The Last Camellia: A Novel (22 page)

Nicholas leapt to his feet. “I do! I do!”

“Me too!” Katherine added.

I shook my head. “I hate to be an old meanie, but the children need a bath and then they’re off to bed.”

“Aww,” Nicholas whined, plopping dejectedly back onto his chair.

Katherine crossed her arms.

“I’ll be here for a whole month, so we’ll have lots to do,” Desmond said with a grin.

Nicholas stood up. “May I be excused, Miss Lewis?”

“Yes,” I said, eyeing his plate. “But you’ve hardly touched your dinner.”

He shrugged. “If Abbott can’t eat, I won’t either. I’m doing it for him.”

“That’s an awfully creative way of getting out of eating your peas,” I said, then turned to Desmond. “Will you stay here with the children while I go up to check on Abbott?”

“Of course,” he said.

Nicholas’s show of solidarity for his brother faded as soon as Mrs. Dilloway brought out cake. “I’ll have an extra large slice,” he said, before turning to Desmond and asking eagerly, “Do you also have a sword?”

I placed my hand on Abbott’s forehead. “You’re burning up.” I wrung out a washcloth and set the cool compress on his forehead. He shivered in his bed, mumbling something under his breath. “You poor thing; it’s a bad fever.” I smoothed his hair. “It will pass, dear. We’ll get you through this.”

On the way out, I met Mr. Beardsley in the hallway.

“How is he?” he asked.

“Not well, I’m afraid.”

“He’s a strong boy, Abbott,” he reassured me. “I think he needs a good night’s sleep more than anything. Dr. Engstrom will be back to check on him first thing tomorrow.”

Before he turned to the stairs, Mr. Beardsley smiled at me. “Thank you,” he said.

“Thank you for what?”

“For caring for the children the way you do.”

“I’m not doing anything special,” I said.

“But you are. And her Ladyship would be grateful.”

After Abbott had drifted off to sleep, I helped the others into bed and tiptoed downstairs, carrying a basket of the children’s laundry with me. A pair of Nicholas’s trousers fell to the floor, and when I reached to pick them up, Desmond swooped in. “I’ll get that,” he said.

He handed the garment to me with a grin. “They work you pretty hard around here, don’t they?”

“I don’t mind,” I said, half-grinning.

“Let’s go steal another piece of Mrs. Marden’s cake from the kitchen,” he said, flashing a mischievous grin.

I shook my head. “You know what Mrs. Marden does to intruders found skulking about her kitchen.”

He smiled. “Why else would I ask you to be my accomplice?”

“Sneaky,” I said with a smile.

Desmond wiped a few stray cake crumbs from his mouth and walked toward the butler’s pantry. “None of it’s changed since the day I came to live here. Beardsley’s desk, the linen closet”—he looked up at the lightbulb that dangled from a wire in the hall—“everything.”

My eyes narrowed. “Oh, I always assumed you were born here, that your family had always lived here.”

“Well, I . . . it’s a long story,” he said.

We walked together to my bedroom door. “Say,” Desmond said, looking at the back door, “it’s a beautiful night. Let’s go look at the stars.”

I smiled, remembering how we’d gazed at the stars when we first met. “Like that night on the ship?” I asked.

“Precisely,” he replied. “I’d imagine they still have quite a lot to say.” He held the back door open for me, and together we walked outside. “Look,” he said, pointing ahead. “Not a cloud in the sky.”

“I don’t think I’ve ever been out here this late,” I said, marveling at the moon overhead. “Honestly, the place is a bit spooky in the dark.”

“Don’t worry,” he said with a grin. “I won’t keep you out past your bedtime.” He reached for my hand. “You’re cold,” he said, blowing warm air into my hand.

“It’s a bit chillier than it looked.”

“I’ll just run around to the front and grab my coat for you.”

I smiled, remembering the way he’d draped his coat over my shoulders on our first night together. It felt like a lifetime ago.

A moment later, he was back by my side, holding out his coat for me to slip my arms into. It was heavy and thick, and I was glad for its warmth as we walked beyond the terrace.

“I used to love coming out here at night,” he said, gazing out at the gardens. We wound through what was left of the rose garden, passing a pink bloom that grew despite neglect, and looked out over the grassy hillside that led down to the orchard. He pointed to a stone bench ahead, and we sat together.

“Desmond, what happened between you and your father?”

“It’s complicated,” he said. He didn’t look much like Lord Livingston, not really. I imagined he must take after Lady Anna.

“You know what I used to like to do, when I was a boy?”

“What?”

“I would come out here with Mum, and we’d lie in the grass and gaze up at the clouds looking for pictures. Once I saw a steam engine, as plain as day.”

“You were close, you and your mother, weren’t you?”

“We were,” he said.

I hesitated before speaking again. “How did she die?” I only knew what Sadie had told me.

Desmond sighed.

