by Carole King
“Why did it fall to you to offer thanks?” he asked. “Where were our own men?”
“It was very late,” she offered. “I was walking . . . standing by the shore. I was coming back to the house—”
“And the man was bringing back Castillo,” stated Cain softly. Autumn nodded, swiping at her dry lips with her tongue. “And you went to thank him—” again Autumn was about to confirm Cain’s conclusion, “—in the middle of the night.” Autumn was only too willing to concur, but checked herself suddenly at Cain’s dark, forbidding tone.
She said, “I . . . didn’t want anyone to know. . . .” Her voice trailed off. Cain studied her for a long moment. She might have swooned beneath his stony perusal. It captured her uncertainty, held it, examined it, forced her to examine her lame explanation. She lifted her chin against her own self-accusation. Her fingers curled around the tiny glass ornament clasped to her breast. Disgusted by her double falsehood and determined to face his challenge, she ventured. “I was afraid of what you might do. I was frightened, Cain. I remember well the night of my arrival. I know how you feel about your horses; I know how protective you are of them.”
“And so you—”
“I did what I felt I had to do. I sneaked out because I was afraid of you, afraid of your anger, afraid, Cain, for you.” The last words came in a relieving rush. At last Autumn had said the absolute truth. Everything she had done—corralling Castillo, visiting Robert in secret, and finally lying about all of it—had been done to protect Cain.
At last he advanced to her. He looked down into her determined face. “Is that the truth?” he asked.
“It is,” Autumn replied in a whisper.
“You did it for me.”
“I did. Your anger, Cain, saddens me.”
He lifted his hand and brushed a curl away from her cheek. “Does it?” he said softly.
“Yes,” she answered. “And I want always to protect you from it.” He smiled.
“You are the optimist, Autumn.” He paused, and his smile faded. “No one ever cared about me as you do. I am most grateful for your concern. But, Autumn,” he added seriously, “we cannot make ourselves responsible for the feelings and temperament of others. We must have no secrets from one another. No matter how painful, or . . . frightening a revelation might seem, we must face each other with our truths.” Autumn lowered her head, and Cain lifted it with both his hands. “No secrets, my darling,” he said and his head lowered. He took her lips in a kiss of divine purity. He pressed her to him. “Did you miss me, love?” he asked hoarsely, pressing his lips to her ear. She nodded mutely. “Say it,” he commanded. “Tell me.”
“Oh, yes, Cain, I did miss you. I miss you every moment that we are apart.” She looked up into his hooded regard. His mouth moved to her arched throat, feathering kisses along its tender flesh, his hand cupped her breast and something blossomed inside her. She pushed against his chest, but he would not allow her the freedom of a moment’s respite to question her response. He strengthened it, encouraged it, with each assault on her ripening passion. “Please, Cain,” she implored softly, not knowing whether she was pleading for him to stop or to go on. Ecstasy flowed from an up-until-now unrealized source. Such euphoria exalted her, so much that she became suddenly frightened. Autumn had never experienced the intensity of pleasure she was feeling now, had never imagined such pleasure possible, and she knew it was horribly wrong. “Cain, no!” she said on a breath. “Please don’t.” He looked down at her, a question in his regard. “We cannot,” she said.
“Why?” he asked. “Why, Autumn? I love you, and, the gods be praised, you have said you love me. Why may we not express our love in the most perfect way possible for a man and a woman?”
“Because we haven’t the right, Cain,” she told him gently, solemnly. Cain released her and turned away.
He paused a long time before speaking, then said quietly, “And what is ‘right,’ Autumn? Who decides what is right?” Autumn touched his arm and turned him to her.
“We do, Cain,” she told him sadly.
