“How are you?” he asked me. It seemed like an odd question. How should I be?
“Okay,” I said. “Fine.”
“Why didn’t you come speak to me in the barn?” Another strange question. He’d been busy, and then he’d been deep in conversation with Bianca.
“I didn’t want to interrupt.”
“What have you been up to while I’ve been busy with my guests?”
“Nothing much. Watching Maddy, as usual.”
“You look pale. I noticed it all the way from the stage. Are you coming down with something?”
“I’m just tired.”
“And a little depressed,” he said. “What about? Tell me.”
“Nothing, Mr. Rathburn. I’m not depressed.”
“But you look sad. I haven’t seen you smile all morning, and right now it looks like you’re holding back tears.”
At this observation, the tears spilled; it was impossible to keep them back. Mr. Rathburn reached toward me as though he might wipe them from my face with his bare hands. Then he pulled back and felt in the pockets of his black jeans. “I don’t have a handkerchief on me.”
“That’s okay. I’ll just go and…”
“I have to get back to the barn,” he said. “The guys are waiting. I’ll let you go, Jane. For a little while. But after dinner tonight, I want you out on the deck with my other guests. Wherever we are, I want you to be there for the rest of their visit. Now go, get some rest.” And then he reached toward me again, this time with both arms, as though he might wrap them around me to give me some comfort. But then he stopped, bit his lip, folded his arms, and strode away.
CHAPTER 11
That night after Maddy’s bedtime, the music continued, though now it was loose and informal. On the back deck, overlooking the woods, Mr. Rathburn sat barefoot on a step, strumming one of his acoustic guitars, playing folk songs, a few of which I recognized. Beside him, Dennis played along. From an Adirondack chair behind him, Mike blew his harmonica. The rest of the group — Tom and Lonnie, Yvonne and Kitty, Bianca, her long hair still floating about her shoulders — nursed Heinekens and sang along. At the end of each song, the group hooted with joy; the singers called out requests.
I sat on a bench at the opposite end of the porch; if I had to be out on the back deck, I would be as far away from Mr. Rathburn and Bianca as I could get. After she’d had a few drinks, Yvonne came over to invite me to join the rest of them. I thanked her sincerely but told her I was comfortable where I was, and she returned to the group.
Mr. Rathburn seemed loose and happy. As the night progressed, he became more and more of a showman. “Bianca, you haven’t made a request yet. Isn’t there anything you want to hear?”
“I don’t know.” Bianca took a long swallow from her Heineken. “How about ‘The Highwayman’?”
“Which version? There are three I know of, probably more.”
“Any version. I love any variation on the Highwayman ballad. I’m a sucker for the bad boys.”
“You hear that?” Mr. Rathburn asked the others. “Which of us fits that description?”
“Oh, please,” Lonnie said. “Don’t you read your own press?”
“You’re the baddest of the bad,” Mike added. “I read it in People magazine. It must be true.”
Mr. Rathburn grinned. “Well then, this song is dedicated to the beautiful Bianca Ingram.” He launched into the ballad, and the others listened. Once again I felt a stinging in my heart. Hearing him sing those lyrics, about an innkeeper’s daughter who shoots herself to save the highwayman with whom she has fallen in love, brought me close to tears again. I was glad when the song was over — that is, I would have been glad if he hadn’t turned around and called my name.
“What about you, Jane? Any requests? Have you been enjoying our little hootenanny?”
I struggled for a response.
“Leave the little girl alone,” Bianca commanded in a mocking voice. “Can’t you see she’d rather be inside watching American Idol?”
“Aren’t you supposed to be taking pictures, Bianca?” Dennis’s tone was perfectly calibrated to sound playful. “Instead of picking on the help?”
“Ooooh.” Bianca took another long swig of beer. “Clever boy.”
