The Gardener (31 page)

This time, Tom was leaving her against his own wishes. And this time, she would not follow.

She kissed him, long and sweet, in the way that still made his knees weak, and then stepped back, gripping his hands. “Do not look so bleak, beloved! Papa will be arriving shortly, so I shall not be alone while you are gone." Abigail smiled wickedly. "Besides, I thought you always wanted your freedom.”

He flushed a little. Sometimes he wondered if she could read everything written in his mind. “Not from you, dearest," he averred, voice rough with feeling.

“I give you my blessing,” she said, releasing his hands as her impish smile faded. Her gray eyes bore into his with new seriousness. “Remember, I shall think of you every minute that you’re gone. Please, come back to me, Tom West.”

“I will.” Tom kissed her again until they were both breathless. Then, before he could change his mind, he seized his traveling bag and walked briskly to the waiting carriage. As it bore him away, his last sight was three copper-headed children of various sizes clutching at their mother’s skirts and looking at him with mournful eyes. Something stuck in his throat as he thrust his hat outside the open carriage window and waved until he could see them no more.

Chapter Twenty-Three

How odd it felt to be back in England, to breathe the cool, damp air, to feel his boots strike the familiar cobblestones! Tom expected to feel as if he were returning home, yet so much had changed that he felt like a stranger. The women’s skirts were narrower, their bonnets smaller, their hair more sleekly styled. Most of the men wore their hair short and brushed forward, like his. Only the old men still wore queues. New styles of carriages rumbled down the streets, but he was starkly aware that nothing around him had changed as much as he had.

As Tom strode down the sidewalks of London, wearing his expensive frock coat and new beaver hat, his fair hair cut in the new style, he wielded a new walnut cane presented to him by Rufus Putnam on the eve of his departure. He looked around with surprise at the crowded street, so much busier and more bustling than the new capital city of Washington with its muddy roads and still-unfinished Executive Mansion.

Just then a street urchin squeezed by. "Beggin' yer pardon, guvner," he said humbly, tugging his forelock. Tom instinctively felt for his wallet and was glad to find it safe in his pocket. Watching the small boy weave through the crowd, he realized from the display of deference that the boy had assumed Tom was a man of importance.

Well, perhaps he was, he thought, with a dart of surprise as he resumed his stroll. He was certainly not as wealthy as the lords and ladies who rolled by in their gilded carriages, but he was certainly more prosperous than most of the tradesmen and passersby who flowed around him. It was a thought to give pause.

While in London, he wrote Abigail several letters during the time he made arrangements for the transport of the trees, and bought gifts for her and the children. His official duties kept him busy, but he found himself with an extra day before his ship was due to sail.

Perhaps, without realizing it, he had planned it all along. Like so many impulsive acts during his life, the decision was foolish, even dangerous. Yet his fine clothes, confident walk, and official business from the president of the United States, Tom thought, should be an effective disguise. He hired a coach and four, and set out.

As the carriage passed through the familiar stone gates and up the long tree-shaded avenue, he frowned. The gatehouse appeared neglected. No one came out to greet him or to inquire about his business. The gardens were overgrown, and vast patches of rosebushes had died. He saw no sign of groundskeepers. When the carriage drew up in front of the house, he saw broken shingles and weeds growing through the flagstones. No servant came to meet him. In the silence, he could hear the twitter of birds far above him and the sound of his own breathing.

“Ho, there! Are you the gentleman who was interested in buying the property?”

Not deserted after all, he realized, for someone was coming toward the carriage, walking slowly and unsteadily, as if it took all his concentration to remain upright. Boots, which had once been elegant but were now cracked and smeared with mud; buff breeches, neatly darned; an elaborate faded waistcoat. Even before Tom saw the newcomer’s face, he knew who it was.

But Jonathan’s brown eyes swept over him without recognition. Tom’s instincts had been right: arriving as a gentleman in a rented coach, he had taken on the most impregnable disguise possible. Jonathan would never associate this prosperous American with a disgraced and probably long-forgotten footman.

He decided to play along with Jonathan’s misunderstanding. It was the perfect pretext for his visit.

“I’m not sure if I wish to purchase the place,” he said, meeting the other man’s gaze straight-on. “Are you sure the property’s not entailed?”

