Tapestry Of Tamar

by Reece, Colleen L.

  In an agony of fear, Tamar retrieved her bag, pulled her shawl close against the chilly night, and lightly ran across the lawn and through the gate. Her shawl and a black veil, the same veil she had once vowed never to wear again, gave her protection, as did the drifting fog.

  Night-blooming flowers scented the still air and the mournful sound of a bell buoy filled her ears. Her shoulders straight, just-eighteen-year-old Tamar O’Donnell walked away into the San Francisco fog. She wondered if life would always be gray.

  three

  Disturbed by the scene with Tamar, Carlos slept fitfully, haunted by his dead mother’s accusing gaze. He started up several times, perspiring in spite of the chill night, then thrashed about until Lorraine sleepily demanded, “Whatever is wrong with you? How’s a person to get any rest with you groaning and tossing?”

  He didn’t answer but slid from the massive, antique bed and into a dressing gown. The clock in the hall chimed two. Not since the night he learned his parents had been killed in the train wreck had Carlos been filled with the foreboding that now drove him to his fine library. He paced for a good hour and at last lay down on a settee and fell asleep, to dream again. Confound that girl, Carlos thought when he woke for the dozenth time. Confound Lorraine, too. Why did she have to shove all this folderol on Tamar? He wondered why he had married Lorraine, with her exaggerated idea of her own importance. A streak of inherent honesty forced him to admit he had been as much attracted to her secure finances as to her proud, cold beauty.

  Never had dawn been more welcome than on his sister’s birthday and wedding day. He peered into the murky world, sighed, and hoped the fog would lift to produce a glorious October day. “If we can just get through without another tantrum,” Carlos muttered. He refused to identify whether the tantrums belonged to sister or wife.

  “Tamar’s evidently still sulking in her room,” Lorraine announced as she unfolded her breakfast napkin and attacked chilled grapefruit segments. Even this early, every hair lay in place, sculptured until she looked more like a mannequin than a wife. “I tapped and told her not to be late for breakfast but she refused to answer.” Without waiting for a response, she sipped her coffee, then sharply struck a small silver bell. A tired-faced maid came, and Lorraine waved at the cup. “Take it away and bring fresh. This tastes like the cook made it from bay water.”

  Carlos caught the maid’s resentful look, but he only shrugged. Servants might not like serving the O’Donnells, but they usually stayed because of the good wages. He laid his heavy silver fork across his plate. “Let her sleep. After today you—we won’t have to worry about her.”

  “Poor Phillip. I pity him. On the other hand, I’m sure he can control Tamar.”

  Why should the memory of the girl’s reproachful dark gaze rise between Carlos and his breakfast? Carlos concentrated on the perfectly deboned fish on a nest of parsley, flanked with hot buttered biscuits. “He had better. It is costing us plenty.”

  “You mean it is costing me.” Lorraine never passed up an opportunity to remind Carlos she had brought more worldly goods to their marriage than her husband, despite his shrewd dealing. “It will be worth it. By the way, just how much is there left from your parents’ estate for Tamar?”

  “Not much.” Carlos squirmed. “By rights, whatever my parents left should go strictly to Tamar and Richard. When Father and Mother made their will, they had no reason to suspect an early demise. If they had lived and Father hadn’t lost his money, Tamar and Richard would each have received the same amount on their twenty-first birthday that I did.”

  “Horrors, they won’t make a fuss, will they?” Lorraine dropped her spoon with a little crash. Her gray-green eyes turned flinty.

  “It would do no good if they did. They money is no longer there.” A frown puckered his heavy dark eyebrows. “I am considering giving my share of the inheritance as a wedding present.”

  “That is the stupidest remark I have ever had the misfortune to hear,” Lorraine flared. “The dowry Phillip insisted on is more than enough wedding gift.” She added, “That tapestry should have been sold as well.”

