A Bed of Thorns and Roses Read online

  A Bed of Thorns and Roses

  by

  Sondra Allan Carr

  Table of Contents

  Copyright

  Acknowledgements

  A Bed of Thorns and Roses

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Connect with me online

  The World of Pangaea

  Smashwords Edition

  Copyright © 2011 by Sondra Allan Carr

  All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this bookthe author.

  Please purchase only authorized electronic editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author'’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners.

  Smashwords Edition License Notes: This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please return to Smashwords.com and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  This book contains content that may not be suitable for young readers 17 and under.

  Cover art by Dara England

  My thanks to the Kentucky Romance Writers, a group whose support, expertise, and friendship have been invaluable to my growth as a writer. I owe a special word of thanks to my intrepid critique partners JM Madden, Teresa Reasor, and Linda Petrilli. You have given me the most precious gift of all, your time. And to Donna McDonald, your brave venture into new territory and willingness to share your experience have inspired me as I set out on my own journey.

  Chapter One

  Nellie took care to tread softly down the long uncarpeted passageway, and still her footsteps sounded unnaturally loud in the deathly quiet that shrouded the second floor. She told herself Mr. Nashe couldn’t possibly hear her approach, yet the enormous house had a way of magnifying the least sound, reminding her—as if she didn’t already know right enough—that her presence upstairs was unwelcome. In fact it was barely tolerated, and then only because her employer was like any other man, he had to eat.

  Of all the varied and sundry duties required of her, delivering the master’s meal tray was the one she had come to dread. Though she performed the task daily, had done so for years, it always depressed her spirits—today more than most for some reason. A body had to wonder how the poor man could live shut away like he did, day in, day out, never showing himself to no one but the doctor.

  Then again, he had a right to his privacy, considering. People ought to have respected that right, but the local folk said terrible things about him and his father. Oh, they were proud to brag about the mansion to strangers. Enough of them had helped in the building of it, they liked to claim the place as their own. A solitary wonder as big and grand as any castle in England, they said, only here it sat in the middle of the Pennsylvania countryside. In the next breath they’d tell you how it was no surprise old Mr. Nashe built himself a castle, since he acted like he was king. How nobody missed the greedy bastard after he died in the fire there.

  That was bad enough, but what they said about his son was worse. They talked about how nobody ever saw Old Cornelius Nashe’s queer son, and just as well. What was left of him after the fire wasn’t fit to set eyes on, that’s what people said. Some claimed he wasn’t even human.

  Balderdash, her mum would have called it, pure balderdash. Ignorant tales carried by ignorant folk.

  Nellie lowered the tray onto the table outside her master’s room, then rapped twice on the door. “God help him,” she whispered under her breath, the short prayer one she repeated often, yet one no less heartfelt for frequent use. The man had been kind enough to her, hiring her on with no references, just off the boat as she was and barely a ha’penny in her pocket.

  “Mr. Nashe, sir, it’s Nellie. I’ve brought your tea.”

  There was no response from within, nor had she expected one. After a moment’s hesitation, she turned to go.

  As she retraced her steps down the passageway, Nellie tried to cheer herself with the thought that, God willing, she planned to work at Nashe House the rest of her life. And surely once during that time, just once, she would have the privilege of setting eyes on the man who paid her wages.

  * * *

  The maid’s unexpected knock at his door gave him a start, and Jonathan’s arm jerked to the side in clumsy reaction, tipping over the bottle of ink that sat on the desk beside his papers. He watched the dark liquid obliterate in a moment what had cost him an afternoon of painful effort to complete. It was a fitting metaphor for his life, he thought, like the despair that spread inexorably through his being, a creeping blackness that threatened to blot out what small hope or purpose was yet left to him.

  Jonathan glared down at the mess. All the hours spent hunched over his notes, the pain, the tedium—and for what? He swept his arm across the desk, sending his papers airborne. They fluttered to earth like oversized confetti, their festive disarray a mockery of his misery. The anger he had tried so hard to contain uncoiled inside him like a tightly wound spring. He shot to his feet, shoving away from the desk with a violence that rocked the chair onto its back legs.

  His damned hand was useless. Good for nothing.

  He threw his pen to the floor and ground the metal nib beneath his heel. A black stain slowly bled into the carpet from the remains of the mangled pen, now as useless as his hand.

  It was a puerile act of destruction. Meaningless. As meaningless as railing against his physical limitations. All of it meaningless, he thought bitterly, including his life. Better to put an end to his suffering and be done with it.

  But no. His mother had been a devout Catholic. Respect for her memory—

  The truth of the matter stopped him short. Why lie? Of course he respected her memory, but it was guilt for her death more than anything else which kept him from embracing the suicide’s easy choice.

