The Indian Maiden

by Edith Layton

  And Lady Mary said nothing, not even to Will when he looked at her with all his heart plain in his eyes, but only stood white-faced and hangdog until Miss Hamilton bade everyone good night and begged and got leave to go to her bed.

  “Faith?” Lady Mary said in a choked voice as she touched the other girl’s sleeve tentatively when they’d reached the top of the stair. Her guest wheeled about so sharply that the fair-haired girl almost toppled over and tumbled down the stair, and wished she had done when she saw the look blazing in her American guest’s eyes.

  “Not a word,” Faith managed to threaten through her tightly clenched teeth. “Tonight, please not one word from or for you, my lady. I dare not begin. I am, after all, a guest in this, your house. But tomorrow, perhaps. Now good night, my lady, and,” she spat with enough force to make her listener wince before she spun around and marched to her room, “sleep well!”

  The duchess said nothing further to her husband on the matter, but left him to a lonely glass of port, protesting a headache so profound that he might have been forgiven if he’d called a surgeon to see to her on the instant. Instead, he made no reply, but sat glowering and thinking deeply for another long hour of the night.

  Will Rossiter went alone and silent as well, but only to a seat in the carriage outside the Boltons’ door. For his host had stayed a moment to speak with the other departing gentleman, The Earl of Methley.

  “We need to meet, I think,” Lord Deal said coldly as he faced the other gentleman on the pavement.

  “Is it to be pistols or sabers? At dawn tomorrow, or the next day?” the earl asked humorlessly.

  “I have no wish to be exiled at the moment,” Lord Deal replied in a tone of voice that was in itself an insult, “so it is to be now, and for the time being at least, only to exchange words. And a very few of them at that. You don’t require me to tell you how ugly a trick it was. But perhaps you do need me to tell you that I will finish you if you ever attempt such a thing again—if you ever come near her again.”

  The earl was paler than was even his natural wont, and his long frame stiffened as he gave in reply, just as tersely, as deep an apology as he was capable of ever giving this gentleman, even though it was delivered in as harsh a manner as a snub might have been.

  “It was never intended to be more than a lesson, and it was, I can see now, a miscalculated and miscarried one. I shall apologize to her for that. Indeed, I think I have never been so sorry for any mischance I’ve caused. But I did not touch her. And I will see her again, I don’t think you have the right to prevent me. Only she does, and if she does, I’ll not trouble her again. But if she does not, I can only assure you that I intend to go on as I should in the matter, as a gentleman.”

  “And as a suitor?” Lord Deal asked icily, his last word as sharp as a slap.

  “And as a suitor,” the earl replied coldly, and then he smiled bitterly as he added in farewell before he turned and ended the interview, “I may be only a mundane earl, and not a dashing farmer, but stranger things have happened, Deal, odder pairs have formed beneath your, and my, very noble noses, as you and I may do well to remember.”

  “Methley,” Lord Deal murmured unheard after a pause, to that gentleman’s retreating back, “she is long dead. Bury her, as I have done, perhaps only just tonight.”

  Then he joined the sorrowing Will in the carriage and they rode home in silence. For Will was busily making up excuses for his lady so that he would not grieve for her lapse. And Lord Deal was preoccupied with his lady, who was never a lady, but rather something, he thought, a great deal better.

  It had been an extraordinary night for discoveries, for himself as well as for his wild Indian maiden. Because, as he’d always lamented the fact that he was not susceptible to such a tender passion as love, he supposed it was only fair that he now found himself to be suffering from the malady. It was also ironic, after all his smug complaints about his imperviousness to the disorder, that he should find the particular strain afflicting him to be a virulent one that was not only incurable, but doubtless fated to presage a long and painful lingering ailment. For it appeared that even if she could ever learn to reciprocate his feelings, his poor love could not bring herself to physical love with any man.