“If it’s too hard to talk about, I understand. I just—”

“No,” he said, raising his eyes to look at the orchard. He remained quiet for a few moments before speaking again. “She and Father had a terrible fight,” he began. “There was always a lot of fighting. He wanted her to be someone she wasn’t, to keep her in this house, like a little bird on display in a golden cage. But she couldn’t be confined that way. She wanted to be free.” He threw a pebble down the hillside. “One day, I found her on the terrace crying. I asked her what was the matter and she said she was thinking about going away for a while. She asked me if I’d take her to the train station. Of course I tried to talk her out of it. But she insisted. Said she wanted to go home to Charleston by herself, and that she’d be back after she cleared her head.”

“So you drove her there, then? To the train station?”

“No,” he said, looking at his lap briefly. “Father overheard our conversation from the upper deck. He stormed down in a terrible rage, blaming me for meddling in his business. Blaming me for everything, actually.”

“I don’t understand,” I said. “How could he be so accusing?”

“We’ve never seen eye to eye,” he said, “and I’ve come to realize that we may never.”

He leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees. “Anyway, Father was terribly angry. I’d never seen him like that before. Mum came unglued. They shouted at each other. Father stormed out. After that, Mum called Mr. Blythe up from the rose garden and invited him to join her for tea on the terrace. She did it to spite Father, knowing he could see them from his study. Mr. Blythe loved Mum. Everyone knew that. It used to irritate Abbott. He hated Mr. Blythe.”

“He did?”

Desmond nodded. “Anyway, Mr. Blythe joined Mum for tea. Afterward Mum walked down to the orchard, alone.”

“Did your father go out looking for her later?”

“No,” he said. “I don’t think he thought anything of it. Arguments were commonplace for them, and Mum always found solitude in the orchard.” He folded and then unfolded his hands. “But Mum didn’t come up for dinner, and I began to worry, so I decided to go talk to her, encourage her to come back home. It was getting dark, and she never liked the orchard at night. I walked down the hill and just past the meadow, at the edge of the orchard, I found her, lying in the grass.”

“What happened to her?”

“Her heart had stopped before I found her,” he said, his voice faltering a little. “I keep wondering how things would be different today if I’d only gone after her sooner. If Father hadn’t shouted at her the way he did, if he hadn’t driven her away . . .”

“Oh, Desmond,” I said, “how terrible for you.”

“It was,” he said. “I carried her up to the house. Fortunately, the children were asleep, so they didn’t see her in that state.”

“Do you know why she collapsed?”

“No one knows for sure,” he said. “And believe me, we all took it hard. Mrs. Dilloway, especially, and Abbott. He was so protective of Mum. For a time, every one of us was a suspect. But in the end, the doctor concluded that she died of natural causes. She was born with a weak heart. But Father blames me for her death. And I suppose, in a way, I blame him.”

“But of course neither of you is to blame,” I said.

Desmond shook his head.

“You don’t mean that he . . . ?”

“No,” he said. “No, he didn’t kill her, if that’s what you mean. I think she died of unhappiness.”

I shivered at the thought.

“I suppose we’ll never know, though,” he said. “I’m ready to move forward with my life now, ready to put it all behind me. Whether my father played a part in her death or not, I can’t hate him forever. Hate is like cancer; it corrodes the heart. I’ve decided to forgive him for the past. It’s why I came home again, why I want to see him this time. The war’s given me an eerie sense about leaving without mending fences with him.”

“I’m sure your father will appreciate what you have to say.”

“I hope,” he said with a sigh. “I just wish we could have saved her. I’ve turned the story over in my mind a hundred times, and I still can’t make any sense of it. I miss her so much.” He looked up at the big star that sparkled overhead. “You know, I’ve thought an awful lot about this, and I think that people are much like those stars up there. Some burn faintly for millions of years, barely visible to us on earth. They’re there, but you’d hardly know it. They blend in, like a speck on a canvas. But others blaze with such intensity, they light up the sky. You can’t help but notice them, marvel at them. Those are the ones that never last long. They can’t. They use up all their energy quickly. Mum was one of those.”

“That’s beautiful,” I said.

Desmond continued to stare up at the sky.

“Do you think you’ll come back home,” I asked, “after the war?”

He looked thoughtful for a moment. “I don’t know. When I was a boy, Mum would take me out here and we’d talk about life and where I might end up when I became a man. She told me never to stop searching until I find my true north.”

“Your true north?”

“She wasn’t talking about a direction, in the longitudinal sense, but rather finding my way, my place in life, the intersection of life and love. My truth.” He paused, turning to me. “The day I stepped off the ship in Liverpool,” he said, “I made a promise to myself.”

I looked up at him curiously, with a shy smile, and waited for him to finish.

“I promised that if I ever saw you again, I’d make sure I never let you out of my sight.”

His words surprised me, and yet they were heartfelt. I knew, because I felt that way too. I searched his face. “What are you saying?”

“I mean that after the war, after all of this is behind us, I want to spend every day of my life with you, Flora Lewis.”

My mouth fell open. “Do you really mean that?”

“With all my heart,” he said, kissing me tenderly.

I hardly knew him, of course. But I knew I loved him, perhaps from the moment I’d first seen him.

“Make me the happiest man,” he said, “and promise me you’ll wait for me. Promise me you’ll be here after the war.”