about the past. How foolish of him to allow those memories to take the present as well. And yet so many things reminded him of Normandy! Even though it had been summer then: deep, rich summer; ripe grasses waist-high in the fields; flowers tangled along the edges, as if someone’s garden had overspilled itself; huge, pale cows grazing. Was there anything on earth more comfortable than sunshine, wind in the grass, and the sound of contented cows?

  His rage was partly at the sacrilege of spoiling that.

  He came to the end of the path and saw a flight of shallow paved steps, stone urns balanced on the pedestals at the bottom and top, empty of flowers now. The way the slanted light fell on them brought back memories of the château, Armand’s château, with its balustrades and urns of flowers.

  He was giving the past too much room in his mind. The present was beautiful. He had never been so happy in his life. He would tell Vespasia about Normandy when this current business was over. Or perhaps not. She would think so much less of him, and he was not sure he could bear that.

  He increased his pace back toward the house and met Rafe Allenby on the lawn in front of the drawing room windows.

  “Lovely,” he said cheerfully. “A marvelous garden. Could get lost in it with pleasure.”

  Allenby smiled. “One of the delights of visiting the rich. They do this sort of thing so well.”

  “House parties?”

  “Gardens,” Allenby corrected him. “And Christmas, with a complete lack of responsibility. I love all my children.” A shadow crossed his face and vanished again. “But not necessarily all my in-laws.”

  “I haven’t any,” Narraway replied, “at least who visit.”

  “Fortunate man,” Allenby said with feeling.

  They walked in comfortable silence back toward the house, Narraway thinking his own thoughts, and Allenby presumably likewise.

  * * *

  Dinner was a very good meal, and everyone appeared to make the effort to be agreeable. Allenby in particular told interesting memories of his various travels, and even Georgiana Brent appeared to be engaged. For once, she looked at ease. She asked one or two perceptive questions, and Narraway caught a glimpse of a far more attractive woman than he had seen previously. The bitterness in her face vanished, as if it had been painted on the outside. Perhaps it was assumed only recently.

  “Tell me more,” she said sincerely. “We shall probably never go there, and even if we do, our pleasure will then be double.”

  Allenby looked startled, and then pleased. “My mind goes to all sorts of things.” He continued, “Camels have a strange lurching step, which appears awkward at first. Then as you hear the camel bells in the darkness, and see their silhouettes against the paler night sky, lit with stars, you see the ineffable grace in them.”

  “Ships of the desert, sailing through time…” Vespasia murmured, but so softly only Narraway heard her. He instantly wondered if she had seen them with Allenby in the ruins of some ancient city, built in the dawn of time, when all stories were new.

  “I thought of the old Silk Road,” Allenby went on, “and wondered what precious things they had carried….”

  “Spices?” Cavendish suggested.

  “Jade?” Amelia added. “Polished, carved, made into marvelous shapes. And ivory, of course.”

  “Fur?” Iris asked.

  Amelia raised her eyebrows. “From China? Hardly, my dear.”

  “Wouldn’t the trading posts along the Silk Road have treasures from the north as well?” Dorian asked. “Furs among them?”

  “And walrus ivory, for example?” Vespasia added.

  “Anyone would think you’d been along it!” Amelia stared at Vespasia, her lips twisted in amusement.

  “Only as far as Samarkand.” Vespasia smiled sweetly. “But I have heard some wonderful tales by firelight, under the stars.”

  “And told a few, I imagine,” Amelia said instantly.

  Vespasia’s smile remained exactly the same. “Only imaginary ones,” she agreed. “I keep the true ones to myself.”

  “Less interesting, no doubt.” Amelia nodded, as if in agreement.

  “Less unkind to others,” Vespasia corrected her. “And less likely to be repeated with malice and error.”

  Amelia started to respond, then realized she had no answer and remained silent.

  Surprisingly, it was Georgiana who rescued the conversation. She turned to Narraway with interest. “I believe you spent time in the Indian Army when you were very young. Or have I been listening to the wrong gossip?”

  “No, you are quite right,” he assured her.

  “Many memories?” she asked.

  His mind teemed with them. “Good and bad. But it was an experience I would not have forgone.”

