Sorrel wondered if Poppy could tell that she was in need of a map herself. She acknowledged the gentle and genuine care Andrew gave this family and resolved to get to know that particular Andrew.
The two women stood on the bridge as heavy clouds rolled in, the sky so low Sorrel felt the rain pressing down before it fell. And then it did, with a rumble of thunder.
“Oh dear, more talk will have to wait,” Poppy said. “Let’s make a dash. We can dodge the worst of it.”
Sorrel didn’t think she could move fast enough to keep up with Poppy, whose boots slapped through the puddles ahead of her, throwing spatter up her tights. If it weren’t for the prospect of the bed, oh the bed, she might have ducked under a tree to wait it out.
Graham was sitting before the fire when they came in. Poppy shook the rain out of her hair, and Sorrel left her shoes in the hall. They plopped down in the sitting room and Sorrel stretched her toes closer to the grate.
“Did Poppet tell you all our secrets?” Graham asked.
“Just a crash course in public transport,” Sorrel said and looked around for Andrew.
“Gone, my dear,” Graham said. “Our Andrew must be exhausted by his charm offensive.”
Sorrel thought charm was a bit of an overstatement.
Poppy stood and hugged her father and then Sorrel.
“It’s time for me to go to bed. I’ve got an eight o’clock seminar.”
Graham and Sorrel sat for a minute or two watching the fire die.
“Andrew is a complicated fellow, with his own story to tell,” Graham said. “As are we all, really.”
“I guess,” Sorrel said. “Although I’d like to think that the important stuff is pretty simple. Honor, love, kindness.”
“Yes, let’s keep that thought,” Graham said. “But I suspect you too are complicated, remade by what happened to your little world.” Graham stood and offered his hand.
Sorrel opened her mouth to say something, anything to send the conversation away from a topic she hadn’t thought of once in these happy hours in London, but Graham kept on as he pulled her to her feet.
“I am so very glad that you agreed to come and grow with this family. It is important that, as we remake ourselves, we also give the world around us a chance to follow along. Kirkwood Hall has a varied history; some bits are worth celebrating, others not. It’s the reason we work so hard to make it a place of comfort and joy today. I think the house deserves your magic, Sorrel, and you deserve hers.”
CHAPTER 3
Narcissus
In all his approachable glory, his jolly, game attitude, Graham Kirkwood still kept secrets. That evening with Sorrel and his family gathered by the fire, he only hinted at the mystery of the garden or Stella’s most recent failed attempt at restoration or her troubling illness. He said not a word about the tapestries hung in a climate-controlled room on the third floor of Kirkwood Hall. He didn’t much like thinking about them beyond ensuring that they were kept safe in all their priceless, pristine, dreadful beauty. It wasn’t so much that they were fragile, which they were; it was that the subject matter had always unsettled the Kirkwoods, particularly the tenderhearted Graham. Out of sight had helped to keep them out of mind over the years, and there hadn’t been one of those years that Graham hadn’t wished they’d never been found. But with the decision to bring Sorrel over, it was essential that she have all advantage on her side, including access to the wretched tapestries. So, yes, he had mentioned them in his letter to the Sparrow Sister, although he had been discreet on the visual punch they always gave him.
Stella had never been one to sidestep a difficult situation so it was she who had come to know the tapestries best. When she and Graham had been married some years with Poppy a babe in arms, he told her of the Hunt of the Innocent, as the series was named. She took it upon herself to come to grips with both the story and the Kirkwood family’s connection to it, and there was nowhere better to start than the grand Kirkwood library. There she began to see the outlines of a history that, for good and ill, shaped her family.
It was hard to believe that the warm and caring Lord Kirkwood could have ever sprung from the warring family who built the estate. It was nearly impossible to reconcile the love-filled house of today with the cold place it had once been. But that was exactly how Kirkwood Hall was born: out of a greed that led men of the same name to tear through a small but treasure-laden monastery, grabbing up everything of value and casting aside the monks and their faith like ninepins. It was a horrible time when the church and the state played a hateful, bloody tug of war over the loyalty of the people and the spoils of their conflict, and the winners were whoever had the monarch’s ear.
Unlike the present Kirkwood scion, the head of the manor in those times was less interested in the beauty of his estate and more in the riches and standing it could bring him now that those pesky priests were out of the way. A prodigy house is what Kirkwood Hall would become, built and maintained in the event that the monarch might visit on his perambulations through his kingdom. And he did, for King Henry was quite fond of the area with its rolling hills and fields of green. So Lord Kirkwood, as he became upon being given the title and even more land, kept the estate in fine shape, stocked with deer for hunting, fine swans on the lake beyond the chapel, and geese, ducks, and chickens for the table. He raised his sons to take the same kind of care. As unpleasant and frankly violent as the birth of Kirkwood Hall was, it endured, and while civil wars swirled around it, there was a sense of relative calm that cloaked the estate. Some attribute the prosperity and peace to the march of Lord Kirkwoods who, to a man, were a driven lot. Certainly there were no recorded uprisings of disgruntled peasants, servants, or farmers, no angry landowner from a neighboring estate who felt he might be better suited to the Kirkwood manor, and finally, no shortage of sons to keep the fairy tale of a beneficent lord and his happy dynasty going. Inside the family and its home there were, over the years, plenty of disagreeable Kirkwoods who imposed their will and their way. And outside, there were plenty of people who held their tongues.