Forever Amber

by Kathleen Winsor

  As they walked along the wharf every eye glanced at or followed them. For her clothes and hair and her jewels glittered in the sunlight; she was beautiful and she had a look of breeding to which they were not very much accustomed. The prostitutes looked Bruce over with an interest not wholly professional.

  "Why didn't you come to see me?" she asked him in an undertone, and then crossed over the wide roped-off plank which led to one of his ships.

  Following her, he murmured, "I didn't think my company would be very welcome," and turned to talk for a moment or two to another man. Then he led her around the deck and down a flight of stairs to a small cabin. It looked comfortable, though not luxurious, and was fitted with a good-sized bunk, a writing-table and three chairs. Maps were nailed to the dark oak-panelled walls and on the floor were stacks of leather-bound books.

  Inside she turned about swiftly to face him. "I'm not going to quarrel with you, Bruce. I don't want to talk—just kiss me—"

  His arms had scarcely gone around her when there was a sharp knock. "Lord Carlton! A lady to see you, sir!"

  Amber looked up accusingly at him, and as he released her he muttered a soft curse. But before he started for the door he gestured at her, and picking up her cloak and the muff she had dropped she hurried through the door he had indicated into the adjoining cabin. And then as Bruce opened the other door, she heard a pair of high heels coming down the stairway and Jemima Dangerfield's lilting young voice.

  "Lord Carlton! Thank Heaven I found you! I've got a message from my father for you—"

  Amber heard Jemima's feet walk into the cabin and the door swing shut. She stood close behind her own door, her ear against the wooden panels and her heart hammering violently as she listened. Her excitement was caused as much, just now, by fear of being caught as by jealousy.

  "Oh, Bruce! I found out you're going tomorrow! I had to come!"

  "You shouldn't have, Jemima. Someone might see you. And I'm so busy I haven't an extra moment. I came down here to get some papers—here they are. Come, and I'll walk back to your coach with you."

  "Oh, but Bruce! You're going away tomorrow! I've got to see you again! I can meet you anywhere—I'll be at the Crown tonight at eight. In our same room."

  "Forgive me, Jemima. I can't come. I swear I'm too busy— I've got to go to Whitehall, and we'll sail before sunup."

  "Then now! Oh, Bruce, please! Just this once more—"

  "Hush, Jemima! Sam and Robert will be here at any moment. You don't want them to find you here alone with me." There was a pause, during which she heard him turn and walk to the door and open it, and then he said: "Oh, I'm sorry. I didn't see you drop your glove." Jemima did not answer and they walked out.

  Amber waited until she was sure that they were gone and then she went back into his cabin again.

  Apprehension for her own safety, now that it was secured, dissolved instantly into a jealous fury against both Jemima and Bruce. So he had been making love to her! The dirty varlet! And the puling little milk-sop, Jemima! She'll smoke for this!

  Bruce returned to find her sitting on the writing-table, her feet braced against the bunk and both hands on her hips. She looked at him as though expecting him to hang his head and blush.

  "Well!" she said.

  He gave a shrug, closing the door.

  "So that's what you've been about this past week!" Suddenly she got up, walked across the room and turned her back on him. "So you didn't intend to seduce her!"

  "I didn't."

  She swung around. "You didn't! She just said—"

  "I didn't intend to. Now look here, Amber. I haven't time for a quarrel. A fortnight or so ago Jemima came one morning to Almsbury House and sent up your name. You may think I should have indignantly ordered her out of my bedroom, but I didn't. The poor child was unhappy and disappointed over being made to marry Joseph Cuttle and she thinks, at least, that she's in love with me. That's all there is to it."

  "Then what about the Crown—and our same room?" The last three words mocked Jemima's voice as she had said them.

  "We met there three or four times afterwards. If you want to know anything else about it, ask Jemima. I haven't the time. Come on—I'm going back upon deck."

  As he turned she ran forward and grabbed his arms. "Bruce! Please, darling—Don't go till we've said goodbye—"

  Half an hour later they returned to her coach and he handed her in. "When will you come back to London again?" she asked.

  "I don't know. It'll be several months anyway. I'll see you when I do."

