Twenty-Seven
A bonfire was about to start at Meadows House. With Verity at his side, Jack had lit a brazier in a secluded spot far from the back of the house, near a marshy pond. Down at their feet were three boxes of the dolls and other things Lucinda had disturbingly destroyed. The large vaguely circular pond was fed by the stream, currently wending its way over the stony bed, its surface sun dappled with darts of bright light that kept it from falling into stagnation and decay. Dragonflies hovered and danced about the reeds and bulrushes, but the couple did not notice the quiet simple way of nature.
‘When it’s all reduced to ash I’ll throw the ash into the pond as a sort of atonement for Lucinda’s slip from mindfulness,’ Jack said, his voice registering low and decisive belying his lack of comprehension.
Verity saw the late child-woman’s destruction as committed out of perilous lunacy but she never offered her thoughts to Jack. She said soothing remarks like, ‘Poor Lucinda, she could not have known what she was doing.’ And, ‘I do feel for you, Jack.’ Or, ‘Life wasn’t fair to your dear Lucinda, but take comfort that she’s at peace now.’ Verity couldn’t help thinking it was a good thing Lucinda had taken her own life. Someone in the state of mania who could rip apart dolls, her much loved and constant companions, and paint them red to signify a lust for blood, would most likely have been horridly capable of butchering her husband or his servants in their beds. Red paint might not have sufficed Lucinda’s mad condition for much longer.
It was a blessing, she thought, that Jack did not see things her way, and that his poignant memories of his tragic wife would always stay untainted by the deepest terrible truth. Verity had gleaned from the occasional remark by Cathy or the Kellands that they shared her view but were stringent to keep up a sorrowful pretence for their master’s sake. When Jack had announced the child-woman’s room was to be stripped bare, that all her dolls (the complete and undefiled ones) and all her things were to be given to an orphanage, Cathy had said under her breath, ‘Now we can get back to normal.’ Kelland had said, ‘No need to lock a certain door ever again.’
Verity wondered if the house steward had slyly locked his mistress in her room last thing at night and unlocked it before Jack had risen. Verity had hoped Jack would have wanted to burn all Lucinda’s strange stuff, for they gave Verity the jitters; at times she had even felt some of the dolls had stared at her with Lucinda’s gorgeous eyes, hate-filled and maniacal against her for loathing her dolls. But, of course, Jack only saw his late wife as a wronged innocent.
‘We can’t just get rid of her dolls and things. I don’t want to sell them off and make profit by them. Have you any suggestions, Verity?’
‘Well, I suppose you could give them to a charity,’ she had offered, hating to even discuss the wretched caboodle.
‘To sell, you mean? No, not that, they would only end up languishing in a variety of rich girls’ nurseries. They should be played with, dressed and redressed. I’ll get on to the Salvation Army and they can hand them out to an orphanage and other worthy poor children.’
Verity had secretly shuddered, praying that none of the dolls and things would pass on any sort of curse to their new owners.
‘Stand safely back, Verity,’ Jack said kindly, taking charge of the burning. ‘I’m just glad of your support. I’ll feed the fire.’
Hugging her cardigan round herself, Verity watched in a sort of awful mesmerized trance as Jack tossed the wax, bisque and cloth limbs, heads, torsos and wads of torn-off hair, to sizzle, stutter and hiss diabolically in the flames. The stink of the glue was acrid and Verity stepped further and further back to prevent her nose and lungs being fouled. Let this be a complete cleansing and let Jack then leave that poor wretched creature forever in the past.
At the end as the last obscene doll part was burning out of existence and the flames were beginning to die down, Verity felt dirty all over her skin and hair and her lungs soiled and choked.
Jack saw. ‘Oh no, I’m sorry you’ve got so grimy, Verity. I shouldn’t have wanted you to stay so long. Please do go inside and ask Cathy to run you a bath, while you have plenty to drink. Mrs Kelland can make you something hot and soothing with honey in it. I’m sure Cathy will be glad to lend you something to wear. Please don’t go home yet. I’ve asked Mrs Kelland to make us a light cooked tea. You will stay?’
His plea was hopeful and needy, but also persuasive. Verity was happy to stay, she was hoping to. She liked everyone attached to this property, and now the ghost of poor Lucinda had been purged there was nothing left to pass a gloom over it, a gloom of bad regretful memories for Jack.