“You’re missing an excellent photo op,” Mr. Rathburn interjected, “but I guess even the queen of celebrity photographers needs to take a vacation every once in a while. Dennis, push over. Go sit by Mike. I’m not kidding.” After Dennis moved, Bianca slipped into his place next to Mr. Rathburn. “If your voice is as stunning as the rest of you,” he told her, “we’d better sing a duet — the first of many, I hope.”
And they did, she taking one line and he the next, of a song I recognized, though I couldn’t recall its name or who had popularized it. I was chagrined to note that Bianca Ingram had, if not a stunning voice, a pretty one that blended very well with Mr. Rathburn’s idiosyncratic baritone. To tell the truth, though I stayed on the deck as ordered, I barely paid any attention to the rest of what was said or sung that night. All I could do was stew in the poisonous feelings roused by their voices harmonizing in the song’s chorus. I was jealous, of course, but it was more than that. I felt that I was watching my best friend make a tragic mistake. Whatever Bianca Ingram was, I was fairly certain about what she wasn’t: kind, loving, or even genuine. And I was disappointed that Mr. Rathburn hadn’t noticed the sharp edges of her personality, or that — enamored by her silky hair and long legs — he’d decided to overlook them. I would have been willing to bet that this relationship would end as unhappily as his others, but there was little — nothing — I could do about it.
From my place in the shadows, I saw Bianca Ingram lean her sleek head on Mr. Rathburn’s shoulder. I saw him draw closer to her, their two silhouettes merging. I tried to remember his less attractive qualities — his bad temper, his bossiness, his tendency to spoil his daughter one moment and to ignore her the next. Not to mention his strange insistence that I be present at moments like this, though there was no place for me in the circle of people sprawled around him. Once I had barely liked him. Now, with a shiver, I realized I’d gone well beyond liking him: I had fallen in love with him. Love had snuck up on me, and now I could hardly imagine a time when I hadn’t treasured his wry smile, his smoky eyes, his broad shoulders, his voice and its distinct, sandpapery edge. If only I could regain my indifference, but I doubted I could ever get it back.
When the revelry finally ended, it was almost two in the morning. As soon as the party broke up, I hurried to my own quiet room. Unlike the others, I couldn’t sleep in until noon. I would wake up feeling no more rested than I had the night before.
CHAPTER 12
A storm moved in early the next day and stalled over Thornfield Park. Rehearsals went on anyway, despite cold, torrential rain, and the moat of mud that had formed around the barn. At lunchtime, Amber and Linda carried an urn of coffee and a tray of sandwiches into the barn, their hair flattened by their short run from the house. I’d kept Maddy home again that day; she’d petitioned her father on the matter before breakfast, and he’d given her permission to hang out in the barn. After lunch, she set up her figurines in a corner and listened to the band as she began one of her protracted games of pretend. I wrapped my hands around my coffee mug, trying to get warm, and was listening to what seemed like the hundredth iteration of a single song when Yvonne sidled up next to me.
“You bored yet?” she asked me. “Why does he make you sit here hour after hour?”
“I don’t pretend to understand his logic.” Rehearsals seemed not to be going particularly well, and Mr. Rathburn had been too preoccupied that morning even to pay much attention to Bianca. She continued her stealthy photography, hovering wherever the action seemed to be, but I thought I detected a brusque, slightly miffed air to her.
“Well, whatever,” Yvonne said. “When he’s not looking, slip out. You need to put Maddy down for her nap anyway, right? Once you’re out of the barn
, come over to the guesthouse. I’ve got my tarot cards. I’ll tell your fortune.”
The opportunity to get away from rehearsals was a relief, even if I risked Mr. Rathburn’s censure. Less than an hour later, I knocked on the guesthouse door. Even with my umbrella, I was pretty wet around the edges.
“Take those shoes off!” Kitty ordered. “Make yourself comfy.”
I’d never had reason to be in the guesthouse before. Its living room was cheery — white and yellow, with a fire in the hearth. I settled onto the couch, and Kitty handed me a wooly red throw; I wrapped it around my shoulders. “Have you ever had a reading before?” she asked me. “Yvonne’s amazing.”
