“There is no soil,” she said, over her shoulder. “How does anything grow?”
“It's called hydroponics,” he said, following her up the aisle. “All the minerals and nutrients that the plants need are mixed into the water supply. Add light and air and you're done.”
“It's miraculous,” she said, “and rather like the hothouse at the Great Exhibition. My father took me there, with my sister Abigail.”
“When was that?”
“Eighteen fifty-one,” she said, as if it were generally known, “at the Crystal Palace in Hyde Park.”
The shock never entirely wore off.
There was another bank of lights off to the rear, illuminating a tiny garden of roses and lilies and Ackerley's prized orchids.
“Oh, how beautiful,” Eleanor said, stepping into the narrow aisle surrounded by the brilliant red roses and the multicolored orchids, on their long, crooked stems. Even without the soil, there was the hot, humid scent of a jungle. Eleanor unfastened the top button on her collar, but no more, and breathed deeply.
“I could not have imagined a place like this,” she said, taking in the riot of color and scent, “in a country so remote and cold. Who takes care of all these plants? Is it you?”
“Oh, no,” Michael said, “they'd be dead in a week if I were in charge.” But how could he possibly explain, to her of all people, what had happened to Ackerley? And what would she say if he did? Would she then confess to him her own undeniable, but secret, need?
If there was one thing he knew, it was that he never wanted to hear words to that effect pass her lips.
“We all pitch in,” he said, to provide some sort of answer. “But most of it's programmed by computers and timers.”
He realized that none of this would make any sense to her. “It's mechanical,” he added, simply, and she seemed content… but reflective, too. Even as she pressed her face to the roses to inhale their aroma, he could tell her thoughts had entered a darker channel. Her brow was furrowed, and her head held still.
“Michael,” she finally said, without finishing her thought.
“Yes?”
After another moment of deliberation, she plunged ahead. “I can't help but feel that there's something you're not telling me.”
She has that right, Michael thought, but there were so many things he wasn't telling her that he wouldn't have known where to start.
“Does it have to do with Lieutenant Copley?”
Michael hesitated; he didn't want to lie, but he was forbidden to tell her the truth. “We've been looking for him.”
“You know that he will come looking for me. If he hasn't already, he soon will.”
“I'd expect that,” he said, “from your husband.”
She looked at him intently, as if her suspicions-or at least some of them-had been confirmed. “Why would you say that?”
“Sorry, I just assumed-”
“In Sinclair's eyes, that may be so. But in the eyes of God, we are most assuredly not. For reasons I can't explain, it could never happen.”
Why her peremptory tone should have pleased him so, he did not wish to dwell on. But since the topic had been introduced, he felt he couldn't let the opportunity go.
“But wouldn't you want to be reunited… assuming, of course, that he's alive and well?”
She studied one of the yellow orchids intently, rubbing her fingers on the waxy leaves.
He was surprised that she wavered at all.
“Sinclair was, and always shall be, the great love of my life.”
Her fingers caressed the golden yellow petals themselves.
“But the life we are forced to lead together cannot be sustained… nor should it be.”
Michael knew of course what she was referring to, but kept silent.
“And over the years, I fear that he has fallen in love with something else-something that holds him in its sway more powerfully than I can ever do.”
The misters suddenly went off, sending a fine spray of cool water into the air above their heads, but Eleanor didn't move.
“What?” Michael asked.
And she replied, “Death.”
The misters stopped again, and she turned to one side, as if ashamed by what she'd just admitted.
“He has been steeped in it so long that he has learned to live with it. He keeps it by him at all times, like a loyal hound. He wasn't always like that,” she quickly added, as if regretting her betrayal. “Not when we met, in London. He was kind and attentive and always so eager to find ways to amuse me.” That last caused her to smile.
“Why are you smiling?”
“Oh, just remembering. A day at Ascot, a dinner at his club in London. Poor Sinclair-I think he was often just one step ahead of his creditors.”
“But didn't you tell me once that he came from a family of aristocrats?”
“His father was an earl-and Sinclair would have been one, too, one day-but he had called upon the family fortune on too many occasions already. His father, I believe, was sorely disappointed in him.”
The mist had settled like a fine veil atop her hair.
“And his prospects… they were altered in the Crimea. Everyone who went there was changed by it, everyone who survived was damaged. It was impossible not to be.”
She brushed the mist from her hair with the back of one hand.
“You cannot bathe in blood every night,” she said, “and emerge the next morning unstained.”
Michael couldn't help but think of all the wars that had passed since her time, and all the soldiers who had struggled, with that same futility, to put the horrors behind them. Some things never changed.
Without looking at him, she abruptly said, “How long do you think I'm to be kept here?”
To dodge the question he said, “Where would you want to go?”
“Oh, that's simple enough. I want to go home, to Yorkshire. I know that no one in my family will be there, and that many, many things will have changed… but still, it can't all be gone, can it? The hills must still be there, and the trees and the streams. The old shops in the village will be gone, but new ones will have taken their place. The town square, the church, the train station, with its tearoom and the smell of hot scones and butter…”
Michael wondered, as she spoke, if any of it was left, if the hills hadn't been leveled for an apartment complex and the train station hadn't been shuttered for years.
“I just don't want to die in a place like this. I don't want to die in the ice.” Her head lowered, and her shoulders shivered at the thought.
Michael put out a hand and turned her gently toward him. “That won't happen,” he said. “I promise you.”
Tears were welling in her eyes. She looked up at him, desperate to believe.
“But how can you make such a promise?”
“I can,” he said, “and I will. I promise I won't leave here without you.”
“You're going?” she said, a note of alarm in her voice. “Where are you going?”
“Back home, to the United States.”
“When?”
He knew what she was afraid of-not just dying in the ice, but of succumbing to her need before she could see her old home again. Even now, he thought, she's probably resisting, with every ounce of her strength, a nearly irresistible urge.
“Soon,” he said, “soon,” and he gathered her into his arms. Beads of moisture still clung to her hair.
She came willingly, pressing her cheek against his chest. “You don't understand,” she said, softly, “and if you did, you would never make so rash a promise.”
But Michael knew that he would.
He was reminded of another promise he had made, on a mountainside in the Cascades. And just like that
