Panting, unable to speak, he stared at me with crazed blue eyes, and I shook my head, sobbing with fear. He strove to control his breathing, his chest lifting and falling, his hands balled into tight fists, knuckles bruised. He finally managed to speak. His voice was a hoarse growl.
“I came to watch. The room was empty. One of the whores said she’d seen the two of you heading toward the back stairs in a hurry. She told me where the bastard lived—”
“You’ve killed him,” I whispered.
“I certainly hope so. Now it’s your turn—”
He moved slowly toward me. I cried out, and the next moment I flew into the darkness, running as I had never run before. I could hear his footsteps thundering behind me, closer and closer. Then he made a flying leap and both his arms encircled my waist. I pitched forward, crashing to the ground. Bright lights exploded inside my head like shattering stars as the breath was knocked out of me and I went careening into unconsciousness.
I awoke to find myself on the sofa in the parlor at Roseclay. The blazing candles hurt my eyes. I groaned and tried to sit up. Instead I sank into darkness again. When I finally fought back to consciousness, I felt the pain of bruised flesh and aching bone. Bright golden flames flickered as I lifted my lids, wondering why I wasn’t dead and wishing desperately that I were. I struggled up into a sitting position, shoving my tangled hair away from my face. My gown was torn in several places and covered with dirt.
Helmut stood in front of the gray marble fireplace, drinking. He must have been drinking for a long time, for the bottle on the table beside the fireplace was almost empty, and he was weaving just a little as he stood. He had removed coat and waistcoat, and his shirt, moist with sweat, was beginning to pull out of the waistband of his dirt-streaked gray trousers. His right cheekbone was badly skinned. His eyes were glazed, and they were full of anguish.
Finishing one glass of whiskey he poured another, staggering slightly as he did so. He emptied the bottle and, scowling, hurled it angrily into the fireplace. The sharp, splintering explosion caused me to jump. He must have seen the movement out of the corner of his eye, for he turned and stared at me, but he didn’t speak. He drank the whiskey, watching me all the while with lowered brows. I caught hold of the arm of the sofa and, using it for support, got to my feet, surprised to find that I could stand.
“So you brought me back to Roseclay.”
“Couldn’t risk you getting away again. Men would help you. Men like that one I knocked out.” His voice was thick, his words slurred. “Couldn’t risk that. Brought you back. I’m going to kill you.’
I stared at him with a level gaze, feeling oddly detatched. He tilted back the glass and downed the rest of the whiskey.
“She’s gone,” he said. “I did it all for her. She was everything. I loved her. I loved her! Meg’s gone. You helped her. You helped rob me of the one thing in life that mattered. Nothing means anything now. This house was for her. Everything I did was for her. Meg, my Meg—”
For a moment I thought he was going to cry. He stared down at the carpet with anguished eyes that beheld only the beloved face, but when he lifted his head the anguish had vanished. Replacing it was a look of hatred so venomous that it seemed to crackle like blue fire in his eyes.
“I’m going to kill you!”
I stood very still.
“Drink—first I want another drink. Then—then it’s going to be such pleasure—”
He burst into laughter. It came rumbling up from his chest, and it was horrendous, inhuman. He shook with it, and I realized that the last vestiges of sanity were slipping away from him. The laughter died down to a barely audible chuckle, and Helmut lurched across to the liquor cabinet that stood in front of the windows. I turned to watch him jerk out a bottle and try to open it. He couldn’t get it open. He hurled the bottle to the floor, and whiskey splattered all over the draperies hanging behind the cabinet. He pulled out another bottle and smashed the neck across the edge of the table. Even more whiskey splattered, covering the draperies with dark stains. He seized a glass and, weaving back and forth, splashed whiskey into it.
“Going to make you beg,” he said. “Going to make you plead. Going to crush you—crush you—”
He cut himself short, smiling that perverse smile, and I saw the bulge beneath the cloth of his breeches. The candlelight flickered, flames leaping in bright golden patterns. I reached over to the heavy silver candelabra on the table beside the sofa. Hardly aware of what I was doing, I closed my hand around the base, lifted it, my arm aching terribly from the weight as I raised it over my head and hurled it at him. It crashed against the drape only inches from his head, shattering the window behind him. Helmut cried out, startled, and suddenly the drape was ablaze, a solid sheath of raging orange fire.