  “The tapestry will never go out of the O’Donnell family.” He flung down his napkin and rose; all the proud ancestry that ruled his life rose with him. “I’ll hear no more about it.” He strode off with his wife temporarily silenced. Not often did Carlos take a strong stand. When he did, fighting his will was like trying to turn the tide. Now he turned when he reached the doorway. “Remember, let Tamar sleep. The wedding isn’t until this evening, and we don’t want a washed-out bride.” His footsteps echoed down the polished hall.

  Lorraine brooded all morning but held her peace. Just a few more hours and they would be rid of Tamar. Even when the parlor maid informed her that Tamar hadn’t touched her breakfast tray, Lorraine merely nodded and said nothing, although she gritted her teeth against the hot anger inside. She went upstairs to calm herself by gloating over her own costume, carefully chosen to set off her cool loveliness.

  She didn’t know an unexpected caller had come until Carlos sent a servant to request her presence in the library immediately. She patted her hair into place, smoothed a bit of lace on her gown, and sauntered downstairs into the dark, oppressive room.

  “I’m terribly sorry, but I don’t see how I can be held accountable.” The family solicitor wrung his hands in distress. “She brought the proof and I—”

  “You doddering old fool!” Carlos raised his hand, and for a moment Lorraine thought he would strike the white-haired lawyer.

  “Mr. O’Donnell, you forget yourself.” Her rapier voice sliced the tension in the room. “What is this all about?”

  Carlos ran a finger under his collar as if it choked him. “This—donkey has made a fool of himself and us.”

  Lorraine gave her distraught husband a scornful glance and turned to the solicitor. “Speak. What has upset my husband?”

  Reassured by her manner, the man told his story. “I arrived late at my office and found my junior partner had taken things into his own hands. But she did bring her papers, and he had no way of knowing—”

  “Knowing what?” If he didn’t make sense soon Lorraine felt she would shriek.

  Carlos clutched her arm with a steel-band grip. “Tamar waltzed into the office this morning, showed proof she was eighteen today, and convinced this idiot’s helper she was entitled to receive her share of our inheritance.”

  “Wha-at!” Lorraine’s jaw dropped. “Impossible! She is locked in her room.” She jerked free and started for the door, then whirled. “Are you sure the person who carried the papers wasn’t an impostor?”

  The old man shook his head. “My partner has known Tamar O’Donnell for years.”

  “But she’s being married this evening,” Lorraine protested. “The distribution of her inheritance was to be after the ceremony.”

  “I know.” The solicitor’s forehead creased with fresh worry. “My partner reported that when he said he understood this was the plan, she stared through him and retorted, ‘There will be no wedding. I am eighteen, the money is mine, and I suggest you speedily produce it.’ she flustered him so much that he gave her a draft for the money. Whereupon, she bowed and left.”

  Speechless, the O’Donnells stared at him as he continued. “As soon as I came in, he told me of the curious incident. I sent him posthaste to the bank to see if the draft had been cashed.”

  “And?” Carlos’s eyelids narrowed to slits.

  “It had already been cashed.” The solicitor mopped his brow. “I’m terribly sorry, as I said, but after all, the young woman was legally entitled—”

  “Get out.” The words fell like two stones.

  The old man gathered the remnants of his dignity and escaped. The moment he left the house, Carlos and Lorraine hurried upstairs.

  “I still think it was an impostor,” Lorraine p
anted.

  “Then you’re as big a fool as the one who just left.” Carlos knew his sister was gone, but still he thundered through the door, “Tamar, unlock this door and come out here immediately.” Silence. He shouted again, heedless of the bevy of curious servants. When he still received no response, he demanded a key, unlocked the door, and gave it a mighty shove. It only opened a few inches.

  “What on earth?” Carlos threw his full weight against the solid door. This time he managed to budge the heavy chest of drawers his resourceful younger sister had put there for a barricade. He stepped into the room. The smooth, unwrinkled bed, a crude rope of knotted bed-sheets hanging out the open window, and the desolation of emptiness mutely told their story.

  Lorraine gained control first. “Not a word of this or every one of you will be fired and given no recommendations,” she told the cowering staff. “Go.” One by one they slipped away, but not before Lorraine caught the little smile on the parlor maid’s face, gone so quickly Lorraine couldn’t be sure what it had meant.

