“Give me your letter,” I said quietly.
He pulled it out of his pocket and handed it to me.
“I know I can depend on you,” he said.
“I don’t know how you know, but you can. I’ll see that she gets it. I must get back to the house now.”
Norman seized my hands and squeezed them tightly. Then he left the gazebo and disappeared into the woods. As I hurried back to the house to change for dinner, I was filled with admiration for this handsome young man who loved so fiercely, and I was eager to give Meg his letter.
The meal seemed interminable. Helmut talked about the papers that had been delivered to Page that afternoon. As he told us that the man would have to pay off the loan in two weeks’ time or else lose his plantation, he chuckled softly, eyes dark with amusement.
“I’d like to go over one or two more sketches with you tonight, Meg,” I remarked casually as the three of us left the dining room.
“I’m very tired,” she replied.
“I wish you’d just let me show them to you. I’d like very much to get them off to Lucile on tomorrow afternoon’s boat.”
“Go ahead,” Helmut told her. “I need to go over some papers in my office, anyway, and the sooner you get some decent clothes, the better.”
Meg followed me upstairs to my sitting room. Closing the door firmly behind us, I was both nervous and excited. It must have shown, for Meg gave me a puzzled look.
“Is something wrong?”
“I saw James Norman tonight, Meg.”
The girl looked stunned. For a moment I thought she was actually going to faint. I took hold of her arms, guided her over to the sofa, and eased her down onto it. She looked up at me in disbelief, and then her eyes grew wide with fear.
“It—it’s a trick. Helmut—”
“Helmut knows nothing about it.”
“James … is in Natchez?”
“You didn’t know? I thought—I assumed you’d exchanged letters while you were in school.”
She shook her head. “Helmut made arrangements to have all my letters read by the head of the school. I never received any that weren’t from him. I—I wanted to write to James, but I didn’t know where—”
She cut herself short. Her hands were trembling. She clasped them together in her lap.
“It’s been four years,” she said, and her voice was barely a whisper. “He promised he would wait. He said nothing would ever change the way he felt … You saw him?”
“He was in the gazebo, hoping you’d come out for a stroll. He’s been there every night for the past two weeks.” I took the letter out and handed it to her. “He asked me to give you this.”
Meg stared at the envelope for a long time, and I could tell that she was trying to control her emotions. The fear was gone now, and the shock finally passed. She managed to compose herself, and when she stood up, her expression was calm, yet there was a dreadful resignation in her eyes. She slipped the letter into the pocket of her skirt.
“He shouldn’t have come,” she said. She might have been speaking to herself. “It’s hopeless. He knows that.”
“Hopeless? But … he loves you, and you love him.”
Meg looked at me as though she’d been unaware of my presence.
“You don’t understand,” she said.
“Meg—”
“Don’t ask questions, Marietta. Please don’t. I—I must get back to my room. I must think.” She paused, and the fear flickered in her eyes again. “You—you won’t tell Helmut about this?”
“Of course not.”
She left then, and I had a very restless night, thinking about her curious reactions, wondering what they meant, wondering what the letter said. She was no longer sixteen years old. Helmut couldn’t keep them apart now, not if she really wanted to marry Norman. Or could he? What was it I didn’t understand? It was tantalizing, and I was consumed with curiosity.
Meg was cool and reserved the next day, refusing to mention the letter, silently defying me to bring it up. She spent most of the day in the library, and at dinner that night she was decidedly nervous, merely picking at her food. Frowning, Helmut asked her if something was bothering her. She didn’t reply, and immediately after dinner she went upstairs to her room. Helmut was displeased, and he looked at me as though I were responsible, all his old antagonism returning.
“What’s going on?” he snapped.
“I wouldn’t know.”
“She’s got something on her mind.”
Refusing to spar with him, I went upstairs myself. I sat down to finish the book I had started the day before. It was almost one o’clock in the morning when I finally turned the last page, but I knew I wouldn’t be able to get to sleep for some time yet. Since I hadn’t undressed, I decided to go down to the library and select another book. Placing a candle in a polished copper holder, I lighted it and stepped into the dark hallway.
