Charity pondered this.
Killian—not a man given to forbearance—had shown remarkable forbearance in this matter. Apparently he had made no move to intercept the letters though he knew their source.
Perhaps he feared to drive Clothilde too far. Perhaps, like the spider he was, he only sat and waited for Johann to die. And then there would be no one to challenge his son’s legitimacy.
Charity got up. She had made a terrible discovery and no one must know she had made it
“I will not tell her you told me,” she said sympathetically, “but I am glad at last to understand.” Her smile said, It is our secret, that you have talked too much.
Old Gerda, smoothing out the delicate coverlet, gave her a grateful look and Charity swiftly left the room, afraid to be found here talking so companionably to the old woman.
The matter concerned Pieter’s future too, and Pieter’s future might be her future.
The ringing skates from the river had ceased, the sleighs had started back upriver, and the winter cold lay around Daarkenwyck like a white blanket. Charity shivered and found a shawl to pull around her shoulders.
The world of Daarkenwyck was dark indeed.
CHAPTER 19
The extremely cold weather was winter’s last gasp, and soon signs of spring began to appear everywhere on the estate. The warm days seemed to bring out a playfulness in Pieter, and he insisted that Charity spend her days riding out with him across the damp green earth as the land around the Hudson sprang to vibrant life.
Pieter was leaving very soon. His trunks were being packed for his year in Holland. But he did not seem terribly anxious to go. Rather, he became tense and worried as the time for his departure neared, and he clung to Charity, hardly leaving her side.
It seemed to Charity that the patroon, too, was acting strangely. His eyes were more and more inscrutable as he watched her with his son.
The ice had broken up and the river was navigable once again, though the weather was often damp and foggy and the nights were still quite sharp and cool. Annjanette had apparently been a good girl, for she now sported a coral necklace and dangling coral earrings hung on golden wires from her pierced ears. Poor Clothilde had withdrawn into herself even more dramatically. She had lost weight, refused to eat and no longer read. She lay in her great bed and stared at the ceiling, taking no interest even in Pieter, so soon to leave for the Holland for which she had longed. Gerda sighed and shook her head when Charity inquired about her. Charity guessed that Johann must have died and that Clothilde was pining. Wasting away, her death was only a matter of time.
And then Annjanette, the happy mistress, would come into her own. . . . Charity watched Annjanette, who sometimes hummed as she walked about the big rooms, touching things acquisitively, waiting for Clothilde to die so they would become her things.
Did Annjanette really believe Killian would marry her? Charity wondered. It seemed far more likely that greedy Killian would marry a daughter of one of the rich river families—perhaps one of the older de Schmoot daughters, who were reputed to be very wealthy in their own right as a result of a legacy from a maiden aunt in Holland. Or perhaps he would try for the widow of Jacob van der Ruyden, whose great manor some said was now up for sale. It was not too far from Daarkenwyck—a joining of hands, a joining of fortunes. Charity thought wryly that Annjanette would have a few shocks in store for her if Clothilde died.
But mostly Charity’s attention was concentrated on Pieter.
As the day before he was to leave came, he appeared absolutely distracted. He followed Charity mournfully about, and showed no interest whatever in the papers and letters and small gifts for people overseas, which family friends were pressing him to take for them.
Charity wondered what life at Daarkenwyck would be like without Pieter. Perhaps Killian would dismiss her. He had paid her no further attention since the night he had blacked Annjanette’s eye. Perhaps he was too interested in selecting a new lady to rule the servants at Daarkenwyck when Clothilde died. At any rate, his diminished interest in her was very welcome, and left her free to think about Pieter.
The night before he was to leave they strolled about the cool spring-green lawns, getting their feet wet with the dew that sparkled on the grass, and Charity brought up the subject.
“I may be gone when you return, Pieter,” she said soberly.
“What?” he cried. “You would not do it!”
