by Carole King
“Rumors—” she interjected.
“Not ‘rumors,’ Antoinette. Rumors be damned.” He hurled his napkin to the table. “Rumors would be bad enough, but I’ve seen your flirtatiousness, your insatiable need for attention, your coarse, cruel ways with my own eyes. I have seen what you are. I am not the same green lad who came bounding into New York seeking a partner in life. In those days, I was eager for a gentle love that you haven’t the heart or the soul to give. I blame myself, Antoinette, for not seeing your true nature from the beginning. I blame myself for being so damned trusting. You showered such lavish attentions on me; how was I to know you showered the same lavish attentions on every man who caught your fancy?
“Do you recall the first time we met? I do. You told me I was the man for whom you had waited all your life, and I flattered myself that I was special to you. I wanted desperately to be special to someone. I think it is what we all want—men and women alike. And for a while, Antoinette, for a long, sad while, you were special to me.” He paused, apparently overmastering a great hurt. “I shall say one thing in your favor,” he resumed finally, “the years have changed my view of you, but you have remained quite constant. You are not kind; you never were. And you never loved me. You clung to me, knowing you would not find a wealthier man, but hoping somehow, I suppose, that you might find a more compliant one. When you did not, you decided to manipulate me into this bizarre and ugly charade of a marriage. And believe me when I tell you, Antoinette, it will be ugly.” He paused, checking a powerful anger. “Now I ask you again; who dangled whom?”
Antoinette eyed him obliquely. When she finally spoke, her tone was both patient and snide. “Let me answer your question with one of my own. If all this is true, why have you continued our relationship? Believing as you have—for some time, apparently—in all my shortcomings, why have you remained with me?”
“I suppose up to now,” he said reflectively, “I was treading time, waiting for my life to begin. I have been at loose ends for so many, many years, Antoinette. We were good company for each other when I came to New York. I assumed that you, feeling no love for me, would find someone else eventually and marry him.” She chuckled derisively, drawing back her chair and rising.
“Poor foolish Cain,” she crooned. “Does he really believe the world works that way? How sad for him. How ignorant and stupid he is. How pathetic.” Her voice turned hard. “‘Cain, Cain, the doctor’s son/Stole a heart and away he run.’” She quoted the nursery rhyme in a sing-song yet menacing cadence. Then she laughed fully. “What a shame that you were truly convinced, in your man’s ignorance, that when you tired of me I would simply go away. That is not going to happen, Cain.”
He targeted her with a black regard. “Will you be happy married to a man you do not love, Antoinette?”
“And who does not love me,” she reminded him. He nodded curtly. “Yes,” she responded with a comfortable smile. “Yes. I shall be happy. I shall have money, a pretty house in Washington Square, and,” she added smugly, “I shall have a good name—your name, Dr. Byron. That is all a woman really needs. Let me add something to that, Cain. While you have been casting about, searching for your one true love—” the words were said with contempt “—I have been making my reputation in New York over the past year, not as a faithless woman, as you so ungallantly put it, but as a wronged one. If you do me ill in our marriage, as you have done for all the world to see in our courtship, you will loose the vengeance of society on your loutish head.” She paused significantly. “I find it worthy of note, by the way, that your ‘time treading’ ended with the arrival of one Miss Autumn Thackeray.”
Cain advanced on Antoinette swiftly. His teeth bared, he might have cuffed her. It was only with a great reining of his anger that she was spared. “For your own sake, Antoinette,” he grated, “hold your viperous tongue. You have wounded that woman more than once. By the gods, will nothing slake your appetite for inflicting torment?” Antoinette glanced down at his clenched fists. She arched her brow derisively.