  “Dios!” It was the closest thing to prayer Carlos had uttered for years. He hastened to the window, saw the broken shrubs below. Unwilling admiration crept into his eyes, but anger soon replaced it. He turned on his heel.

  “You did this,” he accused his wife. “If you had been more understanding, she wouldn’t have left.”

  “I!” Lorraine O’Donnell drew herself to her full height. “You blame me for that vixen’s actions?” They rapidly progressed into a quarrel that left Carlos cursing and his wife livid. At last Lorraine whimpered, “We have to find her, bring her back. If she doesn’t marry Phillip as planned, what will people say?”

  “We’ll have to tell him.” Carlos sat down heavily, faced with disgrace in the eyes of Nob Hill.

  “We could say nothing. This may simply be a final prank to annoy us,” Lorraine offered. Her face showed she didn’t believe a word of her explanation, but she went on anyway, as though trying to convince herself. “It would be just like her to appear any time, smile and go on with the wedding. In the meantime, don’t you know someone who could look for her? Someone who could keep his mouth shut?”

  Carlos sat with his shoulders slumped. He seemed to barely hear her. “There isn’t another man, is there? Someone she cares about and would go to?”

  “Don’t be ridiculous. When have I allowed her to be anywhere except with Phillip?” Lorraine’s reasonable answer set Carlos free from that doubt.

  At the end of the day, Carlos and Lorraine had no more idea where Tamar had gone than when they first discovered her to be missing. A grilling interview with the solicitor’s junior partner disclosed only that she had been wearing “something light greenish, fluffy-looking” and Lorraine identified it as Tamar’s new voile gown. Beyond that, Tamar might as well have walked directly from the law office into the deep blue water of San Francisco Bay.

  Afterward, Carlos wondered how he could have let Lorraine convince him to remain silent for so long. She insisted on going to the church, as though the wedding ceremony would still take place. “Tamar may just show up,” she excused herself. A few at a time, then dozens and hundreds of guests arrived and were seated. The organ began to play. If anyone wondered why the groom and his attendants appeared rather tardily, well, wedding participants often lagged.

  Carlos and Lorraine remained in an anteroom until time for the “mother of the bride” to be seated. Phillip still had not been told anything except that Tamar would be a little late. A dull ache in Carlos’s chest spread throughout his whole body as he peered into the growing dusk, hoping to see some conveyance bringing Tamar. The same accusations he’d heard in his dreams now rose in his mind and convicted him. Did his little sister dread marriage with Phillip so much she would actually leave him at the altar? Why hadn’t he seen it? Why had he allowed Lorraine to quell his doubts with an airy, “All girls feel nervous and jittery. Once they’re married, things will be fine.”

  No one had thought to tell the organist of the delay. Following his instructions, he went through his repertoire, peered down and saw Lorraine in her place, and joyously burst into the familiar opening of “The Wedding March.” Six bridesmaids, chosen from the city’s elite, marched to the front. Heads turned in anticipation. Someone stood and the rest of the guests followed. The music went on. And on. Yet the aisle decked in white velvet remained empty. Phillip’s lips set in a line that harbored no good for the absent bride. Still the organ pealed and chimed its welcome, until even the hired musician realized something must be amiss. At last he throttled to a stop, with only a weird echo to disturb the waiting silence.

  Ashen-faced, finally accepting the truth that Tamar had not and would not come, Carlos took the hardest step of his life and walked slowly down the long aisle alone, the aisle where Tamar should have paced with him. He reached the front, turned and said quietly but in a tone every listening ear could hear, “I am sorry, but my sister is—not well. Thank you for coming.” He glanced at Phillip and watched him quickly hide his consternation beneath his pride, and then Carlos turned to help Lorraine to her feet. They marched out to a buzzing recessional of shock, the bridesmaids’ pastel gowns fluttering behind them. Would Tamar be hiding in her room at home?