  "I'll be waiting for you, Bruce. And, oh, darling, be careful! Don't get hurt. And think of me sometimes—"

  "I will."

  He stepped back, swinging the door closed, and made a signal to the coachman to start. The coach began to move and he smiled back at her as she stuck her head out the opened window.

  "Sink a thousand Dutchmen!" she called.

  He laughed. "I'll try!" He gave her a wave and turned to go back onto the ship. The coach moved on and the crowds closed between them; he disappeared from her sight.

  Amber entered her apartments, still too full of the warm luxuriant afterglow of Brace's love-making to have begun thinking of Jemima again. It was an unpleasant shock to find the girl there, waiting for her.

  Jemima was tense and excited. "May I see you alone, Madame?"

  Amber felt very superior; triumphant. "Why, of course, Jemima."

  Nan herded the other servants out of the room, all but Tansy who stayed where he was, sitting cross-legged on the floor absorbed in working a Chinese puzzle which Samuel had brought him more than a week ago. A servant took Amber's muff and fan and gloves, one of which Amber had lost. She was careless with her belongings, they were so easily replaced; and if she lost something it gave her an excuse to buy another.

  Amber turned and faced her step-daughter. "Now," she said casually, raising her hands to her hair. "What d'you want?"

  The two women, both of them beautiful and expensively dressed, with well-bred features, presented a strange contrast. For one was obviously unsophisticated and essentially innocent, while the other was just as obviously the reverse. But it was not the way she looked, nor was it anything in her manner. It was rather a certain indefinable aura which hung about her, like a wickedly fascinating perfume, redolent of passion and recklessness and a greed for living.

  Jemima was too overwrought, too disappointed and unhappy and angry to try to be subtle. "Where've you been!" It was no question, but an accusation.

  Amber gave her eyebrows a lift, and twisted around to straighten the seams in her stockings. "That's none of your business."

  "Well, whether it's any of my business or not, I know! Look at this—it's yours, isn't it!" She held out a glove.

  Amber glanced at it and then her eyes narrowed. She snatched it away. "Where'd you get that!"

  "You know where I got it! It was lying on the floor in the master-cabin of the Dragon!"

  "Well, what if it was? I hope I can visit a man who's gone to sea to fight the Dutch!"

  "Visit him! Don't try to put that upon me! I know what kind of visiting you do! I know what you are! You're a harlot—! You've cuckolded my father!"

  Amber stood and stared at Jemima and her flesh began to crawl with loathing and hatred. "You whining Utile bitch," she said slowly. "You're jealous, aren't you? You're jealous because I got what you wanted." She began to mimic her, repeating exactly the words and tone Jemima had used scarcely an hour before, but giving to them a savage twist that mocked and ridiculed. "Then now! Oh, Bruce, please! Just this once more—" She laughed, enjoying the horror and humiliation that came onto Jemima's face.

  "Oh," said Jemima softly. "I never knew what you were like before—"

  "Well, now you do but it won't do you any good." Amber was brisk and confident, thinking that she would settle Jemima's business for her now, once and forever. "Because if you're thinking to tell your father what you know about me, just stop long enough to consider w
hat he'd say if he knew that his daughter had been sneaking out of the house to meet a man at public taverns! He'd be stark raving mad!"

  "How do you know that!"

  "Lord Carlton told me."

  "You couldn't prove it—"

  "Oh, couldn't I? I could call in a midwife and have you examined, remember!"

  Amber had been about to order Jemima triumphantly from the room, when her next words came with the unexpected shock of a mid-summer thunderclap. "Call in anyone you like! I don't care what you do! But I can tell you this much—either you make Father stop my wedding to Joseph Cuttle or I'll tell him about you and Lord Carlton!"

  "You wouldn't dare! Why it—it might kill him!"

  "It might kill him! Much you'd care! That's what you want and you know it! Oh, the rest of them were right about you all along! What a fool I was not to see it! But I know what you are now—you're nothing but a whore."

  "And so are you. The only difference between us is that I got what I went for—and you didn't."

