Authors: Elizabeth Adler
And Shannon herself was in a cream Aran sweater she had bought locally and a summery flowered skirt, longish and swirling and worn with cowboy boots. An odd combination to my mind, but somehow on her it worked. Eddie, of course, was in the ubiquitous denim. So there we were, sitting on our red leather seats in our shiny black motor with the brass headlights like two wide eyes, bowling along the Connemara roads, mostly on the wrong side to avoid the potholes, talking as usual about Lily.
T
HERE WAS A NEW SPRING
in John Adams’s step as he hurried up Mount Vernon Street, heading home. And a new look about him too. Gone were the mismatched clothes and worn boots; now his clothes were set out each morning for him by his housekeeper and he was as smart as a vague erudite professor of seventeenth-century French literature could be expected to be.
He could not have said exactly when it was he began noticing his housekeeper, nor could he put his finger on exactly the reason. Lily had been in charge of his household for more than a year now and he supposed it must have happened gradually. She was the most discreet and self-effacing servant, but yet he always knew when she was there. Perhaps it was the faintly spicy hint of French cologne, or the sweet Parma violets pinned at her shoulder, or maybe, he thought guiltily, it was the rustle of taffeta
petticoats beneath her dress when she walked. And he, who had never before noticed a woman’s fripperies, knew he could describe those dresses exactly.
He told himself that of course it was only because they were so different from a housekeeper’s usual nondescript gray garments. Lily wore soft silky velvets in winter, in a deep rosy violet or a dense forest-green. And in the warmer weather she wore a lighter silk faille in a sapphire-blue that darkened the blue of her eyes, or some other shade that reminded him of spring lilacs.
Naturally her dresses were discreet—high at the neck with long, tight sleeves—but a man could not fail to notice how their very simplicity set off her slender figure so delightfully, and how the rich hues brought out the creamy color of her skin and the wild-rose flush of her cheeks. And he could not deny that the charming way she wore her lustrous black hair, pulled back into a Grecian knot, emphasized the purity of her profile and the classical length of her neck.
“Delicious!” he exclaimed out loud as he strode up the hill and passersby turned to stare and smile. He strode on, oblivious to anything but his thoughts. “Can this be you, John Porter Adams?” he asked himself. “Thinking a woman’s profile ‘delicious,’ instead of thinking about a Greek statue? Can it be you, thinking of the sensual rustle of a woman’s silk petticoats and not the cold painted versions in a portrait by Gainsborough?” He stopped to consider the matter, unaware of the ripple of laughter from the passersby, while staring down at his boots—nicely polished boots now with no holes in them—thinking of his discreet, self-effacing housekeeper.
Lily was a paragon among servants: she was quiet and modest; she did her job well and his cluttered, dusty house seemed to have sprung to life beneath her slender white hands. He shook his head bewilderedly. Again, he could not have said why. Maybe it was the vases of fresh flowers in every room? Even in winter there were hothouse roses and lilies—her namesake, tall and pale and pure. He knew
that he now employed fewer staff and yet his establishment cost him less to run than it ever had, and his house gleamed and sparkled and shone with cleanliness. His meals were exactly the way he liked them, simple but good. Every evening his velvet smoking jacket and his monogrammed slippers would be laid out ready for him, and a maid would hurry to run his bath. A decanter of the dry Manzanilla sherry he enjoyed would be set out on the library table, and best of all, Lily would be there to greet him.
John Adams hurried eagerly up the hill. He prided himself on being a truthful man and he had to admit that the reason he was hurrying was because he knew she would be waiting for him. And he told himself that tonight he would ask her to share a glass of Manzanilla with him before dinner.
She must have heard him coming, because she had the door open before he even got to the top of the steps. “Good evening, sir,” she said with a demure smile. “Shall I take your hat, sir, and your scarf, though I hardly think you needed one on such a beautiful spring day.”
“Was it nice?” he asked, beaming. “I’m afraid I didn’t notice the weather.” But he did now. The windows of his house were flung wide to the evening air; a slight breeze ruffled the curtains and the scents of the garden mingled with the vases of flowers on the hall table and Lily’s violets and her cologne. “How delightful the house looks today,” he exclaimed enthusiastically, smiling at her. “It’s all your doing, Lily.”
