The Rose Garden (11 page)

I wondered how long she’d been dead but didn’t like to pry, and so I turned my gaze instead towards the closed door in the wall between this room and mine. He looked as well, and said, ‘I do not doubt that I could find a lock to fit that latch if it would ease your fears.’

I turned to him. ‘My fears?’

‘You surely have them, being far from home among strange men. And you were frightened when we met.’

‘You had a knife, and you were angry,’ I reminded him.

‘Did it seem like anger to you? For my part, it felt like cowardice. I’d never faced a ghost.’

‘Well, any ghost that saw you come at them like that would likely take off running.’

Daniel Butler smiled. He hadn’t moved, and yet I felt the space between us shrinking as he said, ‘But you are not a ghost.’

I shook my head.

‘And I’ll admit you do not seem afraid.’

I said, ‘I’m not afraid at all.’ The words surprised me when I said them, for I knew that they were true. I said them over, to be sure: ‘I’m not afraid.’

He watched my face a moment, then he gave a nod and told me, ‘Good. For that is a beginning.’

***

Sleeping was impossible. I rolled my face into the pillow, eyes closed tightly.

I did not belong here. This was not my room and not my bed. And yet, a part of it felt right to me, and somewhere deep inside my mind a tiny voice kept speaking up to say that Daniel Butler had been wrong to tell me I was far from home.

It was a voice I couldn’t quiet, and I rolled again and dragged the covers with me, staring out the open window at the moonlit sky shot through with stars that danced against the blackness of infinity. The sea had a voice tonight, rolling and whispering on the dark shore as though trying to give me advice. I ignored it at first, but when other sounds, equally furtive and low, rose to join it, I gave in and rolled from my bed, crossing barefoot to stand at the window.

I’d changed back into my pajamas, and the beautiful gown was spread out on the chair in the corner to wait for tomorrow.

Tomorrow, when I would see Daniel and Fergal, and I would be shown what to do with my hair so that Daniel could take me outside, as he’d promised, and give me a tour of the property.

From where I stood now at the front of the house I could see the broad slope of the hill rolling down to the cliffs and the sea, with the darkness of the Wild Wood pressing closer to the house and looking larger than my memory of it, shot through in places with the ghostly white of blackthorn still in bloom. The sounds continued, and I saw a stir of shadows in the woods.

They slipped out one by one and left the path to turn uphill and climb towards the house, a silent line of darkened figures, moving in the moonlight. Well, not wholly silent. I could hear the rustle of their footsteps and the heavy tread of two dark horses being led in single file behind, with bundles piled on their backs.

The floorboards in the next room creaked as Daniel Butler rose as well, and stealthily went out and down the stairs. A moment later, from my window, I could see his shadow going out to join the others and to clap the shoulder of the man in front in greeting, and to guide the line of men and horses up around behind the house.

It didn’t in the least surprise me that he was a smuggler; I had guessed already from the things he’d said about his less than honest trade and from the character he’d painted of the brother who shared the command of his ship. Besides, this was Cornwall, and every house here had its smugglers.

I wondered what the men had carried up tonight then I decided that I didn’t need to know. It didn’t matter.

It felt colder on my feet now, standing there beside the window, so I turned away and headed back to bed.

And then I stopped.

Because the bed had started wavering. Across the blankets shadows played and shifted as the hanging curtains caught the breeze that blew in from behind me like a long, regretful sigh.

Another breath and it had faded like a swirl of smoke in wind, and I was once more in the corridor, just crossing from the bathroom and a few steps from my bedroom door, while all the house around me went on sleeping as though nothing had been changed.

‘
You’re quiet this morning. You feeling all right?’ Mark had already been up and out and hard at work for hours by the time I ventured outside. There’d been a sharp change in the weather, and all round the flowers were ducking in front of the wind, gusting damply and chilly for this time of year. Even the dogs hunched their backs to it, keeping their tails down and gathering closely around Mark and me as we walked to the greenhouse.

