Promise Me This (28 page)

“Annie! Annie, wait!” Mrs. Sprague called after her.

“No—oh, don’t let it be!” Connie whispered and, thrusting her load of packages into her mother’s arms, tore down the street after Annie.

“Girls!” Mrs. Sprague cried.

But Annie could not stop. She stumbled as she ran. Her feet took on lead, and she felt as if her lifeblood drained through her heart and torso and limbs, through her feet and into the street below.

So heavy was the weight in Annie’s chest that by the time she reached the rear garden gate of Hargrave House, she could not breathe.

The garden—the entire length and breadth—was plowed under: every tree and bulb and shrub and rose, every spike of lavender and trail of ivy, had been ripped from the ground and was in that moment piled onto a heaped and growing bonfire at the far end of the garden.

Orange flames roared high, a violent rending of the day. The stench of tar and kerosene poured into the flames spread a dark plume across a blackening sky as five muscled workmen threw her joys and dreams—from the most delicately carved trellis and intricately painted birdhouse to the lowliest flower—onto the roaring heap.

A rushing fire and wind whirled, as a tornado, through Annie’s brain. Animal rage came from someplace beyond her ken—an intense keening from her bowels and heart and throat, from every muscle and sinew and nerve crawling within her.

She struggled and tore against Connie’s strong, relentless arms—arms that tugged her from the ashes and mud she clung to. But Annie would not be moved. She screamed and wept and heaved in gulps until she could scream no more.

Connie and Mrs. Sprague pulled her again and again from the ground she would not leave, urging her to “let us take you home.”

At last Annie stopped fighting.

Mrs. Sprague and Connie lifted her, one on each side.

And Annie glimpsed Aunt Eleanor, sitting on the high terrace, straight-backed, in her wheeled chair. A palsied smile pasted on her lips. She did not need to speak clearly—did not need to speak at all—to direct the inferno.

Michael felt the urgency in the whispers and wrinkled brows that passed between Maggie and Daniel over the kitchen stove at noon. He’d not intended to eavesdrop, but their concerns were his concerns, their worries his worries. When he heard Annie’s name slip from Maggie’s lips, he lost all pretense of not listening.

“What’s the matter with Annie?” Michael demanded, standing in his stocking feet by the kitchen door.

“What have you heard?” Daniel tried to look gruff but failed miserably.

“Only her name. But there’s something not right. What’s happened to Annie?” Michael demanded more fiercely.

Maggie placed her hand on Daniel’s arm. “She’s in hospital, in London.”

Michael felt the color drain from his face.

“A letter’s come from Mr. Sprague, the family solicitor.” Aunt Maggie twisted her apron ties round her finger. “It’s that woman—Eleanor Hargrave—”

“Annie’s aunt?”

Maggie lifted her chin. “I’ll never call her that again. She does not deserve the title.” Anger and pain warred across her features. “She’s had all the Allen gardens torn from the ground—the ones Mackenzie dug by hand and those Owen added to all the years of his life, the gardens that have been Annie’s healing with her love and daily tending all these months. She burned the gardens, that—” But Maggie stopped short, her mouth spread grim, and great salt tears streamed her cheeks. Daniel drew her to him and held her as she shook and sobbed. “It’s all she had of Owen—of either of them! Dear God! I should have insisted she come, poor or not!”

Michael stood in the doorway, one muddied boot in his hand. He tried to picture the destruction of a garden the size Owen had described, a beautiful, breathtaking garden long developed and loved by each member of the family, one that held the variety Annie had sketched and so happily detailed in her long letters to Aunt Maggie.

And then he tried to picture Annie, what such theft and rapacious destruction would do to her heart. It was not hard to conjure the image. He felt her pain in the pit of his stomach—a pain not unlike what he’d felt at the stealing of Megan Marie when he was but a boy. He recognized the cruel, queer nature of this woman intent on crushing a tender heart; he’d seen its likeness in his uncle Tom’s face, in the perverse pleasure he’d gained in tormenting, blaming, and beating Michael until the blood flowed from his mouth.

The room swayed before Michael at the memory. Fury swelled inside him for Annie’s sake. He wanted—needed—to smash something; he wanted—needed—to rescue Annie. “How bad is she?”

It was a time before Maggie spoke. “Mrs. Sprague told her husband that Annie screamed for the longest time that day—the day they came upon the garden. It was Annie’s sixteenth birthday.” Maggie’s voice broke.

Daniel finished because Maggie could not. “He said she’s not spoken since. She refuses to eat. Simply lies there in hospital.”

Michael could not stand the heat, the closeness of the kitchen. He was gone before the door slammed behind him.

Two hours later Michael sat in the potting shed, painstakingly printing small letters across tiny, handmade packets.

“What are you about, Michael?” Daniel pushed wide the door.

“I’m sending Annie a garden.”

“A garden? Not the last of Owen’s seeds?”

“They’re her seeds if they belong to anyone. Owen would want her to have them.”

“Aye, he would. But not this way.” He laid his hand over Michael’s.

Michael pulled back. “I knew you would say that. It’s why I’m not asking you.” Daniel’s brows rose, but Michael pressed on. “Owen entrusted these seeds to my care. He made me promise to get Annie here—and what have I done? I’ve left her to the torment of that witch of a woman!”

“That’s not your doing, Michael.”

“It’s my lack of doing!” Michael pounded the table with his fist. “I’ve failed her! Do you understand? I failed Annie!”

Daniel spoke low but with all the intensity of Michael’s shout. “You’ve not failed her. You’ve been working yourself as hard as five grown men to bring her here, as have I to keep Maggie Allen afloat. It has not been the time for Annie to come—not yet.

