by Carole King
“How do you do, Dr. Byron,” she said with matriarchal assurance. “Your letter and invitation were most kind.” Cain bowed with courtly deference over her hand.
“And you, Mrs. Thackeray, were most kind to accept.” His eyes, as he lifted his regard, glinted with a kind of knowing incandescence. And a rogue where women were concerned, observed Isabel wryly. Cain Byron was not unaccustomed to the art of charming a lady, and Isabel was not unaccustomed—or disinclined—to being charmed. She allowed him to usher her to her seat as she and Vanessa exchanged knowing smiles. Isabel fully understood her daughter’s giddiness. Once seated, she assessed Autumn with a loving perusal.
“You look well, my darling.”
“And you, Mother. Won’t you come upstairs?” Autumn said hastily. “Let me show you to your room. You must be exhausted. It is not so long ago that I made that same journey from Philadelphia to Cape May. I know from experience how wearying it is.”
“You forget, Autumn,” responded Isabel, taking her daughter’s extended hands but retaining her seat, “I came by private coach, a most luxurious private coach.” She looked up at Cain. “And I would like to become acquainted with your employer. Apart from the fact that he possesses a fine coach and four and that he doesn’t approve of women in breeches, I know nothing of him. Though your letters speak glowingly of Mrs. Byron—and I have seen for myself her excellent health and wit—you rarely mention her son.” Cain’s composure lapsed immediately. He shoved his hands into his pockets and paced to the window. “Do the two of your ride together often?”
Autumn hesitated, but Cain said quietly, “Quite often, Mrs. Thackeray.”
“How wonderful for you. There is nothing like riding for fun and exercise.”
“Nothing in the world,” put in Autumn with an uneasy brightness. “We’ve ridden almost every day since . . . since . . .”
“Since the weather has been warm, I suppose,” offered Isabel.
“Yes. Yes indeed, Mother. Ever since the weather has been warm.”
“Since the first part of June, actually,” piped Vanessa. “Wasn’t it then, Cain darling, that you began to ride with Autumn on a daily basis?” Cain nodded.
“I believe it was, Mother,” he offered, frowning darkly in her direction. “You see, Mrs. Thackeray, Autumn and I—I should say your daughter and I—have become . . . friends.” His mother looked at him sharply. Then her eyes fell on Autumn, who said nothing. There was, however, both resoluteness and uncertainty warring in her countenance. Vanessa’s regard drifted to Isabel. She merely seemed interested in what everyone had to say.
“Friends?” she asked placidly.
“More than friends, Mother,” Autumn amended. “Though, you see . . . there cannot be a courtship.”
Cain stepped forward, drawing his hands from his pockets, and stood before Isabel. “Mine is the regret, Mrs. Thackeray,” he interjected solemnly. He lowered his onyx gaze. “I have made mistakes in my life but none so regrettable as those concerning your daughter. Assumptions have been made by others which were completely unfounded.” Isabel regarded him steadily.
“I am afraid I don’t understand,” she said. Vanessa refrained from mentioning that no one in his right mind could possibly have understood such a fuzzy explanation. She cursed the conventions of the time that forced everyone to be so vague and roundabout regarding their feelings. Autumn sat down near her mother.
“Cain is already engaged,” she explained.
“I see,” said Isabel quietly. She regarded her daughter squarely. “What are your feelings in this matter, Autumn?”
“I am fully aware that, at the moment, anything other than friendship between Cain and me is impossible.”
“I am devoted to your daughter, Mrs. Thackeray,” Cain said, “and it is my intention to love and care for her forever.” The words “marriage” and “wife” had not been mentioned, and they were conspicuous by their absence.
“Well,” Isabel stated on a breath, “I believe I understand more than I did initially. You know,” she added, “I am considerably more fatigued than I imagined myself to be. I would appreciate being escorted to my room.” Vanessa rose abruptly.
“I shall be happy to do the honors, Isabel.” As she advanced to her guest, she said, “Won’t you ask Carrie to fix a light supper, Cain dear?” She cast a softer regard on Autumn. “You may bring it up to your mother later.”