The truth was, I wasn’t too sure
how
I felt. I was glad to be back. But if things had gone differently I might be taking this same walk with Daniel right now, and not Mark, and for some reason that left me feeling a little bit… well, a bit cheated, though I knew that didn’t make sense.

Nor was it really fair to Mark, who was still looking at me with concern. I made an effort and met his gaze brightly. ‘I’m fine.’

He seemed prepared to take me at my word. His own attention was distracted by the dogs, who had gone wild because Felicity was coming out to meet us from the greenhouse.

Her
good spirits, at least, were as buoyant as ever. Dancing her way through the onslaught of leaping dog bodies and wagging tails, she said, ‘It took you both long enough. Wait till you see what we’ve done!’ As we neared the doorway to the greenhouse she slipped in behind Mark, covering his eyes with both her hands. ‘Don’t look, not yet. You either, Eva. Close your eyes.’

‘Felicity, what… ow!’ Mark whacked his elbow on the door frame as he tried to step through blind.

‘All right. Now.’ Lifting up her hands with an enthusiastic flourish, she revealed the latest triumph she and Susan had achieved. They’d painted. Everything was green and ivory, beautifully elegant and restful. For the first time, it looked less like an old green house than a tearoom in the making.

Even Mark was forced to say a heartfelt, ‘Wow.’

And that one word, because it came from him, was all the benediction that Felicity had hoped for. I could see it in her eyes, her brightened smile, and once again I marveled that Mark couldn’t see it for himself. She said, ‘Of course there’s still the floor to do and all the rest, but doesn’t it look wonderful?’

It really did. I told her so.

Susan was cleaning the paintbrushes in the new sink that the plumber had just installed, but when she saw us she turned off the water and came across. ‘Well, brother? What do you think?’

Mark was still looking up. ‘I think maybe you might have a tearoom.’

‘I told you.’ But she seemed pleased too, to have won Mark’s approval. ‘Now all we have to do is bring the tourists in, and Eva’s got a start on that already. Did she tell you that she’s found a duke who might have some connection to Trelowarth?’

‘Really?’ Mark turned. ‘Who would that be?’

‘Oh,’ I said. ‘The Duke of Ormonde.’ I’d forgotten all about him, but for the benefit of Mark and Felicity I gave an account of his career, how he’d fought against the Jacobites initially and then switched sides and tried to bring the young King James across to take the throne when Queen Anne died. ‘He was raising a rebellion right down here,’ I said, ‘in Cornwall, only Parliament got wind of it and voted to arrest him as a traitor, and he took off into exile.’

‘A Jacobite rebellion? Here in Cornwall?’ asked Felicity.

‘I know,’ said Susan. ‘That’s what I said. But it’s quite romantic, don’t you think?’

Mark asked, ‘And how’s this duke connected to Trelowarth?’

If I’d had Fergal’s gift for lying I’d have answered that I’d read somewhere the Duke of Ormonde might have had a blood relation living here in 1715, but as it was I only glanced away and shrugged and said, ‘I haven’t really got it all worked out. I’ll have to do a bit more research yet.’

Susan said, ‘You should ask Oliver. Remember him?’

I nodded. ‘Yes, of course. I just bumped into him Wednesday, in fact, in Felicity’s shop.’

‘
Did
you?’ asked Felicity. ‘He didn’t mention that to me.’

I felt the quick surge of new interest all round.

Susan asked me, ‘And what did you think of him?’

‘Well…’

‘He’s filled out a bit, hasn’t he?’ Susan grinned. ‘Who knew he’d grow up to look like a film star?’

Mark said, ‘I should imagine Eva’s seen her share of film stars, Sue.’

‘Well, I’ll take him if she doesn’t want him. The point is,’ she told me, ‘if it’s history you’re after, he’d be a good person to go to, because he knows all sorts of obscure things. He researched a lot when he set up his smugglers’ museum. If he doesn’t know the exact facts you’re after, he might point you in the direction to find them.’