“If you send the last of these seeds before we can reap the seeds from this year’s crop, we stand to lose everything. You’ll grow an old man before you make these gardens profitable—as I am now. And the truth is that if we don’t catch up the mortgage, the bank will foreclose. If the gardens fail, what do you have to bring her to, Michael? Did you think of that?” Daniel grabbed the front of Michael’s shirt with his fist and yanked him to his feet. “Or are you so intent on bludgeoning your way through your plan that you canna see the big picture—the possibility that looms just ahead for the first time for any of us?”

Michael glared in return.

Daniel reddened and dropped Michael’s shirtfront as if his hand had been branded by a steaming poker. “You raise the ire in me, Michael Dunnagan.”

Michael sat back, breathing heavily. “What can I do, then? I can’t leave her there!”

Daniel pushed his hand through his thinning hair. “We’ll do just what we’ve been doing—”

“But—”

“And once we reap the seeds from this year’s harvest, we’ll make packets for Annie, if you’ve a mind to—if you think she’ll want them for next spring, if you think she’ll be staying to plant a garden there.” Daniel leaned forward until his finger poked Michael’s chest to punctuate his words. “But if I were you, I’d build twelve gazebos and sell them at the best price you can fetch. Then I’d write her and tell her things are just what they are—hand to mouth—and ask her if she doesn’t want to come anyway.”

Michael blinked. “But the best schools—what about sending her to the best schools?”

“What difference will the name of a school make if her spirit is broken or if we lose this land? Don’t send her seeds that her crazy, jealous aunt can steal away from her; give her the hope and friendship she needs to keep her heart beating!” Daniel backed toward the shed door. “You and Maggie talk and talk as if the lass needs a diamond tiara! If she were my woman, I’d get her here come hell or high water; then I’d love and labor for her every day I breathed.” Daniel slammed the door.

Michael dropped his pen. The sheer tumble of words from Daniel’s mouth toppled his nerve. Never would he have imagined Daniel McKenica in love with a woman, slaving for a woman.
But isn’t that just what he does for Maggie Allen from the sun’s rising to its setting?

Absorbing such an idea took Michael a long time. But he urged his brain to concentrate on Annie, not the heart of Daniel McKenica laid bare.
How can I help Annie from so far away? How can I give her hope until I can bring her here?

Michael sat in the shed, staring at the small seed packets until the mid-September sun crossed the sky. Annie had not answered his first letter. He knew from Aunt Maggie that she’d not wanted anything to do with him, and that was nearly a year ago. But that was also when she had the garden—the garden that brought her closer to Owen. Now there was only Owen’s grave.
And what comfort is there in a grave and a stone? She needs a bit of Owen, a bit that no one else possesses—a bit that cannot be burned or taken from her, something to know and hold, to live inside her until she can do her own living again.
Michael hardly knew where such a thought came from. It seemed unlikely that it was his own. But he held it close as the sun set, and by the time the stars came out, he knew that it was so.

Michael struck a match to light the lantern. He tucked the seed packets into a storage hole of the chest. Someday he would give them to Annie, but not today.

In the kitchen he found a note from Daniel on the table saying that he’d sent Maggie to bed to nurse her sick headache and that she was not to be disturbed. Michael ladled a bowl of cabbage soup from the back of the stove—surely prepared by Daniel from its odd mix of flavors.

Daniel had taken to the front porch to smoke his pipe. Michael pondered the love between Daniel and Maggie—he’d always thought of them as brother and sister, but they knew and cared for each other as though one was part of the other’s body. Michael wondered if it was always that way—and if Sean Allen, Maggie’s husband, had been equal part of that union. He suspected that he had, and he wondered if they knew how rare such caring was—even he, with no experience in loving, knew it was rare.

Long past midnight, Michael sealed his letter. His eyes felt gritty, too heavy to read it all again. He’d written and rewritten it five times, hoping the grammar and spelling were sufficient, hoping it said what he meant it to say. It was long and, he feared, rambling. He’d bared his heart as plainly as Daniel McKenica had bared his. Michael ran his hand over the address and whispered a prayer to the Sweet Jesus—not for himself, but for the one person he had bound himself to in this life—then blew out the lamp.

Mrs. Sprague placed a basket of fragrant Banbury cakes from the widow Woodward on Annie’s bedside table. She arranged Jamison’s second bouquet of heather in a glass vase beside the cakes and laid the foreign-stamped, handmade envelope by its side. She pulled the drapes to partially block the late-afternoon sun from Annie’s sensitive eyes.

The hospital had sent Annie home to the Spragues near the end of September, saying that she was not responding and they had no cure for melancholia. In the days that followed, Connie had coaxed just enough broth and tea between her friend’s lips to keep her alive, but Annie lay, a gray and sullen shadow of her former self.

“What was the name of your handsome young gardener in the New World?” Connie teased. “Michael Dunnagan, was it not?”

Annie did not answer.

“At any rate, I see a letter has come from someone by that name. I’m thinking that if you’re no longer interested in him—simply as a friend, of course—I might be. I’ve always fancied those lovely Irish brogues and silver tongues blessed with the blarney.” Connie exaggerated the last word and danced the envelope before Annie’s face.

The tea bell jingled in the hallway. Connie’s lips turned down into a pout. “Oh, blast! I must wait until after tea to open this deliciously fat letter!” She made an elaborate showing of returning the envelope to Annie’s bedside table. “But I warn you, Annie Allen, that if you have not opened and read it by the time I return, I shall be forced to read it for you—just to make certain the cad has addressed you appropriately.”