He was not the only one. Had it been a mistake not to provide a downstairs retreat for the men? As it was they tended to get together in little, anxious-looking, low-talking groups, and more than once she had to use her hostess’s privilege to sweep down on them, break them up and ruthlessly find them all partners for the next dance. They did not, she thought, much like it, but, inevitably, they obeyed. After all, to them, she was Mrs. Purchis of Winchelsea.
Lord, how angry they would be if the imposture was ever discovered. It was a thought that haunted her these days. All very well, in a way, for her. She would be out of it all, nursing her memories, far away in France. But Hyde — what would it do to Hyde? No time for these thoughts. She looked about for the next thing to do, caught Tarot’s eye and made him take her to the buffet for a glass of iced lemonade.
‘A most delightful party.’ His eyes were fixed on the sapphire necklace.
‘Thank you.’ Mechanically.
In fact, it seemed endless. She could hardly believe it when the musicians had packed up their instruments and the last guest kissed her hand and thanked her. Hyde was downstairs, seeing Mayor Wayne to his carriage. She was suddenly so tired she could hardly stand, but here was Anne appearing, as always, when needed. ‘You’ll look after the tidying up?’
‘Naturally. Get you to your room, petite, you look worn out. I’ll bring you some hot milk presently.’
She also brought Tarot’s gloves, which she had retrieved from behind the potted palm where they had arranged he should leave them.
‘Bless you, Anne, I don’t know what I’d do without you.’ Juliet looked up with a start as the boudoir door opened.
‘A more successful party than I had hoped. My congratulations!’ As Hyde entered the room, Juliet breathed a sigh of relief that Anne had had the wits to bring not only Tarot’s gloves, but all the other trifles their guests had forgotten. He looked at the little pile, ‘One can always tell how people have enjoyed themselves by the number of fans, and gloves and reticules they leave behind. You will have a busy day tomorrow giving all these back.’
‘It looks like it. But it was a good party, was it not? Even without any waltzes?’ It was the last one she would ever give for him and she found herself absurdly anxious for his praise.
‘Perfect. If only young Jay had stayed sober. I was grateful to you for silencing him so effectively, my dear.’
‘Bless me, Hyde, did you hear that? I sometimes think you positively ubiquitous.’ And that, she told herself crossly, was a word Josephine would never have used in a thousand years.
‘Where you are concerned, I would like to be.’ Hyde had apparently noticed nothing out of the way. ‘But you look fagged out. I’m a selfish brute to keep you a moment longer from your bed.’
The morning proved him a true prophet. The house was thronged with callers, and the parcel for Tarot, with its fortune in jewellery tucked tidily inside the right hand glove, was merely one of many Juliet handed over to their owners. ‘You’ll be careful.’ It was all she had a chance to say to him.
‘I am always careful.’ He smiled that unnerving smile of his. ‘I am come to pay my adieus for a few days. I am off to Charleston this afternoon. It is a town I have longed to revisit. But naturally I shall return for the festivities next week. I shall look forward to seeing you then, Mrs. Purchis.’
‘Yes.’ Smiling mechanically, registering that he meant to have the earrings next week, she was filled with terror lest he encounter Josephine in Charleston. And yet what more sensible than that he should take the necklace and dispose of it there?
Meanwhile, the preparations for receiving President Monroe were going on apace. The pavilion in Johnson Square was almost finished, and William Jay could talk of nothing else. The Savannah too, was. undergoing a drastic spring-cleaning. The President was to be taken for a trip downriver on her, to Tybee Island.
‘And Scarbrough?’ Juliet asked Hyde.
‘Is turning his new house upside-down ready for the President. And looking worse every day. I shall be glad when this state visit is over.’
‘And so shall I.’ But would she? Every time she saw the Savannah, lying quietly at anchor below the bluff, she faced, all over again, the probability that when the steamship left for Europe, she would be on her, with everything over. Curious how much worst of all it was that she would not even be able to say goodbye to Hyde. Josephine would come back, any day now. And she must disappear without a word. Cinderella at midnight, but forever. She might as well die. Going over the Savannah with Hyde, she had wondered in which of those elegantly furnished staterooms she would cry out her heart.