Mark looked doubtful. ‘Would he be open on a Sunday?’

Susan said, ‘If the museum’s closed, he only lives upstairs. I’m betting if you knocked he’d come and open up.’

‘Especially,’ Felicity said, teasing, ‘for the right sort of a customer.’

***

Oliver’s museum was along the harbor road, and it
was
open. The force of the wind blew me in through the door and I had to lean all of my weight on the heavy wood to make it swing shut behind me and latch.

Inside, everything smelt of the salt of the sea and the old plaster walls and the wood dust that came from the floorboards. Brass ship’s lanterns hung from the dark weathered beams overhead to create the illusion the room owed its brightness to them, not the more modern pot lights set into the ceiling. The ceiling itself seemed unusually low at first, but like most very old cottages here, this one’s floor had been hollowed out so that it actually sat at a level below the street outside. Once I’d gone down the two steps from the door I could stand without bumping my head.

It was rather like stepping below decks, I thought, on a ship. With the posts and the beams and the lanterns and barrels and ropes worked so cleverly into the big room’s design, I almost expected the floor to roll under my feet when I walked on it.

‘Eva!’ He’d been in the back, either reading or working because he was wearing his glasses, but he took them off, tucking them into his shirt pocket as he came forwards to greet me.

I looked round the room. ‘This is really nice, Oliver.’

‘Thanks. I’m afraid I can’t take all the credit, though. It was my mother’s idea. She came from a smuggling family herself, and she had this collection of things she’d been gathering over the years, and she always said someone should build a museum to put them in, so…’ With his hands spread, he gestured to what he had made. ‘Mind you, she didn’t stay to help me with it.’

I remembered his mother, a cheerfully no-nonsense woman. ‘Oh? Where did she go?’

‘Up to Bristol, to live with my aunt. Left me to fend for myself, so she has.’

‘Well, you seem to be doing all right.’

‘What, with this? The museum won’t pay any bills for me.’ Oliver smiled. ‘It’s a labor of love. No, I’ve got a collection of holiday cottages over St Non’s way. I let them year round, and so far that’s been enough to keep me in the black. I can’t complain.’

‘Holiday cottages? Really? You wouldn’t have one sitting empty right now, would you?’

‘I’m afraid not. They’re all booked through September.’

‘Oh.’

‘Why, were you wanting one?’

‘Thinking about it.’ I nodded. ‘I’m taking a bit of a break from my job and L.A. and… well, everything, after Katrina. You know. I was thinking I might rent a cottage round here, maybe stay for a while.’

He said, ‘Choose the cottage you like, and I’ll turf out the tenant.’

I smiled. ‘You don’t need to do that. But if one does come free in September—’

‘It’s yours.’ He watched me looking round the room and asked, ‘You want the tour?’

‘Yes, please.’

He’d done a good job setting up all the exhibits so they flowed one from the other in a pattern that was logical, from the earliest days of the settlement here through the bold privateers of the Tudor age, right to the heyday of ‘free-trading’ in the late 1700s, when practically everyone took part in it, sometimes including the revenue men who were meant to be keeping the smugglers in check.

There’d always been trade between Cornwall and Brittany, on the French coast, and neither wars nor taxes had been able to persuade the Cornish free-traders to give up what for them was a good livelihood and, more than that, a most diverting game.

‘Like cat and mouse,’ was Oliver’s analogy. ‘Everyone knew who the smugglers were, the real job was to catch them. And then, once you’d caught them, you had to make the charges stick, because the local juries here would only let them off again. That’s why some of the revenue men in the end gave it up, helped themselves to a cut of the profits, and turned a blind eye.’

I couldn’t imagine the constable turning a blind eye to anything, though he had not seemed to me like a man to be easily fooled. He must surely have known what the Butlers were up to. But then again, those men I’d seen from my window had gone to great lengths to come up from the woods without anyone noticing.

‘What did they smuggle in, usually?’ I asked.