  And for all his supposed wit, he had no more idea of how to help her from that state than he had of how to cure himself of the condition he could have sworn he was immune to, but which would now doubtless bring him low.

  FOURTEEN

  On a sultry August morning in London, a young American girl known to very few members of the ton established a record in society that was never to be broken, although it was also never to be known. For on a humid summer’s day, Miss Faith Hamilton, otherwise known as “the Wild Indian,” received three splendid, bonified offers of marriage within as many hours, and although one of them might have only been from another American, he was a nabob, and the other two were from accredited members of the ton, and both noblemen, no less.

  This successfully bested an achievement of a previous generation, in which a certain Miss Camille Plunket, opera dancer, received four offers from four wealthy, titled gentlemen all in the same day, since two of them were being blackmailed, and the other two had wagered a monkey on which of them could win her, and a case of champagne on which of them had fathered the babe she claimed to carry. But that was in a gaudier generation, and all those offers came during the course of an entire day. And that statistic was also never to be verified by all the gentlemen involved. As was the case two years previous to Miss Hamilton’s triumph, when a Miss Jessica Eastwood also received three worthy offers all in a day, but they too were issued in a time period lasting from morning until dusk and so also would have failed to qualify, even if they had been made known by the lady, who generously kept the tally to herself even after she’d wed the gentleman of her choice. Thus, even Lady Elizabeth Porter’s famous claim of having received four offers in a row at a riotous ball, all refused, still stands as the goal to which young women should aspire, although, as it was a very long evening and a very inebriated company, clearly it does not merit such attention.

  But Faith had no idea of how she would be so singularly honored when she opened her eyes too soon to a dank and sullen summer’s morning. Had it been a cooler day perhaps she would have slept longer and so missed her chance at making history, but the clammy touch of the bedclothes and the thick warm air roused her as thoroughly as a bracingly chill wind might have done. It was no pleasure to lie abed on such moist sheets no matter how late she’d laid herself to sleep on them. So she woke and washed herself thoroughly in cool water, despite her country-bred maid’s repeated muttered misgivings about the unhealthiness of such frequent immersions, hot or cold, as the American girl favored. Then she dressed in her lightest, lowest-cut cotton gauze gown, sat at a little table by an open window, and frowned down at her toast as though it had somehow offended her.

  She’d had too much new information received, and too little time in which to assimilate it all. It would have been to her advantage, if not to history’s, to sleep this day away. For dreams, and the sleep which brings them, help the mind to digest an overload of information. But she’d woken prematurely and found the same problems on her plate, perhaps only a little smaller than when seen through night’s magnifying eyes, but no less real and no more appealing.

  She’d been betrayed by her hostess and her daughter, been made a figure of fun for society to scoff at, and then been compromised by a gentleman who sought her hand and her purse. Though she’d been saved by her own wit and solaced by another gentleman who meant, she discovered, a very great deal to her, she’d confessed the unthinkable to him and no matter how he dressed it up, there could be little question she’d taken herself down in his estimation by it. Add to that the fact that she’d been made to observe unseemly things that had recalled to mind a similar sight which had also changed her life after she’d seen it. And then, multiply her woes by the fact that somehow now in retrospect, qu
ite incredibly, her remembrance at least of the sight of the previous night’s ardent strangers seemed more titillating than terrifying, and the sum of it was one confused and very angry young woman.

  But clearly nothing mattered anymore. Not if half the world giggled at the thought of her as a naked wild Indian, and the other half soon would when they heard of her latest exploit. She wasn’t willing, not now, to delve too deeply into the matter of Lord Deal’s charity to her, except for the fact that she knew that she’d keep the memory of their shared secret hours of the past night close to her always, whatever, she thought ruefully, became of her misled, mismanaged, and miserable life in the future.

