Under the Kissing Tree, Part 2

~*~

"Maggie, I'm going to town. Do you have anything for the post office?"

Maggie pressed down an edge of lace where it was barely sticking to the construction paper heart. "Quentin, I was hoping you hadn't left for town yet. I missed the mailman this morning. Over there, on the coffee table."

Quentin reached for the envelopes, but out the corner of his eye saw a flicker at the window, and knocked some to the floor. He bent down to pick them up. With his long fingers, he reached under the sofa and picked up the envelopes that had slipped under.

"This all?"

Maggie gave a nod, but since she hadn't turned around, Quentin came to stand over her shoulder. "What are you making?"

Maggie laughed. "With Valentine's Day tomorrow, what do you think I'm making?” At Quentin's raised eyebrows and smile her eyes glinted as she tried to take him down a peg. “It's not for you. It's for David."

Quentin laughed. "It's pretty, but do you think he'll like it?"

Maggie wrinkled her forehead. "I think so. Don't you like all the ones you got? Hallie said there were at least a half-dozen for you in this morning’s mail alone."

Quentin flushed slightly. It wasn't his fault that he had been on the receiving end of so much feminine attention lately.

"Maybe I haven't gotten one from the right woman."

“Or maybe you haven't figured out who the right woman is," Maggie countered. “Did you send her a Valentine, or are you letting her do all the work?”

As though the answer were too trivial for her to care about, she didn’t wait for Quentin to answer, but waved him away with her hand. “On Saturday the post office closes at Noon, so you better get moving.”

~*~

Quentin restlessly stood in line at the post office. At his turn he pushed the envelopes forward, with some change, and turned to go. But before he had gone two steps, he was called back. "Sir?"

The clerk pushed a blank envelope and a stamp towards him. At his frown she asked. "There's no address on this one, but you did want a stamp for it, didn't you? You paid for one.”

Quentin picked up the envelope, it was one of the ones that Maggie had given him to mail. Turning it over, he noticed that it wasn't sealed, so he opened it and found the lacy heart inside. No wonder Maggie was hoping he would come for the mail. As he read the poem, the sunlight from the window behind the clerk glinted on the letters.

The Kissing Tree. However did she find out about that?

“Excuse me.” The customer behind him held up a small package and Quentin got out of his way, bumping into a tall stranger as he turned. “I'm sorry…Don't I know you?"

The man offered his hand. "Dipuc, Soré Dipuc. We met some time ago."

Quentin searched his memory, but the man was gone, and he quit trying to remember. Getting into the car, he heard his name called.

"Quentin!"

Professor T. Eliot Stokes was hailing him from the doorway. "I thought that was your car outside."

"Eliot, you want a ride?"

Stokes offered him an old book. "No, but if you're going back to Collinwood, I have something I'd like you to take to Elizabeth for me."

"It must be my day for doing favors."

"Tell Elizabeth that if she agrees, she can return it to me tonight when I come for supper."

At Quentin's raised eyebrows, Eliot added, "We're publishing some of Flora's writings, and there was a passage that I particularly wanted to use in the foreword."

He thumbed through the book and found the page he was looking for. "Here." He began to feel his pockets. “Now if I could find something to mark it for her…”

Quentin reached into his pocket and took out and envelope, and then put it between the pages. “That will do for now.”

The professor got out, nearly bumping into the man that Quentin had talked to in the Post Office. He looked at Quentin and grinned, and again Quentin was struck by the thought that he had met the man before, and not just today.

~*~

Quentin put his head into the drawing room. "Liz. I have something for you from the Professor."

He crossed the room and handed Elizabeth the book. "He says that if you agree, to return it to him tonight."

She thanked Quentin and opened the book to where the envelope marked the place. It was that passage that Eliot had been talking about. A quick skim told her that he was right to want to use it in the forward. As she was about to close the book, she looked at the envelope. There was something in it. A Valentine. How sweet of Eliot.