It took me fifteen minutes to select the right book. As I started back up the staircase, I thought I heard stealthy footsteps moving down the hall above. The candle flickered out, intensifying the darkness beyond. Reaching the top of the stairs, I paused and peered down the hall just to reassure myself. My heart seemed to stop beating, and I almost dropped the candlestick. Faint rays of moonlight seeped through the window at the end of the hall. I saw a man standing in the shadows.
I was paralyzed with fright. I tried to call out, but my throat was constricted and no sound would come. The man stood very still, a dark form barely visible. I realized that he was standing directly in front of the door to Meg’s bedroom. As I watched, he opened the door and slipped quickly inside. Fear gave way to amazement. I found it hard to believe that either of them would take such a risk. She must have left the back door unlocked for him; he must have slipped into the house while I was in the library. I stood there for several minutes, overwhelmed by the boldness of it all, and then I returned to my room, still a bit shaken. I would keep their secret, but God only knew what would happen if Helmut found out.
XXVII
The letter arrived the following afternoon. Soiled, crumpled, the ink faded, it had come all the way from Wales. I found it miraculous that it had reached me at all, addressed as it was simply to “Marietta Danver, Natchez.” It had been written months before, and I wondered how many hands it had passed through before it had finally reached mine. The ship’s captain who had brought it to New Orleans had entrusted it to another captain who was departing for Natchez, and he had given it to a man who, fortunately, remembered that Marietta Danver had become the wife of Helmut Schnieder.
I was greatly relieved that Helmut wasn’t in when the man brought the battered, water-stained missive to Roseclay. There would have been far too many questions. I took the letter into the small drawing room downstairs and, sitting down on the sofa, opened it with trembling fingers. Written in a bold but childish hand and full of dreadful errors in grammar and spelling, it was charged with vitality and aglow with Angie’s personality.
The village, she informed me, was bleak, bleak, bleak, all brown and gray and black. Kyle’s relatives were bleak, too, so grim and taciturn they looked as though they spent most of their time staring into open graves. Nevertheless, she was determined to cope, and she had absolutely transformed the dank, depressing cottage they had moved into. She had had the place completely whitewashed, had put up red curtains, hung polished copper pots over the fireplace. She had waxed the dingy hardwood floors until they gleamed like dark gold. She had become quite domestic and was even learning to cook.
Instead of going into competition with the owner of the solitary pub in the village, Kyle had simply bought him out, and Angie had been aghast when she saw the place. It was so dark you could grow mushrooms, and the smell was not to be believed. It had taken a solid month to clean it up, paint it, make it sparkle. They had enlarged the fireplace and put in new windows and a long brass rail for the bar. She had outraged Kyle’s relatives by insisting on working the taps herself, had outraged
them further by wearing her fancy dresses. Someone had to make the place lively, she insisted, for Kyle was still silent and stern and rarely cracked a smile.
Be that as it may, he was ever so generous, amazingly considerate and, she confessed, absolutely incredible in bed. Wales might be a desolate place filled with windswept moors and driving rain, but she had never even dreamed she could be so happy. She hoped that I would find such happiness myself, if I hadn’t already. She asked about the shop, begged me to write and, in closing, said she thought I might like to see the clipping she was enclosing. She had come across it in a London newspaper.
I retrieved the envelope and shook it. The yellow clipping fluttered into my lap. It contained an account of the case that had taken London by storm, involving as it did greed, deception, adultery, and one of the most distinguished families of the aristocracy. I read the piece shaking with emotions I thought I had buried. Derek had finally won his case. He was declared his father’s legitimate heir and legal owner of both title and estates that his uncle had appropriated. He was now Lord Derek Hawke, and Hawkehouse belonged to him, along with all the annual revenues.