  Thus it was that her first visitor on that historic day quailed at the first sight of her fierce expression. Lady Mary had hoped that the passage of the night had muted her visitor’s rage, but one look at the cold, immobile features and the glittering eye her guest turned coolly upon her when she entered the room caused her words to catch in her throat. She only managed a “good morning,” and then had to sit in shame-faced silence until the maid, all curiosity, as all good maids were, finally found no further excuse to linger and left them alone together.

  “I came,” Lady Mary said with supreme bravery, “to apologize.” After a silence greeted this, and since she discovered she still lived, she gathered up a bit more courage and said, “I was against the idea, truly I was, Faith. But Mama said it was all for the best. And since I agreed that the earl is all anyone might wish for in a husband, I went along with Mama. But still I felt dreadful when she hurried me away last night, I actually felt ill when we ran off from you, like thieves in the night. I didn’t want to go, but what could I do? Oh Faith, please don’t be cross with me. I meant it all for the best. And there was nothing I could do, even if I did not.”

  “Nothing you could do?” asked Faith, her voice the only clear and cold thing in the overheated room, since her anger caused her temperature to rise to match the atmosphere. “Nothing you could do?” she repeated caustically, adding the glow of her fiercely burning bridges to the heat of the day. “Nothing you could do only if you were indeed the child they treat you as. But you’re not. Mary, that was a low and dirty trick you played on me, and if that’s how you folks go on in high society, well then, I’m glad I’m halfway on my way home now. Because my mind is made up even if my luggage isn’t.”

  Faith fixed her visitor with a direct stare, and shook her head until her silken hair began to slide from its neat knot. “I’ll be honest with you then, Mary, because I reason that I’ve one foot aboard ship right now, and it’s easier to be candid when you know you’ll soon be gone. You’re a pretty enough girl, and friendly too, but all surface, like all the rest of this society you’ve been so pleased to try to get me caught up in. When I’m safe and home again I’ll feel sorry for you, Mary, yes I shall. Because whatever else befalls me in the future, at least I’ll always know that it’s myself I can blame, or myself I can praise for it.

  “But you,” Faith said, more in sorrowful appraisal than anger now, looking her white-faced visitor up and down, “why, Mary, you live a life you don’t even own. It’s all on borrow from your mama, and then, no doubt, it will be your husband that orders it. I expect you’ll be exactly like your mama too some day, because I really think the only chance that you’ll ever get to live a life will be when you live your daughters’.

  “Well,” Faith said philosophically, standing up and going to the door to let her guest out before she let all the rest of her anger and contempt out into the open as well, “I hope for your sake that you have daughters, then. Or, that is, that your husband lets you have them. But I hope for your children’s sake you have only sons. Because,” she said, as Lady Mary saw her eagerness to be rid of her and obediently rose and moved dazedly toward the door, “it seems to me that the only folks you let choose their own destiny around here are the men. I don’t know if Will knows he’ll be getting a little girl if you take him, and I don’t know if he’ll mind being a papa to his wife, along with his children. But it seems a rotten trick to play on him too, because like me, I expect he thinks a grown-up person is a grown-up person, no matter if she’s a female or not.

  “And,” Faith said, just before she closed the door on her erstwhile friend, “I don’t want the earl for a husband, and I think you knew that right enough all the while. So I think if you thought he was such a worthy fellow, you should have had a care for him as well, and not tried to foist an unwilling wife on him. But Mary, I expect you can’t be a good friend to anybody until you’re a good friend to yourself. And that, you’re surely not, because if you were, why then, I think you’d let yourself grow up, and get on with your own life.”

  Then, closing the door, having unburdened herself of this excellent advice, Faith quite naturally felt even worse than she had before. Although she was sorely tempted to call her visitor back and take everything she’d said for kindness’s sake, she knew you could never take back truth, since it had a way of sounding so exactly right that any attempt to rescind it always failed, just as attempting to improve on any perfection did.