  “You are fortunate,” she said quietly. “I have had many I would forgo gladly. But even if the mind forgets for a while, the bones remember.” She did not explain her remark.

  Narraway looked at her with more interest than before. He wondered what, in particular, she was referring to. He knew almost nothing about her. That was an omission he should not have made. He did not yet know whether Dorian Brent was the person who was here to ensure Iris’s safety; and since Georgiana was Dorian’s wife, he should have gotten to know her better, because he should have known all of them. At first he had imagined it was Cavendish, and that was why they were at Cavendish Hall. Vespasia knew Amelia Cavendish, and she knew Rosalind Allenby a little, at least by repute, but it would be rash to make assumptions about any of them.

  Georgiana was staring at him, eyes wide.

  “Yes,” he agreed. He was thinking of Normandy when he spoke, but the same truth applied. “The bones do, like an old injury that seems healed but aches when the weather takes a certain turn.”

  Her face was tense with recognition of tragedy. “Were you there for the Mutiny? That must have been about then. Or are you too young for that?”

  “I was young,” he said bleakly, memory flooding back. “Not yet twenty, and very green. But I remember the aftermath particularly. Not something I wish to relive in my mind…ever.” He had not meant to embarrass her, but the memory of brutal violence was one of the worst he had.

  “I’m sorry,” Georgiana replied softly. “Of course not. I did not see that, but there are other things. No two people are the same. And there can be deep wounds, even in calm countryside like this. Violence does not always come screaming with a bloody sword in its hand. It can come wearing a familiar face, armed only with words….”

  “What a harsh subject for Christmas,” Rosalind said with forced cheer. “It’s a time for forgetting old injuries.”

  Narraway thought briefly of a governess he had known long ago. She smiled just like that when announcing it was time for rice pudding or bed.

  But it was Vespasia who spoke. “No, it is the time for forgiving them. That way, they stay buried, instead of rising like malevolent ghosts every time there is a tear in the fabric.”

  Narraway glanced at her, and then away again. He knew just what she meant, and there were tears in the fabric greater than he had thought.

  The conversation washed over him, more talk of where people had been, the marvelous and strange things they had seen, the interesting people and food, the humor, the love of children and making something beautiful. But he was not listening. Actually, he was watching their faces. Faces gave away far more than many people realized. What made different people laugh. He also admired the fabric of the women’s dresses, and particularly the colors th
ey wore, not necessarily to flatter or even for fashion’s sake; sometimes the colors were statements of their own natures. Vespasia so often chose grays, blues, or the palest of sand, ivory, or oyster. She loved the delicacy and the suggestion of mystery in the colors of the sky and the sea. Otherwise it was lavenders or purples. Ancient royal colors, vivid or subdued, half shades. Would he even recognize her in red?

  Lady Amelia wore plum, a rich silk. Clever, with her cold coloring, and individual.

  Rosalind chose comfortable blues and browns, nothing challenging. Narraway thought it was in order to appear uncomplicated. Travel the world all you wish, but this is the comfort you come back to!

  Iris chose purplish blue, simple in line. The gown was the setting, as one frames a painting not to detract from it.

  Georgiana wore burning orange and gold, mirroring the exact shades of her hair, but brighter. It was certainly spectacular. Whether it was flattering was another matter.

  He turned back to Vespasia. She had delicate bones, yet there was startling strength in her face. She turned to him, as if aware of his gaze, and he looked away immediately in case she saw his emotion too naked. At times, it was painful to be so much in love, and at his age perhaps people would think it ridiculous. She had known him only a few years, and there were other things, darker things, that she did not know about him and might find very difficult to understand, let alone forgive.

  She had never asked. Did she have enough wisdom to know she might not be able to live with the answers? How much longer did they have together? He had no idea. Whatever it was, it was not long enough. If you are happy, it can never be long enough.

  * * *

  Everyone was agreeable about going to bed early. It had been hard to find conversation after dinner. No one wanted to sit late, trying to make any further effort.

  As soon as the bedroom door was closed, Vespasia faced the issue. She stood in the middle of the floor, looking at Narraway. She had considered many ways of approaching this. None of them pleased her, but that was an excuse, and she acknowledged it to herself. “What is the matter, Victor? Do you know something about one of these people that you would rather not?”