Jonathan snorted and stopped, leaning heavily on his cane, which had a dented gold handle. “My father had an idea to entail it, but fortunately he popped off the hooks before he could complete the papers.”  The broad face showed lines of dissipation; the  eyes were bleary, although the fleshy mouth curved into a twisted smile. “Be glad to get rid of the old place. Never cared much for the country, anyway. With the proceeds, I should be able to pay off my debts and buy a handsome house in Bloomsbury Square.”

“A pity to sell it off, though,” said Tom quietly, gazing around the familiar grounds with nostalgia, poorly kept as they were. “It's a handsome place, and I hear it has been in the family for many years.”

“It is well enough, I suppose.” Jonathan sounded uninterested. “If you wish to see the place, come inside. I did not catch your name.”

Tom hesitated. “West. My name is Thomas West.”

Jonathan’s uneven gait did not change. “Come this way, Mr. West. This, as you see, is the grand hall. Not as grand as it was, mind you, but it has possibilities.”

Tom said nothing. The statues and most of the paintings were gone. The Constable, the Rembrandt, the family portraits, all vanished, leaving nothing but paler rectangles against the sky-blue flocked wallpaper.

He cleared his throat. “I see no servants?”

“Oh, there’s a few still about. Most of the staff are gone, to other houses or elsewhere, I couldn’t say. I believe they were all given references.”

He couldn't say Jenny's name. But there was a roundabout way to find out. “And your family?”

Perhaps he had gone too far after all. Jonathan turned and shot him a curious glance. The bleary eyes took him in, the lips compressed. Then, “My parents are dead,” he said shortly. “And my sister, who lived in Barbados, as well. She and her husband were killed in the slave uprisings. I inherited the house only a year ago.”

Lord Marlowe dead one year? And Jonathan’s debts already forcing the heir to sell?
Tom said nothing as Jonathan resumed the tour, although the rapidity and extent of the family’s decline in fortune shocked him.

All the rooms were missing some of the best pieces of furniture: the red parlor, the green room, the banquet hall. Tom knew the house better than Jonathan himself, including the small hidden stairways and the service rooms as well as the public rooms, but he allowed Jonathan to show him it all. Once he had loved and admired the place, then he had hated it and never wished to see it again. Now … he wasn’t sure.

“Well,” said Jonathan when they were done. “I do not suppose you care to make me an offer?”

Tom thought of his farm in Ohio. The land there was bringing a pretty price these days, with thousands of emigrants flocking from the east and snapping up lots. He did not know how much Jonathan was expecting for the manor house, but he realized with a thrill that perhaps he could afford it. Blackgrave Manor—his? For a moment the possibility tantalized him.

Then he remembered Abigail’s words. “I do not believe you have ever got England out of your system, Tom.”

No.
He knew the moment's temptation had been just that: a temptation. Any residual longing for his old life dissipated like smoke, never to return.

“I’m afraid not. The place is too large for me.” Tom's face felt like a mask, but inside, his heart was pounding with the irony of the situation. All the times Jonathan had thrown Tom casual orders: to fetch a cane, to light a fire, to summon the stable boy, to ride behind the gilded carriage and deliver calling cards…. Back then, Tom and Jonathan had unknowingly shared an infatuation for the beautiful Jenny, a maid with the face of an angel and the soul of a calculating fish-wife. Once they had stood in the library, just down that hallway, and had a long conversation face-to-face despite old Lemley’s dire warnings that such actions brought danger. Danger had ensued, but wonderful things had come of it as well.

Now, after a decade apart, the two men stood facing each other again. Both of them lived much of their lives among these very surroundings—yet one was a total stranger to the other, while the other knew the first intimately.

Suddenly Tom was tempted to reveal his identity. What would Jonathan’s reaction be? Incredulity? Anger? Chagrin at having treated a former servant as an equal, shaking his hand and calling him “Mister?” The new master of Blackgrave Manor could not fail to note that the other man's clothes were as fine as his own but newer and in far better condition. Tom’s jaw was more cleanly shaven, his boots shone brighter.

“You’re not interested in the house? I feared as much.” Jonathan pulled out a clay pipe and lit it, shrugging. “Well, perhaps you can mention the place to your friends in London. A pity, though, to waste your time after traveling all this way.”

Tom was consumed with curiosity about what had happened to his old friends. “You said there are yet some staff on the premises?” he asked carefully. “Does that include any of the groundskeepers?”

