Gavin, a band of black crepe on his sleeve, came out of his father’s bedroom in time to hear that. “Why, where are you going, Roxanne?” he asked, dismayed.
Roxanne gave him a twisted smile. “Mrs. Hollister has just told me she was a witness to Rhodes’s innocent arrival last night. It seems the family must stand together against outsiders.”
Gavin dismissed frightened Mrs. Hollister with a wave of his hand. “There’s no need for witnesses, Roxanne. Rhodes has disappeared.”
“Disappeared?” she repeated stupidly.
“The Virginia Lass has up-anchored and sailed away. God knows where Rhodes has gone or if he’ll ever be back.”
She stared at him, stunned. Whatever she had expected, it was not this. Rhodes was gone!
“So it would be stupid for you to go to the police,” he said. “They’d only ask you a lot of embarrassing questions, and it wouldn’t amount to anything. They can’t punish a man they can’t find.”
Roxanne’s rebellious heart saw some sense in that; she had dreaded the questions the police would ask her.
“It will make no difference between us, Roxanne,” said Gavin earnestly.
“I can’t stay here.” She shivered.
“I’ll take rooms for you with a lady I know. She’s elderly. It’s quite a nice place.”
“And why,” she asked wearily, “would you do this, Gavin?”
“Because I want you beside me, Roxanne.” Gavin’s voice was caressing. “This is no time to discuss it, with my father lying dead on the other side of that door, but—I want you to think about me, Roxanne. About us.”
“But what about Clarissa?” she asked. “Doesn’t she expect you to marry her?”
He frowned. “The court will appoint me Clarissa’s guardian, but no marriage will take place. Clarissa is immature; she needs seasoning before she will make any man a good wife.”
And in the meantime, Roxanne couldn’t help thinking, you will have charge of her fortune, just as your father had.
But his words had made her heart beat faster. She was well aware of how Gavin felt about her. And in her present rebellious mood, fiercely angry at Rhodes, not knowing how to strike out now that he was gone, she wondered what it would be like to marry Gavin. To queen it over the big house on Mt. Vernon Place. Let Rhodes hear about that! How it would gall him!
So she smiled seductively at Gavin. “You are right,” she agreed. “You need a more mature woman at your side.’’ She gave her hair a graceful pat, knowing full well the gesture caused her ripe figure to be outlined against the morning light.
His eyes kindled, but he made no move to touch her. “You’re so lovely, Roxanne. . . .” His voice was hoarse. For a wild moment she thought he was going to seize her and crush her in his arms, but he seemed to take a fresh grip on himself, and only a faint tremor in his voice betrayed him. “I only want you to ask your heart if you feel as I do.”
She stared at him. It was a simple declaration; it sounded sincere.
“I don’t ask for an immediate answer,” he said hastily. “I only want you to think about me, Roxanne.”
She studied him. And studying him, she made up her mind. She needed no smiling lover who’d be gone with the dawn. She needed a man she could trust, and depend on. She smiled. A cold smile. Gavin was so trustworthy, so certain of his way. So ... so different from Rhodes, who was everybody’s darling and careless of his path through life.
Yes, Gavin would do nicely.
There was the sound of a carriage arriving, of footsteps outside, people come to offer their condolences.
“I will make the arrangements today,” Gavin promised hastily as he answered the door. Roxanne gave him a thoughtful look and climbed back upstairs to pace the floor of her little room restlessly. All day downstairs, people came and went. But true to his word, in the afternoon Gavin took her in a carriage to her new quarters.
“Everything is taken care of,” he told her as they alighted in front of a handsome but run-down red brick Georgian mansion. “Mrs. De Quincy is a widow, somewhat hard of hearing. She lives alone, and will be glad to have someone occupying her second floor.”
He took her into the high-ceilinged house, past a jumbled collection of family heirlooms, and introduced her to Mrs. Pe Quincy. The woman, a vague, fluttering, white-haired old lady in a long purple silk gown, cupped her hand over her ear and said “Speak louder.” Then shouted that she was delighted to have Roxanne; since her late husband had died, said Mrs. De Quincy, she’d had the most delightful people upstairs. Roxanne understood this to mean that she habitually took in roomers.