It was very late when Cain and Autumn made their way back to the house. He kissed her softly, secretly, at her door, and Autumn withdrew into her bedroom. As she shrugged out of her cloak, the warmth of him still clung to her flesh. The commanding tenderness of his embraces heated her being from within. She flushed, thinking of them together in the star-shrouded night. She still held the little snow globe and looked down on it now, studying it, and thinking on all that it signified. Autumn padded into Vanessa’s room and replaced the globe on her night table. No secrets! The phrase echoed and swelled in her heart. Cain had said there must be no secrets between them, but how could that be when their very relationship was founded on secrets? Autumn had never intended her life to be filled with so many secrets, so many lies. Her eyes brimmed over with tears and she lifted her hand to her mouth to stifle a tiny sob. She hastened back to her room. She stood for long moments gazing out over the lawn and saw in the star-silvered mist below Cain’s lone figure moving down toward the sea. Who decides what is right? he had asked her. We do, she had answered. “We must decide, Cain,” she said aloud through her tears. Having made those decisions, she reflected, we must then live with them.
The young lady studies her features in the mirror. She sees refinement in the face, translucence in the skin, a harmony of colors in the complexion. She has been told there is a symmetry of proportion about her appearance: A well-shaped head; a moderate length of neck; a clearly-defined nose; mouth not too large; and all parts of her form equally and well-ordered. She has been told she must give animated expression and vivacity to her manner—which she does. She has been told she must be graceful in her movement—which she is. In this way, it has been said, she will attract the best of husbands.
Chapter 13
Autumn wrote her mother regular letters, but cold perspiration accompanied each attempt to apprise that lady of her daughter’s life at Byron Hall. It was not a life of which Isabel Thackeray would be proud. And so Autumn filled the letters with unimportant, often misleading, and always cheery details of her daily routine. She told her mother of the bicycle she had found in the back of a shed, and that she used it to navigate about the little city of Cape May. Isabel would find that amusing. Autumn allowed her mother to know that Carrie Inman had agreed, after much cajoling, to let Autumn do the early morning shopping. This was not something she was forced to do, she assured Isabel, but something she wanted to do, as it afforded her some much appreciated exercise and fresh air. She had become, she said, a familiar sight on the byways of Cape May, and a popular curiosity, waving to the merchants and the walking school children. “If once,” Autumn wrote, “they were startled by me, they are now most friendly and wave back all the time.” The truth was that Autumn wanted desperately to be out of the house early. She could not bear to see Antoinette coming to the breakfast table and fawning over Cain, and she could not bear Cain’s corresponding silences. Antoinette’s visit had spilled over into the early spring, and the tension in the house was palpable. Autumn no longer pretended friendship with Antoinette, and that lady no longer made her wheedling, whining gestures of kinship. Her entire focus was on Cain Byron. If open warfare had not broken out between the two women, there was at least a recognizable hostility.
Each morning, Autumn came downstairs to clear Vanessa’s breakfast tray, and each day she would find Cain awaiting her in the kitchen. He stood, as always in the morning, sipping at his coffee, watching her with a keen, hooded gaze. As always, Autumn entered, fresh from dreams of him, and avoided that gaze. Her dreams over the past several weeks had taken on, naturally, a new reality. Mixed with her unfocused desire for the embrace of his strong arms, the lean length of him pressing against her body, was the breathless desire for the further intimacy between them that seemed both impossible and inevitable.
“You mustn’t look at me so,” she informed him in a stern whisper one morning. Carrie had retreated to another part of the hous
e to tend her morning duties, and Autumn was clearing Vanessa’s breakfast tray.
He lifted a dark brow and smiled lazily. “Mustn’t I?” he intoned.
“No,” she rejoined. “You are attempting to wear down my composure.”
“And succeeding,” he informed her.
“Not at all,” she said haughtily.
“You have been avoiding me of late. Where do you go every morning?”
“Shopping,” she said with a nonchalance she did not feel.
“I thought Carrie did the shopping.” Autumn glanced at him.
“I asked Carrie if I might do it.” She did not mention the bicycle, for she knew that Cain would not approve.