I put both letter and clipping back into the envelope and slipped the envelope into the pocket of my skirt. Surely he was happy now. He had his title, had the majestic old Elizabethan mansion and countless tenant farms. I had no doubt he would soon have a wife, as well. A cool, refined woman of impeccable background, she would be everything I wasn’t. Angie’s letter had been written months ago. Perhaps he had already married. Conflicting emotions began to well up inside me, and I was amazed to find my lashes damp with tears. I brushed them away. I wasn’t going to think about it. I wasn’t.
After I went up to my room and put the letter away in my desk, I began to look for Meg. I had to talk to someone. I had to be with someone. All those feelings that had been locked away for so long were trying to break free, and I knew that if I allowed them to do so, I would be utterly demolished. That hard shell I had built around myself was threatening to collapse. I had to fight the flood of memories swelling up, gathering force, ready to crash over me and sweep away my defenses. I would talk to Meg, no matter what her mood. I didn’t trust myself to remain alone. We would discuss books, clothes, talk about anything … anything to take my mind off tousled dark hair, cool gray eyes, perfectly chiseled features.…
I knocked on the door of her bedroom. When there was no answer, I opened the door to find the room was empty. Perhaps she was down in the library. I checked, but she wasn’t. The library was empty, too. I moved briskly through the house in search of her, but she was nowhere to be found. Hurrying outside, I decided to check the grounds and walked quickly down the path toward the gardens. I saw her then. She was coming back toward the house. As I called out to her, Meg stopped and seemed to pull back. Drawing nearer, I saw her white face, her tear-stained cheeks, saw her shoulders trembling.
All thought of my own problems quickly vanished, for Meg looked as though she was going to collapse at any moment. Reaching her at last, I took hold of her hand. She didn’t try to pull away. Her eyes were filled with terrible anguish.
“Meg, what’s wrong?”
She didn’t answer. She seemed not to have heard.
“Something’s happened. You look deathly pale. You’re trembling. What is it?”
She shook her head and made a feeble effort to free her hand.
“You must let me help you,” I said.
“No one can help me.” Her voice was a bare whisper.
“Come. We—we’ll go back inside.”
“Leave me alone. Please—please leave me alone.”
“Meg—”
She looked up at me with those pain-filled violet-blue eyes, her cheeks stained with salty trails, the corners of her soft pink mouth quivering. I realized that she was in a state of shock, incapable of coherent speech, and I had to get her back to the house. As I led her up the pathway, she moved as one in a trance might move. Once inside, I took her into the small parlor and sat her down on the sofa.
Pouring a small glass of brandy, I forced her to take it. She gazed at it as though she had no idea what it might be.
“Drink it, Meg,” I said.
She obeyed. I took the empty glass from her and set it down. She held her hands clasped in her lap, staring down at them as though they belonged to someone else. The windows behind the sofa were open. The long draperies stirred in the breeze.
“Do you feel better?” I asked.
“I suppose so,” she said.
The anguish in her eyes had been replaced by a grim resignation that, in some ways, was even worse. She looked up at me, and I saw that she had summoned at least a surface calm. Her cheeks were still deathly pale, her hands still clasped tightly in her lap, but when she spoke, her voice had only the faintest tremor.
“He’s leaving,” she said. “We—we had an argument. He said we must marry immediately. I told him it was impossible. He wanted to know why, and I couldn’t explain.”
“You’re talking about James?”
“He was waiting in the woods behind the gazebo, just as he said he would in his letter. I didn’t want to see him, but I knew I had to. I knew I had to send him away before—before something terrible happened.”
“I—Meg, I don’t quite understand.”
“You brought the letter. He asked me to meet him. I did.”
“But—”
“He said he would be waiting at two o’clock in the afternoon, said he would be there every day until—until I came. I didn’t—I couldn’t bring myself to meet him yesterday, but today—I knew I had to get it over with. I knew I had to send him away.”
“You haven’t seen him before?”
“This afternoon was the first time I’ve seen him in four years.”