  Jemima gasped and the next instant lashed out with the palm of her right hand and smacked Amber on the cheek. So swiftly that it seemed to be part of the same movement Amber returned the slap, and with her other hand grabbed a fistful of hair and gave a jerk that snapped Jemima's head back like a chicken's. Jemima screamed in sudden fright and viciously Amber slapped her again. Her self-control had slipped away and she was not even wholly conscious of what she was doing. Jemima began to struggle to free herself, now genuinely terrified and screeching for help. The sight of her scared eyes and the sound of her cries infuriated Amber; she had a sudden savage determination to kill her. It was Nan, who rushed into the room and threw herself between them, who saved Jemima from a serious mauling.

  "Mam!" she was shouting. "Mam! For God's sake! Are you mad!"

  Amber's hands dropped to her sides and she gave an angry shake of her head to toss the hair back from her face. "Get out of here!" she cried. "Get out and don't trouble me again, d'ye hear?" the last words were a hysterical shriek, but Jemima had already fled, sobbing.

  It was not easy to convince Samuel that Jemima's wedding must be postponed. But she did, at last, succeed in making him agree to put it off for a few more weeks to let the poor child recover from her grief at Lord Carlton's departure. Amber, nervous and worried and lonely for Bruce, was made even more morose and irritable by pregnancy. But she had to conceal her ill-humour from everyone but Nan, who listened patiently and with sympathetic concern to her mistress's perpetual grumbling and sighing.

  "I'm so damned sick and tired of being virtuous," she said wearily one day as she came in from having paid several afternoon calls.

  She spent a great deal of time visiting the wives and daughters of Samuel's friends, sitting about and discussing babies and servants and sickness with them until she wanted to yell. She worked hard at being a respectable woman. Now all at once she arranged her mouth into a smug smile and began to mimic the elderly aunt upon whom she had just called. No one—not even the immediate family—had yet been told that she was pregnant, though Samuel knew it and was almost absurdly delighted.

  "My dear, I do hope you'll soon prove with child. Believe me, no woman can know what it is to be truly happy until she holds her first little one in her arms and feels its tiny mouth at her breast." Amber screwed up her face and gave a noisy rattle with her tongue: "I'll be damned if I can see where the pleasure is to throw-up every morning and look like a stuffed pig and blow and puff like an old nag going up Snow Hill!" She slammed her fan onto the floor. "Crimini! I'm sick of this business!"

  To make matters worse, when Bruce had been gone four weeks Samuel firmly announced that the wedding-date was definitely set for October 15th. Nothing at all, he assured her, would induce him to change his mind again. The Cuttles were growing impatient, people were beginning to wonder at the delay, and it was high time Jemima stop her foolishness and behaved like a grown woman. Amber was frantic with worry and though she mulled over her problem most of the day and half the night she could discover no solution. Jemima warned her again that if she did not do something to stop it she would tell her father, even though he threw both of them into the streets.

  "Oh, Lord, Nan! After everything I've been through to get that money I'm going to lose it! I'll never get a shilling! Oh, I always knew something would happen! I knew I'd never really be that rich!"

  "Something 'll save you, mam," insisted Nan cheerfully. "I know it will. Your stars are lucky."

  "Something?" demanded Amber, her voice sliding up an octave. "But what? And when?"

  By the tenth Amber was half-wild with worry and remorse. She wished that she had never seen Bruce Carlton. She wished that she was back home in Marygreen and married to Jack Clarke or Bob Starling. She paced the floor and beat her hands together and bit her knuckles.

  Oh, my God, my God, my God, what am I to do!

  Thus she was one morning, still in her dressing-gown and walking distractedly about the bedroom, when Nan came rushing in. Her cheeks were pink and her blue eyes sparkled triumphantly. "Mam! What d'ye think? I just saw one of Mrs. Jemima's women and she told me Mrs. Jemima's been in a green-sickness all this past fortnight—but no one's supposed to know it!"

  Amber stared at her. "Why, Nan!" she said softly.

