Eternal Deception

by Jane Steen

  “You’re a true artist,” said a soft voice behind us. I swung round to find Judah leaning against the door jamb.

  “May I beg a moment of your time?” Judah asked formally, uncoiling himself in one fluid movement. He gestured toward the open doorway, indicating that he wanted to see me in private. I hesitated, but I hardly had any reason to refuse him. With a last look at the deep lilac silk and a regretful sigh for the work I hadn’t done, I followed him out of the room.

  He led the way to the chapel, tugging open the large ornate doors and ushering me in. The great, echoing room was chilly and dim, the gray November light barely penetrating to it through its row of stained-glass windows.

  Judah waited till I sat in one of the back pews, then curled himself into the bench in front so that he faced me.

  “I feel you’ve been avoiding me, Nell.”

  He was right, but I didn’t want to admit that. I felt the shape of Martin’s letter in my pocket and realized once again that I had a fine line to walk. I dared not commit myself in any direction, but neither was I in a position to burn bridges. I strove for a neutral, friendly tone of voice.

  “I’ve been very busy, Judah. So have you—you seem to spend an extraordinary amount of time in Dr. Calderwood’s study.”

  “Great plans are afoot.” Judah’s word’s came out with a little puff of breath that indicated amusement or derision—it was hard to tell in the deep shadow.

  He took my hand, rubbing his thumb over my palm. I did not pull it away, noting with interest that a small shiver ran through me at his touch. Yet it was so different from the yearning I had experienced when Martin held me that I wondered why I ever thought it might be love.

  I neither wanted to cross Judah nor encourage him, of that much I was certain. So I let my hand lie limp in his, hoping our interview would be short.

  “Is that what you wanted to see me for?” I prompted, trying to sound lighthearted. “So you could berate me for my absence?”

  “Well, I’ve also been wondering about something.” Judah turned my hand palm up and affected to study it, although unless he had eyes like a cat’s, he would barely be able to see it. But he did have eyes like a cat’s, I thought, remembering how he had boasted about seeing well in the dark.

  “I think,” Judah continued, his eyes on my hand, “that you’re rather more fond of Mr. Rutherford than you should be.”

  This time I did try to snatch my hand back, but his fingers closed firmly around my wrist, and I thought better of struggling. My stomach had begun to tie itself into knots, and I was sweating despite the chill.

  “And I think he’s much more fond of you than befits a married man.” Judah’s fingers tightened, cool and hard. “Don’t deny it, Nell. Wasn’t it George Herbert who said that love and a cough cannot be hid? It would have been touching to see how well the two of you suit each other—had Mr. Rutherford been free to marry.”

  “We’ve done nothing wrong.” I could hear the tremor in my voice. “Nothing improper.” Except a kiss. “Martin is an honorable man.”

  “But you’re in great danger of doing wrong.” Judah’s voice sounded earnest, sincere. “Even the most honorable man can suffer moments of weakness, Nell. And a woman—well, women are naturally weak creatures, are they not? We cannot blame you overmuch for acting according to your nature. And you have a passionate nature, Nell. You crave warmth as a butterfly does—you can’t live for long without it. Sooner or later, the state of celibacy will become unbearable to you.”

  I felt a shock of recognition at his words and could not suppress the shudder that ran through me. My physical reactions to Judah, I realized, and the fact that I had been in a state of celibacy for some time, were not entirely unrelated.

  “He won’t be able to divorce his wife. The law isn’t easily persuaded to permit such things. Has he asked you to wait for him?” The jerk of my head as I tried—in vain—to see his face gave Judah his answer, and he chuckled. “That course of action can only end one way, Nell. And you, of all people, can’t afford another mistake. That would put you beyond the pale of good society forever and condemn your daughter to the shadows.”

  “What do you propose I do?” My throat was dry, and I swallowed hard to relieve it.

  “I’ve already offered you the protection of my name,” Judah said. “I don’t require love from you, and my affections are not—and will never be—engaged elsewhere. You would have a young, ambitious, and vigorous husband—I think, in fact, that in my arms you would begin to forget your hopeless infatuation.” I could see a flash of white teeth as he grinned at me. “And in return, I would make very few demands on you.”