“Cain’s gallantry, when it finally emerges, falls on sterile fields. That seed,” she assured him, “will never grow.” Her eyes narrowed and her next words were delivered in deadly earnest. “Hear this, Cain Byron: You shall never have her. That I promise. You may take your mistresses by the dozens if you so desire, and I shall have my paramours, but if you touch her, you will lose everything. I shall divorce you, Cain, and strip you of every penny of your fortune. Add this to that: I shall take this house, this estate, your precious horses, your lands, and your good name. The courts are notoriously sympathetic to wounded women, and I shall be the most wounded woman the world has ever seen. You and your bemused and bewildered old mother will be penniless.” She ground out the last words with such venom that Cain, even in his own wrath, was taken aback. “Yes, dear betrothed, I shall leave you and your pathetic little family destitute. You shall have to take up doctoring—if anyone would trust such a debased human being to doctor him—to earn your supper. Think about that the next time you decide to display your gallantry in defense of that hired slattern.” She paused. “In the meantime,” she added, daring to touch his jaw with one poised and polished fingernail, “a marriage is in your future—a marriage to me. If there is any question of that in your mind, check the law books. I can just as easily revert you to poverty with a suit for breach of promise as send you to jail. It is all one to me, Cain dear, for you see, what you say is true. I do not love you; I never have, and I am convinced that I never shall. I suppose,” she added mildly, mirthfully, “I am quite incapable of love. That suits my purposes very well.” She turned and ambled from the room. In a perfumed froth, she made her way across the entrance hall and up the gracefully curving staircase. She ventured one smiling glance over a slender shoulder to see Cain storming from the house.
Autumn was stunned. The voices and the vitriol had resounded through the house. There could no longer be even a pretense of civility. But what of that? Antoinette had, indeed, revealed her true nature, her complete lack of morality—this time to Cain himself. But what of that? It was over. The marriage would take place. Autumn made her stumbling way up the back staircase, the aching realization growing in her heart. Her wildest dreams had not prepared her for this outcome. Cain’s manly image, always strong in her mind, had been stripped, laid bare of all its defenses. Antoinette was, in fact, devoid of emotion, of any normal human response, and no one, not even Cain, for all his strength and confidence, could fight that. Autumn knew that both she and Cain had been idealistic fools—rendered even more foolish by Antoinette’s depravity. They were puppets, merely that, dancing on her string. Damien had been right. Antoinette was a gorgeous tropical bloom with poison at its center. Up to now that observation had been merely a colorful metaphor. But those words had become reality. Autumn could not even cry, so profound was her amazement. She sat heavily on her window seat that overlooked the grounds beyond the house, and though the sun was strong and warm, she felt a cold chill. She watched the newly budded leaves of trees, planted a hundred years ago, shuddering in the ocean breezes. She looked down, and through the distortion of her disbelief, her incomprehension, she saw Cain striding toward the stables. She saw him speak to one of the grooms and she saw that man unstable Castillo. Cain mounted the unsaddled horse in one powerful motion, and the animal, spurred immediately to a gallop, reared, wheeled mightily, and pounded off. The scene riveted her. It was a display of action, of unchecked power and control. And Autumn knew that she, too, must take action.
She raced to her armoire and pulled out a light jacket from among the tumble of her clothing. Desperate in her desire to overtake Cain, she raced down the stairs, slammed from the kitchen, and flew across the back lawn to the stables. “Get me a horse,” she called to one of the men. That man sprang to the task of saddling one of the animals. Autumn mounted with bare assistance and charged off. She did not, of course, perceive the narrowed green gaze that watched her from a second floor window.
> The Byron estate was a vast holding. Verdant fields and cultivated farmland stretched out behind her as Autumn kept her horse to a steady gallop. She abandoned established paths to ride into wooded areas, only to find them empty of human inhabitance. She rode on, past a sparkling blue pond that reposed in the sun, and down through the dewy purple shadows of a lilac grove. Everywhere, Autumn found evidence of the earth’s annual renewal. Buds burst forth, their delicate fragrances carried on blue breezes. New leaves lifted their virgin flesh to be nourished by the springtime sun.
At last, slowing her horse and entering a heavily foliated grove, Autumn spotted Cain. He stood, leaning back against the bole of a tree. His head resting against the bark, his arms folded on his chest, he seemed in repose. But Autumn knew that beneath that relaxed exterior there was anger and confusion, bitterness, and deep, deep pain. She dismounted noiselessly, tossing her horse’s rein over a low-hanging limb and approached him. He shot a quick, wary look in her direction and straightened at the sound of her footfall. Autumn’s lips curved into a soft smile. Before she could utter a word, Cain was upon her. His arms took her in a hard, acquisitive, not-to-be-breached embrace.