She remembered again that she had given the patroon her promise that she would tell no one she was not a cousin. It prevented her from revealing to Pieter her true position in the household, from saying “Your father will have no use for my services now, and may well dismiss me.”
She felt trapped, wanting to be truthful, hardly knowing what to say.
They had reached the deep shadow of some trees where the dew was very heavy. She shivered. “It’s cold, Pieter. I must go in. I didn’t bring my shawl with me.” He ignored that and seized her arm. “If I thought you would not be here—” he said hoarsely.
Charity saw no way out of her dilemma. “Of course, I’ll be here,” she said. “I only thought that your father....” She let the words drift off.
“What has he to do with it?” burst out Pieter.
“I live here at his sufferance,” Charity pointed out.
“But you are his cousin! He would not turn you out.”
Charity sighed. “No, I suppose not.”
Above them the moon was a pale sliver and the branches of the big trees swayed. His face shone in the darkness. She saw she had alarmed him.
“You have been cruel to me, Charity!” he accused. “You have denied me so much as a kiss!”
It was true; she felt suddenly shamed by her unrelenting attitude toward Pieter. He had poured out his love for her in a hundred ways, and she was holding out ruthlessly for the marriage vows.
“I know,” she said, and lifted her lips for his kiss.
He crushed her to him fiercely, covering her face with kisses, then prying open her lips with his tongue, probing desperately. His hands were fumbling with her bodice. She felt her senses quicken, and managed to push him away.
“No,” she said. “No, Pieter.”
“I can’t leave you,” he panted. “I won’t leave you. I won’t!” His eyes were wild.
“Your father—” she began.
“Damn my father!” he cried. “Damn him to hell!” His words came out almost with physical pain. “Oh, Charity, a year, a whole year without you—I cannot stand it.” He threw his arms about her with such violence that she could feel the breath leave her, and then his body was pressed against hers in what seemed a bitter rage.
“You must go,” she said sensibly. “It’s all arranged.”
“Then I’ll take you with me!” he cried.
“No . . . your father won’t let you do that. He wants you to complete your education, remember? So you can follow in his footsteps and manage the large estates that will one day be yours. Oh, Pieter, a year is not a lifetime, not if . . .” she almost whispered the words, a gossamer shadow in the dusk—“not if you love me.”
“I do love you!” His voice broke. “Oh, Charity, I do love you. I do. Charity, Charity, what am I to do? I am near crazy with wanting you. I cannot sleep, I cannot eat, I pound my pillow at night in anger that your head is not lying on it beside me. Charity, give me this one night—grant me that of your kindness, of your love for me. You do love me, don’t you?” he asked anxiously.
“I . . . don’t know, Pieter,” she said ruefully. “I want to love you, but ... I don’t know.”
“Then let me take you in my arms,” he cried, grief-stricken. “Let me prove to you that for me there is no other! Ah, Charity, I cannot wed you before I leave, but when I come back we will be man and wife. Can you not find it in your heart to give me this one night to remember you by? To hold in my heart on restless nights? Else I will go mad without you! You could not be so cruel as to deny me!”
His arms ti
ghtened about her as he spoke, and tears overflowed his eyes. Confusion and pity swept over her, and a kind of wonder. To remember her by . . . there was a humbleness in his tone tonight as he asked her that, a humbleness that was new to him. She felt in that moment that Pieter truly loved her.
Held prisoner there in his arms, staring into the wild hungry depths of his eyes, his tear-streaked face, she hesitated—and was lost.
“You will!” he cried in a voice of rapture. “Ah, Charity, you will!”
Even as she opened her mouth to answer, his mouth clamped hungrily down over her own, effectively shutting off all speech.
She felt him tugging her dress down, tearing it in his hurry, and she struggled against him, but he seemed to take her struggles only as an eagerness to be in his arms. She could hear his breath rasping, feel his chest heave against her in his fury at the resistance of her garments until finally he had pulled her dress off her and next her petticoats and chemise, and fell with her upon the wet spring grass.