  “Except for my money,” I said drily.

  “What is wealth?” Judah shrugged. “You’re no miser, I believe. Money has little hold on you—you’ve been quite content to live in a simple manner. And the advantages on your side are great. I’m rescuing you from past shame and future seduction. I'm giving you and your daughter an irreproachable name and ensuring that your children will henceforth be born in wedlock. Isn’t that worth a little gold?”

  I pulled my hand back again, and this time he let it go. “We have, what, six weeks or so before the agreed time elapses, do we not? Let me put it this way, Nell—your choice is clear before you, and there’s only one possible outcome. I expect you to yield to me.”

  “Or?” I whispered hoarsely.

  “Or you will be outcast.” Judah’s voice now had an edge to it I had never heard before. “You can’t expect to continue to live here—or in any decent society—in a state of moral turpitude. I am offering you a raft to cling to, Nell. You’re already drowning.”

  “A little more of this excellent bacon, dear Mrs. Lillington?” Dr. Calderwood, who had disposed of more rashers than I ever imagined a person could manage in one sitting, held out the greasy plate with what, I believed, he thought was a winning smile. I shook my head.

  “I’ve eaten quite enough, thank you.” I took another sip of my coffee and cast a longing glance over my shoulder at the far end of the room where Tess and Sarah sat, happily conversing over their breakfast.

  In the two weeks since Judah and I had spoken in the chapel, he had summoned me to the head table for every meal. He didn’t invite Tess and Sarah, but the omission didn’t bother them since neither of them—as Tess had pointed out—wished to be under the Calderwoods’ scrutiny while they ate.

  “He’ll isolate you and control you.” Martin’s words had come back to me often in the last few days. With Judah—who always sat at Dr. Calderwood’s right hand now—and the doctor and his wife opposite me, I was starting to feel like a plump turkey in the presence of a pride of lions. The impression grew stronger whenever Dr. Calderwood licked his lips or shook out his mane of silver-streaked hair.

  I had the nasty feeling that Judah had at least hinted about my wealth to Mrs. Calderwood. The little woman’s manner toward me had become decidedly deferential. She directed the choicest cuts of meat to my plate, asked after my health with a proprietary gleam in her small black eyes, and refilled my coffee cup with her own hand.

  She did so now, her hair trembling in its piled-high coiffure as she leaned forward.

  “I have given much thought to your request to spend Christmas at the Lombardi mission,” she said to me as she returned my cup and saucer to their place. “I’ve arranged with one of the farmers to borrow his pair of Percherons and his covered wagon. Mr. Poulton will accompany you, of course.”

  I looked at Judah in alarm. “But not just Mr. Poulton, surely—we’ll need a chaperone too, won’t we?” I didn’t want to cross the plains with just Tess and Sarah as protection against Judah. “I thought Andrew could drive us,” I began again.

  “Andrew may take you and bring the wagon back here. I doubt the Lombardis have sufficient hay to feed such large horses over Christmas.” Mrs. Calderwood’s face folded into a fatuous smile. “As for a chaperone, I consider that the presence of Miss O’Dugan and your daughter will b
e sufficient. After all, you and Mr. Poulton are practically betrothed. Now, as for the date—“

  “I’ve written the Lombardis that I’ll set off on the thirteenth,” I said hurriedly. I hadn’t forgotten that Mrs. Drummond intended to depart on the twelfth. My plan was to secure the letter, be on my way to the Lombardis’ before anyone thought of asking me if I had known anything about the housekeeper’s flight, and peruse the letter in the presence of Pastor Lombardi and Catherine.

  “Oh no, that won’t do at all.” Mrs. Calderwood clasped her small hands under her chin and cocked her head to one side. “You must leave on the sixth. That way you’ll have three full weeks before your return, which should be on the twenty-seventh—I would say the twenty-sixth, but that is the Sabbath. After all, a little bird tells me that there will be an announcement on New Year’s Day, and we must have you back in good time to celebrate it. We must host a dinner with our dear friends from Springwood, do you not think, Doctor?”