  Easy. How ludicrous. Easy? It had been years since he had the privilege of choice, much less an easy one.

  Jonathan bent to retrieve the ruined pen. He studied it a moment, uncaring that the ink soaked into his fingers. One would think, he mused, that after all these years, he could control his anger. Even more so, his self pity.

  He tossed the pen back onto the desk. What right did he have to pity himself, when he had cost others their lives?

  “Tea,” Jonathan reminded himself, glad of the distraction. His mouth twisted to one side in a bitter smile when he caught himself speaking aloud with no one there to hear. What did it matter, his eccentricities, in this solitude?

  He went to the door and put his ear against the panelling to listen for the maid’s footsteps. Certain she had left, he opened the door a crack, cautious nonetheless. After a furtive glance down the hall, he stepped outside his room, taking o
nly a moment to retrieve the tray and shut the door behind him once again.

  Jonathan looked down at his meal and smiled, this time without bitterness. High tea, Nellie called it. Though he kept a regular schedule, the days melted together into stultifying sameness, one much like another. Today, however, the contents of his tray reminded him that this was the one day of the week he actually had something to look forward to.

  Usually he took a single cup of tea, refusing the scones and teacakes Cook persisted in offering him. But on the days Richard came to dine, he ate what amounted to a full meal at teatime. His appetite thus sated, he could comfortably pretend to join in the dinner, taking the occasional sip of wine and pushing the same morsel of food around his plate.

  As his doctor, Richard was long accustomed to his frightful appearance. Even so, Jonathan was loath to subject him to the spectacle he presented at table. His friend deserved that modicum of consideration.

  Richard was the only living person who had seen him without his mask, and was probably the only person in existence who could stomach the sight of him. It had been thirteen long years—half his lifetime—since the fire. Richard had helped his mother nurse him through his long convalescence. He had watched his body through every stage of its transformation from a lump of charred meat into a mass of scar tissue vaguely resembling a human form. That is to say, the resemblance could be seen if one had a great deal of imagination.

  Jonathan took his tray to the table and started on his meal. It was the sort of food a monk would eat, or young Daniel and his friends in the Bible, who begged the king to allow them only vegetables and water. Jonathan no longer ate meat, even cold meat. After thirteen years, the sickening smell still stuck in his nostrils, the cloying stench of roasting flesh. His own.

  Chapter Two

  “Cook has outdone herself tonight, Jonathan.” Richard carried his plate to the sideboard and served himself second portions, pausing to inhale the aroma when he lifted the domed lid from the silver chafing dish. “If I dined like this every night, I would soon be as large as Mr. Melville’s notorious whale.”

  “She lives for your praise.”

  Richard grinned as he seated himself across the table from Jonathan. “Does anyone know the old sweetheart’s age? Maybe I should marry her.”

  Jonathan took a sip of wine to avoid Richard’s gaze. It was an instinctive habit. He knew he would never see revulsion in his friend’s eyes, though at times he caught his own reflection there and could barely suppress a shudder of disgust.

  “I believe she is an elemental,” Jonathan said, still looking into his wine glass. “Part of the stones and mortar of this place. They probably found her when they dug the foundation.”

  Richard laughed, then bent to the task of emptying his plate. Jonathan looked on, unable to remember the last time he had eaten with such gusto. Or done anything else, for that matter, with any enthusiasm.

  Richard glanced up between mouthfuls. “Has she always gone by her occupational sobriquet?”

  Jonathan rested his fork on his plate and gestured his ignorance with his left hand. His right one remained in his lap, hidden beneath the table.

  When Richard narrowed his eyes, Jonathan knew he’d been found out. Stupidly, he’d reverted to an unthinking habit he’d acquired over the years, that of substituting a gesture for the facial expression now lost to him. He should have expected Richard would notice him awkwardly wielding his fork with his left hand and conclude that he had abandoned the use of his right. Very little escaped Dr. Richard Garrick’s professional scrutiny.

  Jonathan stared at his wineglass, fingering the stem, until he realized he’d fallen into another mindless habit. He slowly withdrew his hand to his lap and rested it beside its deformed mate, allowing himself the unreasonable hope that Richard would let the matter pass.

  “How do you plan to phrase your proposal?” Jonathan asked, trying to recapture the previously light hearted tone of their conversation.

  “Let me think.” Richard looked up at the ceiling, tapping the air with his fork as he punctuated the words going through his mind. “How about . . . darling Cook, I am smitten. Please have pity and save me from a dreary life of gustatory discontent. Say you will marry me and satisfy my insatiable appetite for your culinary pleasures.”

  Jonathan laughed, though his amusement was short lived. Richard’s jest reminded him of the tie they shared, one that knotted them together in grief. Richard had been in love with his mother, and they likely would have married had death not taken her first. The man had already been more a father to him than his own, a bond strengthened by his mother’s death. It was as if their shared memories of her kept her spirit alive, as if by their sustained love they kept death from stealing her away altogether.