“The cards are amazing,” Yvonne corrected her. “I just know how to interpret them. I used to pull cards for myself every day, but I stopped. They were so right, they scared me.”
“So now we get to be scared,” Kitty said with a small shiver.
“You should be scared after the reading I did this morning. We got Miss Thang to put her camera down and sneak over here for a while.”
I recalled that there had been a brief stretch that morning when Bianca hadn’t been present. It also dawned on me that neither Kitty nor Yvonne particularly liked Bianca. And why should they? In her days at Thornfield Park, I’d never once seen her speak to either woman; all her attention had been focused on the band.
“You read Bianca’s cards?” I asked. “What did they say?”
“Oh, she drew the Tower,” Yvonne said offhandedly. “Let’s just say her reading centered around a serious blow to her ego.”
“I’m not sure I want my fortune told,” I said. “If bad luck is lurking around the corner, I’d rather not know.”
Yvonne cut and shuffled the deck. “Oh, the cards don’t tell you the future, sweetie. They just tell you about yourself, give you hints on how to go about getting whatever it is you want. So you start by coming up with a question. What is it you want to know?”
I hesitated. It would have been foolish and unprofessional to share the subject that most preoccupied me. And what would I ask, anyway? Even if the cards could tell me the future, I knew mine didn’t hold hope for the one thing I wanted most. There was no point in asking how to get Mr. Rathburn to love me; it was beyond my power. Besides, was I really silly enough to believe a card chosen from a deck could tell me anything useful? “I think you should know I’m a skeptic,” I said.
Yvonne shrugged. “Doesn’t matter. You might not believe in the cards, but they believe in you. There’s got to be something you want.”
I thought a moment. “Will I ever go back to college?”
“Boring!” Kitty sang out. “Is that the best you can do?”
“Ask about love,” Yvonne urged me. “Do you have a boyfriend?”
“Oh, no.”
“Is there someone you like?” she persisted. “Somebody you’ve got your eye on?”
“Look at her blush,” Kitty said. “There’s your answer, Vonnie. Who is it?”
“Nobody you know.”
“It’s Dennis!” Yvonne guessed.
“I’ve only known him three days,” I said. “No, it’s not Dennis. It’s someone from my other life. Before I came here.”
Was that disbelief I saw cross Yvonne’s face? At any rate, she stopped pressing me for information. “Think about him while I shuffle the cards. What is it you want to know?”
I closed my eyes and thought of Mr. Rathburn’s face, a little shocked at how easily and vividly I could conjure up the image of his smoke-colored eyes and crooked smile. “What do I want to know?” I tried to formulate the question as vaguely as I could. “Is there… I don’t know. Is there hope?”
I opened my eyes and saw a fan of cards spread out a couple of inches in front of my face. “One of these cards is screaming your name,” Yvonne said. “So pick it.”
I made my choice and laid the card faceup on the table. It featured a colorful drawing of a nude woman kneeling on one knee beside a stream. Water poured from the pitchers she held in each hand. An enormous, eight-pointed star took up most of the night sky above her.
“It’s the Star!” Yvonne exclaimed.
“Is that good?” Kitty asked.
“You bet,” Yvonne said. “The Star is the card of hope and healing.”
“Why is she naked?” I asked.
“She’s stripped bare, completely vulnerable. And that water she’s spilling symbolizes tears you’ve been holding back.”
“Have you been? Holding back tears?” Kitty asked.
“Well, not exactly.” That much was true; yesterday I’d been unable to hold them back. The memory of how I’d fallen apart in front of Mr. Rathburn still rankled.
“Well, cheer up,” Yvonne said. “What you want is out there. You just have to go and meet it halfway. That’s not me talking, honey. It’s the card.”
I shook my head. “I’m pretty sure that’s not the case,” I told them. “Nothing against your card-reading skills.”
“You may not see it now,” Yvonne said. “But you need to be on the lookout for opportunity.”
I took the throw from my shoulders. “Thank you both. This was very nice of you. I should probably get back to the barn.”