  “Certainly,” mumbled Dr. Calderwood, who had surreptitiously taken another piece of bacon from the plate and was chewing industriously.

  “You have time to inform the Lombardis that your plans have changed if you write this morning,” remarked Mrs. Calderwood briskly. “Mr. Poulton will walk you to Springwood in time for the mail collection.” She rose to her feet, occasioning a general scraping of chairs as the gentlemen rose with her. Dr. Calderwood hastily swiped his napkin over his greasy mouth and hands and smiled vaguely at no one in particular.

  “But the sixth is less than a fortnight away. What about my work?” I was also on my feet, grateful for the movement to disguise the dismay I felt. “To leave that early in December—before the students, even—would make it difficult for me to catch up upon my return.”

  “Ah yes—about that, Mrs. Lillington.” Mrs. Calderwood had scurried around the table to cut off my retreat to the refectory door. She laid a confidential hand on my arm, its tiny sharp nails shining like glass.

  “I instructed Mrs. Drummond to place advertisements in the Dickinson County Chronicle and whatever suitable Wichita paper she could find. She’s already receiving replies. Our intention is to bring in a young person within the next fortnight to receive a little training from you before you go. If she proves suitable during your absence, you’ll be quite free of your responsibilities and ready to assume new ones by January. We will have much to talk about when you return.”

  She patted my hand and trotted after her husband, who was, as usual, delaying the start of the day’s work by chit-chatting with faculty members who did not have a class immediately.

  I glanced at Judah, who favored me with a nod and a smile. He evidently knew the gist of what Mrs. Calderwood had said to me.

  They had been colluding, I was sure of it. They wanted to make certain I was under Judah’s eye for practically the whole of December, giving me no opportunity to turn elsewhere for advice or help. Also, I’d be back at the seminary before the appointed date for giving Judah his answer, so that the Lombardis couldn’t interfere. Judah intended to make certain of his prize.

  41

  Key

  The sickroom had a sweet, fetid smell that made some instinctive part of me shrink away in horror, even though I knew Mrs. Drummond’s ague wasn’t contagious. It was more than the normal taint of illness—the room reeked of death.

  Perspiration bedewed Mrs. Drummond’s brow, but when I touched her hand, skeletal and claw-like as it lay on the counterpane, it was clammy and cold. The skin of her face had a stretched, yellowed look, like old parchment. The faint breaths that issued from her mouth were sour, unwholesome.

  “Will she live?” I kept my voice low in case the sick woman could hear.

  “My heart tellin’ me otherwise.” Dorcas’s voice was also low. “She done starved herself to a skellington, and now the ague come for her again, she don’t have anythin’ to fight it with.”

  “It looks worse than just an ague,” I remarked. “What does the doctor say?”

  “That we wait and see.”

  Dorcas dipped a cloth into the basin of water that she kept on the floor near her chair and gently swabbed Mrs. Drummond’s forehead. The housekeeper’s eyelids flickered, and she moaned, a faint, faraway keening that faded into silence.

  Wait and see. But I couldn’t. While I’d been breakfasting with the Calderwoods, Mrs. Drummond had taken to her bed with the first chills of malarial fever. Like a fool, I’d suppressed my initial urge to tell her about my early departure and press her to deliver up the letter immediately. I’d been reluctant to disturb her on her first day of illness. She would recover, I had thought, and I’d have time to ask her before she went.

  Yet she had gotten worse instead of better, and now I might never come into possession of the only weapon I might ever have against Judah.

  I was running short of options . . . and of allies. It was not in my nature to gather a wide circle of friends around me, as I saw some people do. My attachments were few, and all the more passionate for being rare. As a result, I had kept my clients—women who might have become my friends—at arm’s length. With Reiner and Professor Wale gone, I had only the Lombardis to flee to as a possible haven from a situation that was becoming unbearable.

  But getting to the Lombardis meant bringing Judah along with me, an undertaking akin to hitching up a tiger to the cart that would carry me across the prairie. Who would stand between me and this beautiful, dangerous man?