He leaped aside, dropping the glass of whiskey. A flaming shred fell to the floor, landing on the spilled whiskey, and then the carpet was ablaze as well, flames crackling, smoke swirling in thick black clouds. He moved back, his lips parted, and then he turned to look at me and his eyes began to gleam. He laughed again, nodding his head, his hands resting heavily on his thighs. The flames were spreading, devouring one of the chairs, snakes of orange fire slithering across the floor, moving up the back of the sofa.
“Perfect!” he cried. “Perfect!”
He lurched toward me. I backed away, but I stumbled against a table and lost my balance. Helmut’s fingers closed over my wrist and he dragged me out of the blazing room. I tried to pull back, pull free, but he didn’t even notice. He just kept walking, pulling me behind him. Though my heart was pounding in my ears I thought I heard someone pounding on the front door as well. I thought I heard a frantic voice calling my name, and I screamed as Helmut started up the stairs, his fingers like iron bands about my wrist.
I grabbed hold of the banister with my free hand. He gave a mighty jerk. As my hand was torn loose from the railing, I was slammed against the wall. He dragged me up the rest of the steps and down the hall to my rooms. Flinging open the bedroom door, he thrust me violently inside. I fell to my knees. I looked up to see him looming there in the doorway, the mad smile still on his lips, and then he slammed the door and locked it. Getting to my feet, I threw myself at the door and banged on it with my fists. I heard him roaring with laughter as he started back down the hall.
Minutes passed, and I was out of my mind with fear. I could smell the smoke now, could hear the flames crackling and feel the heat. Roseclay was blazing. The fire had spread over the ground floor, and in just a few minutes the flames would come searing up the stairs. I pounded on the door, unable to think coherently, filled with panic. As smoke began to curl under the bottom of the door, I backed away, tears spilling down my cheeks. It was all going to end. I would never see him again. He had come back for me, and I would never see him, never know if he…
“Marietta!” he shouted.
I was imagining it, of course. I had to be. I was hearing his voice because I so desperately wanted to hear it.
“Marietta! Where are you!”
“Derek!” I cried. “Derek!”
The key turned in the lock. The door burst open. He flew toward me, scooped me up into his arms and raced down the hall. This must all be a dream, I thought, yet I saw the staircase with blazing banister, saw the clouds of smoke, and heard his heart thumping in his chest as his arms tightened around me. He started down the stairs, keeping against the wall, away from the crackling flames. I was coughing, and he coughed as well. As he raced toward the open door the blazing wall began to lean toward us. Tilting, crumbling, it crashed down just as Derek stumbled out the door and onto the verandah.
He moved down the steps and across the lawn, carrying me away from the smoke and flames. In the distance I could see a carriage on the drive, two men standing beside it, one of them with a white bandage wrapped around his head. Derek moved on and finally sat me down under the trees on the slope beyond the front lawn. Flames leaped out of the windows of the distant mansion. The
roof was blazing. A savage orange glow that seemed to scorch the sky illuminated the dark night. I turned to look at Derek, who knelt at my side.
“It’s—really you. You came back.”
“I came back,” he said.
His arms folded around me, and I leaned against him, closing my eyes, resting my head against his shoulder. Roseclay was burning to the ground and Derek was holding me in his arms, and if this was all a dream, my last dream before death, then I was going to die content.
XXIX
The inn had changed very little in all these years. It was still comfortable, mellow, spotlessly clean. The jovial proprietor had died two years before, leaving the inn to his plump, ebullient daughter. Lizzie and her husband ran the place with friendly efficiency. During the past week she had been wonderful to me, looking after me as though I were a queen, filling the room with hand-cut flowers and merry gossip. She had given me two of her dresses and a cotton petticoat, and had even altered them for me. Lizzie fancied me a glamorous creature, and it delighted her to take care of me as I recovered from the ‘tragedy’ that had all Natchez abuzz.
