“Let me lend you some money for cards,” he suggests, a smile playing on his lips, “and you can pay me back later.”
“Ha! You have a more optimistic view of my fortunes than I.”
Quinn laughs outright, which catches at my heart, he sounds so much like Will. He enjoys cards, and I play longer than I want until the clock in the hall strikes twelve long chords. As I leave, I give Quinn’s unshaven cheek a quick peck and abscond with the jack of hearts. It’s my first kiss for anyone since Will left, and I’m surprised by the spark of feeling it ignites though of what specific emotion, I’m not sure I could say. My lips feel as if they’ve brushed fire, and my heart trips in my ribs. Does Quinn notice? I avert my head as I hasten to the door.
“Jennie.” At my name I stop. “A question.”
I pause and turn.
“Did you really love my brother?” Quinn asks. “Or did you just love him back?”
I can’t hide that I’m startled. “What do you mean?”
Casually, he says, “The oldest son. The heir of Pritchett House. You would have been put in a sticky position if you’d rejected his advances. You know how…persuasive Will could get.”
“I wasn’t forced to love Will.” A nervous laugh catches and dies in my throat.
“No. Not overtly.” Quinn looks uncomfortable. “Ah, I’m being an ass. When all I wanted to comment on was your sweetness, Jennie. You give so freely of your time and good humor, I wondered if Will and I ever realized how much we depended on it.”
Then he selects a book from a stack on the carpet and opens it, pretending to be absorbed, and clearly embarrassed by his confession.
Quinn’s newfound sensitivity is touching. I’m happy that he has spoken his brother’s name, even if the question he posed was odd. I had never conceived of rejecting Will, but I assumed it was because I loved him, not because I feared any consequence. But the hour has grown late for such prickly introspections.
Though I’d set a fire before dinner, it has died and the room is cold. The glass is frosted over, and my candle is a single star in a dark sky. I pull out my scrapbook and page through notes from Toby, uneven and misspelled; letters from Will, with his elegant script and stilted declarations of love; still more scraps of paper, oddities, and curios, before I reach the pages I have kept from Will’s sketchbook. Where I find him again. His best gift was for capturing the outdoors.
A thread of black ink becomes a bird wing or loop of ivy. I linger over them before turning to a section in the back with drawings, some of myself, where I compare Will’s art with Geist’s print.
Will’s pen unlocks my secret moments. My smile on the cusp of laughter. The breeze in my unbound hair. The bow of my neck against the sun. Fleur. I’d forgotten. It’s a name that conjures summers past when I gathered starflowers, bluebonnets, thistle, and daisies on the riverbanks, twining them into bracelets and crowns, filling vase after vase, setting them on every windowsill and mantel, much to Aunt’s dismay.
But in Geist’s print I glower. As if my closed mouth might hide a pair of fangs. We are all dour, all but Viviette, who looks positively beatific.
And then I see what has eluded me. This fragment of detail is now so clear, and yet so radically different, that for a moment I wonder if I’ve lost my mind.
Quickly, I pry the paper from its backing and bring the candle close. And yet I’m sure my memory is serving me correctly and that the discrepancy is real. Unlike the Harding photograph or the print that I’d set on Uncle Henry’s desk, in this image Viviette’s head is crowned not by holly berries but by a wreath of dark flowers.
But. The negative could not have changed.
Irises. I trace them with my fingertip. They are inky flames leaping around the angel’s head. Transfixed, I can feel myself slipping away again. Geist had called it the undertow, and that strange word now redefines itself as I skid deep into memory.
An August day, the angry sun. Wildflowers and smeared black ink on the sketchbook pages.
My eyes snap open. Black irises. Is there such a flower?
The ink is so dark. Geist’s words sliver through my heart. William Pritchett reached for you because he has unfinished business in this world.
In the print my own black eyes stare up at me, reproachful. Black pupils, black irises. What am I looking at that I can’t see?
A spy must engage all senses.
Taste, touch, smell, sight, hearing. But I can’t smell or touch or taste these flowers. “Why black irises?” I murmur aloud. What is the significance of this flower in particular? And in the next breath, I think I might know.
12.
Mavis would hate to hear that she snores worse than Mrs. Sullivan. Her sound sleep is my good luck as I fumble for my clothing, rank with soot and sweat from my trip to the city.
My movements are deft and noiseless. For what I need to do, I can’t risk Mavis discovering that I’ve been out. The use of a fresh frock would betray me.
It’s just a guess, less than a hunch, but the lights have lit my mind. I won’t be able to sleep or to think of anything else unless I am proved right or wrong. I move like mist down the stairs and beeline to Uncle Henry’s study.
He has put the photograph in his Indian cabinet and has removed his magnifying lens from its case. In its proximity to the photograph, I gather he might have been using the lens to comb the image for deeper insights.
In Uncle’s photograph, Viviette wears her crown of holly.
Just as I’d suspected, it is only my print that has been altered. Its encrypted irises are for my eyes only. I close the door to his study and am off.
The Black Eye, as I’d always heard the tavern called, stands on the outskirts of Brookline Village, at the far end of Sherburne Road near Heath Street. Hurrying alone this late at night on the stretch of road that leads into the village, I am struck by a thousand terrified imaginings. I don’t trust my eyes. A hungry beast crouches, ready to rip my flesh from bone. Wild creatures spy from tangled boughs above while a crone crouches behind a tree, beckoning, her gaunt arm a ragged branch. I try to keep my senses sharp. But when a fox darts across my path, I scream and start running. My borrowed boots drag and squelch, but I don’t stop sprinting until I have cut across Heath Street, where I spy what must be the tavern.
It’s a modest, two-story building, but its swinging lantern is strong enough to be a beacon to its hitching posts, where a few weary horses stand in wait.
And then I see the sign. I am exhilarated and terrified.