***
‘Are you as tired as I am?’ Hyde picked up the bezique pack and shuffled expertly. It was the evening before the President’s arrival, and they had spent all morning touring the route he was to take, from the bluff, where he would be saluted by the cannon George Washington had given the city and review the Savannah Volunteer Guards, by way of Johnson Square and William Jay’s pavilion to Scarbrough’s house.
‘Tireder, if possible.’ Juliet glanced idly at the hand he had dealt her. ‘But at least you look better, however tired.’ It was her one comfort. She had had a letter from Josephine that morning, from Charleston. A quick scrawl, written as the Liberty docked, it had warned Juliet to be ready to change places at a moment’s notice. ‘I’m not going to miss the President’s visit.’ When she wrote it, Josephine had not had Juliet’s letter, which would have been awaiting her in Legare Street. But it could only speed her coming. Juliet swallowed convulsively. Whatever happened to her, she must not let Hyde be exposed to the appalling scandal that would explode about them if Josephine mismanaged her return. And yet, what more could she do to protect him? On her instructions, Alice and Anne had warned the servants to be ready for anything. Their kind, sad faces told her that they would do their best, for Hyde and for her, if not for Josephine.
‘Devil take it!’ Hyde’s unwonted imprecation betrayed his own state of tension. ‘The front door bell. At this hour! Yes, what is it, Moses?’
‘Mr. Scarbrough would be glad of a word with you, sir. He says he’s sorry it’s so late, but it won’t keep.’
‘Oh, very well, Moses, show him in.’
‘Here, sir? He said it was private, and most urgent.’
‘Of course, here.’ Impatiently. ‘I’ve nothing private from Mrs. Purchis.’
But Scarbrough, entering, was visibly taken aback by the sight of the two of them, sitting facing each other across the card table.
Juliet, on the other hand, was delighted to see him, as, deep in her own thoughts, she had forgotten her role and was beating Hyde soundly, using the method her father had taught her. ‘Mr. Scarbrough,’ she rose and held out her hand. ‘What news in town?’
‘None that I know of.’ If he had looked fagged out before, now he looked desperate. ‘I’m this moment returned from Charleston. There were a few last minute purchases for the house. You will forgive me, ma’am?’ He turned to Hyde. ‘If I could have one word alone with you?’
‘Nonsense,’ said Hyde. ‘There is no crisis so bad that Mrs. Purchis can’t share it.’
Scarbrough’s tired face flushed darkly. ‘I hope you’re right!’ He reached into his coat pocket. ‘There’s your crisis!’ The gold and sapphire necklace fell like a glittering snake across the cards. ‘I saw it in a jeweller’s in Charleston. There could be no mistaking it.’
‘I hope you contrived not to pay more for it than it is worth.’ Hyde’s cool voice brought him a look of amazement from Juliet.
‘If you want to know, I got it dirt cheap. Well, there it is. And I wish you joy of it. It was sold by a Frenchman, the jeweller told me.’
‘Well,’ said Hyde reasonably, ‘of course it was, since I gave it to him. I’m only sorry to hear he got such a poor price for it. As for you, Scarbrough, I must thank you for your kind intentions, and reimburse you. I’m sorry, my dear,’ he turned to Juliet, ‘that your white elephant is return
ed to you so quickly.’
‘Never mind.’ Juliet swallowed astonishment, picked up her cue and touched the necklace disdainfully. ‘After all, it has a certain charm, in a vulgar kind of way.’
Hyde laughed. ‘Perhaps you had better wear it to entertain President Monroe after all, my dear. In the meantime, come to my study, Scarbrough, and tell me what I owe you.’
Left alone, Juliet sat transfixed, desperate, racking her brains for a way out of this disaster. Nothing for it, that she could see, but to admit to being blackmailed by Tarot, but what in the world should she say he was blackmailing her about? What, for Josephine’s sake, was the least she could admit? But there was worse than that. What could she tell Hyde that would not send him out to fight another duel; this time with a man who snuffed candles with his pistol?