  She decided to pen a quick note summoning Will, for she was sick of this house and more than eager to put her plans into motion at once. There was no place to go but home. But even as she wrote the words she began to realize that having at last achieved the goal she’d set when she’d arrived here, it had become no victory but only an ignominious retreat. And as she wrote the word “home” on the paper, she discovered that it seemed more distant than ever now in both memory and desire, and further from what she really wanted than she would ever have believed possible.

  So it was that her second guest of the day saw only deep and abiding sorrow in her large gray eyes, and none of the rage and contempt that it had been Lady Mary’s lot to observe.

  But then the Earl of Methley was more subdued than she’d ever seen him to be himself, and after he bowed over her hand and she seated herself in the salon and waited for him to speak, his voice was so serious she scarcely recognized its deep and somber tones. His long white face was grave, and there was no scintillation in his eyes, they were, this morning, unusually for him, as innocent and gray as the first moment of dawn.

  “My behavior last night,” he said straightaway, “was despicable. I know it. Perhaps I even knew it then. But I’d convinced myself it was all for your own good, knowing all the while it was all for my good as well. I wanted very much for you to accept my suit, Faith, and was anxious enough for our union to try anything that might facilitate it. Whatever,” he said dismissively, as though the subject bored him, though from how painfully he spoke it was apparent that was the only thing it did not do, “it was a cur’s trick, and I more than apologize. Whatever satisfaction you wish from me, you may have. Although the only thing I have to offer you is myself, and that is precisely what I was attempting to give to you with all my mechanations. I still want very much to marry you, Faith,” he said solemnly.

  She remained very still, but when it became plain that he would say no more until he knew her mind, she spoke at last. Her voice was low and thoughtful; all anger having been burned out earlier, she now was capable only of sad reflection.

  “No,” she said thoughtfully, looking up at him where he stood awaiting her judgment, “you were not looking ‘to give me yourself,’ my lord. You were wishful of receiving me. It appears to me,” she went on reflectively, “that the duchess and Lady Mary had me all wrapped up like a gift, and you were all ready to unwrap me. But,” she grinned unexpectedly, looking up at him with a cynical expression very much like ironic amusement sitting oddly on her gentle, lovely face, “I do think you wouldn’t have been at all pleased with your present, my lord. Oh no. For I’m not at all what your sort of gentleman expects. Oh, I would have come with all the trimmings, I’m dowered just as lavishly as you’d think. And really, I can’t blame you for being interested in that part of the bargain—I’m aiming to be a merchant, remember. But the rest of me would be no bar
gain for you.

  “I’m not at all the soft and agreeable sort of female you’ve been brought up to look for in a wife, like Lady Mary. Why, I think you’d have to beat me every morning to get me to agree with you every night, and likely you’d have to hang me by my thumbs or starve me out regularly to get me to sit in the shadows and obey your every command, as you’d expect of a good wife.

  “And it’s not just that I seem to have been fearful of lovemaking,” she said with a small smile, pausing for a moment, diverted by the discovery that once an unspeakable thing has been said, it becomes increasingly speakable, and that repetition seemed to kill shame as surely as it slew wit, before she went on to muse aloud, “it’s that I guess I can’t seem to understand how all of you gentlemen think of young women as commodities. You mock me for wanting to be a merchant, my lord, but you and the duchess, who both made it clear you wouldn’t stain your hands with trade, why you trade off daughters and wives like we deal in cotton and tobacco at home, seeing the whole matter as one of profit and loss. And I guess,” she said, her accent becoming more pronounced with each revolutionary thought she voiced, “I just don’t think of myself and my future as being part of a business deal. If I ever wed, it will be for the pure joy of it, my lord, and dollars and cents just wouldn’t figure in. It doesn’t,” she said at last, summoning up a real smile for him, “add up that way for me.”

  The earl looked at her, she thought, as though he were seeing her for the first time, and something in that thought and in his gaze disturbed her, so she rose to her feet and put out her hand. “I wish you luck, my lord. And as for your apology, no need. I think you did me a favor, after all. Because I’ll be going home now, where I belong.”