  “Shall we go next door?” Richard asked, pushing away from the table. “I’d like a cigar after that fine meal.”

  Jonathan looked across at Richard’s empty plate. How much time had passed without his awareness? Day by day, the constant solitude drove him deeper inside himself, with only his thoughts for companions. Soon he might lose the capacity for social intercourse altogether. The possibility of such an eventuality brought him to his feet.

  “Good idea!” Jonathan winced at his own awkwardness. In an effort to cover his lapse of attention, he had agreed much too heartily to sound convincing. He hurried on ahead to the smoking room, acting the host in order to conceal his embarrassment, though Richard could just as easily have led the way. Nashe House was as much Richard’s home as it was his, in spirit if not in actual deed and title ownership.

  They settled into their usual armchairs, at a slight angle to one another. Jonathan offered Richard the humidor, which he kept stocked with the best Cubans for his friend’s enjoyment. And although he liked the rich smell of burning tobacco, he never joined Richard in this small indulgence. The feel of drawing smoke into his lungs was a sensation he had no wish to revisit.

  Richard went through the ritual of choosing and lighting his cigar, finally settling back in his armchair to take the first appreciative draw. Exhaling slowly, he let his gaze follow the upward drift of smoke. “Ah, Jonathan,” he said wearily, “I’m getting old and tired of trying to hold at bay for others the fox I feel nipping at my own heels.”

  Jonathan gave him a concerned look. Richard rarely complained about the trials of his profession.

  “Old? You’re fifty four. The men in my family regularly live into their nineties.” As soon as he’d spoken the words, Jonathan realized with a chill their implication for his own life. Another ten years in his daily hell was unthinkable. But sixty or more?

  “Forgive me, Jonathan. What kind of guest am I to bore you with my troubles?”

  Richard, perceptive as ever, must have noticed his discomfort. Jonathan brushed aside his apology. “That’s what friends are for.”

  If anything, he owed Richard an apology for being too absorbed in his own problems to lend his undivided attention to his friend’s.

  Richard nodded, acknowledging his comment with a grateful smile. For a moment, it was enough to make Jonathan feel as though his life might still be worth something to someone.

  Richard took another contemplative draw on his cigar. “The damnedest things can get to you—and I don’t mean disease and death. You get inured to such, I’m sorry to say. No, it’s the little things.”

  He stopped as though he wouldn’t go on.

  “Tell me,” Jonathan prompted. Richard needed to unburden himself, that much was evident.

  “After the war,” he began, then stopped and shook his head. “I was glad to have missed that whole sorry business.”

  This sentiment required another pause while Richard thoughtfully puffed at his cigar. Jonathan knew he harbored a deep well of resentment against the treatment received by the South, which was not surprising in a man whose parents’ families hailed from the Carolinas. But if Richard drew from those bitter waters in his private moments, he seldom shared the drink with other
s.

  “I returned full of youthful idealism,” he went on, “inspired by what I’d learned in Paris and Edinburgh. What I found here was a medical establishment entrenched in their outmoded practices. They refused to acknowledge the well proven principles of Pasteur and Dr. Lister.”

  “Principles which undoubtedly saved my life.” Jonathan refrained from mentioning the agony he suffered at the frequent application of antiseptic to his raw flesh, an agony that never diminished over the months of treatment, regardless of its familiarity.

  Richard nodded. “Thank God Simonne had an open mind.”

  Jonathan did not thank God, or anyone for that matter, though this, too, he refrained from mentioning.

  “The willful ignorance of the medical establishment disgusted me. I began my practice treating the indigent.” Richard smiled wryly, with a nod that included Jonathan. “My father did well from the war, as did Cornelius. I decided to help the poor, partly out of guilt, and partly out of the knowledge that they would readily accept my unorthodox treatments, as long as they worked. The needy care nothing for academic theory.”

  Richard paused, lost in thought. When he resumed the conversation, his mind had taken quite a different turn.

  “The poorer classes suffer abominably from lack of treatment.” He shook his head sadly. “I’ve seen such degradation.”

  “I can imagine,” Jonathan murmured, wanting to sympathize.

  Strictly speaking, he knew he should admit that he had tried to imagine lacking for money, but in the end, his imagination always failed him. His father Cornelius had amassed a fortune that would take several lifetimes of profligate living to run through. He looked around the room, where every item was the best of its kind, chosen without regard to price. His mother used to joke that even the dust the maid missed had probably been shipped from Europe, bought off an unfortunate aristocrat who had fallen on hard times.

  No, poverty was an abstract concept to him, one he could contemplate with a philosophical mind, but whose true nature lay completely outside the realm of his experience.