“Divorce? No, I couldn’t. Only actresses and women of the evening get divorces.”
“Twaddle! That’s no longer so, my dear. You could accuse Roger of adultery.”
“I couldn’t. I couldn’t take him into court. He would make a scandal. He would bring up the fact that my grandmother was a wh—”
He put his hand over my mouth. “Don’t. I know all about it. Don’t torture yourself, darling.”
“You knew? Then it’s true. Oh, Page, can’t you see how the newspapers would have a field day? And Mother not well? The news would be sure to reach her.”
“She would recover. Leave Roger. If you don’t, I might do something drastic.”
“Like what?”
“Kill him.”
“Oh, Page!”
Page found a gig in the stables and hitched the bay to it. We drove in the silent, snow-whirling dusk to Pine Street.
“I’d best take a hansom the rest of the way,” I said.
“All right. But I must see you again, Sabrina. In two weeks I’ll be in Richmond on business.”
“I can’t chance another meeting, darling.”
“You’re not going to say good-bye and leave it at that, not after what happened between us today?”
“How can we meet except furtively?”
“Is that what my lovemaking meant to you? A furtive assignation?”
“Oh, no. Page, no. Please, don’t confuse me. I can’t think now.”
“Leave him. Hang the scandal. We’ll go away—to New York, a place where we can be anonymous. We won’t have to worry about scandal then.”
“I—I don’t know.”
“Think about it, Sabrina.” He put his hand on my arm. “The bookshop owner is a friend of mine. He can be trusted to exchange messages. I’ll write to you there. Will you do the same?”
“Yes, Page.”
He hailed a hansom. “Good-bye, darling.” He leaned over and kissed my cheek. “I love you.”
I cherished those words all the way back home. It was well I had them to sustain me, for as luck would have it Roger was there ahead of me. Ordinarily he did not come home until late at night, never at five in the afternoon.
“Where have you been?” he asked from the doorway of the parlor. He held a glass of whiskey in his hand.
“To the bookshop and afterward I stopped in to see the Bainbridges. ”
He stared at me, a vein pulsing at his temple. “My man said he was cleverly evaded.” It was the first time he had openly admitted to having me followed.
“What a pity,” I replied coolly, hating him, my heart hammering in suppressed anger. “I wonder that you would believe such an alibi. I’ve no doubt he made the story up as an excuse. I did see him disappear into Mosby’s Tavern while I was in the bookshop. Perhaps you’d better get a replacement,” I added, sweeping into the parlor.
I accepted a glass of sherry from George and sat down on a wing chair, Silas Lapham in my lap.
“This is a marvelous book, Roger. Have you read it? Mrs. Mahone recommends it highly.”
“Does she? Hmmph!” Roger grunted, eyeing me suspiciously over his glass. “You seem in excellent spirits. And your high color—what is the happy occasion for that? Surely not Silas Lapham
My throat went dry, and it was a moment or two before I could force myself to reply. “No occasion, Roger.” The words issued forth smooth as cat’s cream, and I wondered at my self-possession. “There’s a cold wind outside. Or hadn’t you noticed?”
It was Page who had given me the courage to speak without fear. Drinking my sherry, thinking of him, remembering the feel of his thick hair under my fingers, the strong neck, the naked back . . .
Roger darted one last dubious glance my way, then sat down and unfolded his evening paper. After a few moments he said, “I see where your cousin has bought a horse.”
“Has he?”
“Yes. Shaizar. Won Pimlico twice.”
I touched my lips with a froth of lacey handkerchief. “Indeed.”
The paper rustled in Roger’s hands. “I understand Page wishes to make Wildoak into a stud farm. Damned nonsense.”
“Is it? I’ve been told horse racing is a popular sport.”
“No money in it,” he asserted, jerking the paper into another fold. “Not real money.”
I suddenly saw Mr. Prescott in the set of Roger’s mouth and wondered how the old man had failed to recognize it himself.
