by Carole King
“Is that how you feel, Autumn?” he asked. “I mean about wealthy men.” She nodded.
“It is.”
“And if a wealthy man, even one with whom you shared a certain affection, made overtures to you, would you deny him?”
“I would, sir,” Autumn responded solemnly, “especially if that man were about to become engaged to another woman.”
“I see,” said Cain, defeat clear in his tone. “But what if,” he asked, rallying, “the wealthy man were not engaged to another woman?”
“Oh, sir,” Autumn said after only a moment’s consideration, “if the man were free to love me, I would dog his every step. My heart would be his—if the man were free.” She glanced away, allowing him to absorb her words. Her gaze was drawn back to his own, and they regarded each other meaningfully. Time became suspended in their knowing silence.
“If the man were free,” repeated Cain softly.
“If,” affirmed Autumn. At last she stood, slowly, rigidly. “I will leave you now, Dr. Byron,” she said. His eyes hardened to a jet density.
“Will you, Autumn?” he asked.
“Yes. I must.”
Upstairs Autumn hastened across the second-floor gallery, Cain’s brooding image strong in her mind. She heard muffled voices from behind the closed door of Hamilton Fraser’s suite. She knew very well what that conversation was about. If, she reflected, her heart twisting painfully. As Autumn was about to enter her own room, she heard Antoinette’s strident voice lashing out over the darker tones of the men:
“She’s bewitched both of them, I tell you! She is a Satan-loving Gypsy!”
Despite her pain, despite her anxiety over an uncertain future, Autumn could not help but smile.
Chapter 10
The next morning saw the departure of Winslow Beame. He would be back in a month, he told Cain, and he further stated that his prognosis was not optimistic. Vanessa’s tears over that silly bit of trinketry on Christmas Eve worried him. Her listlessness and apparent detachment from even the lively society of the Frasers concerned him as well. This was only the beginning, Winslow had said, of a downward spiral to mental incapacity. He had seen it in his women patients time after time. The word “cure” could only be applied when a lady had returned to her fullest mental capacities—minus, naturally, the “nonconformities.” He was grateful that Vanessa had not attended the Woodhull debacle—and Cain knew why, he said. The idea, he said, of women actually enjoying sexual relations was as repugnant as any of the new notions now abounding in this permissive age. Something had to happen, and very soon, too, Winslow opined. The one bright spot in the holiday, according to Winslow Beame, was that something was going to be accomplished in the matter of Antoinette Fraser.
“It took a visit from her father,” he said expansively, “to force you to do the right thing by the girl, Byron. High time, too. She’s a catch, is Nettie,” he added with a sly wink. The “other matter” he said, would take care of itself. “The little Thackeray wench has hooked herself a big fish.” Even the old father could not refute a direct proposal and an announcement in front of witnesses. “But I would warn young Fraser,” said Beame seriously, “that he has a tiger by the tail.” In any event, he said, they would all be rid of that meddling and troublesome miss before the year was out. Cain was not sorry that he was leaving.
Upstairs, a morning meeting was underway. Hamilton St. John Fraser had requested that Damien and Autumn meet with him in his apartment after breakfast. Damien’s secret, all-knowing smile had vanished. He tapped his fingers nervously on a side table and attempted to look relaxed. A filled brandy snifter within his reach was emptied rapidly and refilled and gave the lie to his pose.
“You see, my dear,” the elder Fraser was confiding to Autumn, “my son has failed to see the ramifications of his . . . impulsive gesture. He is, quite simply, not prepared to marry you—or anyone for that matter. Why, he has not even completed his education. I have decided, therefore, that it might be best if the two of you . . . postpone the wedding. Just for a year, or perhaps two. Marry in haste, repent in leisure, as the saying goes. Too, there is precedent in the Fraser family for the eldest son’s attendance at Jesus College at Oxford. Heaven knows, we would not wish to deprive our young roustabout of that advantage.”
“I agree,” said Autumn quietly. Hamilton Fraser’s brows lifted.
“You do?” he asked warily. Autumn’s intention was to end this conference as quickly as possible and with as little hurt to Damien as she could manage.
“Yes,” she said emphatically. She regarded her young suitor with a wide, liquid gaze. “Damien,” she addressed him gently, “we must both be reasonable. Our youthful haste must be tempered by mature consideration.” The young man merely cocked his head. “Think on it, Damien,” resumed Autumn, going to him. “Your father is offering you something wonderful. An education, Damien, at one of the finest colleges in the world.”