  I had wished for a strong shield. Instead, I found a strength more akin to a root that does its work in the dark, unacknowledged until it cracks the stone.

  I visited Mrs. Drummond early in the morning, unable to sleep for worrying. I returned now to our room to find Tess mostly dressed and helping Sarah with her buttons. Tess’s soft, fine hair was in a state of flyaway disorder, and my daughter’s was worse. She had undone her braids in the night, finding them uncomfortable. Her springy curls had twisted themselves into a Gordian knot of interwoven copper.

  “You’ll never untangle her hair that way,” scolded Tess after Sarah yelped for the twentieth time. “You keep forgetting where you started, and you’re pulling much too hard.” She dampened her brush and smoothed her own hair into submission, then took Sarah’s brush away from me and began to tease her hair with short, brisk strokes.

  “What’s wrong with you, Nell?” she asked, looking sideways at me. “You’re scatterbrained. You’ve been scatterbrained for days.”

  “It’s nothing,” I replied, gazing out of the window at the scudding clouds that sailed over the prairie in sullen procession.

  Tess pursed her lips but didn’t say another word until she had untangled Sarah’s hair and watched me braid it into two tight pigtails.

  “Now, Sary, why don’t you read your book for a while?” she suggested, handing Sarah our latest purchase, a copy of The Water-Babies. Sarah could not yet read properly, but she found it amusing to pretend she could, pronouncing those words she understood and skipping over the others. “Momma and I are going to have a little talk.”

  She grabbed me by the forearm and tugged me in the direction of the door.

  “It is something,” Tess said in her version of a whisper—which was more like a loud hiss—when she had shut the door. “I know very well that you keep things from me, Eleanor Lillington, because you think you’re being nice by not worrying me, but I’m not a child to be told to go play. And I’m not a parcel to go sit in the corner till I’m called for neither. I’ll thank you to be honest with me and tell me what’s bothering you.”

  I blinked, taken aback by the sight of Tess’s jutting chin and furrowed brow as she tried her best to look forbidding.

  “I didn’t mean to keep things from you,” I said, but I knew I sounded unconvincing. Since the day I’d realized what Martin really meant to me, I had kept my most important thoughts and feelings locked inside me—and I knew I suffered as a result. Perhaps it was time to come clean.

  “Then tell.”

&nb
sp; “Not here.”

  I led the way along the corridor till we reached the linen room and fumbled in my pocket for the key that unlocked it.

  The fresh smell of starch, the underlying metallic note of the heat from the flat-iron, and the fading sweetness of old lavender greeted us as we stepped into the room. Its shaded windows cast a dim glow over the stacked ranks of immaculate linens, free of dust and insects. Another reminder of how well Mrs. Drummond had done her work. I had never particularly liked the housekeeper—after all, she had been quick to pass judgment on me. Yet now I realized I would miss her efficiency and the sense of peace and order she brought to everything she touched.

  I sank down onto the swept boards, wishing my corset didn’t prevent me from curling up into a ball of misery and hopelessness. Tess, who wore a soft corset without a single steel spring, sat too—much more comfortably. She folded her legs up under her skirt in the complicated way that Sarah often tried, unsuccessfully, to imitate.

  “I’m worried about two things,” I began. “Judah, first of all. I’m sure now that I don’t want to marry him, Tess.”

  “That’s the best news I’ve heard in a long time.” Tess’s smile was almost a gloat, but then her expression turned to puzzlement. “Why don’t you tell him, then? You haven’t told him, have you?”

  “No. For a variety of reasons, no. I want to tell him when we’re at the Lombardis’.”

  Tess made a face. “I’d rather not have to go on a long journey with him first.”

  “Neither would I.” I twisted my hands together, feeling Hiram’s ring dig into my fingers.

  “Don’t worry, Nell. I’ll be with you.” Tess leaned forward and patted my knee. “I don’t like it when gentlemen get cross, but I’ll stand beside you when you tell him you don’t like him anymore. I won’t be afraid. I’ll remember that the Lord is my strength and my shield, like the Psalms say.”