“Have you ever been to Wildoak?” I asked, breaking a long silence.
“Yes, when I was a child. It’s not much. The house is antiquated, although it has since been renovated, I understand. In excruciating taste, I might add—very rococo.”
“I’ve never seen it.”
“Why should you?” His eyes darted at me over the lowered newspaper.
“Because I’m a Falconer,” I replied.
“Oh, that!"
He went back to reading his paper.
“Is my mail still being censored?” I asked.
“It will be managed until you can be trusted.”
Trusted—the pompous tyrant! “But surely you don’t find it necessary to scrutinize my incoming letters? I haven’t received one from my father in a long while.”
“Rest assured I shall not withhold mail from your parents. Remember, they are on their way to Germany; writing might be difficult.”
“Yes,” I said, disliking him more and more. His voice, his gestures, everything about him repelled me.
“The house is going slowly,” Roger said after another pause. “This inclement weather is holding it up.”
I hoped never to live in that house. Or any house with Roger. And suddenly I realized I didn’t have to. We could go away, Page and I, just as he had urged. We could leave Richmond, travel, cross over to Europe, find a seashore village and settle there, a place where no one knew us.
But could we? Could I? Page had said, “Hang the scandal,” and I didn’t care for myself. But how would my parents feel? Suppose Roger made a fuss? There was always the shadow of the grandmother I had never known, the one who had been a courtesan, a woman one spoke of in whispers.
“I’ve ordered an early supper,” Roger said. “I must go out this evening on business.”
Roger never discussed business or politics at home or in mixed company. He believed that such concerns should be strictly reserved for masculine ears. Females were either too unintelligent or too fragile and must be shielded (or barred) from the rough-and-tumble male world. Women like Susan Anthony and Lucy Stone, who were agitating for the vote, he dubbed the Shrieking Sisterhood and considered them misled creatures, unfeminine if not criminal.
I knew about the suffragettes and other burning issues of the day, for I read the Dispatch too. But Roger preferred to go on pretending that my knowledge was confined to purely domestic matters. I never talked to him about the newspaper articles that caught my interest, nor did I question where he went of an evening. He would have resented it, and in truth I really didn’t care. Perhaps he, Mr. Mahone, and Mr. Flood were meeting to plot the overthrow of the radicals in the Democratic Party. More likely, Roger was making a visit to one of the bawdy houses on Poplar Street.
I watched him now as he sipped at his whiskey, a frown between his eyes. It struck me again that Roger could indulge his lust (with discretion, he insisted) as he saw fit, and though society might gossip, it would never condemn him. Whereas I, who loved, would have been pilloried and branded a shameful adulteress if it became known that Page and I had been together.
“You might look over the catalogs,” Roger suggested. “It’s never too soon to start ordering furniture. Cook says she will consult with you on kitchen equipment. She’s told me she wants, among other things, a Dover egg beater, whatever that is.”
I had no idea. My education had not included anything as mundane as egg beaters.
“What’s keeping supper?” Roger asked irritably, eyeing me as if I had perversely caused it to be late.
While I secretly debated my future, the hypocrisy that molded the pace of our lives went on. A new man was hired to follow me, a gaunt fellow who wore a peaked cap and sniffed loudly so that I always could tell when he was close behind. He must have wondered why I made so many visits to the bookshop. At first he would linger in the doorway or peer surreptitiously through the stacks of display books in the window, ducking out of sight when I caught him at it. Then he grew bolder and came inside, loitering over the bargain table of secondhand books, leafing through the faded volumes with one eye cocked in my direction.
By that time I had received three letters from Page and sent him two through the shopkeeper, letters in which Page implored me to leave Roger, answering each argument of mine with one of his own. He was sure to be making money soon, he said. He had already received a half dozen requests from racing men who wished their mares bred when the mating season began in February. “And,” he wrote, “I’m charging as much as the traffic will bear.” Mixed with his persuasive pleading were words of love that burned the pages, endearments and protestations that would have sounded trite to others but were like beautiful sonnets to me.