“Do you know what he told me last night?” he asked. Ignoring his father’s menacing glare, the lad continued. “He said if I married you he would cut me off without a penny.” He rose, the canny smile returning to his lips. “You see, Father,” he said easily, “I have the courage not to be bribed.” He went to the sideboard and refilled his glass with a generous supply of brandy.
“You call it bribery,” Autumn said, thinking hastily, attempting to reason with the lad before his irate father interjected with some stupid and demeaning comment, “I call it an unparalleled opportunity. Do you know what I would have given to be sent to such a college? I was sent to a charming boarding school for girls that taught me deportment and stitchery. And French! None of which has ever served me in the real world. I longed for books and mathematical problems and scientific discoveries to challenge me. You shall have all those challenges, Damien. You shall have knowledge of the finest, most elevating sort.”
Hamilton St. John Fraser’s thick brows furrowed, and he fingered his side-whiskers uneasily. On the one hand, the girl was making his argument for him, but on the other, she was making it with a most distressing revelation of her own quite unfeminine desires. The family would be well-rid of this puzzling and, no doubt, troublesome wench. “A very fine point, my girl,” he said.
“I am not finished, sir,” Autumn interrupted resolutely. She was rather enjoying the older man’s discomfort. “You and I are both so young, Damien,” she went on, “we’ve hardly tasted life. And life has so much to offer the young. I, at least, expect to taste and touch and smell every joyous aspect of it. In the meantime, let us both resolve to know life fully. Let us resolve to experience every joy it has to offer.” Slowly, she removed the brandy snifter from his hand. “Let us become drunk with every imaginable opportunity with which we are presented. Let us in our youth and exuberance offer ourselves to the world, and let it give us all the ecstasy it has to offer. When time has passed, a little time to be sure, we will be ready to meet again. And when we do, we shall have so much more to bring to each other. We shall be fuller people then, Damien. We shall have lived in the world. Only then can we give the world to each other. Someday, when you are ready to marry, to settle into a comfortable life of obedience to tradition and counting your gold, you may think of me. I shall be thinking of you always with tenderness, Damien.”
Hamilton cast the girl a hooded gaze. He looked then to his son. Did the boy understand, he wondered, what he had almost gotten himself into? Thank God the creature had capitulated. Life with her and her fanciful and irritating and, God save us, “ecstatic” talk would be unbearable. She was, in truth, one of the scariest women Hamilton Fraser had ever encountered. Damien was smiling.
“You paint a pretty future, Autumn,” he said.
“Yes, yes. A pretty future,” intervened Hamilton with, in his consideration, some necessary haste. “Sands of time and all that,” he said inanely. Not only was the girl penniless, and apparently, quite a proud little chatterbox, she was, Hamilton perceived, imaginative. Winslow Beame had warned hi
m of the wench’s whirligig-like mind. She had managed, in her slyness, to secure her own future, while seeming to acquiesce to the father’s dictates. In the bargain, she had gained the son’s admiration. Oh, Lord! This was just the sort of nightmare woman who had caused all that trouble up in Seneca Falls in ’48 with talk of a bright future when men and women might come together on equal terms. A frightening thought. Hamilton would see the boy in school and safely engaged to some docile New York City belle before the season was quite over. He would not allow any more chatter. The matter settled, he rapped the curving wooden arm of his chair and grinned. “It won’t be so very long,” he said to both young people. “You shall see. In the meantime, I suggest that all commitments between the two of you be considered moot . . . for now, of course.” He looked at Autumn. “You understand, my dear, that if, as you say, you and Damien are to allow yourselves to, one might say, ‘taste life fully’ you must be free to do so. You must not feel entrapped by the formal commitment of an engagement.”
“I agree,” Autumn responded.
“And would you agree,” inquired Hamilton, “in a . . . formal statement?” He would not have her coming back at some future time with a back door breach-of-promise suit beneath her belt. She had witnesses, after all, to his son’s foolhardy announcement—and distinguished witnesses as well. Two medical doctors had been in the room to hear Damien’s promise of marriage to the girl.
“Of course,” Autumn told him. Hamilton reached into his coat and produced a folded sheaf of papers.
“Oh, Father,” protested Damien, “is this absolutely necessary? Autumn has agreed, and I, God save me, have not the strength to fight you.”
“Leave this to me, son,” said Hamilton. He knocked on the adjoining door, and Antoinette appeared. “Go downstairs, daughter, and send up Drs. Byron and Beame. They will be our witnesses.” Antoinette hurried obediently from the room. “Now,” he said, contentedly eyeing Autumn, “you shall have your taste of the ‘real world,’ as you describe it, dear child.” Autumn’s heart constricted. Cain Byron would, in fact, be witness to this humiliating ceremony. She reasoned, however, that he would also see that she had been sincere in her protestation that she had no intention or wish to marry Damien. But what, she wondered, was her alternative?