Once the older women had withdrawn, Cain sank heavily into the chair vacated by his mother. “Oh, Lord,” he groaned, allowing his head to roll back and raking his fingers through his curls. He regarded Autumn levelly at last. “I am sorry, love. I would not have compromised you for the world.”
“It is comforting to know,” she said flatly, “that I have the advantage of such a protector.” The last word came with a less than complimentary edge. Cain’s gaze narrowed.
“Autumn,” he said, clenching his words, “what could I have done? You do want us to be honest with your mother, don’t you?” Autumn raised an elegantly winged brow and her chin concurrently. Her amber gaze darkened to a stygian gold.
“You might have been like other men, Cain Byron, and accepted my favors incidentally. It was not necessary for you to declare eternal devotion right in front of my mother.” Cain’s brows lifted, but Autumn’s forbidding posture ruled out a rejoinder.
Instead, he hid a smile, observing only, “You are a most unusual woman, Autumn Thackeray.”
“And one in a most unusual predicament,” she returned. “If you had left it that we were merely friends, I could have simply let that suffice as an explanation for our closeness. But mothers are notoriously curious about men who say they will love and ‘care for’ their daughters forever without adding they will marry them, too.”
“Have you no faith in the power of love?” inquired Cain. “Don’t you wish your mother to know, as I do, that one day we will be Dr. and Mrs. Byron?”
Autumn sighed and averted her gaze.
“Who is being the optimist now, Cain?”
“Oh, come now, Autumn,” he objected, “you cannot really imagine that Antoinette will sacrifice her whole life for the sake of wrecking ours. She will be madly in love with someone else before the season is out. In the meantime, we shall enjoy the most glorious summer of our lives, and we shall enjoy it in the fullest confidence that when autumn comes—that most magnificent of seasons—we shall be husband and wife.” He paused and stood slowly, moving cautiously to her. “You look,” he observed, “as though I have just sentenced you to torture on the rack.” Capturing her against him, he added, “Any torture you experience at my hands, love, will be sweet, I promise you.” He lowered his lips to hers and they shared a searing kiss. “Now,” said Cain on a husky breath, “go up to your mother. Tell her the truth. Tell her further that you adore Cain Byron and have every reason to believe that he will make you the happiest of women. Tell her all that, my sweet. And tell her also that you fully expect that every morning of your life, from this day on, you will awaken with a smile.” He pressed her to him, and Autumn felt the thunder of his heart against her cheek. “Tell her all those things, Autumn Thackeray, and believe them, for they are the truest words I have ever spoken.”
Chapter 17
Few words were needed between mother and daughter, though many were spoken. Isabel counseled that Autumn must make her own decisions, and Autumn, for her part, wished that she were five years old again and might depend on her mother to tell her what to do. Isabel did warn of the pressures that would be placed on both her daughter and on Cain Byron by standards of convention manufactured and guarded by an unforgiving society. Those pressures, Autumn assured her, were already taking their toll. Their relationship would always be a stormy one, it seemed, wracked not only with external tensions but with internal ones as well.
“Cain is an entirely sincere lover,” conceded Isabel, as she and her daughter strolled the meadows that surrounded Byron Hall, their wide skirts trailing deep swaths in the grasses. “B
ut he is nevertheless only a man. He has been bred to believe that only his judgments are the valid ones. That is the real challenge of your relationship, Autumn.”
“I can face those challenges, Mother. Failure lies in only one direction, and that would be abandoning Cain to his notions of his own infallibility.”
“What then will you do about Vanessa and Robert?”
“I don’t know yet. That problem seems insoluble.”
“But you do know, Autumn, that no problem resides in the universe that does not have a corresponding solution.”
“I do know that,” Autumn responded, smiling. Arm in arm they strolled down to the sea. “And what of you, Mother?” she asked as they reached the sun-smeared water of the bay. “Have you thought of remarriage?”
“Oh, I shall never remarry, Autumn. That much is clear to me. But I have plans of a sort.”
“Of a sort?” inquired Autumn.