‘Thinking of a new set of lies for me,’ Hyde’s cheerful voice from the doorway made her start convulsively. ‘Don’t you think it’s time we rang down the curtain and called an end to the play?’
She put a bewildered hand to her brow. ‘Rang down the curtain? I don’t believe I quite follow you, my dear.’
His laugh was bafflingly normal. ‘Well, that makes a change, considering what a dance you have been leading me. Not that I haven’t enjoyed it, of course. It’s been a pleasure to watch you, and, if I may say so, to lend a hand here and there.’
‘Lend a hand? Hyde, what are you talking about? Have you gone crazy?’
‘No.’ He settled himself comfortably in the chair across the table from her and picked up the sapphire necklace. ‘That’s just what I’m telling you. That I’m not quite the fool you think. Did you never consider —’ He paused for a long moment, smiling — ‘Juliet, that my wife might have told me about her cousin who might have been her twin?’
‘Oh!’ Her hand went up to her mouth. ‘You mean you knew?’
‘From the first. Well,’ he conceded the point. ‘Almost from the first. Another time you plan such a substitution there are a few simple hazards you should consider. You did not think, for instance, how my wife loves to drench herself in chypre. Any time I was in doubt as to which of my charmers was entertaining me, I had only, if you will forgive the vulgarism, to smell her. A hand ... a handkerchief ... I could tell in an instant.’
‘And you let it go on?’
‘I’m afraid so. Shocking of me, I know, but it is not often that such an entertainment provides itself in a man’s life.’
‘“Entertainment”!’ She did not know whether to laugh or cry. ‘You can call it that?’ She was bewildered in a throng of discoveries, recollections, reconsiderations ... ‘And Fonseca?’
He was sober on the instant. ‘Yes. You have a right to ask that. I beg you to believe, Juliet, that I knew things about him — quite apart from his relationship with my wife that made me feel justified. The law could never have touched him. He was a slave dealer, you know. I could tell you things ... But I won’t. At all events, they made it possible for me to do what I did. Well —’ reasonably, ‘it was obvious that his return from Florida would be the end of our play.’
‘So you killed him? Hyde, you frighten me.’
‘Believe me, I frightened myself. I did not know how unpleasant I would find it to have killed a man — even such as Fonseca. Do you know, since we are talking frankly at last, I was really quite glad that he wounded me. Quite aside, of course, from the pleasure of being nursed by you.’
‘Good God!’ There was no end to this confusion of recollections and reappraisals. ‘That time when you got worse —’
‘Well, of course,’ he said. ‘I wanted you back. There seemed no other way. Mind you, it worked rather better than I intended.’
‘It nearly killed you.’
‘But not quite. No need to look so stricken, my —’ He paused. ‘What a remarkable situation! Will you forgive me if I follow habit and continue to call you “my dear”? Juliet is the prettiest name in the world, but I don’t think I dare start using it yet.’
‘Yet? You mean, you intend to go on?’
‘Well,’ he said, ‘that depends, of course, on where Josephine is and what she is doing. You do see, don’t you, that you must tell me?’
‘Yes.’ For the moment, all she had time to feel was an overwhelming relief. ‘It’s not so bad as you may, perhaps, think.’ Hideous even to guess at what he might be imagining about Josephine. She hurried into the story of the proposed rescue of Napoleon and found herself actually almost enjoying his amazed expression.
‘Well, I’ll be damned,’ he said when she had finished. And then, ‘Forgive me. I’ve never been so surprised in my life. I owe Josephine a thousand apologies. Only, it changes everything. You do see, don’t you, how it changes everything?’
‘No.’ Why was he, all of a sudden, so grimly serious? ‘I don’t understand you.’
‘You really don’t.’ There was something, now, in his steady gaze that kept her dumb. ‘What did you plan, tell me, for the end of this charade?’
‘Why —’ Tears filled her throat but she fought them down. ‘Josephine promised ... She would pay my fare back to France ... I was to disappear …’
‘You needed the money so badly? I always wondered how she contrived to persuade you.’