‘Oh, brandy and tea and tobacco, French laces and silk. Anything that the government slapped a big duty on.’ He hitched a barrel over and sat down while I examined a small gallery of drawings of Polgelly’s famous smuggling ships.

I didn’t find the one that I was looking for, and so I asked him, ‘Did you ever hear of a ship called the
Sally
?’

He considered it a moment. ‘No, it doesn’t ring a bell. Was she a smuggler’s ship?’

‘I think so. She belonged to the Butlers who lived at Trelowarth.’

‘The Butlers? I don’t know them either. What year would this be?’

‘Early 1700s,’ I said, trying hard not to sound too specific, because I could already tell from his face he was going to ask me:

‘And where did you come across all of this?’

I shrugged. ‘I read about them somewhere on the Internet; I can’t remember where. I wasn’t smart enough to bookmark it.’

‘The Butlers. Did it give their first names?’

‘Jack and Daniel.’

‘Well, I should at least remember
that
.’ He grinned. ‘It sounds enough like what I like to drink.’ Which led him to his next idea. Glancing at the windows that were for the moment free of rain, he said, ‘You’ve done the tour. Now let me buy you lunch.’

‘That’s what you do for all your tourists, is it?’

‘Certainly.’ His eyes, good-natured, challenged me to challenge him. ‘What’s it to be? Your choice—the Wellie or the tearoom?’

I was torn at that, because I’d never been inside the Wellington. It hadn’t been the sort of pub you took a child into, which had only made it all the more intriguing. But I settled on, ‘The tearoom, please. I’ll do a bit of corporate spying while I’m here, for Susan.’

‘Right,’ said Oliver. ‘I’ll fetch my coat.’

We were the only customers for lunch, and it was clear the waitress had a crush on Oliver because she set my soup down with a lack of care that bordered on disdain. Oliver, not noticing, looked puzzled when he saw me trying not to laugh.

‘What?’

‘Nothing.’

‘So, Felicity tells me Sue’s put you to work.’

‘Yes. That’s what brought me down here today, actually. I was hoping I could find somebody famous in Trelowarth’s past, a name that she could use to draw the tourists in.’ I knew from how he looked at me he’d hit upon the obvious, as I had, so I told him, ‘Yes, I know. I told her she should use Katrina’s name, but Susan wasn’t having it. I’ll have to find her someone else.’

‘A famous person in Trelowarth’s past.’ He wasn’t sure.

‘Well, there’s the Duke of Ormonde, maybe.’ We discussed that for a minute. He impressed me with his knowledge of the details of the Jacobite rebellion I had read about, which encouraged me to add, ‘His name was Butler, right? James Butler.’

‘Like your Butler brothers, you mean?’ He considered this. ‘It’s a bit of a shot in the dark.’

‘Oh, I don’t know,’ I told him carelessly. ‘They might have been related.’

‘You’re determined to find Sue her famous person, aren’t you?’ Oliver was smiling but he sympathized. ‘I know, it would be brilliant if her plans worked out. I’d hate to see the Halletts lose Trelowarth.’

In surprise I set my spoon down. ‘It’s as bad as that?’

He gave a nod. ‘It’s bad.’

‘I didn’t realize.’

‘Never fear,’ he said, ‘I’ll do a little research of my own and see what I can find. Even if the Duke of Ormonde didn’t come this way, your Butler brothers might prove interesting enough themselves.’

‘Thanks, I’d appreciate that.’

‘Would you? Then you’ll have to let me buy you lunch again.’

The waitress heard that part and slammed my sandwich plate down with such force the table rattled.

This time even Oliver noticed. Watching our waitress depart he said, ‘She’s in a bit of a mood today, isn’t she?’ Then catching sight of my face, he asked, ‘What?’ again.

It took an effort to straighten my smile as I answered him, ‘Nothing. It’s nothing.’ But I had a feeling that lunching with Oliver anywhere here in Polgelly might turn out to be an adventure.