Gavin, who had to hurry back, bade Roxanne farewell at the door. “Right after the funeral I’m leaving for Boston,” he told her. “If there is anything you require, ask Mrs. De Quincy or send for Mrs. Hollister. I will leave them instructions. I will be gone for a while. You understand, I must wait a decent interval.” She nodded, watching him from beneath sooty lashes. “And when I come back, I will have something to ask you, Roxanne.”
He pressed her hand and was gone. Mrs. De Quincy’s maid, a stalwart black woman, gave Roxanne a disapproving glance and lumbered upstairs with her bag.
Roxanne assumed that the maid disapproved of aristocratic Mrs. De Quincy taking in roomers.
Upstairs, the maid swung the door wide on her spacious new quarters, light and airy, with big windows and handsome drapes. The furnishings were pre-Civil War and very elegant. Roxanne couldn’t help contrasting this place with Mary Bridey’s shabby quarters. But then, she reminded herself, Gavin had been doing that for Rhodes—and perhaps reluctantly. These rooms were for the woman he would one day make his wife.
For she had never doubted that Gavin’s declaration was a proposal of marriage, and the luxury of her new surroundings reinforced that belief. She walked about bemused. A drawing room—she had a drawing room! And a small formal dining room and a very large and elegant bedroom with a tall marble-based pier glass and furniture of rosewood and satinwood. There was a dressing room as well but no kitchen. Roxanne discovered she did not need one. Her landlady maintained an excellent cook, and the maid brought her meals up to her three times a day, on a giant footed tray of antique silver.
Roxanne was amazed at Gavin’s solicitude.
She was even more amazed when, a few days later, a clever little French dressmaker arrived to measure her for several handsome gowns, showing her fabric samples and some magazine illustrations from which to make her selections.
Roxanne chose an elegant beige walking suit, almost the color of her dark-blond hair. It was tailored, and the belted skirt was cut in many gores, lined with gold silk, and had a little train. With it she would wear a soft, high-necked, overhanging blouse of lingerie material with deep insets of handmade lace. She also chose a princess-style tea gown, gored from neck to hem, in a deep blue silk that almost matched her sapphire eyes. It was lined with light blue taffeta, which gave it the fashionable froufrou rustle. And, daringly, a low-cut white satin ball gown that fell off the shoulders, exposed the upper half of her round white breasts, and was caught at the shoulders with sprays of rhinestones. It would fit her like her own skin to the hips, then swirl into a bell shape with a rather long train. She looked at it dreamily. With a higher neck and sleeves it might have been a bridal gown. . . . She roused herself from her reverie, and turned to the dressmaker.
“These will be sufficient for now,” she said.
“But Mr. Coulter said you were to have as many as you like,” cried the dressmaker in distress. “I have many more to show you!”
Roxanne shook her head.
The dressmaker looked unhappy. “When I come for your fittings,” she said, “Mr. Coulter has authorized me to bring hats and veils and underthings and shoes and stockings and gloves for you to choose from.”
“Very well,” said Roxanne. “But I have a favorite glover. All my gloves must come from Barrington’s.” And she sent the woman on her way.
Hot on the heels of the dr
essmaker arrived a note from Mrs. Hollister, who asked if she might call later in the afternoon. The gray-uniformed maid who brought the note was a girl Roxanne had never seen before, a pretty Russian girl who, when asked if she spoke English, said “Soon,” with a flash of white teeth.
Roxanne gave her a sympathetic look. The girl was her replacement in the Coulter household, no doubt. Anxiously, she stood inside the hall door awaiting Roxanne’s reply.
Roxanne agreed to receive Mrs. Hollister that afternoon at two o’clock, realizing that the girl might suffer if she didn’t. Mrs. Hollister might well believe she hadn’t delivered the message properly.
Promptly at two, Mrs. Hollister arrived, wearing deepest black. Roxanne received her coolly; she had no love for the woman who had cast off Mary Bridey and had lied to save Rhodes from her own just vengeance. The plump little housekeeper looked around her, apparently surprised at such sumptuous surroundings, and stammered out what she had come to say: that they all missed Roxanne at the Mt. Vernon Place house.
Roxanne inclined her head regally—after all, she might soon be giving Mrs. Hollister her orders for the day—and inquired about the staff.
