Forever Amber

by Kathleen Winsor

  Radclyffe smiled at her puzzled expression. "As you can see —it isn't a new gown. But it is still beautiful, and I shall be grateful if you will wear it."

  She reached out to take it. "I'm glad to, sir."

  Later, she and Nan examined it carefully, speculating. "It must be two-score years old, or more," said Nan. "I wonder who wore it last?"

  Amber shrugged. "His first wife, maybe. Or an old sweetheart. Someday I'll ask him."

  To her surprise she found when she put it on that it fitted her very well, almost as if it had been made for her.

  Chapter Forty

  "Amber, Countess of Radclyffe," she said slowly, watching herself in a mirror, whereupon she wrinkled up her nose, snapped her fingers and turned away. "Much good it does me!"

  They had been married just one week, but so far her life was no more exciting than it had been when she was plain Mrs. Dangerfield—certainly far less so than when she was Madame St. Clare of His Majesty's Theatre. The weather was so cold that it was unpleasant to go out. The plague deaths for the past week had been almost a hundred, and neither King nor Court had yet returned to Whitehall. She stayed at home, scarcely left their suite of rooms—for the rest of the house continued in its dirt and gloom—and spent her time feeling bored and resentful. Was this what she had traded her sixty-six thousand pounds for! It seemed a bad bargain—dullness and a man she despised.

  For now that she was his wife Radclyffe was a greater enigma than ever.

  She saw him but little for he had a multitude of interests which he did not wish to share with her, nor she with him. Several hours of almost every day he spent in the laboratory which opened out of their bedroom, and for which new equipment was constantly arriving. When he was not there he was in the library or in the offices on the lower floor, reading, writing, going over his bills, and making plans for the remodelling and furnishing of the house. Though this was to be done, obviously, at Amber's expense, he never consulted her wishes in the matter or even told her what plans he had made.

  They met, usually just twice a day—at dinner, and in bed. Conversation at dinner was polite and arid, carried on chiefly for the benefit of the servants, but in bed they did not talk at all. The Earl could not, in any real sense, make love to her, for he was impotent and apparently had been for some time. More than that, he disliked her, frankly and contemptuously—even while she roused in him conflicting emotions of desire and some wild yearning toward the past which he could never explain. Yet he longed violently for complete physical possession —a longing at which he caught night after night, but never grasped, and it drove him down a hundred strange pathways of lust and helpless rage.

  From the first morning they were enemies, but it was not until several days had gone by that mutual antipathy flared into open conflict. It was over a question of money.

  He presented to her a neatly-written note addressed to Shadrac Newbold: "Request to pay to Edmund Mortimer, Earl of Radclyffe, or bearer, the sum of eighteen thousand pound," and asked her to sign it, for the money was still in her name, though he possessed the marriage-contract which put control of her entire fortune, except for ten thousand pounds, into his hands.

  They were standing beside a small writing-table. As he gave her the paper he took a quill, dipped it in the ink-well and extended it to her. She glanced first at the note and then, with a little gasp of amazement, raised her head to look at him.

  "Eighteen thousand pounds!" she cried angrily. "My portion won't last long at this rate!"

  "I beg your pardon, madame, but I believe that I am as well aware as you of the evanescent quality of money, and I have no more wish to dissipate your inheritance than you have to see me do so. This eighteen thousand pound is to pay my debts which, as I told you, have been accumulating for twenty-five years."

  He spoke with the air of one who makes a a reasonable explanation of a difficult problem to a child who is not very clever, and Amber gave him a furious glare. For a moment longer she hesitated, her mind stabbing here and there for a way out. But at last she snatched away the pen, thrust it into the ink-well and with a few swift strokes scrawled her name across the sheet, making specks of ink fly as she did so. Then she threw down the pen, left him and walked to the window where she stood staring down into the alley below—scarcely seeing two women fish-vendors who were bellowing curses and slapping at each other with huge flounders.