Before long, the two doctors had been ushered into the room. They stood solemnly, understanding their function, as Autumn signed the document emancipating Damien from any promise to her. Hamilton Fraser offered brandies all around, once the witnesses’ signatures had been obtained, but only Winslow Beame accepted. Cain Byron had withdrawn immediately.
“Cruel business,” said Damien as he and Autumn retired to another part of the room.
“Not so cruel,” said Autumn gently. “It is for the best all round, Damien. But, I do thank you.”
“Thank me, little gypsy? For what?”
“For thinking for a moment that you wanted to marry me. A lady might consider that the highest compliment a man could offer.”
“A lady might,” he agreed, smiling. “Will we meet again?” he asked her after a pause.
“Damien,” said she, “our future is always a mystery.”
“Not mine,” he affirmed quietly, sadly. “Father will have me in school and then married off in no time.” Autumn placed her hand tenderly on his.
“Do not take my words of before lightly, Damien. Accept the opportunity for an education—and use it wisely. Take the time to make your own choices.”
“I shall try, little gypsy.” They parted with a handshake.
In her room, Antoinette practiced for the meeting that was to take place directly after luncheon. Odd, she thought, as she gazed at her mirrored reflection, that this day should contain both the elimination of a marriage contract and the making of one. And how bitter a circumstance that her own future should be entwined with that of the implausible little servant, Autumn Thackeray. Antoinette wondered how the betrothal had been thwarted, but decided to think on other, happier, things. The fact was, when Hamilton St. John Fraser wanted someone eliminated it simply happened. Antoinette had every confidence that his powers would work in reverse. She rehearsed the vacuous smile she’d been told to assume for the meeting with Cain, but it came back pinched and anxious. The loathsome Autumn’s hand could be found in this, too. At first, Antoinette had only disdained the girl, but now she feared her. Somehow, the twit had managed to dampen Cain’s long-standing and well-established ardor. For a brace of years, he had been the most ardent of suitors, bringing her little presents and not so little ones. She looked down on the remarkable bracelet of emeralds Cain had given her—“damning evidence,” her father had called it, without for a moment suggesting its significance. Antoinette looked up, attempting her smile once more. She sighed discontentedly. “Autumn Thackeray be damned,” she said aloud, and lifted her chin, forcing upon herself her brightest, most piquant and alluring manner. She had seduced Cain Byron before; she could do it again. And if all else failed, Antoinette had her father’s facility for manipulation and her emerald bracelet in her arsenal. Autumn Thackeray had exactly nothing in her favor.
After lunch, Antoinette was ushered into Cain Byron’s parlor where he and her father had been talking for some moments. Hamilton Fraser bowed indulgently at her appearance.
“Take a chair, my dear,” he murmured. “We are so glad you could join us.” Once seated—in an unlikely chair made, oddly, of animal horns—Antoinette placed that bland and practiced smile on her lips and prepared herself to say absolutely nothing and to hold no opinion on anything that happened in the room. “Dr. Byron and I,” Hamilton was saying, “—but let us not be so formal—Cain and I,” he amended, “were just discussing your visit here. I was telling him that I was reluctant to allow you to come on this holiday. However, when I realized that Damien and Dr. Winslow Beame, whom I highly respect, were also invited, I relented. Do you recall my resistance, darling?” Antoinette nodded obediently. She was well coached, was Nettie, reflected Cain. Hamilton’s satisfaction at his daughter’s vapid response was evident. “With such chaperones to protect my little girl, I said to myself, how could I refuse her this most consequential visit? It is no small thing,” he reminded Cain, “for a man to invite a young lady to his home for an extended holiday. This, I reasoned, is the natural progression in a long-standing relationship. Though in my time,” he noted with a small chuckle, “ladies and gentlemen did not indulge in such intimacy until they were engaged. In fact, such a visit announced an engagement.” He glanced pointedly at Cain. “And, in truth, the times, I said to myself, have not changed so very much. A long-standing relationship is a very good thing, just as it was when I was a youth. And I appreciate your reserve, Cain. You saw what happened with my own son. His very impulsive gesture caused nothing but disquiet. Fortunately for us all, Miss Thackeray has wisdom beyond her years and saw that Damien’s rashness was born of immaturity.” Antoinette shifted uncomfortably in her chair, but quieted as her father’s dark glare fell upon her. “Maturity, Cain,” pronounced Hamilton, “that’s the ticket. In a mature relationship, a mature gentleman always does the right thing.” He waited expectantly for Cain to respond, but that man remained impassive. He was, Hamilton reflected, either a dullard or he intended to put up some resistance. No matter. Hamilton Fraser had followed his script exactly. He was practically at the end of his oration. “The right thing, Cain,” he resumed. “The honorable thing. The honorable, long-standing relationship between a gentleman and a lady can have only one conclusion and that is a pledge of holy matrimony.”