Cook was fine, she was told. Greaves, unfortunately, had a stiff back from lifting a heavy trunk for Miss Clarissa. Lizzie was stepping out with the milk-cart driver—a widower, old enough to be her father; what she saw in him, Mrs. Hollister couldn’t imagine.
And Tillie and Ella?
“Tillie and Ella—” Mrs. Hollister hesitated—“are no longer with us. We have hired two new girls to replace them.”
“Why have you dismissed them?” cried Roxanne in rising indignation. “What had they done?”
Mrs. Hollister bit her lip. “Mr. Gavin replaced them before he left for Boston. It was because—well, because of what happened to you. He didn’t want gossip spread.”
And Cook and Greaves and Lizzie never gossiped . . . while Tillie and Ella might.
“That was cruel of Gavin,” Roxanne said slowly.
“He did it to shield you,” cried Mrs. Hollister. “He gave them both two weeks pay and a reference.”
Roxanne’s lips twisted. “The one who brought your note was very pretty. And the other?”
Mrs. Hollister sat straighter. “Both are very pretty. Mr. Gavin likes pretty women in his household.” She paused for a moment, but then said solicitously, “Mr. Gavin wanted me to bring you anything you needed from the house. Blankets, linens, dishes.”
“The rooms here are handsomely furnished,” said Roxanne. “And my landlady’s cook and maid provide well for my needs.”
Mrs. Hollister looked relieved.
Had they heard from Rhodes? asked Roxanne in spite of herself. The woman looked surprised. No, they had not, she said. Mr. Rhodes had disappeared off the face of the earth, it would seem. His father had punished him by disinheriting him; surely—
“Joab Coulter was not Rhodes’s father,” said Roxanne, and the other woman started. “You knew that,” she added brutally. “Why pretend with me?”
Mrs. Hollister took a deep breath and straightened. “Yes.” She stated it coolly. “I knew. You see, I met Joab”—she no longer called him “Mr. Joab”; the cards were on the table now—“I met Joab when I was only fourteen. I was the daughter of one of his ship captains, and I met him when he came to inform me that my father had been washed overboard in a storm. Since I had no means of livelihood, he assured me that he would give me employment in his household as a chambermaid. Ah, he was so handsome then. . . . Before I was fifteen he took me to his bed—he was a widower, with a little boy . . . Gavin.” She spoke the name softly, as if he were her own son. “A year later he married Amanda Rhodes and we all moved to Mt. Vernon Place. At first I thought my heart would break, knowing he was up there in the bedroom with her—they occupied Miss Clarissa’s rooms then. But after a time I realized he did not love her, that indeed he hated her, had only married her for the wealth she brought him.”
Mrs. Hollister looked down, picking at the black lace that trimmed her black silk dress. “At first it gave me joy to see him tear at her, make her weep with his accusations. And then”—she looked up at Roxanne and her chin lifted—“and then I came to feel sorry for her and to love her. Amanda was a good woman, full of heart. I think she knew about me, that I shared his bed, but she never let on, and she was kind,to me. When she hired her Irish groom—and I think he had not been a groom before he came to us, but an impoverished gentleman—I was glad for her. The light came back to her eyes and she was happy for a time. Then he was killed in a stable fire. And she lost heart altogether. Later when Rhodes was born, she came to life again and all her love was lavished on her son. That left Joab for me—and I took what was mine. Three rooms were combined to make my large back room on the third floor. Joab gave me gifts, did everything to make me comfortable. Of course, Amanda died, but even then I understood that he could not marry me—not a housekeeper; he had his reputation to think of. But we lived together as man and wife after the shades were drawn.”
“And Rhodes never knew about his real father?”
“No, and I don’t think Joab ever knew either. Certainly I didn’t tell him, although I surprised Amanda and her lover one day in each other’s arms. And I never let on to Joab; I kept her secret well—except for Gavin, who surprised it out of me one day. In a way, I guess you could say I was Amanda’s friend.”
“And it was because Rhodes was her son that you lied and said you’d found the door to the servants’ entrance unlocked?”
Mrs. Hollister bobbed her head. “And I’d do it again, Roxanne. I owed it to her, not to let her son suffer—for she could have thrown me out of the house, you know. Joab would not have stopped her. He’d have set me up elsewhere, but I’d have seen so much less of him. . . .”
