“But he doesn’t know you need him, and you haven’t sent for him. A man not sure of his beloved, not sure he’s needed, may seek solace in another’s arms.”
May-Jewel became silent and walked toward the door, ruminating about the man she left behind. Jeremy was… Jeremy. He has always been by my side. He’s warm, handsome, sexy… and sought after! She suddenly became anxious. She didn’t like having what belonged to her taken by another. I’ll write to him this very moment, she decided, and tell him of my love. I’ll implore him to come to me. I’ll tell him how much I need him. And he’ll come, I’m sure.
“I believe I’ll rest a bit before dinner,” she said, exiting the room.
Manipulating people was new to Katherine, and she didn’t like the feeling it gave her. She felt guilty and sneaky. She didn’t really care about May-Jewel and her former lover. All she cared about was that Alex didn’t snare her sister with lies and false promises. Katherine tried to erase some guilt she was feeling by believing that she was working in May-Jewel’s best interest. But was she?
Restless, Katherine left her room and returned to the garden. As she walked, she inadvertently found herself drawn from the manor. Before she realized it, she was in front of the cottage again. How different it looked in the last light of day. Its thatched roof mushroomed over two small windows, making the black openings look like half-lowered eyelids. The only sign that someone had once cared for the structure was the whitewash that clung to the deeper crevices of the wind whipped stones.
She stood before the portal remembering how she used to count her footsteps from the gate to the door, thirteen. Now she counted only six. Pausing with her hand on the latch, Katherine wondered, did she really want to go in? The sun bathed the cottage front in muted orange and it seemed to smile.
She entered.
Everything was in its place as if no one had been there since her mother died. Even the three legs of her small stool in front of the fireplace sat in fitted circles of dust. How could she have missed falling over it in the predawn light?
“Oh, God,” she uttered in despair, wrapping her arms about herself, “why have I come back to Wistmere?”
From the silence of her memory crept sounds of the raping wind as it molested the moors beyond the cottage. Then she heard her mother singing as she always did when she cooked or cleaned. The memory crushed her, and Katherine buried her face in her hands and cried, “Momma, why have you left me alone in this world?”
A deep voice suddenly jolted her from her grieving.
“Do you know the family who lived here?”
Katherine whirled around, the answer frozen in her heart, her hands hastily brushing aside her tears.
His tall frame blocked the sun and closed the room in darkness as he stooped under the low portal. “May I join you?” Garth asked.
“It seems you already have,” she stammered, not sure whether she welcomed his presence or was frightened by it.
He shoved his hands into his pockets like a shy little boy, uncomfortable and out of place, and looked around. An unspoken kinship between the two animated the stuffy air and charged it with excitement.
He moved toward the reed of a woman who instinctively stepped further into the shadows and wondered why he had followed her there. Curiosity? Yes, curious to see if she fit the cottage-slave image or that of the lady of the manor. What better way, he thought bitterly, than to see her in her natural surroundings? But as Garth studied Katherine, he couldn’t remain bitter. His heart argued on her behalf. She’s but a scared little bird caught between the winds of time, between remembrances of greed and lust. Where lies her strength?
“It’s small, isn’t it?” He uttered, slowly moving about the room.
“Yes, it is now, but it wasn’t always.” Her eyes seemed to see the smallness of the room for the first time.
He closed the distance between them. “When was that?”
“When I was a child.” She turned her head, not wanting to look at him, fearful that he would see her vulnerability.
But he already knew when that was for he knew all about her. He knew of his father’s secret lover hidden from the eyes of courtly Wistmere and the child that came from their illicit union.
Katherine shuttered under his continued stare. The silence pried words from her discomforted mind. “I was born and raised here.”
“Indeed?” He stepped back, keeping between her and the door. “Was your mother considered African or Hispanic?” A sudden bitterness crept back into his voice.
“I–I beg your pardon,” she whispered, her raspy words barely audible. She couldn’t believe that he would ask such a question, him of all people.
“Was your mother African or Hispanic?” He repeated, a little more loudly and more boldly.
Katherine wanted to pull the stones of the cottage down around her. Then she grew angry with his insolence, his cruelty. She had to