She felt the dew chill upon her naked back, and goose flesh trembled over her skin as the grass blades wet with dew probed and fingered up between her upper legs so that she writhed there—and Pieter mistook that too for desire.
For a moment he let her go as he opened his trousers, holding her body firmly to the ground by his weight, and in that moment she cried desperately, “No, Pieter! This is not the way. We are not—”
But his anguished voice cut into hers. “Oh, you would not change your mind now? You would not do it?”
And before she could struggle away he was on her again, his mouth cutting off her outcry, his hands pinioning her shoulders to the cold wet grass, his coat with its gold buttons cutting into the soft flesh of her breasts and stomach, his boots scratching the fine soft flesh of her legs—and his throbbing masculinity finding a swift entrance between her thrashing legs, driving home without regard to pain or pleasure.
Stunned by the suddenness of his assault, with the force of his taking, she quivered and stopped struggling. Though he had taken her against her will, she felt all her nerve ends quicken and over the pulsating beat of her heart, and over the rising fire in her veins floated his words: A whole year without you—I cannot stand it. They were sweet words, they had seemed wrested from the heart of him. And her heart responded to his words as her body did to his tempestuous embrace. Her own fires—kept banked these many months—now mounted to match his own so that she clung to him, almost weeping until, with a mighty surge, the volcano of their desire was surfeited and they fell apart spent upon the grass, cold and wet with the spring dew.
Her hair was soaked, she was shivering. She made to rise, but he turned over instantly, lying on his side beside her, and with a hand upon her stomach held her down.
“Ah, let me look at you.” His voice thrilled. “You are mine! Mine at last!”
She lay back and stared at him, her eyes wide and dark as he feasted his eyes on her nakedness, her body pale and glistening with the dew in the dappled white moonlight as the branches overhead swayed.
“I am cold, Pieter,” she whispered. “Cold and wet. I must go—”
“Not yet,” he murmured sensuously. “Not yet.” And he held her fast to the cold grass, his warm hands kneading her flesh, seeking every part of her, his lips following, tracing small patterns across her stomach, across her quivering breasts, setting his teeth gently into her thigh. She pushed at him weakly.
“I cannot let you go yet,” he cried. “I must have you again!” And as she tried to edge away he rolled back upon her, lifting his body up a little so that she could still try to escape, turning this way and that beneath him, in an effort to get away from the wet, penetrating chill of the grass. But just as she would turn her body to the side so that her breasts brushed the grass blades and were wet with the dew, he would turn her over again toward him and his warm hands would fall upon them, warming them, and as her hips and thighs slid away from him over the slippery lawn, so he would turn her back toward the warmth of his own trouser legs again. At last fully aroused, he took her again, entering her this time with easy assurance, and plundered her secrets again until finally, he lay relaxed upon her cold, spent, half-crushed body, his face nestling in the bright tangled beauty of her hair, which was spread out like a golden fan upon the dew-washed grass.
Suddenly he rose, made a sweeping downward movement with his hands. Then adjusting his trousers and leaning over, he took her hands and pulled her to her feet.
“Let me look at you,” he cried, pulling her out of the dappled shadows onto the bright moonlit lawn. “Here where I can see you.”
Charity pulled back, protesting, “Please, Pieter. They can see us from the house.”
“No matter,” he said recklessly. “Let them see that you’re mine! Mine!” And spun her around, holding her hand tightly above her head, in a wild dance upon the lawn as if in some Bacchanalian revel.
Charity sneezed and stumbled. “I will catch my death of cold.” She reached down to snatch up her wet torn garments. “You, Pieter, are fully clothed. See, you have torn my dress so that I cannot wear it! You must give me your coat.”
“Ah,” he laughed exultantly, “I would rather lead you in as you are, stamped with the impress of my body, proving to the world that I have bedded you at last!”
She recoiled.