The citizens of Natchez had no inkling of what had really taken place that night. They knew merely that Roseclay had burned to the ground, that Helmut had died in the fire, and that I had been rescued by one of his ‘business associates’ from New Orleans who, providentially, had arrived on the scene in time to save me. Derek took charge of everything. He sent for Meg and James Norman, and they arrived two days later. I was too ill to attend Helmut’s funeral, but the next day I was well enough to sign over all Helmut’s estate to my sister-in-law, keeping not a pound for myself. Both Meg and James were stunned and, at first, refused to accept, but I finally convinced them that it was something I needed to do.
Roseclay was no more, but the rest of Helmut’s vast holdings now belonged to the Normans. James immediately marked ‘Paid in Full’ on all the notes Helmut had been holding against those planters who were so deeply in debt to him. He and Meg were already talking about building a new church, a school, a library. The city of Natchez was going to profit greatly from my husband’s death.
The Normans came to see me every day. They were beautiful young people blissfully in love. If Meg felt grief over her brother’s death, she didn’t show it. She was radiant, her cheeks a vivid pink, her violet-blue eyes shining with happiness. Her husband couldn’t keep his hands off her. All the time they were in the room he was either squeezing her hand or holding her by the waist or around her shoulders. Toward the end of each visit he was always eager to leave so that the two of them could be alone. Meg clearly found all this ardent attention sheer rapture. It was difficult to believe she had ever known anything but joy.
Jack Reed had come to see me too. Jack and Derek had pieced together the story of that terrible evening for me as they visited. James Norman had seen the advertisement that Derek placed in the New Orleans news sheet and had contacted Derek, telling him where I could be found. Derek had taken the next boat to Natchez. When he disembarked from the boat, a man, bleeding profusely and babbling incoherently, had bumped into him and then collasped on the dock. Derek was able to find the doctor that had been on the boat with him, and the two of them carried Jack back onto the boat and tended his wounds. When Jack’s head finally began to clear and he was able to speak coherently, he begged Derek to take him to Roseclay. That, of course, astonished Derek, who was planning to come there to find me in any case. When Jack impressed upon Derek and the doctor the desperate situation that I was in, they found a carriage and raced to the mansion.
The house had already begun to burn when they arrived. Derek, who rushed into the mansion, encountered Helmut just after Helmut had locked me in my room. They fought, but Derek easily knocked down the drunken man. Derek had carried me from the burning mansion just in time, and no one was able to go back into the mansion to bring Helmut out. No one mourned his loss.
Jack’s head was still bandaged, but his grin was as wide as ever. When I asked him about his injury he just laughed.
“Just got a little lump is all,” he informed me. “It’d take more’n a block o’ lumber to hurt this thick skull, I can tell ya flat. Take a piece ’o lead pipe at least. Only reason I ain’t taken the bandage off yet is the girls think it makes me romantic-lookin’.”
“I’ll never be able to thank you for what you did, Jack.”
He looked uncomfortable. “Wusn’t nothin’. I recommend you forget the whole incident. I reckon you’ll be leavin’ Natchez soon as you get better. This English lord ’ere, ’e acted ’alf outta ’is mind when I told ’im you were in trouble, needed ’elp. I reckon you’ll be leaving with ’im.”
“I imagine so, Jack.”
“I wish you ’appiness,” he said.
“And I wish you the same.”
That was yesterday. Today, I had finally received permission from the doctor to get out of bed. Though fully recovered from the shock, I was still a bit bruised. I was also rather weak, but I felt better after a long hot bath. It was late afternoon, and as I dressed, I couldn’t help but feel a faint nervous apprehension. Tonight would be my first evening to go downstairs to dine. Derek was to fetch me in less than an hour. He had looked in on me each day and we had talked, but we hadn’t really discussed the future. I tried not to worry, but I still found it difficult to believe he was actually here.
I was wearing the more attractive of the dresses Lizzie and I had altered to fit me. It was vivid yellow cotton and a far cry from the silks and velvets I had grown accustomed to, but it was quite fetching just the same. Skirt and petticoats rustled as I stepped over to the mirror to make a final inspection. Faint shadows still tinted my lids, and I looked a bit drawn, but the pallor was gone.