“Why?” Cain inquired.
Autumn rounded on him. “I do it because I want to get out of the house before you and Antoinette sit down to breakfast.” She looked at him directly. “She imagines, I believe, that you and I have been . . . intimate.” The last word came out with an accompanying blush.
“And what of that?” Cain inquired.
Her next words were whispered, but no less intense for their lack of volume. “We have not been intimate, Cain,” she said. “And we will not be till we are wed—if that day ever comes.” Autumn averted her eyes. He moved to her, and setting down his mug, he took her shoulders in his hands.
“Listen to me, love,” he said cupping her chin so that she had no choice but to look up into his eyes, “Antoinette may imagine anything she wishes to imagine. It can have no effect on us.”
“I am not so sure of that, Cain. She seems more determined than ever to win your affection.”
“She does seem determined,” he acknowledged.
“And if she is so determined that even in the face of your attraction to another woman she would throw herself at your head, then we must face the fact that you will have no choice but to marry her.”
“But there is always Antoinette’s true nature to rely on,” he said with a smile. Autumn drew away from him. Antoinette’s “true nature” had already been revealed—and skillfully hidden by both her and Autumn.
“Cain,” Autumn implored, “you must try to understand that Antoinette’s assumption—false though it may be—has succeeded only in making her desperate. She will attempt anything to win you.”
“Are you suggesting, Autumn, that I might be won? By Antoinette Fraser? Are you suggesting,” he asked, taking her shoulders and turning her roughly to face him, “that I am so foul-hearted a brute that I would profess my love for you and then allow myself to be seduced by the likes of Antoinette? Am I a prize bull, Autumn, a derby-winning stud who will bow its head and nuzzle whoever offers the largest hunk of hardened sugar?”
“No, Cain,” Autumn shot back. “But you may be forcing the issue. You say that Antoinette will reveal herself—and I have no doubt that she will do so . . . in time. But what if she does? Her revelation might only be the response of a browbeaten lady who has been dealt with unkindly. We want the truth, Cain, not some manufactured response forced out of her.” His regard altered. His face became a mask.
“Perhaps I would not need to force the issue,” he said harshly, “if you would be sensible and shed that mantle of chastity with which you protect yourself. You want me as I want you, and yet you cling to some absurd, idealistic notion of a precious purity that may not be breached until a preacher sanctifies our union. One day, I warn you, your pose of maidenly virtue will come under my assault. And whether or not Antoinette has deigned to reveal her true self, you will submit to the truth of your feelings for me. I am no martyr to be sacrificed on the altar of your pride.”
“And I, Cain,” Autumn retorted hotly, “am no martyr to be sacrificed on the altar of your lust. Your obligation to Antoinette has not diminished simply because a willing wench may or may not allow you to bed her.” Cain’s face darkened.
“Is that how you characterize our love, Autumn? Is that how you dare to speak of what we are to each other?” His lips lowered and his mouth came down on hers in a brutal kiss. His tongue ravished the sanctity of her most carefully hidden hungers. She felt her heart twist, pounding in her breast. Her flesh thrilled, her passion spiraled. Cain’s lips released hers, but he held her arched to him. “You are fooling no one, Miss Thackeray,” he said, grinding out the words. “You are as powerless as I over what we share.”
Her eyes closed against the raging swell of her need. “Yes,” she said. “I cannot deny it, Cain. I do love you. I do want you. But I am bound as you are to—”
“To what!” he charged, his grasp tightening.
“To honor,” she said. He loosened his hold on her, and she placed a hand on his broad chest. “To honor, Cain,” she repeated. Her words came raggedly as tears puddled in her great eyes. “If Antoinette does not reveal herself . . . if you must marry her,” she said, gasping, “will you make me your doxy?” The last word was clenched, and Cain’s hold on her loosened even further. Autumn waited for his response, her heart fluttering, pausing with every beat. His gaze was hard, questing, as he looked down on her. He could throttle her, Autumn reflected briefly. She moistened the soft bow of her lips. His face was very close above hers, its planes rigid as bronze.
