The Island of Doves Read Free Page A

shocked her heart to admit it, and she knew she was flouting God himself.
    “Are you all right, Mrs. Fraser? You look a little pale.”
    Susannah glanced at Madame Martineau, then took in the peach frippery that encircled her own body. Beneath the soft layers of silk, the feminine rustle of the flounces cascading to the floor, Susannah could feel that her resolve remained lodged in her chest, as smooth and sure as a stone.
    A large fire heated the room. “The room is a little too warm for me—that’s all.” Susannah felt herself sway on the platform.
    “Indeed it is. But we are almost finished,” Madame Martineau said as she handed the pieced peach silk to her seamstress, who hustled the bundle to the curtained back room where she and the other girls would work late into the night on the dresses. She gave Susannah the dress she had worn into the shop, then helped her lift it over her head and fastened the buttons at the back.
    Susannah stepped down from the platform and Madame Martineau smiled at her. “We will send them to Hawkshill as soon as they are ready.” Their house, a stately mansion Edward had purchased and renovated for them, was well known throughout Buffalo.
    Outside the door of the shop, a paved footpath stretched along Pearl Street past the downtown shops. The chilly March air was a welcome relief and the sun shone brightly. The Saturday shoppers thronged about her, despite the cold. Two well-dressed women nodded to Susannah. “Good afternoon, Mrs. Fraser,” they said in unison, stepping aside on the footpath to let her pass. The crowd seemed to part for her, each cluster of people deferring to her as the wife of one of the town’s wealthiest men.
    Since October had brought the frost, she had grown accustomed to work and solitude in her greenhouse, where winter never came. A woodstove boiled water that ran through pipes beneath the floor, and rows of steam-clouded glass panes captured and enhanced the weak light of the sun. Even now, in March, every surface was alive with the urgency of plants at work—climbing, rooting, stretching their petals. Grapevines crept like green insects up the glass walls, and the lavender fanned out in a muted purple cloud. On the highest shelf, orchid blossoms lolled, their leaves draping down like tongues. The most remarkable thing of all was that this life pulsed frenetically along in perfect silence. She heard only the occasional clank of the steam pipes.
    Out on the street now with all the people coming and going, from the market to the theater to the saddle shop, the noise and motion were terrific. Carriage wheels crunched over snow-covered gravel in the road. A woman shouted after two cackling boys who had swiped a bun from her child’s hand and taken off running; her little girl wailed. In front of a tavern, a tethered mare shied away from a terrier that nipped at its hooves. The horse’s owner kicked at the little dog. “Get back, yeh!” he yelled.
    Susannah stepped off the footpath and leaned against a brick wall, trying to breathe. Everything felt too loud, too bright. She smelled all at once coffee and smoked meat and manure and sugared almonds, and she tried not to gag as it all rushed in on her. She closed her eyes and inhaled, then willed herself to walk the last half mile back to Hawkshill. Edward wouldn’t come home until the late evening; there were hours of peace to look forward to if she could make it the rest of the way home.
    But just as she began walking again, determined to remain calm, she felt her breath catch in the bramble of her lungs. There
she
was again, the strange woman in the black gown and bonnet. Susannah had seen her three times in the last week alone: on the way home from church two Sundays in a row as she’d held Edward’s elbow, and once as they walked to a party at the mayor’s home. Always, the woman peered from behind a pillar or the side of a carriage, meeting Susannah’s eyes but never revealing herself to Edward. She