Lizzie tapped on the door and stepped in to see if I needed anything. When she saw me in front of the mirror, she sighed heavily and shook her head.
“That dress never looked like that on me,” she complained. “It’s not fair for anyone to look so ravishing, and you just out of the sick bed, too! Are you sure you feel like goin’ down tonight?”
“I feel wonderful, Lizzie.”
“I suspect that handsome Lord Hawke has a lot to do with it,” she remarked. “I suppose you’re eager to spend some real time with him—and who could blame you? Both the maids are all a-titter over him, and if it wasn’t for my Johnny, I guess I’d be titterin’ right along with ’em.”
Lizzie was as plump as she had been four years ago, her blonde curls as bouncy. She was even wearing the same dangling jet earrings. The giggling, effusive girl was gone, however, and had been replaced, after three years of marriage, by a warm, matronly woman. Seating herself on the edge of the bed, Lizzie watched me dab cologne behind my ears.
“I remember you comin’ here with that dashing Jeff Rawlins,” she said. “What a card he was—so full of life. Then you came back to Natchez and married Helmut Schnieder, the richest man in the territory—can’t say that I cared for him myself, but he was certainly intriguing. Now you have that gorgeous English lord dyin’ to take you away with him. Some women have all the luck.”
I smiled, and Lizzie sighed again.
“When I first saw you, I so longed to be an adventuress too, I thought it would be ever so grand and excitin’, but I guess it wouldn’t of suited me after all. I’ve just had one man, my Johnny, and he’s more than enough to last me a lifetime. I guess I’ve been pretty lucky at that.”
“Far more than you realize, Lizzie.”
Lizzie stood up, brushing aside an errant blonde curl. “I’d better get back to my work. I’ve reserved a table for you and his lordship that’s as private as I could make it, but people’re still goin’ to be able to stare. They’re goin’ to expect you to be wearin’ black and lookin’ all teary-eyed and mournful, though I don’t imagine you care a fig about that.”
“Not a fig,” I agreed.
Lizzie grinned, delighted with my wicked glamor. Then she bustled out of the room, her blue cotton
skirts crackling. It was still half an hour before Derek was due to come take me down to the dining room. I was weary of my room and knew I’d never be able to sit still that long, so I decided to walk in the gardens for a while. As I moved down the hall and the back stairs, I remembered the last time I had come this way. I had been wearing a red dress, had been intent on running away from Jeff. I remembered it all vividly as I stepped out the back door and into the fading sunlight.
It seemed so long ago, yet in another respect, it seemed only yesterday. I remembered climbing down the cliff, fleeing through Natchez-under-the-Hill, encountering Helmut on the docks. I remembered Jeff’s weary, amiable expression as he strolled toward us in his buckskins, and I felt a dreadful sadness. We had come into these gardens that night, and he had torn my Article of Indenture into tiny pieces, tossing them to the wind. They had fluttered like tiny white moths in the darkness. He had given me my freedom, and I had been unable to give him the love he so desperately wanted.
Pensive now, filled with sadness, I strolled past the neatly arranged beds of flowers, moving toward the edge of the cliff. The sky was pale and stained with yellow on the horizon as the sun began its gradual descent. Below the river was a deep blue, spangled with shimmering silver reflections, and on the opposite shore the trees cast long black shadows. I remembered the way Jeff had wrapped his arms around me as we stood here together. Dear Jeff. How I wished I could have changed the course of events that followed.
As I stood there near the edge, the gardens behind me, the wind lifted my skirts and set the yellow ruffles aflutter. Strands of hair blew across my cheek. Brushing them aside, I thought about what Lizzie had said only a few minutes ago. She was indeed lucky. She saw me as a glamorous creature whose life had been filled with tempestuous excitement and romance, an exotic adventuress who lived life to the brim. She envied me, and she would find it hard to believe that I actually envied the happiness she had found so easily, and so early. True happiness was within reach for me at last, but it had come at such a cost, after so much grief.
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