  In a few moments she heard the door close behind him, Suddenly she whirled, grabbed up a small Chinese vase and threw it violently across the room. "Lightning blast him!" she cried. "Stinking old devil!"

  Nan rushed forward as though she would rescue the pieces. "Oh, Lord, mam! Your Ladyship!" she corrected. "He'll be stark staring mad when he finds what you've done! He was mighty fond of that vase!"

  "Yes! Well, I was mighty fond of that eighteen thousand pound, too! The varlet! I wish it had been his head! Lord! What a miserable wretch is a husband!" Impatiently she glanced around, looking for some diversion. "Where's Tansy?"

  "His Lordship told me not to allow 'im in the room when you're in your undress."

  "Oh, he did, did he? We'll see about that!" She rushed across the room and flung open the door, shouting. "Tansy! Tansy, where are you?"

  For a moment she got no answer. Then, from behind a massive carved chest appeared his turban and shortly the little fellow's black and shining face. He blinked his eyes sleepily, and as he opened his mouth to yawn half his face seemed to disappear. "Yes'm?" he drawled.

  "What the devil are you doing back there?"

  "Sleepin', mam."

  "What's the matter with your own cushion in here?"

  "I ain' allowed no more in there, Mis' Amber."

  "Who said so!"

  "His Lordship done say so, mam."

  "Well, his Lordship doesn't know what he's talking about! You come in here, and from now on do as I say—not as he says! D'ye hear?"

  "Yes'm."

  It was just after noon when Radclyffe returned, entering the room with his usual quietness, to find Amber sitting cross-legged on the floor playing at "in and in" with Tansy and Nan Britton. There were piles of coins before each of them and the women were laughing delightedly over Tansy's droll antics. Amber saw the Earl come in but ignored him, until he was standing directly beside her. Then Tansy looked slowly around, his black eyes rolling in their sockets, and Nan became apprehensively still. Amber gave him a careless glance, shaking the dice back and forth in her hand. Though it made her angry, her heart was beating a little harder—but she had told Nan he might as well find out once and for all that she was not to be governed.

  "Well, m'lord? I hope your creditors are happy now."

  "Truly, madame," said Radclyffe slowly, "you surprise me."

  "Do I?" She rolled the four dice out onto the floor, watching the numbers as they turned up.

  "Are you naïve—or are you wanton?"

  Amber gave him a swift glance and heaved a deep bored sigh, brushed the dice aside and got to her feet, reaching down as she did so to take Tansy's wrist and lift him too. Suddenly there was a sharp stinging blow on the back of her hand that made the nerves tingle. Tansy gave a scared shriek, grabbing at her skirts for protection.

  "Take your hands off that creature, madame!" Radclyffe's voice was even and cold, but his eyes glittered savagely. "Get out of this room!" He spoke to Tansy, who ran, not waiting to be told twice.

  Radclyffe looked at Nan, who was staying close to Amber. "I told you, Britton, that that little beast was not to be in this room when her Ladyship was undressed. What have you—"

  "It's not her fault!" snapped Amber. "She told me! I brought him in myself!"

  "Why?"

  "Why not? He's been with me two and a half years—he comes and goes in my apartments as he likes!"

  "Perhaps he did. But he shall do so no longer. You are now my wife, madame, and if you have no sense of decency yourself I shall undertake the management of your conscience myself."

  Furious, det
ermined to hurt him with the one weapon she could depend upon, she said now, softly but with an unmistakable sneer: "Sure, my lord, you don't expect to be cuckolded by a mere child?"

  The whites of Radclyffe's eyes turned red, and the purple veins of his forehead began to beat. Amber had an instant of real terror, for there was murderous rage in his face—but to her relief he seemed swiftly to control himself. He flicked an imaginary speck of dust from his immaculate lace cravat.

  "Madame, I cannot imagine what sort of a man your first husband must have been. I assure you that an Italian woman who spoke to her husband as you have just spoken to me would have the gravest cause to repent of her impertinence."