“Oh, love,” he said, the sound almost a groan. He captured her mouth in a searing kiss. “Autumn,” he whispered hoarsely on ragged breaths again and again. He swept her down onto the fresh grasses, cradling her in his arms. The sound and scent of him inflamed her senses, and Autumn knew that never again would she deny him. To deny him would be to deny herself. Now, knowing all that she knew, understanding the universe as it functioned now, in this present moment, Autumn gave herself fully to the mastery of her desire—and to his. She opened herself to Cain Byron, obeyed his every urgency as the tide obeys the compelling power of the moon. The ferocity of his lovemaking did not overmaster his consideration. He held her, stroked her, caressed her, and found the secret places where her deepest hungers resided. He fed them with succulent attention. Autumn’s soul was yielded up on the surging sea winds of a need so powerful it transcended all earthly thought. He entered her with a tender force and Autumn cried out. Cain hesitated, but she held him fiercely. He gazed down into the liquid dusk of her eyes, a question in his own.
“Don’t stop, Cain,” she whispered, “don’t ever stop loving me.” A smile tugged at the corners of his lips, and his eyes were the color of a midnight ocean.
“I never shall, Autumn,” he assured her. His lovemaking gentled and slowed as he watched the splendorous tableau of her rapturous response. Her whispered expressions of love and passion were rhapsodic music on the scented breezes of their perfect union. As his own desire mounted, he gathered her to him, his ardor swelling. They rose together to a voluptuous release, and they lay in each other’s arms for what might have been eternity. Cain watched her, her lips dewy, her eyes shadowed by tangled golden lashes, her skin flushed with passion’s innocence. He brushed a moist curl from her cheek. “I am the most fortunate of men,” he said quietly. She lay back in the setting of his arms, a jewel touched by the sun.
“And I,” she returned, “the most fortunate of women.” She lifted her arms, entwining them about his neck, and drew him to her for a last kiss. They both knew that eternity must end. Autumn sat up slowly, surveying the wreckage of her clothes that were strewn about the moist grass. She smiled softly. How unnecessary were these remnants of civility in Eden, she thought. She glanced at Cain who was regarding her keenly.
“May I ask a question—or several questions?” he inquired, suppressing a smile.
“You may,” she told him as she gathered her things. “But I can guess what they are.” He waited, his smile deepening. “You wish to know why I came, how I came to find you, and what happened to my former restraint.” She glanced at him archly. He was lying next to her, facing her, his weight held on one muscled arm. “You are quite smug, sir,” she told him tartly. “You think yourself the most desirable of men, don’t you? You imagine I was compelled to my wanton fall by your virility.” Amending her attitude, she smiled and drawing her knees beneath her, she leaned toward him. Her hair fell in creamy, sun-touched tangles over her shoulders. “If you think that, Cain Byron, then you know exactly why I came here.” They both laughed. “As to how I found you,” she added, “I might say that I shall always find you. Just try to run away from me and you will discover the truth of that. I shall dog your heels till the end of my days—and possibly even after that. We Gypsies, you know, believe in ghosts.” He drew her into his embrace and she lay contentedly against his lean length.
“And why,” he asked, stroking her hair, “have you abandoned your former restraint?” Autumn stiffened imperceptibly. She would not have him know that she had witnessed Antoinette’s humiliating assault. She would never allow him to know that, even though it had been the vehicle that had empowered her. Some secrets, she resolved, were a kindness to keep.
“I suppose,” she replied, her tone light, her face betraying no guardedness, “it is because . . . light-o’-love really is a pretty phrase.” Cain looked down on her, his gaze questioning but not doubting. His gratitude was in his eyes.