As she read the message the letters seemed to sparkle as something stirred in her. She had long ago given up hope of the Professor being anything more than a friend to her. No wonder Julia was talking of the Kissing Tree, she was finding out whether she knew about it for Eliot.

She hugged the Valentine to her, and then put it back into the envelope and the envelope back into the book as Eliot had wanted.

~*~

Elizabeth had come down early to the drawing room, certain that Eliot would come early to be with her alone, but it had been too much to hope for. By the time that Mrs. Johnson let him in the front door, the only one that hadn't arrived yet was Barnabas. As Eliot looked at her over the others, and she motioned to the book with a slight nod of her head, and saw him beam and nod back, she realized why he had been so cautious and had come late enough that others would be around. If she had said no, it would have made for an awkward time.

Taking courage, she crossed the room with the book, only to have Mrs. Johnson appear in the doorway. "Mrs. Stoddard, that butcher gave me the wrong cut…"

"I'll come to the kitchen," she interrupted the irate housekeeper, her sweetness of expression not showing the disappointment she was feeling.

On her way out of the room, she handed the book back to Eliot. With a smile that would have warmed the hardest of hearts, and Eliot's was far tenderer than he would have people know, she told him, "I agree. To all of it."

Eliot took the book and noticing something in the pages, pulled it out. A Valentine. He looked at around the room, no one seemed to have noticed, and he moved away, facing the darkness outside the window. He never realized that Elizabeth had felt that way about him, but it made him feel warm, and happy. The words practically flashed. The Kissing Tree. He remembered reading about it in Flora's diaries. Suddenly, he saw his reflection in the window. Like a love-sick puppy.

As Elizabeth came in to announce dinner, he caught her eye and they exchanged a glance, and a nod, and smile. Putting the book and the card down on the desk, he joined the others in going to the dining room.

Dipuc had once again taken up residency at the window. Tomorrow, his work would be done.

~*~

Maggie hummed on the way to the drawing room. Dinner had been a lighthearted affair. Eliot had been so attentive to Elizabeth that even David had noticed and had to be prevented from making a comment more than once. Quentin had come in just as they were sitting down to eat, but was in time to see Eliot holding out Mrs. Stoddard’s chair, and calling her Liz with that particular tone of voice that Maggie hadn’t been able to resist looking at him to share the joke, but then her face grew warm and her heart beat hard at the glances that Quentin was sending her way. At least with David’s preoccupation with his Aunt and the Professor, he hadn’t noticed her.

Perhaps it was something in the water.

"Where are you going?" he had asked her as she had left the table scant minutes after she had sent David off to start his homework. Somehow he had filled those words with such regret that she had almost sat back down and said, "Nowhere." But David was behind on his work and she had answered, "To find my scissors and get David started on his homework."

“They’re on the desk. I saw them when I left something there for you.”

The minute she entered the drawing room she saw what he had left for her. A single read rose, with a card bearing her name. Inside were the words, “Maggie, my love, I’d be pleased and proud to meet you at the tree.”

She looked at the back of the card. There was nothing more. What tree?

“Maggie, do you have my poetry book?” David asked. “If you want to borrow it, I don’t need it back.”

“Oh, yes you do. You have an assignment whether you like poetry or not.”

As she looked for his book, she saw a card on the desk. Absentmindedly giving David his textbook, she opened the card. Not homemade like hers had been, but the poem had been handwritten and from a special ink that glittered. She read it, and then her cheeks grew pink. No wonder that Quentin was grinning at her over the Valentine she was making David. She wondered what and where the Kissing Tree was, but she wasn’t going to ask Quentin. Let him have some anxious moments waiting to see if she would come. Besides, Carolyn would know.

“You found my rose.”

Quentin’s voice came from the doorway. Deciding to tease him, she opened the drawer and slid the card into the drawer before turning around holding the rose to her nose with both hands.

“You gave it to me, so it’s mine.”

Quentin seemed to be waiting, no doubt wondering if she got his card or not, but the others began to come into the drawing room, and she had to go help David with his homework. With a smile, she hurried away.