  "Well, I'm not an Italian woman and this isn't Italy—it's England!"

  "Where husbands, you think, have no rights." He turned away. "Tomorrow that black monkey will be gone."

  Suddenly Amber regretted her insolence and bluster. For she realized that he was neither to be bullied like Black Jack Mallard or Luke Channell—nor wheedled like Rex Morgan or Samuel Dangerfield. He did not love her and he had no awe of her. And though it was fashionable to scorn husbands, she was quite aware that a wife, under the penal laws, was her husband's property and chattel. He could use her at his will, or even murder her—particularly since he was rich and titled.

  She changed her tone. "You won't hurt him?"

  "I'm going to get rid of him, madame. I refuse to have him in my house any longer."

  "But you won't hurt him, will you? Why, he's harmless and helpless as a puppy. It wasn't his fault he was in here! Oh, please let me send him to Almsbury! He'll take care of him. Please, your Lordship!" She hated begging him and hated him more for making her beg, but she was fond of Tansy and could not bear to think of his being hurt.

  There was something on his face now almost like secret amusement, and his next words were her return for the cut she had given him. "It scarcely seems possible," he said slowly, "a woman could have so much fondness for a little black ape unless she had some use for him."

  Amber shut her teeth and refused to be goaded. For a long moment they faced each other. At last she repeated: "Will you please send him to Almsbury's?"

  He smiled faintly, pleased to have her in this humiliating predicament. "Very well. I'll send him tomorrow." The favour, though granted, was like a slap.

  Amber's eyes lowered.

  "Thank you, sir."

  Someday, she was thinking, I'll slit your gullet, you damned old cannibal.

  On the 1st of February Charles returned to Whitehall. There were deep snows on the ground, the church bells pealed out merrily, and at night great bonfires lighted the black winter sky, welcoming the King home. Her majesty, however, and all the ladies had remained at Hampton Court. Castlemaine had recently given birth to another son; the Queen had miscarried again. And York was not speaking to his Duchess because he thought—or pretended to think—that she had been having an affair with handsome Henry Sidney.

  Radclyffe went to wait upon the King, but Amber could not go to Court until the women returned, when she might be presented at a ball or some other formal occasion. However, having once paid his respects, Radclyffe did not go often to Whitehall. He was not the sort of man King Charles would take for a confidant and his religion barred him from ever holding an office. Furthermore, he had been too long away from Court. A new generation was setting the pace, and it was not the pace at which his own had moved. There was a new way of living, which he considered to be shallow, frivolous, lacking in grace or purpose. Most of the men he judged either knaves or fools or both and the women he thought a pack of empty-headed sluts. He included his wife in this category.

  To Amber it seemed that time passed more slowly than ever before. She spent hours with Susanna, helping her learn to walk, building block castles and playing with her, singing her the dozens of nursery rhymes she remembered from her childhood. She adored her—but she could not build a whole life around her. She longed for that great exciting world to which she had bought and paid her admission and which she might now enter proudly by the front door, not sneak into like a culprit through some back passageway. She was glad that Radclyffe was not interested in the gay life at the Palace, for that would leave her all the more free to enjoy it herself.

  She wanted nothing so much as to get away from him. She felt as though he was casting some evil spell over her, for though she did not actually see him often he seemed to hang forever at her shoulder, to lurk in her mind—sombre and dreaded. Alone in the house as she was and with few diversions, everything that was said or done by either of them assumed a magnified importance. She mulled over each word spoken, each glance exchanged, every action, worrying it like a dog with a bone.

  Once, out of boredom, she ventured into his laboratory.

  She tried the door, found it open, and went in quietly, so as not to disturb him. Great stacks of books and manuscripts, recently sent down from Lime Park, were piled on the floor. There were several skulls, hundreds of jars and bottles, oil-lamps, pottery vessels of every shape and size—all the paraphernalia of alchemy. He was engaged, she knew, in the "Great Work"—a tedious, complicated process of seven years which had as its goal the discovery of the Philosopher's Stone —a search that was occupying some of the best minds of the age.