Chapter 14
The day of the engagement party for Cain and Antoinette dawned blue and breezy with only a touch of a sea-scented chill in the air. By mid-afternoon, the sun had warmed the earth, and a daffodil-tinted glow covered the world. Before the guests arrived, tables draped with pristine linen cloths were set in the side gardens of Byron Hall and were laden with bowls of fruit, trays of cakes, and crystal dishes filled with relishes and jams. The house was ablaze with springtime color. Tall vases of rhododendron, bleeding heart, and white lilacs brought the outdoors inside. Serving people swarmed between the kitchen and the parlors and the gardens, setting up tea tables, punch bowls, and conversation corners, filling every space with festivity.
Vanessa Byron, alone in her second floor chamber far above the ground-level bustle, put the finishing touches on her costume. She felt it was indeed a “costume.” Vanessa compared herself to a puppet in a silly shadow box farce—manipulated into taking part in an entertaining, completely unbelievable, event. Standing before her mirror, she studied herself, lifted a steely eyebrow, and smiled thinly. She had decided earlier that day that she had had quite enough of the “patriarchal pressure” that had staged this whole manufactured mess. She intended to use a bit of matriarchal pressure to see it stopped. She had asked her son to attend her in her room. She heard his tentative knock and opened her door, greeting him warmly.
“We’ve not been alone in some time,” she said, embracing him.
“You are quite right, Mother,” he replied as he bowed her into a chair.
“We needn’t be so formal, Cain,” she said, though she took the chair and sat for several moments looking up at her son. He seemed ill at ease and decidedly restless. Vanessa was not at all surprised that this should be so. “Did you realize that we haven’t had a party at Byron Hall in nearly ten years?” she ventured. Cain nodded tensely and paced to the bay of windows. “The lawns look so pretty, don’t you think? With the hedges groomed and the flower beds—”
“Yes,” Cain said impatiently. “Yes, Mother, everything looks manicured and fine. What did you wish to speak to me about?” He regarded her resolutely, and she smiled.
“I suppose it is necessary these days for me to have quite a good reason to summon you into my presence. It wasn’t always so, you know. Once, you would come in here just to lie on my bed while I dressed for a party, and we would talk and laugh and alter the universe. But, of course these days you are so busy with the farms and the tenants . . . and your plans.”
“I apologize, Mother,” he told her. “Of course you do not need a reason. It is only that,” he hesitated, “your summons seems so uncharacteristic.”
Vanessa laughed softly. “I suppose I haven’t taken much of an interest in this household of late, or in you. I think it is time I did.” Their blue gazes merged in a long-remembered well of tenderness. “I am, after all, your mother.
And believe me when I tell you, Cain darling, I am very interested in what happens to you.” She paused and leaned forward. “This marriage,” she began. Cain averted his eyes.
“What about it?” he asked. His manner was defensive, though he adopted a casual tone.
“I don’t approve of it,” stated Vanessa shortly. Cain turned to her, a question in his regard.
“You don’t?”
Vanessa shook her head firmly and responded, “No. I do not.” Cain crossed to her.
“Why not, Mother?” he asked.
“Call it a mother’s instinct, Cain,” she explained softly. “Call it the meddlesome observation of a woman who has spent entirely too much time alone. Call it what you will, but please do take note of my objection.”
Cain managed a half smile. “I do note it,” he affirmed. He paced back to the windows.
“And,” asked Vanessa, “do you credit it?”
“Of course I do, Mother,” he answered kindly. She watched the broad back, beloved, cherished once in her motherly arms. She stood, having long ago abandoned her walking stick, and moved to him, placing her hand on that now quite strong, quite powerfully self-sufficient back.
“Cain,” she said gently, “why are you going through with it?” He turned to her and in the diffused light of the softly curtained window he examined her. She was lovely in her motherly concern. Cain smiled and gathered her into his embrace.
“I am going through with it, Mother, because I must.”
“Must you?” she asked. Cain drew away from her and nodded. “Why?” asked Vanessa. Before he could answer she went on. “Why must you persist in something that is so obviously being done against your will?”
“Mother,” Cain said with kindness and concern, “you simply do not understand the situation.”
“Don’t I?” she replied narrowly.
“No,” Cain told her. “You do not.” With some difficulty, he explained. “Antoinette has been given every reason to believe that I would marry her.”