~*~

Barnabas woke with the sunrise. Ever since he and Willie had gone through the chest two days ago, he had been unsettled. Old memories haunted his dreams, and puzzling thoughts filled his waking hours. Most puzzling of all, was that the memories and the thoughts were not of his father, or of Angelique, but were of Lucy, and of Julia, and of the Kissing tree.

Not able to fight his need to see it again, he shrugged into his Inverness, and took up his wolf's head cane, and headed out toward the clearing. It snowed the night before, hiding all the paths new and old, but he didn't need a path to go to the tree.

As he stepped into the clearing he saw the tree. Tall and spreading, the tree was bigger than when he had seen it last, but he knew it was the one. The legend said that Cupid's arrow was of white oak, and having missed its mark, fell and grew there. It was good luck to kiss your true love under the tree, bad luck if the love wasn't true. Barnabas ran his fingers along an old scar where he had carved his initials, intending to add Lucy's to his later. That was the best or the worse luck of all, according to the legend, for you bound your soul to the other, for good luck or bad, for the rest of eternity. He traced the bare spot beneath his. And what had he bound his soul to? Only the hope of love. He thought of all the women who had come and gone since Lucy, all capturing his heart, but none his true love.

He turned away. Could the legend have been true? Could the reason that he had loved each woman, including Angelique, so strongly and then just as quickly left each one behind been that easy? Was all he had to do was to finish the carving? Suddenly he needed to talk to Julia. He took the path toward Collinwood, forgetting that Julia wouldn't be there.

Soré Dipuc looked out from where even the shadows of the tree couldn't touch. He was forbidden to touch it. He could see the initials and cringed as the man left them as they were, and walked away. Mortal men were such fools.

Julia opened the door, awkwardly holding her packages.

“Julia.” Barnabas came over to the door, and after taking her packages and putting them down on the nearby table, helped her off with her coat. “I was hoping that you’d be home soon. I wanted to talk with you.”

Julia smiled at the warmth in Barnabas’ tone, and the look in his eyes. His voice dropped a level from gravelly to sexy. “You look beautiful. You’ve cut your hair again.”

Julia put a hand up to her short cut. “It was hard to keep long, now that I’m back working at Wyndcliffe.”

As though she had jinxed the moment, the phone rang and Julia picked it up to find her receptionist from Wyndcliffe on the other end. She took a deep breath and answered the anxious voice on the other end. “I’ll be there as soon as possible.”

She put a hand over the receiver and asked Barnabas, “Could you get me a piece of paper…out of the desk drawer?”

He opened the drawer and took out the envelope and saw Julia blush. He took out the Valentine and look at her, and she nodded, and mouthed, “Yes.”

Realizing that she was still waiting for her paper, he gave her a blank sheet and a pen, he waited until she turned back to the phone, and then started to read the Valentine. The letters were gold and shiny. And the verse was sweet. But the sweetest part of all, was that she was inviting him to the tree.

She came over to him. “I have to go out, Barnabas. Some minor emergency at Wyndcliffe, but I'll be back in time." If I have to kill, I'll be back in time she thought. “Oh, you wanted to talk to me?”

Barnabas shook his head. “I don’t need to any more.”

~*~

Barnabas took the slow way home by way of the path, even though the snow filled his shoes and numbed his toes. How had Julia found out about the Kissing Tree? It was as though she had read his mind. Maybe she did, they were so close that often they seemed to share the same thoughts. But such a stray thought…until Willie had opened the chest to reveal that old Valentine, he hadn't even thought of the tree since he was little more than a boy. That wasn't true. He had thought of taking Josette there, but then when he was showing her the estate, he had stayed away from the tree. It couldn't be that he believed the legend. Or could it?

Halfway home, he made a turn through the woods and went back to the tree. Turning more than once because he had the strangest feeling that someone was watching him. Once again he stood under the branches of the ancient and enormous white oak tree. Old even when he was a boy, it would still be here long after he was gone from the earth. Let go of the past, Julia often told him, but she was wrong. It wasn't the past that had to be let go of, but the future he had to reach out and grasp, with both hands and without regret.

