Read Online Immortal With a Kiss by Jacqueline Lepore - Free Book Online Page A

at once was much changed from yesterday. Then, she had made the presentation of a most robust woman. Today, she seemed pale, tired, and subdued.
    Mrs. Boniface must have agreed with my assessment. “What is wrong with you, Agatha?” she asked. “Did you not sleep well again?”
    Miss Thompson frowned but did not reply. The uncomfortable moment was skillfully avoided by Mrs. Boniface, who turned to engage me in conversation. She insisted I address her as Eloise. “Mrs. Boniface makes me feel ancient! Really, Emma, we are to be friends.”
    “Thank you, Eloise.” I paused, both getting used to the more casual form of address and wondering if it were too soon to ask her about what had been much on my mind since meeting her yesterday. Her friendliness emboldened me. “When you mentioned how long you have been teaching here at Blackbriar, I wondered if it were possible you remembered my mother. She attended the school . . . oh, twenty-five years ago or perhaps a little more; I do not know exactly. Her name was Laura Newly.”
    Hearing it put out there, I realized how thin the possibility existed that Eloise would remember one student over a span of so much time. I felt immediately sheepish, a condition not aided by the scathingly incredulous stare I received from Trudy Grisholm.
    Bless Eloise Boniface, for after a moment’s ponder she exclaimed, “Why I do remember her! Yes. Laura Newly. She was a lovely girl. I’d only been teaching a few years and she was one of those you tended to notice. Pretty enough, but very quiet. Nice girl, I recall. I also remember I had thought she’d be an excellent dancer because she had the figure to be light on her feet. But . . . oh, dear, she had no grace whatsoever.”
    I did not know firsthand if my mother was clumsy, but as I had no gift for gliding across a parquet floor in a ball gown, I assumed it was true. I was amazed Eloise would recollect such a thing, or anything at all about a single student from the past. “I am embarrassed to have asked you. It seems so absurd to expect you to remember her, and yet you do.”
    “Well, not much, I am afraid. I do seem to think she was more a poet than one who liked soirees and such. As I said, she had no gift for dance.” Eloise nodded as she frowned in thought. “A dreamer. She had a book with her at all times. Perhaps that is why she did not take to dancing, it meant she had to put down her Tennyson, or Spenser, or some other poet. And always writing in her books. Yes, now I recall. Writing, writing, always. But for all of her flighty ways, she was a good girl, bright and pleasant, as far as I can recall.”
    I breathed in slowly, deeply, filling myself with this rare connection. My father’s best friend, Peter Ivanescu, whom I had known all my life as Uncle Peter, had given me the basics in understanding, at least from his vantage point, what had happened to Laura. Other than furtive whispers about her descent into “madness” I had managed to overhear from the house staff as I was growing up, I had no knowledge of my mother.
    A dreamer. A writer, and always reading poetry—like me. This small tidbit from Eloise Boniface was a jewel, and I hugged it close.
    “Thank you,” I said. Trudy made a sound, a kind of a snort, but I did not so much as glance in her direction.
    Eloise patted my hand, and her eyes crinkled warmly. But then her expression changed suddenly. A small furrow appeared between her eyebrows. I felt more than saw Agatha Thompson stiffen beside me, and I turned to find Margaret and Vanessa entering the dining room.
    Eloise recovered first and picked up her fork. “Agatha? Your eggs are growing cold.”
    “I am afraid I have no appetite this morning,” the other woman replied. Her voice was strained, and I saw her complexion had taken an ashen tone.
    Trudy and Susannah had their backs to the door and seemed oblivious to the subtle tension that rippled around the table. Although Eloise and Agatha were clearly