“Right now they seem unfocused, but I dream of opening a business.”
“What sort of business?”
“As you know, Autumn, I have always been a talented seamstress—or at least a patient one. I have been taking in sewing since your father’s death, but now I think I should like to open a shop—a real dress shop right in the heart of Philadelphia. When you were little I designed many of your pretty outfits. I should have enjoyed making them myself, but your father didn’t think it would be seemly. Our dressmaker became most impatient with me,” Isabel remembered, laughing. “She always said I should leave the mundane and technical aspects of sewing to her.”
“And so you should have, Mother,” Autumn said.
“Why?”
“Because . . . Well, a lady of your wealth simply doesn’t do her own sewing.”
“I am no longer a lady of wealth, Autumn.”
“But a shop, Mother, in the center of Philadelphia. At least I left the city to live out my humiliation. Please, I beg of you, think of your reputation.” Isabel eyed her daughter with a tilted perusal.
“What reputation have I to protest? Friends have deserted me; invitations are nonexistent. You know how it hurt when people we had known for years passed us on the street without acknowledgment. We were not even paid condolence calls. You and I, Autumn, became invisible. In that great city of ‘brotherly love’ I am still invisible. Now I should like to carve out a purpose for my life. As I mentioned, I shall never marry again, I shall never turn my life over to another. And I refuse to remain invisible.”
Autumn could not deny that her mother’s reasoning was sound. But she had to protest that her plans were unrealistic. To start a business of one’s own one needed capital, resources to which Isabel had no access. Women could not get bank loans. Women could not rent business property. “On the other hand,” Autumn mused aloud, “if you could acquire some money through private investment . . .” She turned to her mother excitedly. “I have saved some money. I can think of no better use for it.”
“I could not take your money, Autumn.”
“But it would be an investment, Mother!” Isabel turned the idea over in her mind.
“An investment,” she repeated quietly.
“And I am certain Vanessa would be interested in such a venture. We could be a corporation.”
“If we succeed,” said Isabel, as she and Autumn hurried back to the house, “we shall be the talk of every board meeting from here to Menlo Park.”
Vanessa not only approved the idea, she had contributions of her own to make. She insisted that all three of them must travel to Philadelphia and choose a house where Isabel could not only live, but where she might have room to work and store her inventory of materials and equipment. Cain was apprised of their plans and was naturally dubious. His most vigorous objection revolved around the fact that none of the women knew anything about business.
“I beg to differ, Dr. Byron,” put in Isabel. “I do know something about business. Quite a lot, in fact. Though I took no active role in my husband’s professional life, I was an avid listener. He confided in me regularly, and I have always been a quick study.” Cain eyed her in some astonishment as she proceeded to explain her plans. Autumn felt a welling pride in her mother’s acumen. She displayed, as it happened, a rare and cunning understanding of the procedures and strategies involved in running a business.
At one point, Vanessa found it necessary to remind Cain that the money was hers to invest if she wished; Autumn found it necessary to remain absolutely silent throughout their talks. In many ways she understood Cain’s rigorous disapproval—and it brought her closer to him. Whether he liked the notion or not, approved it or not, she, Isabel, and Vanessa were going to become businesswomen. This was not a circumstance with which Cain Byron, autocratic and proud protector of women, was familiar. Autumn recognized that in not seeking his advice, they had affronted his pride; he was probably more hurt than angry. She found his befuddlement endearing. What she did not find endearing was Cain’s strenuous opposition to her accompanying her mother back to Philadelphia.
“Under no circumstances will I allow it,” he told Autumn furiously.
“It is not for you to allow or disallow, Cain,” she reminded him.
“Woman,” he said, shaking an avenging finger at her, “you are a member of my household, and you will do as I say.” Autumn bit back the obvious rejoinder that would have served to remind him of exactly whose household she was, in fact, a member. Instead she stood her ground rigidly.