“Thank you, Mr. Adams,” she said, lowering her eyes demurely. “It’s kind of you to say so.”
A young maidservant bobbed good evening to him and then scuttled upstairs to run his bath, and before he could change his mind he said quickly, “Would you be so good as to join me in a glass of sherry this evening, Lily? I … there are some things I should like to discuss with you.”
Lily hesitated. He thought for an agonized moment she
was going to say no. Then she replied, “Of course, sir. It would be an honor.”
“In half an hour then,” he said quickly. “In the library.”
He stroked his short Vandyke beard, gazing thoughtfully at her, until she reminded him that his bath must be ready.
“Oh,” he said, startled. “Of course. Yes, of course it will.” He ran up the stairs two at a time like a boy, turning at the landing to look back at her. She was watching him, smiling, and he grinned as he took the rest of the stairs at the run. Even though he was a mature professor of fifty years, somehow he felt almost boyish tonight.
Twenty minutes later he was bathed and changed and pacing the library floor. “There you are,” he exclaimed, relieved when on the stroke of the half hour Lily tapped on the door. She walked toward him, her blue silken skirts swishing, and he sighed happily. “Did I ever tell you how glad I am you do not wear gray?” he asked, handing her a cut-crystal glass of his best sherry. “It brightens up my household, to see you in blue and violet.” He nodded, half to himself. “Yes, yes. You brighten my life, Lily.”
“Thank you, sir. I’ve always liked bold colors, even when I was a child.”
“And where was that?” he asked, intrigued.
“We lived in Connemara, sir.” She smiled. “Maybe that’s why I liked the bright colors. The landscape is so muted there, all silvered over by the clouds and the mist.”
“Does the sun never shine?” he asked, astonished.
She laughed and he told himself it was surely the pleasantest sound ever heard in his big old house.
“Oh, sometimes the sun shines, sir,” she assured him. “Some days the sky would be as bright as my blue dress and the sea would be turquoise and green. We would ride our ponies at the very edge of the waves and never want the day to end, nor anything to change.” She paused and then said, “But of course, it did.” She walked to the open window looking out onto the garden, and he stood next to her while she told him about her younger sister, Ciel, who was attending school in Paris.
“Ciel!” he exclaimed. “What charming names your mother chose for her daughters!”
Lily stared down at her glass of sherry. “My mother is dead, sir,” she said.
“Oh, yes, of course. I remember now, you told me you lost your family on the way over. Drowned, were they not? I’m so sorry, Lily, it was clumsy of me to remind you.”
“Not at all, sir.” She stood up and said briskly, “I think dinner is ready, Mr. Adams. Thank you very much for the sherry. It was sweet of you to invite me.”
He threw back his head and laughed. He said, “No one has ever called John Adams ‘sweet’ in his entire life.”
Lily smiled at him. “Then you are obviously not moving in the right circles, sir,” she retorted with a hint of her old flirtatiousness.
He watched her walk across the room, thinking how graceful she was: so simple, so slender, so feminine. “Lily,” he called, and she turned at the door.
“Yes, Mr. Adams?”
“Would you join me for sherry again tomorrow evening? I’ve so enjoyed our little talk.”
This time her smile seemed to come from her heart, lighting up her face. “Of course, sir,” she said. “I should be delighted.”
Taking a glass of sherry together before dinner soon turned into a little ritual. Dinner was put back permanently half an hour, and it became the highlight of his day. Spring drifted toward summer, and for once he did not plan a trip to visit Europe. “I have so much work to do on the book I’m writing,” he explained to Lily. “It’s already taken me two years and I’m afraid if I do not finish it, I shall be considered a dilettante by my peers.”
“I’m quite sure no one could ever call you that, sir,” Lily said indignantly. “You are devoted to your work—anyone can see that.”
She seemed to have the feminine knack of finding exactly the right soothing phrase, and he added it to her growing list of attributes. “Why not join me for coffee after
dinner in the library, Lily,” he suggested. “It’s lonely sometimes, of an evening, and I appreciate your company.”