If he came here tonight, and stood here with Julia, it would be the same as taking a vow in church, no going back. If he came here.

~*~

Willie straightened up Barnabas' desk and found the Valentine sitting on the top. Ever since he had accidentally given it to Barnabas with the paper, he had felt too foolish to ask for it back. And yet, Barnabas hadn't looked at him with amusement or any kind of pity. Barnabas understood.

It was just a little bent, but the verse was better than the second one he had tried to create from memory, and it was prettier. So it would have to be this one that he sent. He took out a fresh envelope and addressed it with her first name, so that this time, if it ended up somewhere where it could embarrass him, it would be given to the right person.

Time was growing short, and hoping that she hadn’t made a date with any one else, Willie hurried to Collinwood, to hand deliver the Valentine to Carolyn.

~*~

Julia came quietly down the front stairs. All dressed up, she was trying to slip away unnoticed, but just in case she would be seen, she had tried to come up a reason for her to be going out at this time of evening. She took her coat and quietly opened and closed the front door, relieved to have run into no one, and then hurried to where Liz had told her that the Kissing Tree was.

She saw a tall man waiting under the tree and stepped out. He turned around and his mouth opened in surprise. "Julia? Did you send me the Valentine?"

"No, Quentin, I believe the lady sent it to me." Barnabas said as he took his place at Julia's side.

Julia shook her head. "I didn't send either of you cards. Barnabas? You didn't send me a card?"

Barnabas heard the tremor in her voice and put out a hand to take hers. Then a voice came from the far side, growing louder as the speaker came closer, "Liz? Liz Love?"

A voice softly answered him from the shadows. "I'm here, Eliot." And Elizabeth Stoddard moved into the moonlight.

Then Willie's voice, "Quentin, Julia, Barnabas…Mrs. Stoddard, Professor Stokes? Where's Carolyn?"

"Here I am, Willie."

"You told me to meet you here." "You sent me a Valentine." "How did you know about this tree?" Everyone seemed to be talking at once. Maggie ran into the clearing, and stopped suddenly. Looking around at the confused faces, and then began to laugh. "I guess I'm the last to arrive?"

Quentin threw back his head and joined into her laughter. "They say that you should make reservations if you want to go somewhere popular."

He crossed over to Maggie and held out his hand. "I don't know about you all, but I came to kiss my Valentine under the tree. Maggie? I didn't send you the card, and I guess you didn't send it to me, but will you be my Valentine?"

Maggie smiled up at Quentin, and raised her lips for a kiss.

Carolyn and Willie quickly followed suit and hurried away, while Eliot and Liz moved to the other side of the tree into the shadows, pausing, and then moving on.

And then it was only Barnabas and Julia. Only when he squeezed her hand, did Julia realize that Barnabas was still holding it.

"We all came here by mistake." She said, breaking the sudden silence of the woods.

"Was it a mistake?" he asked.

He pulled her hand and took her over to the tree trunk, and showed her a heart carved there. “They say if you carve your initials along with the one that you love’s, that you will be in love for eternity.”

He pulled her fingers so she could feel the B and C that were weather worn, and then below it, a J and H that were new and sharp.

“Do you think that eternity will be long enough?” He let go of her hand, only to take her into his arms and pull her closer.

His eyes were so close to hers, that even in the moonlight, she felt she could read into his soul. His face grew close, and she knew he was going to kiss her. Their first kiss, and under the tree, if only the moon would shine down on them, the legend would be completed.

As their lips met, the moon came out from behind the clouds, bathing them in white light.

Out of the reach of the shadows of the tree, Dipuc picked up his bow and his arrows of white oak that he had gotten back, having been successful at the job he was sent to do. He listened to a voice, like music on the wind. “Yes, I’m coming,” he said, and his wings unfurled.

2-14-2003