To please him, I had slipped on a flimsy wrapper while he pulled the heavy, fringed drapes together to shut out the sunlight. He had even turned back the covers on the large bed for me, and fluffed up the pillows. How solicitous of me he was, and I should really sleep, if only to please him. This was what I told myself, but the moment he left the room I found myself far too restless and hot to stay in bed.
I did not like the opulence of this room, with its turkey-red carpet and gilt-framed mirrors. The crimson and gold wallpaper made me feel as if the walls were closing in on me. The room was too dark, too gloomy; even the enormous four-poster bed with its heavily embroidered brocade bedspread and red-tasseled canopy made me feel stifled.
I felt the perspiration beading on my body and the slight, nauseous feeling that I had learned to dread seemed to curl like a fist in the pit of my stomach. I told myself I was being fanciful. If I didn’t look out I would end up a hypochondriac, like my mother. All I needed was some fresh air.
And so I made excuses to myself, swinging my bare legs off the edge of the bed and feeling the soft plush of the carpet under my feet as I went to the window, which was closed. I had a slight struggle opening it, wondering crossly as I did so, if people in this town were all afraid of fresh air. But with that much achieved I stood there for a while, studying the people on the street. I thought I recognized Mark, standing hatless, his fair hair burnished by the sun as he talked with a group of men. One of them, a portly gentleman wearing a dark suit and stovepipe hat, shook Mark’s hand as he clapped him heartily on the back.
Another acquaintance? I frowned slightly. Strange that I should have had no idea before that Mark knew so many people. He had never spoken to me of his friends in the territory; only of people he knew in Boston and New York. A misfit, he had called himself, and yet he seemed perfectly at ease down there. I saw him throw back his head and laugh at something the older man had said—a mannerism that reminded me strangely of Todd, and which I had never observed in Mark before. He had always seemed so restrained, so reserved. But ever since we had been married I had noticed an air of self-assurance, even of firmness about him that had seemed lacking.
And now, I scolded myself, I was being fanciful again. I had only known Mark in the shadow of his uncle. And now he was free—we both were. Perhaps I was only just discovering the real Mark, the promising young attorney who was so highly spoken of in Boston, the gay young man-about-town who had all the eligible young females there setting their caps at him. I was lucky, I repeated that to myself as I saw Mark and the portly man detach themselves from the others and walk down the street together, talking earnestly. They went into a building that adjoined the town marshal’s office, with a boldly painted sign that proclaimed it to be the Bank of Socorro. And why shouldn’t Mark visit the bank? No doubt he needed money to take care of all our expenses and pay the wages of the men who had escorted us here.
And then I forgot Mark, for my eyes were drawn with morbid curiosity to the white-painted structure on the other side of the marshal’s office, with a covered walkway connecting the two. The courthouse. I remembered the story I had heard so long ago, when none of the protagonists were familiar to me. Had my father occupied a room in this very hotel while he waited for Lucas to come to trial? And Lucas himself… what had he been like then? I imagined him standing at the window of his cell, staring out at the mountains which had been his home. Perhaps he had wondered if he would ever see them again… And then I thought, oh, God, must everything I see remind me of Lucas? When would I come to accept that that part of my life was finished and done with?
But in spite of everything I could tell myself, it was difficult not to remember, especially when Mark himself brought the subject up.
As he had promised, we went walking in the plaza that evening. It was getting dark, the mountains a dark purple, like enormous shadows splashed against the fading blue and crimson sky. Mark named these ranges for me, the names Spanish and musical. “Magdalena, Galinas, Los Piños…” He had surprised me with gifts when he returned to our rooms. A ruby and diamond-studded comb for my hair, a white mantilla made of the sheerest lace to wear over it, and even a white silk shawl to put around my shoulders. He had insisted upon choosing the gown I would wear—a burgundy red silk with deep blue and green threads woven into the material, giving a shot effect when it caught the light. I had never worn this particular gown before, thinking it a trifle too flashy for my taste, and cut too low in front, but Mark liked it. It made me look Spanish, he said, and I had given in to his wishes with a shrug.