“What, are you worried about big, bad Nico?” Kitty said. “Let him wonder where you went. Hang out for a while. Vonnie’s going to read my cards. I’ll make some coffee; that’ll warm us up. And if Nico says anything, just tell him we kidnapped you.”
“He’s a softy underneath all that bluster,” Yvonne said. “But you know that, right?” And before I could answer, she turned to Kitty. “So what do you want to know?”
I lingered with them awhile longer before going back to the house to check on Maddy. She was already up and out of bed, and had probably run over to the barn herself, and I was most likely in hot water for slipping out of the rehearsal and not watching my charge properly. In fact, I should be in trouble. I was thinking grim thoughts when the intercom by the front door buzzed. I would have expected Lucia to answer it, but she must have gone out to run an errand. It buzzed a second time and then a third.
I ran down to the entryway and pressed the button to reply. “Yes?”
“It’s Teddy in the guardhouse. There’s an Ambrose Mason here to see Nico. He’s not expected, but he says it’s important, and Nico will know what it’s about.”
I offered to run over to the barn and relay the message, since I was headed there to find Maddy anyway. Sure enough, she was parked on the love seat right in front of her father’s mike stand, watching him with still-sleepy eyes, a figurine clutched in each hand.
Mr. Rathburn was swapping one guitar for another when I climbed up onto the stage to get his attention. He looked up distractedly. “Jane?” He seemed surprised, even happy, to see me standing there. “What’s up?”
I relayed the message. When I pronounced the visitor’s name, the smile on his lips faded. “I’ll be right back,” he announced to the band. “Take five.”
Bianca, who had been sitting just offstage reviewing pictures she had stored on her camera, got to her feet as if to go with him. “No, stay here,” he ordered her. “Jane, come with me.”
I had expected him to hurry down to the guardhouse or at least to the intercom. To my surprise, the moment we got out of the barn, he pulled me aside to a space between the trees. It was still drizzling; I could feel the dampness of my clothes against my skin. He grabbed my hand. “Ambrose Mason? Are you sure you got the name right?”
I assured him that there was no way I could have mistaken a name like that.
“Did you see him? Did he say anything to you?” His face was paler than I’d ever seen it before.
“He’s down at the guardhouse. I haven’t seen him. What’s wrong? Are you okay?”
“Jane, you have no idea.” He loosened his grip on my hand a bit. “This is a nightmare.” We walked on, toward the pool house. He looked both ways, let himself in, and held the door open for me. Once inside, he dropped
to the nearest chair. I sat beside him.
“Who is he?” I couldn’t help but ask.
“He was a friend of mine” — his voice was grim — “a long time ago.”
“Can’t you just tell him to go away?” I asked. “Teddy will send him away if you don’t want him here.”
“No, Teddy can’t help me with this.”
“What about me, Mr. Rathburn? Can I help you?”
He reached over, took my hand in both of his, and rubbed it. “Your hand is cold,” he said. “It’s too bad the two of us can’t just run away together somewhere. But tell me something,” he asked in an urgent voice. “If all this disappeared tomorrow” — he let go of my hand and gestured to the house — “if the tabloids invented a scandal about me and turned my name into shit, and nobody bought my records, and the recording company let me go… if I had nothing and went back to being Nick Rathburn from Wichita, would you stick by me? Would you still be my friend?”
“Of course I would,” I told him. “No question.”
“You know what, Jane?” he said quietly. “I believe you.”
“Let me help you. I’ll do whatever you need.”
“Nobody can help, not even you. Not with this. This I need to handle myself.”
He told me to go back to the house and started down the long path to the front gate. Once inside, I sat in the living room and waited for what felt like hours, though it must have been only minutes. Just when I was wondering if I should have insisted on going down to the guardhouse with Mr. Rathburn, the front door opened. I hurried to the entryway to find him with a man of about thirty — handsome in a feminine way. He wore what looked like an expensive suit and carried a suitcase.