I suddenly felt very, very weak. A cold wave of horror washed over me, and I tried to tell myself it couldn’t be. I must be mistaken. Stepping over to the table, I took glass and decanter and poured myself a brandy. My hands were trembling. Meg continued to talk, speaking calmly, but her voice seemed to come from a long way off.
“He was there in the woods, waiting just as he’d said he would be. He pulled me into his arms. ‘At last,’ he said, and I thought he was going to burst into tears of happiness. I did not let him kiss me. He loves me—still. After four years he loves me as much as ever, perhaps more. He said we must be married immediately, must elope at once, and—”
I drank the brandy. All the pieces fitted together now, and I realized what I should have guessed from the first. I knew why he had married me. Helmut didn’t give a damn what people thought, but there were certain taboos even he didn’t dare break publicly. I moved over to the window and peered out, clutching the drapery with my hand, staring at the sunshine-washed lawn. He needed a wife as … as a smokescreen. If he had a wife, if he flaunted her in public, no one would ever suspect … I let the drapery fall back in place and closed my eyes, trying to fight back the horror that seemed to shriek inside.
“James asked me if I loved him,” Meg continued. “I lied. I said I didn’t. I said it had—had just been a youthful infatuation. I told him he was a fool to think I would still—feel anything after four years. He looked as though I’d struck him. His face turned white. He seized my arms and said I had to be lying. I just stared at him coldly, hurting so terribly inside, knowing I mustn’t let him—”
“You still love him?” I asked. My voice was flat.
“I love him with all my heart.”
I moved over to the table to pour another glass of brandy, but after I had poured it, I set the glass down. It wouldn’t help. I turned to look at Meg again. She seemed composed, yet fresh tears were streaming down her cheeks. She didn’t seem to be aware of them.
“He said there was no reason for him to stay in Natchez. He said he couldn’t live in the same town with me, knowing how I felt. He’s going back to New Orleans. He—he said he was going to pack immediately and take the first boat in the morni
ng. I told him that was best. I wished him well. I—I felt as though I was dying inside.”
“You must go with him.”
“I’d give anything in the world if that were possible.”
“Why isn’t it?”
“I can’t discuss it,” she whispered.
“I know, Meg.”
She raised her eyes, and when she saw the expression on my face, she drew back against the cushions. Her cheeks turned even paler.
“Last night I went down to the library to fetch a book. When I started back upstairs, I thought I heard someone moving down the hall.” My voice was as calm as if I were discussing the weather. “When I reached the top of the stairs, I saw a man slip into your bedroom. I just assumed it was James. I assumed you’d left the door unlocked for him, that he had slipped upstairs while I was looking for a book.”
“You know,” she whispered.
“It was Helmut, wasn’t it?”
Meg bit her lower lip. She nodded. The tears still streamed in tiny, sparkling rivlets.
“How long, Meg?”
She was silent for a moment, staring across the room at the gray marble fireplace without seeing it. She was seeing something else, a terrible scene that must have been burned into her memory. When she spoke, her voice trembled.
“Since … I was fourteen years old.”
“You didn’t—it wasn’t of your own free will—”
“He took me by force the first time, and—and I never had the strength to resist him. I … I’ve wanted to kill myself ever since it—ever since it began, but I … I could never bring myself to do it.”
“How could he? How could he?”
“He loves me,” she said. “You must understand that. I’m the only person in the world he cares about. There were just the two of us, you see. My mother died when I was born, and then when I was eight, my father’s estates were taken away from him. He had a heart attack and he died. Helmut and I had to leave Germany. My father had offended someone very important, a member of the’ Royal Family—it was over some political issue. I don’t know all the details. Helmut was twenty-four. He had said some dangerous things and they were going to arrest him. They had seized the house and everything in it, but he managed to slip inside and steal all my mother’s jewels. We fled. We managed to get out of the country. He sold the jewels in France. That was the beginning of his fortune.”
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