Jonathan looked up from his pipe; his dark eyes narrowed again. “You are referring, no doubt, to the decline of the famous gardens?” He took a slow puff, as if savoring the flavor. “They were a foolish luxury of my mother’s, and I could not spare the expense to keep them up. However, I believe there is an old caretaker who has remained, as he had nowhere else to go. Feel free to look around before you go. The grounds still have a ghost of their former beauty.”

Tom watched the dark-haired figure stagger back toward the entrance of the decaying manor house. He still had not heard what had happened to Jenny. Well, one thing was clear: the chit was no longer here. He found he was no longer curious about the girl who had once meant everything to him. He felt only profound indifference.

Leaving the coachman with the horses in the courtyard, Tom turned and strode toward the stables and found the stalls empty. Even the straw had been swept out, leaving the board bare. He heard nothing but his own footsteps, not even the scurry of vermin.

He walked up the stairs and down the narrow hall, where he nudged open the farthest door. This room, at least, was not empty. The thin figure on the cot twitched, the eyes opened, and Lemley stared at him, speechless.

Then the old man roused himself. “Tom? Is it you?”

He pulled up a stool and sat by the cot, carefully taking the old man’s thin wrist into his hand. The fragile bones felt like Tom could crush them if he folded his fingers over them. Lemley’s thin hair had lost all pigment and the skin was paler, waxy.

He cleared his throat. “It's me, Lemley, same as I ever was under these new clothes.”

Lemley struggled to a sitting position. On a table next to the cot, Tom saw the remains of a meal: a few crumbs of bread, the remains of a chicken, a jug of ale. The old man was not starving, then.

“So I’m not dreaming.” Lemley stared as if he were looking at a ghost. “It's really you! I never thought I’d see me poor Tom again.”

“Life has been good to me, Lemley. I should have written you since arriving in America. I can’t think why I never did.” Perhaps it was because England had seemed like part of another world, one that no longer existed. Guilt stabbed him nonetheless.

“America! Is that where you’ve been all these years? I see ye've done well for yerself, me lad. Ye have the air of a gentleman.”  Lemley laid his head back against the pillow. “Aye, how times have changed. Ye have nothing to fear here anymore, now that the old master is dead.”

Tom knew Lemley was right. Jonathan had known of Tom's innocence from the beginning. But of course, Jonathan never would have exposed his sister as a liar —hence the story about the missing snuffbox.

Pushing back the memory, Tom looked around at the room, which had once housed several men, and cleared his throat. “Well, Lemley, it appears they’re all gone. The house servants too.”

Briefly he thought again of Jenny. Had Jonathan eventually tired of her? No doubt the calculating young woman had ended up the mistress of a duke or an earl, with a house of her own, just as she had always wanted.

As if reading his mind, Lemley’s wizened face took on a sour look. “That lass ye were so curious about – Jenny, I believe her name was—saved her money and bought a millinery shop in Scotland. Mrs. White ran into her a while back while visiting a relative—claimed the girl had grown fat and smug as a cow. A spinster, after all these years.”

“Is that so?” Tom yawned. It all seemed so long ago.

“Too good for the minx, considerin’ the trouble she caused,” Lemley said, snapping his remaining teeth together. “As for the rest of ‘em, not all have left the area. The seamstress, Rosie, lives in town. She’s married the butcher, and she’s plump and happy.”

At the news, Tom’s eyes returned questioningly to the plate of food, and Lemley nodded vigorously. “She visits me every day or two, and has been begging me to come live with her family. But I told her she must care for her young ’uns and not trouble her ’ead about me, who scarcely knew her in the old days. But Rosie said….” His voice trailed off, and for the first time his rheumy eyes avoided Tom’s.

Tom leaned closer. “Rosie said what?” He had to strain to hear the old man’s words.

“She said that as long as the good Lord gave ’er breath, she’d not desert the man who’d raised Tom West.”

Tom tightened his grip slightly on the old man’s hand. “She’s happy, then?”

Lemley chuckled under his breath. “As ’appy as a stout woman can be what ’as two healthy young ’uns and a hearty ’usband who treats ’er kindly,” he said, grinning, revealing the gap between his yellowing teeth. “She seems well enough, young Tom. Ye need not worry about ’er.”

“I’m glad.” Tom thought of that fateful night when he had escaped from Blackgrave Manor, the bundle of money Rosie had tucked in his hand that had helped him reach the shores of America. He reached into his pocket and pulled out a handful of gold coins and piled them on the wobbly table next to the bed. “Give these to her, will you? Tell her it is a repayment of a loan, with ten years’ interest.”