Joan Wolf by The Guardian Read Free Book Online Page A

the door. I called to the dogs and we went up the stairs to the nursery to have luncheon with Giles.
    * * * *
    The day Stephen came home, the hazy August sun was shining on golden fields of wheat, ripe for harvesting. The air was sweet with the smell of cut grass, and the horses in the paddocks were standing head to tail, lazily swishing away the flies. In the distance the turf of the Downs looked like green velvet against the blue of the sky.
    Giles had recently become interested in fishing, and the two of us had spent the afternoon out at the lake. I was wearing an old, grass-stained gown, my hair was done in a single braid down my back, and my bare feet were thrust into a disgraceful pair of ancient leather slippers. It was the sort of costume that would invariably provoke Gerald to complain that I looked like a farm girl.
    As soon as we came in I sent Giles upstairs to the nursery while I lingered for a moment in the Great Hall to consult with Mrs. Nordlem, our housekeeper, about cooking the fish Giles had caught. I was still in the hall when a hired carriage came rolling up the drive and stopped in front of the stately front steps of Weston Hall.
    Hodges heard the carriage, went to one of the tall narrow windows that flanked the front door, and glanced out. He clicked his tongue in disapproval of the shabby equipage. Then his back stiffened.
    “Good God,” he said, “it’s Mister Stephen!”
    I stood as if rooted to the marble floor.
    “Mr. Stephen?” Mrs. Nordlem’s small, trim figure was quivering with delight. “My lady, did you hear? Mr. Stephen has arrived!”
    “Yes,” I said, “I heard.”
    Hodges had already thrown open the front door as wide as it would go and gone outdoors into the hot afternoon sun. “Mr. Stephen!” I heard him cry. There came the tapping of his feet as he ran down the stone stairs. “Welcome home!”
    Then, for the first time in five years, I heard Stephen’s voice. “Thank you, Hodges,” he said. “It is good to see you again.”
    My legs felt as if they would not bear me up. My mouth was dry and my heart was hammering.
    Stop this, Annabelle! I commanded myself. I breathed slowly and deeply, trying to get myself under control.
    Stephen walked in the open front door, saw me, and stopped as suddenly as if he’d been shot. We stared at each other across a seemingly endless expanse of black-and-white marble.
    He looked the same, yet somehow he was different. The mahogany brown hair, the level brows, the narrow, slightly arched nose, which bore a distinct bump where it had once been broken, the thin, beautifully chiseled mouth, the familiar deep blue eyes: all of these were the same. Yet they looked sharper than I remembered, as if all of the softness of boyhood had been burned away by the hot Jamaican sun.
    He said my name, and his voice sounded unsteady.
    Portia, who had once been Stephen’s dog, recognized his voice and hurled herself across the marble floor, barking ecstatically.
    “Portia! How are you, girl?” He bent to pet her, but she was too excited to stay still. She raced back to me, barked three times to tell me the wonderful news of Stephen’s arrival, and then tore back to him, skidding along the marble floor in her excitement. Merlin decided to get in on the fun, and he also went to greet Stephen. Both dogs’ tails were wagging so hard, their whole bodies shook with the force of it.
    The dogs gave me a chance to gain my composure. I crossed the marble floor after them, and conscious of the watching eyes of Hodges and Mrs. Nordlem, I held out my hand. “Portia missed you,” I said. “Welcome home, Stephen.”
    Even to my own ears, my cool voice did not sound particularly welcoming.
    I felt his familiar thin, hard fingers close around my hand, and then he dropped it as if the brief contact had scalded him.
    “I am so sorry about Gerald,” he said. His eyes flicked upward, in the direction of Gerald’s old bedroom. “I still can’t believe that I will