‘Badly! I was starving when she found me. But there was more to it than that.’ At all costs, she must make him understand. ‘I thought — forgive me — I thought Josephine desperately unhappy. She needed to do something, to achieve something …’
‘You were right enough.’ He was looking beyond her, sombrely, into the corner of the room. ‘She was miserable. She always had been. With me. Don’t you see, my — Juliet? When she disappeared and you came to play my good angel, I thought she had found someone, found some kind of happiness at last.’
‘Oh.’ It left her speechless.
‘Now,’ savagely, ‘now do you begin to see what a wretch I feel? Don’t you understand? I let you play out your little drama, thinking all the time that somewhere, somehow, Josephine had found a man she could love. And,’ he clenched his teeth on it, ‘was giving me grounds for divorce.’
‘Divorce!’ But one violent movement on his part had thrown table, cards, sapphire necklace and all broadcast across the room. His arms were round her, pulling her to her feet, his lips found hers. She did not even think of resisting. Why should she? There would be time enough for despair, tomorrow. Why not this moment of poisoned happiness tonight?
He let her go at last, suddenly. ‘I knew you felt it too, My love. Let me say it this once. Don’t look so frightened. I’ll not touch you again. I don’t dare. But, oh my God, what madness made me fall in love with Josephine — with your shadow?’
‘I’m not frightened,’ she said. ‘Let tomorrow take care of itself. Tonight, I don’t care what happens to me.’
‘But I do. My one and only love. Don’t let me have more on my conscience than I must. More of despair …’ He put her, with a kind of fierce gentleness, back in her chair and sat down facing but well away from her. ‘So you’re to disappear?’
‘Yes.’ She managed, almost, to match the desperate calmness of his tone. ‘I had thought of the Savannah.’
‘I remember. You were close to tears when we went over her. I wondered at the time. You were choosing your stateroom?’
‘Yes.’ How much he had noticed, and how little she had understood.
‘And Josephine will probably be back tomorrow.’ He looked at it squarely. ‘Well, of course she will. To entertain the President. But this man Tarot. What was there between them, do you think?’
‘God knows,’ She would not guess. ‘But you’re right: she will be back tomorrow. I’ve heard from her.’
‘It makes no difference anyway.’ He followed his own line of thought. ‘What there was between them, it was all before ... before I married her. Let’s face it, my love, honestly, like the fellow conspirators we are. She will be back tomorrow, you say, and suddenly, on a breath, at a street corner, very likely in full publ
ic view, we will have to say goodbye for ever. So let me tell you now, once and for all, that whatever happens, I shall never forget you. I almost wish I thought I could.’ He was nearer again, and had hold of both her hands. ‘You’ve taught me so much. But so has Josephine. It’s a crazy plan, hers, and of course I won’t let her go through with it and let loose that madman on Europe once again, but I can’t help respecting her for it. There’s more to her than I ever understood.’ He sighed, lifted her hands to kiss them, one after the other, then let them go. ‘Nothing for it but to try again, with all the loving you have taught me. Who knows? In a scrambling, second-best kind of way, we may make some kind of a miserable marriage of it yet. But you, my poor love, what’s to become of you?’
‘I shall go back to Europe on the Savannah. What else can I do?’
‘Nothing.’ He faced it with her. ‘Our Comedy of Errors has turned tragedy after all. I could almost think it a judgment on me for poor Fonseca. Oh, Juliet,’ suddenly, heart-rendingly, he broke down, ‘how shall I manage without you? How shall I bear it?’
‘How shall I?’
‘If you could only stay — if we could meet sometimes ...’
‘No! Hyde, you must see, that would be worst of all. Besides, if I did, the story would be bound to get out, sooner or later, Think of the scandal.’
‘What do I care for that? It’s you I’m thinking about. Going back, alone, to France. I’ll see to it, of course, that you never want, but what comfort is that? Shall I come with you, Juliet?’
For a moment, her heart sang. Then she remembered everything: Winchelsea, the servants, Aunt Abigail ... ‘You know you can’t.’
‘Do I?’ She watched him face it. ‘Yes, I suppose I do.’
‘Besides, you’d be wretched away from Savannah. And so shall I.’ She could not help adding it. ‘I had not realised how I had grown to love it.’ She smiled at him through a mist of tears. ‘You see, it’s not just you.’
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