Lily looked at her employer. “Distinguished-looking,” was how she would have described him, with his silver hair and his pointed beard, and his nice brown eyes hidden behind horn-rimmed spectacles. She never talked to anyone else, except her employer, keeping a distance between herself and the cook and the two young maids, but even though she buried herself in the thousand and one details involved in running a large house such as this, she was still as lonely as when she had first arrived in Boston. She had heard that John Adams was a genius in his field and she knew that his conversation would be stimulating. “Oh, I’d love that, sir,” she said, meaning it.
His writing lay neglected on his desk and the pile of new books he had bought remained unread on the table, and the after-dinner conversation in the library became a nightly event both of them looked forward to. Lily talked a little about her home and her childhood, and she drew him out to talk about his travels and about art and books and his work. “The three loves of my life,” he told her, “and the greatest comfort to any man.”
Lily laughed. “My father always said a man’s wife was that, sir.”
He stared at her. “Would you do me a favor, Lily, and not call me ‘sir’ when we are alone together? I’m enjoying the rare company of a charming, educated young woman, and there is no reason for you to always address me as ‘sir.’”
He showed her his collections and all his treasures, turning the fragile leaves of a fifteenth-century book of hours painted in transparent watercolors and gold leaf; and a very rare Gothic bible, and Persian and Chinese manuscripts. He talked at length about his favorite subject, seventeenth-century French literature, and she asked him to recommend some books to read so that she could understand all the points he was making. So he drew up a reading
list and then each week he asked her questions on what she had read, treating her like a schoolgirl.
Summer drifted into fall, and fall into winter, but Mr. Adams did not entertain his colleagues anymore, the way he used to. He preferred the company of his housekeeper.
“You must have met a woman, John,” they said jocularly. And they were astonished when he laughed and shrugged his shoulders. “Can it be true?” they asked each other. “Has some woman snared old Porter Adams at last? And if so, who is she?” None of them could remember ever seeing him with a lady.
The following year, on the first day of spring, as Lily was approaching her twenty-first birthday, Mr. Adams waited nervously for her in the library. He smiled, relieved, when he heard her tap on the door and she came in. He thought how beautiful she looked as she walked toward him, and he wondered with a pang of regret if he would ever see her walk into his library again. Because after what he had to say to her, there was a chance she might not.
“Come here, Lily,” he said, and she stepped closer. Looking into her eyes he said, “Over these past months you have come to mean a great deal to me. I know that I am many years older than you, but still we enjoy each other’s company, do we not? I have been thinking, Lily, that it would be a very pleasant idea if you would agree to marry me.”
She stared at him, wide-eyed with shock, and he said quickly, “I can see my proposal has come as a surprise to you, but I’m not a man who knows how to show his emotions. I’m asking you to be my wife, Lily. I don’t expect your answer right away, but please, think it over, take your time….”
Lily said nothing. She just shook her head disbelievingly and turned away. He watched, agonized, as she walked to the door. “At least consider it,” he called after her. “That’s all I ask, that you think about it. Take a week, a month … take forever if you must.”
Lily turned and looked at him. “Thank you very much,
Mr. Adams. I shall think it over,” she said, closing the door quietly as she went out.
Walking calmly as if nothing had happened, Lily crossed the hall to the back of the house. She looked around at the pleasantly furnished comfortable little sitting room and the small bedroom that she had called home for over two years.
She sank into the blue brocade chair by the fire and put her feet up on an embroidered footstool. She glanced at the table next to her with the little pile of books that were her “required reading” for Mr. Adams’s personal literature course, and at her treasured silver-framed photograph of home.
“Jayzus!” she exclaimed, leaping to her feet and pacing her small room agitatedly. Why did he have to go and spoil it all by asking her to marry him? It had all been so nice, so civilized and pleasant. So
safe.
She had worked hard to get where she was; she had tried hard to put the past behind her. Most of the money she earned went to the Sheridans for the child, though she never said where she was or who it was from. She wanted no contact with them or her past.
She thought again about Mr. Adams’s offer of marriage. She could become Mrs. John Porter Adams, the beautiful young wife of one of Boston’s richest and most important men. She contemplated for a minute what it would be like to be married to him, and she wanted to cry. He was old enough to be her father. Oh, and she was still so young, so very young, and despite what had happened, there was always the hope in her heart that, somewhere on the horizon, someone would come to rescue her.