More and more Page was winning me over. Only thoughts of my mother still held me back. If she were better by spring, I told myself, then I would come to an affirmative decision. But I could not let Page know about my new state of mind with my husband’s spy hovering so diligently nearby. It was impossible for me to pass a letter to the bookseller with him noting my every move. I tried evading Roger’s informer, even tried the policeman trick again, but apparently the man had been forewarned and knew how to avoid such traps. I complained to Roger and he lashed back at me, saying that an innocent woman who had nothing to hide wouldn’t object to a little “watching over.”
One Saturday afternoon as I sat reading in the parlor I was startled by the echoing sound of the brass knocker. The servants had been given a few hours off to attend a wedding in Jackson Ward and I was alone in the house. I was wondering who it might be—we never had callers on Saturday afternoon—when the knocker banged again, this time rather impatiently.
I got up, went through the hall, and opened the door. A woman stood there with a gloved hand ready to reach for the knocker a third time. I had never seen her before. Small and slim, reeking of heavy jasmine perfume, she wore a veiled hat decorated with paper roses and a cloak banded in rabbit fur.
“Is Mr. Prescott at home?” she inquired in an affected nasal whine.
“I’m afraid not. I am Mrs. Prescott. Won’t you come in and wait?”
She peered past me. “How long will it be?”
“I have no idea.”
“I can’t. I come to see him,” she said, dropping the affectation in her annoyance.
“Perhaps you would care to leave your name, a message?”
“Florrie Stokes,” she said defiantly, tossing her head, the pink paper roses quivering on her hat. “Tell him I’ll be by tomorrow.”
Her dress, the cloak and hat, though too showy for good taste, were far too expensive for a millworker. I stared at her, trying to pierce the veil, but could discern little except that her lips and cheeks seemed heavily rouged.
At breakfast the next morning I casually mentioned the woman’s visit to Roger.
“Stokes?” he repeated, raising his brows. “I haven’t the least idea who she could be. Probably one of the millhands with a complaint. There are a few who are chronic grumblers. The foreman has explicit instructions to inform the help that I must not be disturbed at home.”
I did not contradict him, did not voice my suspicions. I was sure Florrie Stokes was a doxie whose services Roger had enjoyed, though I was surprised that he should have revealed his identity to her. Gentlemen who frequented whorehouses usually gave false names to protect themselves. Perhaps this one had been a favorite, someone who had pleased Roger more than the others and so gained his confidence and with it the power to badger him.
She did not come the next day and I had almost forgotten her when on the following Wednesday her name leaped out at me from the inside page of the Dispatch.
A woman’s body, identified as that of Miss Florrie Stokes, was pulled from the James River at the foot of 26th Street early this morning. According to the coroner, Miss Stokes, a white female, age 25, had been strangled by an unknown assailant before her corpse was thrown into the water. She was wearing a cape trimmed in rabbit fur. . . .
As I read, goosebumps rose along my arms. A picture of Florrie superimposed itself on the newsprint—Florrie on the doorstep, her painted face bold beneath the veil, the roses on her hat quivering assertively. Unknown assailant.
Had Florrie tried to blackmail Roger and subsequently died because of it?
Even if Roger had not committed the murder himself, he could have hired someone to do it for him. A mill worker could be fired, but there was only one way to silence an extortionist. The more I thought about it, the more convinced I became that he had killed her. But as in the case of old Mr. Prescott, I had no proof. If accused, Roger would deny it with an air of astonished injury. He would point out, and quite logically, that a woman of that sort—one whom the paper had gone on to define as being without “visible means of employment,” i.e. a prostitute—must have had many enemies. As for Florrie Stokes coming to our door, what of it? His butler could testify to dozens of ne’er-do-wells who managed to get past the gate, hat in hand, begging for favors.
I spent the week in a turmoil of indecision. Should I admit my suspicions to the police and perhaps expose myself to ridicule or keep silent? At one point I thought of writing an anonymous letter to the Dispatch and posting it secretly.