At last—at long last—Cain responded. “It does sometimes happen that way,” he acknowledged.
“In an honorable relationship,” put in Hamilton rigidly, “it happens that way—always. And, I assume, knowing my cherished daughter has been raised honorably, that she could be involved in nothing less than an honorable relationship.” This time, Hamilton’s silence was a demanding one. Cain reached into the small enameled box and drew out a slim cigar
, offered one to Hamilton who refused it, and inhaled deeply as he put a match to its end. He eyed the two Frasers passionlessly.
“As you pointed out,” he said evenly, “Antoinette’s and my relationship has gone on for a very long time.”
“Almost three years,” Antoinette put in perkily. She was horrified to receive the weight of her father’s dour, reproachful regard. She shrank back into the chair. Cain nodded his agreement with her outburst.
“I was barely out of university when Win brought me to New York and introduced me to your . . . cherished daughter.” He smiled, but there was no affection or gentleness in the expression. In fact, if Antoinette was not mistaken, his gaze held a certain challenge. “Do you recall our first meeting, Antoinette?” Cain inquired. Antoinette looked quickly to her father. He regarded Cain steadily as he lifted a silencing hand toward his daughter.
“Reminiscences,” he pointed out, “can be a jolly way to pass the time. Perhaps we can reminisce right now on promises made, on expectations supplied, on . . . tokens extended.” He paused, noting with gratification that Cain’s regard was now bent on Antoinette’s bracelet. How clever of the girl to be toying with it like that. “Or would you prefer not to reminisce, Dr. Byron?”
“I was about to point out,” said Cain levelly as he raised his eyes, “that in a long-term relationship, people and circumstances are subject to change.”
Hamilton raised his brows. “Exactly my point, Cain lad. Exactly my point. Change is the very thing that vitalizes a relationship. It must change. It must grow.” Cain realized his error immediately. He had to admire both the old man’s determination and his ability to manipulate words to his advantage. Hamilton persisted. “The obvious change, then, in this very particular relationship, is marriage—wouldn’t you say so, lad?” Rather than awaiting Cain’s answer and risking another digression, he added, “It is the only reasonable—and certainly the only honorable—conclusion I can imagine. Do you agree, Antoinette?” She smiled and nodded mutely. “Antoinette agrees with us, Cain,” said Hamilton expansively. “How fortunate! But secretly, I knew she would.” He looked to Cain benignly. “She has always doted on you, Dr. Byron—or should I call you ‘son’? And, I must tell you that she has made her devotion quite public. You may not realize it, but Antoinette has turned down many an ardent suitor on your behalf. It is well documented in New York social circles that she has awaited the attentions of that one suitor who would completely please her. That one suitor is you, my boy.” He stood and extended his hand to Cain. “I approve of her choice with all my heart and give you both my most earnest blessings. Also,” he added with a knowing wink and taking up Cain’s hand in both of his, “I am prepared to settle on this union a most generous endowment. Antoinette has over three thousand a year, and I can add to that another thousand, with,” he paused significantly, “a lump sum of ten thousand to start you off.” He smiled broadly. “That,” he pronounced, “should take the sting out of losing one’s treasured bachelorhood.” He laughed. Antoinette scowled inwardly; she dared not allow her grievance to show. Her father was using the most unseemly terms to describe her marriage. Still, she pondered, he had done the deed. She wondered that she did not feel happier. She had expected relief to well up inside her once the bargain was sealed, but relief was not at all what she felt. Glancing up at Cain Byron, she knew only a sense of dread. Cain, after all, had said almost nothing. He had certainly not agreed verbally to the marriage. Yet, at this point, and once that eccentric mother of his had been told, there would be no question of Cain’s compliance. Compliance, thought Antoinette dismally. The word itself implied resigned obedience—not the stuff of which impassioned lovers were made. Oh, for that urgency with which her brother had proclaimed his love for Autumn Thackeray. Antoinette paused in her ruminations. If there was any satisfaction in all this, it was that she, not that little witch, had won Cain Byron. Autumn Thackeray had been defeated; she could never have Cain now. Antoinette’s brows knitted with a sudden apprehension: Men had been known to take mistresses. Resolution filled Antoinette’s soul. She had bargained with the devil, and won Cain Byron. She would do no less to see Autumn Thackeray eliminated from their lives completely.