“Doxy,” he intoned very quietly. Autumn attempted to swallow, but there was nothing there to swallow. Tears cascaded freely now from her terrified gaze. Yet she would not relent; she would have her say.
“You say that I deny you because I am proud. You challenge me, telling me you will not be sacrificed on the altar of some idealized purity. Oh, Cain, I deny you because I believe in the sanctity of marriage—and in the sanctity of love. These are not idealized notions, they are my truths. You said we must always tell each other our truths.” She paused, catching her breath, and then went on. “Don’t you know how much I love you, Cain?” He straightened, awed by her passion, and drew her to him, pressing her cheek against his chest. He could feel her tears, hot and unchecked, through the lightness of his lawn shirt. “I cannot bear it that our love has been sullied, dirtied by lies, cheapened by deception. And, no matter how much I love you, my darling,” she gasped out, “I was not born—and certainly not bred—to be any man’s light-o’-love.”
Cain’s darkly maned head rolled back as he gathered her deeper into his embrace. What would he do, he wondered resignedly, with this adorable woman? She was part siren, part gamin, part tight-laced little Grundy, and in all parts, the center of his world. His heart swelled with his love for her. Her tirade had made little sense and yet he understood it more fully than he had ever understood anything before in his life. “Light-o’-love,” he said, rocking her in his arms. “’Tis a pretty phrase.” He felt a smile tug at his lips, but dared not allow it to display itself as she drew away from him and swiped at her eyes.
“You think such a thing pretty?” she asked indignantly. He splayed a hand.
“No, love,” he said hastily, with found solemnity. “The phrase—” he attempted to explain lamely.
“Well, I do not think it one bit pretty, not one bit, Cain. My mother would be mortified if she ever even imagined such a future for me,” she asserted. She was about to continue a wrathful scolding when Carrie bumped into the kitchen through the swinging door.
“Breakfast’s on,” she said brightly. “Miss Fraser’s already in there. Is Mrs. Byron comin’ down?”
“No,” said Autumn without expression and perhaps a bit too hastily. Carrie regarded both she and Cain with a question. “No,” Autumn amended, “she is not. I’ve already served her.” Carrie noted the oddly gorged silence between the couple, but ignored it. There were many such silences these days, she mused, as Cain withdrew.
As she cleaned the dishes from Vanessa’s breakfast, Autumn heard snatches of the dining room conversation, though the word “conversation” implied an exchange of thoughts. There was no true exchange, for Antoinette was doing all the talking. She spoke of the house her father had bought for her and Cain in Washington Square, of its proximity to “all the best peopl
e and places in Manhattan,” to both a girls’ school and “just across the Hudson” a boys’ military academy. She talked of the plans that were being made for a grand engagement party in New York City and the one she hoped might be held in Cape May so that she might be introduced to “all the Byrons’ friends.”
“The Byrons have no friends,” Autumn heard Cain comment. And then, mesmerized, Autumn listened as the terrible, true nature of Cain’s and Antoinette’s relationship combusted into hellfire. She might have been with them in the room, so histrionic and revealing was the conflagration. And, at last, Autumn was, in truth, witness to a “conversation.”
“You really will make no effort on behalf of my plans,” Antoinette said tartly. Cain’s response was immediate and leveling.
“If you continue to carry on with this falsehood you call an engagement,” he said darkly, “I shall continue to have nothing to do with it.”
“You are not being fair, Cain,” Antoinette shot back. “Plans have been made—expensive plans. Had you not dangled me on a string all those years, I could have been making them with someone else.”
Cain was up, nearly knocking over his chair. “Who dangled whom, Antoinette?” he demanded. “You promised love, lady. You promised devotion. I believed your promises, but I found you to be the most faithless of women.”