Mark was very attentive to me, keeping his arm around my waist and whispering to me that every man on the street envied him, and all the other women paled to insignificance beside me. I wished that he had not fallen into the habit of flattering me so excessively; it had begun to embarrass me. I was almost glad of the crowds that surrounded us and the bustle of activity on the street.
The lamps had been lit everywhere, cowboys dressed in their Sunday best with slicked down hair rode into town whistling and whooping. And in the plaza where, following the Spanish custom, people paraded slowly around and around from one end to the other, a mariachi band played lively music.
We received many curious glances, Mark and I; perhaps because of the contrast we formed—I with my black hair and he so blond.
“You see, my love? You’re so beautiful that no one can help staring at you.”
“I don’t enjoy being stared at.” I retorted more sharply than I had intended. “Mark, can’t we sit down for a while? All this walking round and round is making me feel quite dizzy.”
Somehow he managed to find a stone bench under some trees, apologizing for his thoughtlessness. We sat there in silence for a while, alone and yet not alone. Anyone who noticed us would have taken us for lovers, choosing this quiet corner to whisper to each other,
Mark’s arm had been around my waist, now he moved, drawing me closer to him. I felt his hand slide up my back under the shawl I wore; and then his fingers, moving lightly over my skin, were caressing my shoulder and the curve of my breast. I could not help stiffening. I turned my head, and he was watching me intently, a slight smile curving his lips. I repeated the thought that was on my mind aloud.
“Sometimes I feel as if I do not really know you, Mark.”
“And I feel as if I have always known you. But not enough. All human beings are strangers to each other, I think. Marriage can be a dull affair of a contract between two persons, or a voyage of discovery—shall we spend the next few days discovering each other, my darling wife?”
I could not help widening my eyes. “I’ve never heard you speak that way before. I think you are quite a complex person, Mark.”
“Does that frighten you or intrigue you? My dearest Rowena, if you only knew how puzzled you look!” His tone became almost teasing. “At least I’ve managed to take that lost and distant look from your face and to make you see me as a man. My poor girl, has it really been so bad? Is forgetting him so hard to do?”
I caught my breath, but I did not pretend not to know what he meant. “Has it been so obvious? I’ve tried…”
“Perhaps you try too hard. Sooner or later, you will see Lucas Cord for what he is—a conscienceless, predatory killer, not far removed from the level of a beast. And then you will stop romanticizing what happened to you, and go back to being your true self.”
“Mark,” I began, “I don’t—”
“You must not stop thinking of me as your friend, just because we are now husband and wife,” he said gently. “And that is all the more reason why we should be completely frank with each other. It does not pain me to hear you speak of him, Rowena, because you see, I have you; he does not. And the day will come when you will make your own choice, of your own accord, and turn your back on the past forever.”
An impassioned speech, but a slightly puzzling one, unless Mark meant that he was wooing me with gentleness, where Lucas had taken me by force. What would he think if he knew t
he truth? Dare I tell it to him? I might have been tempted to make a clean breast of everything, including the last visit Lucas had paid me, if Mark had not kissed me at that moment, his arms holding me possessively. And this time his kisses held a passion and ardency he had not shown me before as he forced my lips apart with his.
I felt myself thrown off balance, a feeling I did not altogether enjoy. And I found myself wondering, as we walked slowly back to the hotel, what other surprises Mark might have in store for me this evening.
There were none, at first. Mark had reserved a table for us in the corner of one of the smaller dining rooms, where we could eat in privacy. The food was tolerable, and the champagne was iced. Under Mark’s amused eyes, I drank far too much of it. Perhaps I was preparing myself for the test of the night that lay ahead of us—Mark had made no mention of his joining his friends later.
He drank more champagne than I did, and I noticed that his face became slightly flushed, but he made no attempts to draw me into an intimate conversation again, limiting his remarks to the kind of thing we used to talk about before. Books and music and the theater, some of his experiences in the law courts.