“Let me tell you something, Dr. Byron, you shall have to tie me in the cellar to keep me from going to Philadelphia. . . . I can rail and brawl as well as you, sir. In the end you will gladly ship me off to Philadelphia.” Cain hesitated. Autumn was nothing if not formidable when in one of these moods. He took in the elevation of her chin, the molten glistening of her eyes, the clenching of her small fists. For all she was the daintiest thing under a bonnet, she could, when she set her mind to it, give pause to the manliest of men—she’d faced down Winslow Beame fearlessly enough, reflected Cain. He was hard pressed, even in his wrath, not to smile at the memory. Still, he could not allow her and his mother to go traipsing off without male protection.
“Autumn,” he said, attempting a reasonable tone, “it is not right, three women on their own in a big city.”
“My mother has been on her own for more than a year, Cain, and she has survived quite successfully,” Autumn reminded him.
“I shall miss you,” he interjected quietly. Autumn looked at him, stunned to her bones. The sudden change in his demeanor was completely unexpected, as was the message he conveyed. Apparently, the admission was a surprise to Cain as well, for he turned from her abruptly.
“Oh, Cain,” she assured him, “I shall miss you, too.” Her mood had changed instantly. “Come with us,” she entreated, moving to him. She lifted her hand to his proud shoulder. “Please do. The builders will be coming in to set up your office, Cain, and you won’t be able to start your practice for a few weeks anyway.” He turned back to her, his gaze questing. Autumn brushed at the jet curls that fell over his forehead. “I love you so much, my darling,” she said gently. “And I know how difficult all this is to absorb. But please try to realize how important it is to me.” Very suddenly he took her into his arms. He held her to him for a long moment. She could feel his uncertainty, his confusion. These were not emotions Cain understood.
“I can’t bear the thought of losing you,” he told her. “That fear haunts me every day.” Again, Autumn found herself astounded by his admission. His fears were hers. She clung to him fiercely.
“Cain Byron,” she told him with soft intensity, “I told you once that I would dog your every step. I told you that my soul would be yours. Remember those words, Cain, and believe them, for they are the truest words I have ever spoken.”
It had been decided that two coaches would be needed for the trip. While Isabel and Vanessa rode in one, the other was taken by Cain and Autumn. The baggage, hastily packed, was distributed—if a bit carelessly—b
etween the two, and the foursome laughed in jolly acknowledgement of their rather messy departure from the proud baronial presence of Byron Hall. They arrived in the historic city of Philadelphia resembling something like a ragtag deployment of vagrant yokels. While Cain, Autumn, and Vanessa took rooms in the stately Hotel Olympus on the Ben Franklin Parkway, Isabel went on to her small apartment overlooking the Schuylkill River on Walnut Street. Inviting Vanessa there for tea the afternoon of their arrival, she apologized for the meanness of the accommodation. Vanessa assured her that her circumstances would most assuredly change within the next few days. As they drove back to the hotel to meet Cain and Autumn for dinner, Isabel pointed out where her home had once been on the city’s Main Line, a swath of majestic estates rich with prestige and—for Isabel at least—memory. She assured Vanessa, however, that she had no designs on those memories. They were for her as false and as far away as a storybook fantasy.
“I want a real home,” she told Vanessa, “one in which I might map out my own future, where my own hopes and dreams might be realized.”
“And that is exactly what you shall have, Isabel,” Vanessa told her.
They dined that evening at one of the restaurants in the northwest section of the city called Germantown. After dinner, the mothers retired, and Cain and Autumn strolled along the city’s grid of narrow cobblestone streets intersected by broad and busy boulevards. Excited and memory-charged, Autumn pointed out the sights of the city—the park where her nanny used to bring her afternoons and where later in her adolescence she would ride on Sundays; the narrow brick walks of Elfreth’s Alley; the secluded courtyard of Carpenters’ Hall; and the cool cavern of Old Swedes’ Church where Autumn had watched with pleasure and excitement the arrival and departure of many a wedding party. They visited a bread shop and sat in the warmly lit little tavern that adjoined it as the evening ended. Cain noted that there was an air of melancholy around Autumn as she recounted the brightness with which her family’s social star had shone and the rapidity with which it had faded once her father had died.