  And then all at once she ran out of the bedroom, down the long hallway toward the opposite wing of the house, and into Jemima's chamber. She found it crowded with dressmakers, maids, several mercers and other tradesmen. Amber had told her that if she would go ahead and pretend she was going to be married, she would somehow find another excuse at the last moment—if she had to throw herself out the window. And Jemima, not because she wished to oblige her step-mother, but because she really was confused and helpless, had done so.

  There were gowns heaped on every chair and stool, lengths of brocade and satin and sheer tiffany ran like rivers over the floor, fur-skins lay in soft shining piles. Jemima stood in the midst of the crowded, noisy room, her back turned to the door, having her wedding-gown fitted; it was made of the gold cloth Lord Carlton had given her.

  Amber came in breezily. "Oh, Jemima!" she cried. "Such a marvellous gown! How I envy you—getting married in that!"

  Jemima gave her a sullen, warning glance from over her shoulder. But Amber saw to her satisfaction that the girl was pale and seemed tired.

  "Are you almost done now?"

  Jemima spoke wearily to two of the dressmakers who were kneeling about her on the floor, pins in their mouths, arranging each smallest fold and crease with the most meticulous care.

  "In a moment, madame. Can't you bear it just a little longer?"

  Jemima sighed. "Very well. But hurry—please."

  Amber went to stand before Jemima, her head cocked to one side as she examined the dress, and her eyes ran tauntingly up and down the girl's figure. She saw Jemima begin to fidget nervously, a faint shine of sweat came to her forehead; and then all at once her arms dropped and she sank to the floor, her head falling back, her eyes rolling. The dressmakers and maids gave excited squeaks and the men stepped aside in alarm.

  Amber took charge. "Pick her up and lay her on the bed. Carter, bring some cold water. You—run for some brandy."

  With the help of two of the maids she got Jemima out of her gown, took the pillow from under her head and began to unlace her busk. When Carter brought the cold water she sent them all out of the room—though Carter was obviously reluctant to leave Jemima in the care of her step-mother—and wrung out a cloth to lay on Jemima's forehead.

  It was not more than a minute before Jemima regained consciousness and looked up at Amber, who leaned above her. "What did I do?" she asked softly, her eyes going uncertainly about the empty room.

  "You fainted. Take a sip of this brandy and you'll feel better." Amber put her hand behind Jemima's head and tipped it forward. Both of them were silent for a moment, and Jemima made a face as she tasted the brandy.

  "The dizzy feeling's gone," she said at las
t. "You can call the others back in now." She started to sit up.

  "Oh, no, Jemima. Not yet. I want to talk to you first."

  Jemima glanced at her swiftly, her eyes guarded. "What about?"

  "You know what about. There's no use trying to pretend. You're pregnant—aren't you?"

  "No! Of course I'm not! I can't be! It's just that— Well, I've had the vapours, that's all."

  "If you thought it was only the vapours why didn't you tell anyone? Don't try to fool me, Jemima. Tell me the truth and maybe I can help you."

  "Help me? How could you help me?"

  "How long has it been since your last flux?"

  "Why—almost two months. But that doesn't mean anything! Oh, I know I'm not pregnant! I can't be! I'd die if that happened!"

  "Don't be a fool, Jemima! What the devil did you think when you laid with him? That you had a charm of some kind— it couldn't happen to you? Well, it has, and the sooner you admit it the better for you."

  Suddenly Jemima began to cry, scared and distracted now that she was finally forced to confront the fact from which she had been fleeing for weeks. "I don't believe you! I'll be well again in a few days, I know I will! You're just trying to scare me, that's all! Oh—go away and leave me alone!"

  Amber gave her an angry shake. "Jemima, stop it! Most likely some of the servants are listening! D'you want everyone to know what's happened? If you'll keep your mouth shut and be sensible you can save yourself and your family too. Don't forget what a disgrace this will be for them if it's ever found out—"

  "Oh, that's what I'm afraid of! They'll hate me! They'll— Oh—I wish I were dead!"

  "Stop talking like an idiot! If you marry Joseph Cuttle on the 15th—"

  Jemima snapped out of her hysteria as if she had been dashed with cold water. "Marry Joseph Cuttle! Why, I won't marry Joseph Cuttle and you know it! I wouldn't marry him for—"