Cathy’s clothes were not going to fit Verity’s taller, curvier form so she sat down to the meal clad in Mrs Kelland’s best dress, its generous width pulled in with a tie belt. Her legs would have been too much on display and so the cook-housekeeper had also loaned her a skirt to wear under the dress, pleated over and held fast by a couple of safety pins. The result should have made Verity look like a bag stuffed with potatoes but she actually appeared rather fetching, although old-fashioned. She smelled of coal tar soap and dabs of Mrs Kelland’s violet scent that the woman had insisted she put on her wrists. Her wet hair was pinned up in a high bun giving her an exotic Latin look. ‘I’ve helped dress ladies before when the occasion has called for it but I’ve never turned one out looking like you, though you still come across just as lovely, Miss Verity,’ Mrs Kelland had declared, amused, as Verity was, by the end result.
‘I’ll return your clothes tomorrow and thank you, Mrs Kelland.’ On the cusp of the moment she had given the woman a hug. ‘You all make me feel so at home here.’
‘Well, you said it, miss.’ Mrs Kelland went off to her kitchen chuckling a certain chuckle.
The implied meaning was not lost on Verity. At home here. That was a not unwelcome notion.
‘You look charming, Verity,’ Jack said gallantly, at the foot of the stairs. Verity had taken so long relaxing in the deep Victorian bath and getting ready that Jack had beaten her in cleaning up for the meal.
‘I think I rather do,’ she smiled, accepting his waiting hand. As for him, he was enticing and virile in a white open-neck shirt and cravat, his potent muscles bursting against the fine linen of his shirt.
‘Are you hungry?’
‘Ravenous.’
He eyed her for many long seconds. ‘Let’s eat.’ He escorted her into the dining room as if they were about to dine at a regal banquet, but once at the table – a long shining beauty set with a simple silver vase of roses – he brought the mood back to natural friendliness and engaged her in light-hearted banter.
In utter contentment they munched their way through breaded ham, and egg and parsley flan, boiled potatoes and salad leaves. Dessert was a delicious strawberry mousse. ‘Just about all from my own produce,’ Jack said proudly. ‘And thanks to the best company I’ve had in absolute ages the food has never tasted so good.’ Until now he had only gone through the motions of living, regularly getting drunk and bedding the temptress kind of women to seek refuge from the numb coldness in his mind.
Verity accepted the compliment with a salute of her wine glass. ‘Jack, when do you next want me to do some work for you at the farm office?’
‘I don’t; there’s nothing there for you to do,’ he replied frankly, although he lifted his wine glass to his cheek and was smiling round it at her.
‘Oh, does that mean you don’t require my services any longer?’ Verity asked the question in a serious tone edged with disappointment, yet her heart gave a series of tingly leaps. Jack’s winning smile gave away his intention to keep her in some way in his life. Verity wanted nothing more than to stay in it in some capacity.
‘We can say that officially you’re my personal assistant, if you like. One thing pressing on my mind is to find out what happened to my sister Stella, and my brother Tobias. I only have my father’s word that Tobias is dead. It’s true Randall cut off Stella without a penny. She wrote to me a few times, just sketchy notes, saying she was working in medicine and was about to go overseas, there was nothing more after that. But what I really want from you, Verity, is to be my companion.’ He put his glass down and reached for her hand. ‘Would you like that?’
She placed both her hands round his. ‘More than anything, Jack.’
‘In this house?’
‘Yes.’
‘Together with me forever – you know what I’m asking you?’ He lifted her hands to his lips and kissed them gently.
‘I do.’ She pulled the huddle of their hands and kissed them as he had done.
‘It was not exactly a romantic and conventional proposal but we’re two people who’ve been through enough of life’s experience and don’t need that. We’re on the exact same wavelength; we’ve helped each other move on from the past. Agreed, Verity?’
‘Agreed, Jack. Totally.’
He released her hands and drew her up from her chair and fully into his arms, gazing smilingly and tenderly into her eyes. ‘You won’t have to worry about me going astray. That’s all out of my system and it was an empty way of running away from my woes anyway, to forget them for a while. I’m in love with you, Verity, darling. I fell for you hard and fast when I pulled up beside you in the car that day. I hope one day you’ll fall in love with me too.’
Wrapping her arms snugly and now possessively round his neck and stretching up on tiptoes to kiss his sensuous mouth, she whispered huskily, ‘You don’t have to wait for that to happen, Jack. I’ve been in love with you for a long while.’