  As she entered he stood before a table, his back to her, carefully measuring a yellow powder. She said nothing but walked toward him, her eyes going curiously over the loaded shelves and tables. All at once he gave a start and the bottle dropped from his hands.

  Amber jumped backward to avoid spotting her gown. "Oh, I'm sorry."

  "What are you doing in here!"

  Her anger flared quickly. "I just came in to look! Is there any harm in that?"

  He relaxed, smoothing the scowl from his face. "Madame, there are several places where women do not belong—under any circumstances at all. A laboratory is one of them. Pray don't interrupt me again. I've spent too many years and too much money on this project to have it ruined now by a woman's blundering."

  After alchemy his greatest interest was his library, where he spent many hours of each day. For most of his life he had been collecting rare books and manuscripts, which he kept all in precise order, listing each one carefully and with a full account of everything that pertained to it. But his interest in books was more than mere pleasure in possession, in the look and feel of fine leather and old paper. He read them as well. There were Greek plays; Cicero's letters, and the meditations of Marcus Aurelius; Plutarch and Dante; Spanish plays; French philosophers and scientists—all in their original languages.

  He did not forbid Amber the library, but it was not until they had been married for several weeks that she went into it. She had now become so desperate for entertainment that she was finally willing to read a book. But she had not realized that he was there and when she saw him, sitting beside the fireplace with a pen in his hand and a great volume lying open on the writing-table, she hesitated a moment, then started out again. He glanced up, saw her, and to her surprise got politely to his feet, smiling.

  "Pray come in, madame. I see no reason why a woman may not enter a library—even though she isn't likely to find much in it to her taste. Or are you that freak of man and nature—a learned female?"

  His mouth, as he spoke the last sentence, turned ironically down. In common with most men—no matter what their own intellectual interests and acquirements might be—he considered education for women absurd and even amusing. Amber ignored the jibe; it was not a subject on which she could be easily offended.

  "I thought I might find something to pass the time with. Have you got any plays written in English?"

  "Several. What do you prefer—-Ben Jonson, Marlowe, Beaumont and Fletcher, Shakespeare?"

  "It doesn't matter. I've acted 'em all." She knew that he did not like any reference to her acting and mentioned it frequently to annoy him. So far he had refused the bait.

  But now he looked at her with obvious displeasure. Madam
e, I had hoped your own sense of shame would prevent you from making any further reference to so unfortunate an episode in your life. Pray, let me hear no more about it."

  "Why not? I'm not ashamed of it!"

  "I am."

  "It didn't keep you from marrying me!"

  From across the dozen or so feet that separated them they eyed each other. Amber had long felt sure that if once she could break through his coldness and composure she would have him at her mercy. If I ever hit him, she had told herself a dozen times, I'd never be afraid of him again. But she could not quite bring herself to do it. She knew well enough that he had a strong streak of cruelty, a malevolent savagery—highly refined, as were all his vices. But she had not found any restraining rein of conscience or compassion. Therefore she hesitated out of fear, and hated herself for the cowardice.

  "No," he agreed at last. "It didn't keep me from marrying you—for you had other attractions which I found it impossible to resist."

  "Yes!" snapped Amber. "Sixty-six thousand of 'em!"

  Radclyffe smiled. "How perceptive," he said, "for a woman!"

  For several seconds she glared at him, longing violently to smash her fist into his face. She had the feeling that it would crumble, like a mummy's, beneath any hard and sudden blow, and she could picture his expression of horror as his face disintegrated. Suddenly she turned toward the book-shelves.

  "Well, where are they! The plays!"

  "On this shelf, madame. Take whatever you want."

  She picked out three or four at random, hastily, for she was anxious to get away from him. "Thank you, sir," she said without looking at him, and started out Just as she reached the door she heard his voice again.