Roxanne stared at this woman of divided loyalties. It must be hard to be Mrs. Hollister. She sighed. “I understand why you did it, but it goes no less hard with me. I’ll not try to undercut you with Gavin, Mrs. Hollister. I think he needs you.”
To her surprise, tears filled the other woman’s eyes. “They’re like my own sons,” she choked. “I’ve mothered them since they were little.”
“I am glad you came,” said Roxanne as Mrs. Hollister rose to go. “It’s nice to understand at last.”
“It isn’t a bad life,” said Mrs. Hollister earnestly, patting Roxanne’s hand. “If I had it to do over, I’d do it all again.” Her face broke up. “Oh, I miss him so” she murmured, and fled.
As Roxanne watched her go, a plump little figure in rustling black silk, her eyes were bright with compassion. Joab Coulter had been many things, most of them bad, but he had had the staunch love of one woman, and according to her lights, he had been good to her.
But Mrs. Hollister’s story had upset Roxanne, and she hurried out of the house, which seemed suddenly oppressive, to take a walk. She strode down the street, noticing the gardens filled with flowers. For it was almost May and Baltimore was abloom.
She paused and sighed as she found herself in front of the handsome brick house at South and Gay Streets where young Betsy Patterson had been wooed and won by that glittering nineteen-year-old gallant, Jerome Bonaparte. Napoleon had put a damper on his youngest brother’s marriage soon enough, and dark-haired Betsy had had to retreat via England to her native shores, Napoleon having refused to recognize the marriage. How sad it must have been for Betsy, proud daughter of a self-made merchant prince of Baltimore, to happen upon Jerome years later (then King of Westphalia) while he was strolling in a Florence museum with his second wife . . .his queen. Once Betsy had aspired to be his queen.
Roxanne shrugged. Daring Betsy had gambled for an empire and lost, but . . . she herself might gain a shipping empire. Her eyes grew dreamy as she cast a last backward glance at the elegant mansion, the walled garden overrun with flowers. Perhaps like Betsy she would someday dance the night away with a man of glamor and fortune. Perhaps, when Gavin returned, she might join the wives of Balti
more’s merchant princes—Pattersons, Carrolls, Calverts—and give dainty teas and lavish balls. . . .
But her feet dragged.
Suddenly Baltimore had become an alien city. She longed for Savannah with its moss-draped live oaks and its leisurely ways. She longed for her lost girlhood, her lost innocence, a time before she had become the pawn and plaything of men. . . . Sometimes, as she passed a magnolia tree, she imagined herself back home among the scented creamy blossoms, the chinaberry and mimosa with its lacy foliage and blossoms like powder puffs, with the scent of a wild honeysuckle overrunning the gardens—a young carefree Roxanne lolling in a hammock in the summer shade or playing with a favorite kitten.
The picture faded. She was here in this ironclad city that had once been circled by walls, that might as well be a walled city now, so firmly did it shut her in.
She must wait for the day Gavin returned and took her to wife.
Gavin had promised.
She must wait.
Chapter 18
All of May and part of June Gavin lingered in Boston. He was not a man given to writing, and Roxanne did not hear from him. Waiting in her spacious surroundings with nothing to do, Roxanne chafed.
In her loneliness, she turned to Denby.
The young glover brightened when she strolled into his shop, but grew sad again as he told her that his father had died two weeks before. An automobile had run him down in the street at dusk one day. His skull had been fractured. Roxanne murmured condolences.
“I would have sent flowers if I had known,” she said sincerely. Denby gave her a wistful smile; he seemed rather subdued today. “We closed the shop for a day out of respect for my father,” he said. “But now it’s business as usual. Though I’ll be happy to slip out for an hour and walk you home.”
She nodded her assent, and he called someone out from the back workroom as he joined her at the door.
Impulsively, when they neared the De Quincy house, Roxanne, let Denby kiss her. She thought, resentfully: If Gavin doesn’t want things like this to happen, he should be here! Denby asked to see her again and she agreed. She told herself she was comforting him for his father’s death, but in her heart she knew it was untrue. She needed his warm admiration, his sunny compliments to bolster her against loneliness and to steady her sadly flagging self-esteem.
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