“You couldn’t want to drag your future wife naked through the front door!” she gasped.
“We could go through the back,” he said, his voice becoming sullen as if he had been stopped in the middle of some delightful game.
“And shame me before the servants?” she cried.
“The servants do not matter,” he said sulkily, but he shrugged off his coat and slipped it around her as he marched her jauntily to a side door.
She shook him off with a reproachful look and, carrying her torn dress over one arm, said anxiously, “Look inside, Pieter. If there are servants there, send them away. I must get back to my room without being seen.”
He left her shivering there, and in a moment was back to report there was no one inside, all had gone to bed. She slipped past him and hurried up to her room, he following fast on her heels. Under the pretext of retrieving his coat, he came inside and shut the door.
In silence Charity removed the coat and stood before him naked and used. Her wet hair streamed down her back and there were twigs caught up in it. Bits of grass still clung to her back and legs. She wanted nothing so much as a warm bath and to lie for hours and hours under a warm blanket on her narrow bed, oblivious to the world.
“I will dry you,” he offered gaily, and seized a towel and began to rub her body vigorously.
Stiff with cold, her strength drained. Charity suffered him to do it.
Now he had reached her buttocks with the towel and he let the towel drop and squeezed her bottom so hard that she winced as he pulled her strongly toward him.
As he did so, her soft mouth hardened and some new cold core of her being she had not known existed counseled: You have gone this far with him. Go now yet a little further and the world will be yours. Daarkenwyck will be yours.
Charity wrenched herself free and stepped back and faced him. Her topaz eyes flung him a challenge and she stood very erect and unsubmissive, her chin high.
“And will you take me with you?” she challenged.
“Yes,” he cried. “By God, if I cannot take you with me, I will not go! No man can make me!”
Charity sighed deeply. She had not meant it to come to this. A confrontation. She had hoped for some other course. But now his impetuosity had turned them down another road and he had had his way with her. He was young, excited, she did not know for sure how lasting his affection would be. But for the moment he was ablaze with desire for her. She must go with him now or he might be forever lost to her—Daarkenwyck might be forever lost to her.
She no longer protested as he tossed the blanket from her bed and pushed her down upon its soft surface. He spent the night in turbulen
t takings and leavings until with the dawn he slept.
But as Charity drifted off to exhausted slumber, something in her heart bled a little, and nameless whisperings echoed down the corridors of her mind, and those whisperings said to her, You do not love him. You have sold yourself for gold.
CHAPTER 20
When Charity woke, Pieter had left her room. His coat was gone. She stretched and smiled as she remembered the wild night just past.
Pieter was a spoiled young man who insisted on having his way. Just as he had had his way with her, so he would have his way with the heavy patroon, his father. And his listless mother, wasting away, would not deny him.
She rose, feeling tired and hard-used, but with a strange new hope in her wary heart.
She would go to Holland with Pieter, and even if she did not wed him here in America—for perhaps Killian would prevent that—they would be wed before they returned to these shores; she would see to that. She would return to the Hudson as wife to the future patroon of Daarkenwyck.
It was a golden future, and she would have it.
She lay back upon the bed, dreaming for a while. Then she got up and spent a long time mending her torn dress. It was stained by the grass and still slightly damp, but she wanted to wear it so that Pieter would see it, and seeing it remember last night.
She had thought him a boy but he had taken her with a man’s passion.
Time sped by. Pieter was probably still sleeping. No one had brought her a tray. Perhaps the servants had guessed—or seen from the attic windows. . . . She flushed. Well, it was over and done. Now she had to make the most of it.
The afternoon sun had cast its light across the lawns when Charity at last made her way down the front staircase, trailing down it elegantly, her hand lightly caressing the polished railing. A majestic stairway down which she would walk in innumerable lovely gowns to greet her guests at balls that were yet to be. Her hospitality would become a legend along the river. . . .
This Loving Torment Page 20