And then… “The law has always fascinated me; I suppose it comes from being born into a family of lawyers.” He spoke casually, twirling the stem of his glass between his fingers. “Even when I was not directly involved, I would make a point of visiting the courts whenever I could, particularly when a case that was exceptionally interesting or controversial was being heard. The territorial courts fascinate me; the atmosphere here is so much less formal than it is in the more civilized parts of the country. As a matter of fact,” he went on in the same casual tone, “I traveled up here to Socorro with my uncle for Luke Cord’s trial, but more to hear Jim Jennings, the attorney from San Francisco your father retained, than from morbid curiosity.” He looked up at me. “You’ve heard about it?”
“Mr. Bragg told me the whole story before I ever came here,” I said through stiff lips. “He—his descriptions were very vivid.”
“Cord was guilty, of course. He should have been hanged in the interests of justice—it would have saved so much trouble and unhappiness if he had! Did he tell you he was innocent? My poor Rowena!” My expression must have given me away, for Mark shook his head slightly. “I talked to Flo afterwards, at your father’s urging. He imagined—well, the poor girl had always been a flirt—you saw how she was. He thought that perhaps it was her fear of my uncle that made her cry rape. But she swore to me that that was what actually happened, and if you could have seen the state she was in, with her clothes ripped and bruises on her body, you would have had no choice but to believe her too.”
“But, my father…”
“Your father did not want to believe that his protégé, the son of the woman he loved, would lie to him. And Cord, of course, had his own motives for going to your father, instead of running away. We know what those were, don’t we? That letter, the money he hoped to inherit. I think he believed your father’s influence would get him off scot-free; you should have seen the stunned look on his face when the judge handed down his sentence!”
“Must we talk of these things now? It’s all in the past, Mark.”
“But to understand the future you must understand the past as well. Don’t you see that, Rowena? This is not an unjustly treated, put-upon man we are talking of, but a cold-blooded, calculating one. ‘And the truth shall set ye free’… remember?” Mark quoted.
“Very well!” I raised my chin defiantly. “I accept the truth. You were all right and I was wrong, gullible, foolish! But is it foolish of me to ask that we change the subject of our conversation to… something more pleasant?”
“Of course!” Mark said equably. “I didn’t mean to upset you. One day, you know, we will be able to mention his name and you will do no more than give a casual shrug…Well, shall we talk about Paris and London now, or shall we go upstairs to bed?”
“To bed, please,” I said a trifle unsteadily. “I think I have had a little too much champagne to drink.”
Mark carried me across the threshold to our room because, he said, this was our real wedding night. And although I did not realize it at the time, another threshold had been crossed as well—this time, in our relationship. For at last I was to begin understanding the real nature of the man I had married.
“I am a sensualist,” Mark said to me, as he turned up the lamps, one by one. “Does it surprise you?” I stood with one hand on the back of a chair to support myself, watching him, and made no answer. He smiled at me and went on, “You see, I am being honest with you. I want you to understand me, Rowena, just as I mean to understand every little thing about you. Your likes and dislikes, your desires, your—needs. Our marriage is going to be perfect. We shall be partners, lovers, friends, achieving all our goals together. Why do you think I have waited so long to be married? I was looking for the perfect woman, you see, and I think I have found her in you. Beauty—and I love beautiful things around me, had you guessed that? Intelligence and wit, strength and ambition; the ability to rise above all obstacles and setbacks…”
“Mark, you flatter me!” I said a trifle desperately. “But I don’t think I can ever live up to the perfection you demand. I’m not perfect, surely you of all people must realize that?”
“I realize that you are the only woman I have ever wanted,” he said seriously, coming to me and tilting my chin up with his fingers. “Your being here with me as my wife is an example of what I have just been speaking of. You see, from the first moment I saw you I was determined to have you; just as I am determined now that you shall love me and admire me too—just as much as I do you.”
“Mark!”
“Hush,” he said, turning me around as if I had been a doll. “It’s time I made love to you, worshiped your body as it deserves to be worshiped.”