  Common sense told Carlos no. In a flash of memory, he recalled the story of Grandmother Joyous, who once fled from an elite family who wanted no part of her. Tamar, a throwback to that brave woman, had not only her grandmother’s red-gold hair but also her valor. She would not return so quickly. How long could she live on the paltry inheritance she had collected this morning? What would she do then? Had any man ever been more plagued than Carlos O’Donnell?

  ❧

  An hour later, all of Nob Hill whispered of the wedding that wasn’t. Veronica Rhys, who lived with her younger brother Gordon, flounced down on the sofa of their tasteful home not far from the O’Donnells’ and prepared to enlighten him about the fiasco. Her ice-blue gown made a pretty splash of color against the dark red upholstery.

  “Well, I just wasted an evening,” she began. Thirty-nine, as sandy-haired and gray-eyed as thirty-year-old Gordon, their Welsh ancestry showed in more than their name. Yet the stockiness that made Gordon’s five foot ten, one hundred and eighty pound frame attractive only made Veronica square and imposing. Despite her lack of beauty, she lived with the conviction that while God might rule the world, she was a divinely appointed second-in-command. Her self assurance was the only quality she shared with Lorraine O’Donnell—whom she secretly despised.

  Gordon looked up from some papers he had been scanning. He wore a sympathetic smile. Overbearing, Puritanistic, and annoying as Veronica could be, he adored her. When their mother had died, Veronica had cared for Gordon herself, though she was barely in her teens. “That’s too bad. What happened? Oh, yes—the Carlin wedding.” He grinned. “Did Phillip duck out? It would be just like him.”

  Veronica shook her head and a faint twinkle made her less formidable and more human. “No, but the girl did.”

  Gordon dropped his pen, all attention. “What! You mean any girl or woman in San Francisco would dare leave Carlin at the altar?”

  “Carlos O’Donnell explained that his sister was not well, but I have my doubts about that.” She looked smug. “I don’t know Miss O’Donnell, but according to her sister-in-law Lorraine she’s a redheaded vixen who won’t be told anything. Perhaps she got wind of how deeply in debt Phillip really is.”

  Gordon lost interest. “She should thank God she isn’t married to Carlin. He has a long way to go before he will ever become a husband for any decent woman.” He smiled at Veronica. “I’d better finish my work. Thanks for the news.”

  She rose, patted his shoulder. “Goodnight, Gordon.”

  “Goodnight, Veronica.” He watched her leave the room, admiring her stately carriage. Why hadn’t some man snatched her up years before? He laughed out loud. For that mat
ter, why hadn’t he found a mate among their hordes of friends? His laugh died. Well-meaning associates often accused the Rhys brother and sister of being so compatible they’d never marry.

  “Hogwash.” The epithet sounded foreign to the elegant room, but Gordon didn’t care. Tired of the preparation for the next day’s court cases, he thrust back from his desk and strode to the window. Who would have dreamed that one day he and Veronica would live on Nob Hill? He thought of his years as a struggling attorney, how his sister schemed and worked to bring him to the attention of a fine firm. True, the inheritance from their parents had helped. But Veronica’s shrewd business sense added to it. Now, without conceit, Gordon knew himself to be one of the most sought after lawyers in the city.

  On top of the world, he thought. Yet— he sighed. The talk of the wedding had stirred something deep within him. He was in a position now to look around for a wife, but he felt a strange reluctance. The women he met left him cold with their simpering and their greedy interest in an eligible lawyer bachelor. “Redheaded vixen, eh. At least this Miss O’Donnell sounds like she has brains enough to think, which is more than most society belles do! Wonder if she is sick? Or just stubborn?” He eyed his cluttered desk with distaste, but he gave in to the discipline ingrained in him by a life of hard work. Five minutes later, legal work replaced Carlin and the O’Donnells in his mind. By the next day, he had forgotten his fleeting interest in the “redheaded vixen.”

  **

  Gordon successfully defended his client, felt the glow that came when he knew justice had been served, then hurried back to his office. A hasty sandwich, coffee, and he plunged back into his work.