Then in the midst of my uncertainty, my maid, Marigold, got into a bit of trouble. She had formed an attachment with a young man, a drayman’s assistant her aunt disapproved of. One morning I heard the two quarreling in loud voices on the stair.
“Ask Miz Sabrina!” I heard Marigold sob.
There was a knock on my door and Hazel entered, dragging a frightened and weeping Marigold by the collar.
“Dis chit’s been wicked,” Hazel announced. “Claims she was fixin’ yo hair last evenin’ when I know she been seeing that no-good pussun she call Porter. Miz Sabrina, would yo please say she’s lyin’?”
“I’m sorry,” I answered without hesitation, not because I felt noble, but because I disliked Hazel, “Marigold was helping me with my hair. We were trying out a new fashion.”
I picked up a copy of Godey’s, leafing through the pages to a picture of a girl modeling the latest in hair styles, fringed curls worn over the forehead exactly as I had arranged mine that morning.
Hazel examined the picture and snorted while Marigold threw me a grateful look over her aunt’s shoulder.
A week later, Marigold, Roger, my indecision and guilt all became insignificant in the light of a new and terrible circumstance.
I was pregnant with Page’s child.
I had gone through the usual stages, denying it at first, telling myself the early morning queasiness was due to something I had eaten the night before, the missed monthly a fluke, the swelling breasts the result of a few extra pounds I had put on. But the symptoms persisted, and finally I had to accept the truth: Page’s seed had inexorably taken root.
It could not have happened at a worse time. Roger had not been to bed with me in months and not in the normal manner for longer than that. There was no way I’d be able to convince him the child was his unless I could coax him into making love to me immediately. And that I could not bring myself to do.
I fought to keep calm, to consider alternatives, to decide how to deal with this appalling situation. Throw myself on Roger’s mercy? He would kill me, slowly perhaps, unobtrusively. Should I appeal to my parents? I would have to tell them who the father was, and they would be shamed, then angry. Get rid of it? Bribe a doctor to keep silent about an abortion? But that would mean destroying Page’s child. I wouldn’t be able to live with myself if I did that.
/> I saw only one course open to me. I must accept Page’s offer to elope—and soon. It would be an unfortunate way to begin a life together, under a shadow, unable to marry, fleeing to a strange city. But the more I thought of it, the less important those obstacles seemed. We loved each other. It wasn’t a passion of the moment, but a deep love that had lasted through the years.
I was wondering how to get word to Page when Roger informed me that we had been invited by Mrs. Betsy Plummer to a birthday celebration. I had never met Mrs. Plummer, since she lived on the old Fairchild plantation some twenty miles from Richmond, but she was a socially prominent hostess among the planter families—or what remained of them—in King William County. The party was to be a surprise for her husband, Charles, who, as Roger put it, “had connections.” Roger, delighted with the invitation, felt sure he would have the opportunity to meet politically important men in state government there. I also looked forward to the celebration, but for a different reason. Fairchild was only a few miles from Wildoak. If Page had not been invited, then sometime during our three-day stay I hoped to find a way to see him.
We drew up to the Plummers’ house in the early evening, an impressive plantation manor, its white-pillared facade agleam with the lights from within. Fairchild had been burned out during the last days of the war and the Plummers had purchased it some twenty years later. They had evicted the squatters, along with their goats and chickens, and had completely rebuilt the house. Such an excellent and historically accurate job had been done that I would never have guessed the house in its red-bricked mellowness was of recent vintage rather than one of a bygone era. Even the wisteria vines clambering over the portico looked a hundred years old.
Mrs. Plummer, bosomy and breathless in duchess satin, greeted me as if I had been a long-lost friend.
“Why, I do declare! Miss Sabrina!” A bear hug, a whiff of lilac cologne. “My dear, how wonderful of you to come! Now, you all must be quiet when Charles arrives. It’s to be a surprise, you know.”
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