Somehow I found myself in front of the mirror again, almost too dizzy to move or do anything more than grip the edge of the dresser with both hands as my husband began to take the pins from my hair.
One by one, just as slowly as he had turned up the lamps so that the whole room glowed with their light like the center of a giant ruby. And then the tiny hooks that held my gown together at the back. I would not look at Mark’s eyes in the mirror. Mirrors reminded me of Edgar Cardon, of myself, naked except for the diamonds sparkling about my throat.
The silk gown fell rustling to the floor around my ankles, trapping me where I stood, trapping me like the gold circle on my finger. Mark was a blur behind me as he began to slip the thin silk chemise I wore down my shoulders, his fingers lingering against my skin. Mark—or Edgar? I saw only my own eyes in the mirror, and they were the eyes of a stranger, staring back at me, wide and startled and shining with an unusual, glittering brilliance.
“Sapphires to match your eyes,” Edgar had whispered once, and I was a marble statue with jewels for eyes.
I felt Mark’s body move against mine—the rough texture of his clothes, the softness of his hands as they stroked my cringing flesh.
“Watch…” he was whispering, or did I only imagine it? “Watch, Rowena! See how beautiful you are? All this loveliness—mine.”
I felt myself begin to shiver. Lucas… Lucas… oh, God, where are you? Roughness of his hands, hardness of his mouth… hardness… I closed my eyes against the memory, feeling my head spin as I leaned back passively against Mark.
Even my thoughts had become disjointed now. Too much champagne… I was dreaming all this…
“I think I forgot to mention one other thing I searched for in the perfect woman,” Mark said softly, his hands moving lower. “She must be the perfect lady in public, ice-cold and reserved. But in our bedroom… my mistress and my whore…”
Forty
I cannot, like some popular novelists of my day, draw a discreet veil over all that is unpleasant to recall. I write in these journals for myself, only my eyes and the eyes of my children will read what I have written. And it has become a c
ompulsion with me to write everything down exactly as it happened. I have learned that nothing can be gained from running away from the truth. And so I will be exact, and detailed in my account of all the events that have taken place.
I am full of good intentions, and what is past is past. But even now I feel a certain reluctance to remember certain things. And that morning in Socorro, when I woke up with a headache that was like a thousand hammer blows in my temples, threatening to split my skull open, is one of these.
At first I could not even remember where I was, could hardly recall who I was. There was the pain in my head that seemed almost to blind me—and then, surge after surge of sickness so acute that I must have cried out weakly. I say I must have, because I was suddenly aware that someone was supporting my head, holding a basin for me while I gasped and retched and was disgusted with myself all the while for being subject to such weakness.
A strange voice spoke soothingly to me—in French of all things.
“Pauvre petite! There, there, it is just one of these things that all women must bear, hein? So—you will be all right soon, no need to feel ashamed. It is that husband of yours who needs a talking to, yes?” I was lying against the pillows, limp and exhausted, too drained of strength to open my eyes. And I felt my lips and forehead sponged gently with water so cold it made me gasp.
“You feel better now?”
Something—I did not yet understand what—made me imagine for a moment that I was still in London, lying in my bedroom at Cardon House.
“Martine?” I could not manage more than a faint whisper, but I heard a gurgle of amused laughter underlying the voice that answered me.
“Non, non! You are thinking of someone else, pauvre cherie. I am Monique, and we have not yet met… formally. But that is all right, for I had already heard so much about you.”
I forced my eyes open at last, and saw a smiling yet sympathetic face bent over me. Strange how much I noticed, even in my semi stupor. She was attractive, with a piquant face and masses of auburn hair that contrasted sharply with her milky white skin. Her eyes were green—large, and slightly slanted, and she wore a pale green gown that formed a pleasing contrast to her vivid coloring. Everything about Monique Kingman, I was to discover later, was vivid, exciting. Some might even have called her flamboyant. Certainly she seemed out of place here, in the dull red hotel room.
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