She said the same to Roger. How it was to be a surprise I could not fathom, for one look at the carriages choking the wide curved drive outside would tell him everything.
But when he arrived to a darkened house and shushed twitterings, Mr. Plummer pretended great surprise. His pleasure, however, was genuine. Under the prismed chandelier, his bald head gleaming, his homely face wreathed in smiles, he went from person to person, shaking hands, murmuring expressions of delight.
I did not see Page. As the evening wore on and he made no appearance, I knew he wouldn’t be coming. To add to my disappointment, a feeling of nausea that had started shortly after supper became acute. I excused myself rather hurriedly from the drawing room, where I had been chatting with our hostess, found Roger in the study, and told him I was going up to bed.
He gave me a penetrating look. “What’s the matter? Axe you ill?’’
“Just tired.’’
By the next day I felt much better, and when the other ladies went up for their naps after lunch I slipped out and hurried down to the stables. Not wanting to take our own cumbersome carriage, I had the darkie hook up the Plummer gig. Using the back drive, shielded by trees from the main house and curious eyes, I came out on the turnpike and headed north. I realized I was running a risk, but it couldn’t be helped. I had to see Page.
He must have observed me riding up the drive, for when I reached the front steps he was waiting for me.
“Sabrina!’’
I threw myself into his embrace as if it had been years and years since last we met. Oh, it felt so good to have his hard shoulder under my chin, his strong arms about me, his lips in my hair, repeating my name over and over.
“We were at Fairchild,’’ I said, breaking away. “And I thought ...”
“Darling, if I had known you were there! If Mrs. Plummer had only told me. But never mind, you’re here now.’’ He took my arm and turned me around to face the house.
“Well, sweetheart, what do you think of Wildoak?’’
I looked up at the two-storied home of my paternal ancestors, red-bricked, like Fairchild, but smaller, its four chimneys rising out of a broad-hipped roof. It was just as I had pictured it, even to the deep colonnaded verandah and the mud-scraper at the foot of the whitewashed wooden steps. I thought of my father and his father before him as children running up to the house at the sound of the dinner gong, pausing at the scraper to hurriedly wipe their muddy boots.
“It’s such a strange feeling,’’ I said, “to see it at last.’’
“Come in, darling, I’ll show you the rest.’’
His arm circling my waist, we went into the house. “This is the parlor,’’ he said, “but I rarely use it.’’
I had a glimpse of a dark-green rococo sofa and the lion-clawed leg of a chair before he whisked me across the hall to the dining room. A fire burned brightly on the arched, bricked hearth.
“I spend most of my time here.”
The sideboard, the long table, and the étagère were polished to a mirrored glow and smelled of beeswax. It was a warm room, cheerful and cozy, nothing like Mrs. Plummer’s elegant dining room or our cramped, musty one on Charles Street. Here at this table Page sat and ate, perhaps read his newspaper in the morning, did the accounts in the evening. The faint aromatic scent of tobacco told me that he puffed a pipe while brooding over his figures, perhaps patting the head of the huge sheepdog I had seen asleep in the hall under the stairs. It was a new side of Page, I pictured, a domestic one that endeared him to me all the more.
“Page, I had to see you.”
“And I you.” He took me in his arms again, giving me a long and thorough kiss. “God! How I’ve missed you, darling! And no letters!”
“I couldn’t. Roger’s man was too watchful.”
“I should have guessed it. There is so much to tell you, Sabrina. I’ve a mare now. I can’t breed her this year, but I hope to the next. By then I think I can afford another two. That will be the start. And darling, I want you to meet Shaizar and see what I’ve done to the stables.”
“Page—”
“It won’t take long. Before you remove your cloak and hat.” He took my hand. “Come.”
He had completely redone the stables, he said, painting it in a cream tone with brown trim. The inside had been divided into commodious stalls, clean-scrubbed, with gear hanging neatly on the walls. The stalls were empty except for the middle one, where Shaizar, his head poking over the low, bolted door, turned toward us. Even I, who knew little of horses, could see that he was an exceptional specimen. A dark chocolate color with a black mane and tail, he had the slender, delicate legs (pampered now with bandaged fetlocks) of a highly bred racehorse.
Page’s eyes shone as he patted Shaizar’s head. “He’s my joy,” he said, putting his free arm about my waist, “next to you, darling, of course.”
The brood mare was in an adjoining building, a dowdy sister when compared to her sire. But Page believed she had great possibilities. “Her dam, grandam, and great grandam were good breeders, a line that has produced illustrious names in racing,” he told me.
A vast expanse of pasture, fenced and cross-fenced, newly painted in white, had been set aside from the fields. Page had also constructed a small track where his horses would someday work out. He showed it all to me with a touching air of accomplishment and pride. He loved Wildoak, every blade of grass, every stone, every tree, the house, the stables, the dark river-bottom earth, the sparrows pecking at the fallow tobacco fields. My father, Miles Falconer, might still hold title deed, but the plantation belonged to Page.
On the way back to the house, he paused, turning, gazing back down toward the stables, his face in profile smiling, his blond hair whipped by the brisk February wind. And as I looked at him I suddenly knew, as if someone had ripped a curtain from my eyes, that I could never take Page from Wildoak. This land, the red-bricked manse, the river gliding by, was his heart’s blood. If I ran away with him I would have to live with guilt—the memory of him gazing fondly over Wildoak—for the rest of my life.
“It’s nothing without you, Sabrina,” he said, squeezing my hand, which lay unresponsive and cold in his. “Nothing.”
But it was everything: his dream, his home.
I could not tell him about the child. He would insist on taking me away. He would assure me that leaving Shaizar and the brood mare, his future as a horse breeder, was unimportant, irrelevant. He would give it all up for me. But I couldn’t let him do that. I loved him, perhaps at that moment more than I ever had, and loving him I could not, would not, allow him to make such a sacrifice. The child’s paternity would be my secret. It had to be.
“What do you think, Sabrina? Do you like it?”
“Yes.”
Roger would never give me a divorce. If I came to Page here at Wildoak and lived with him, Roger would find some way to bring me back, and, failing that, he would destroy Page. I knew he could do it.
We went back into the house. When Page started to remove my cloak, I said, “No, please—I can’t stay.”
“Then at least have a glass of sherry.” He bent to kiss me, and I turned away so that his lips grazed my cheek.
“All right, sherry,” I agreed, “a small glass.”
I needed something to sustain me, something stronger than sherry to give me the courage to do what I must. Standing there, I felt like a condemned criminal about to make a last walk to the gallows.
In the dining room the fire still leapt on the hearth, its rosy light gleaming on the china through the watery glass of the cupboard. A clock ticked cozily in the silence. A portrait of some Falconer ancestor, a lady in an Empire dress with plumes in her ringleted hair, looked down at me, it seemed, with pity in her large brown eyes.
“Now,” said Page, seating himself, pulling a chair up to mine, and giving me the glass, “let us drink to us—our future.”
I drank, the sherry trickling down my throat like acid. Taking a deep breath, I plunged in. “Pag
e, I’ve come to tell you that Roger and I have reconciled. I’m not going to leave him.”
He grinned at me. “You’re teasing, darling.”
“I never was more sincere in my life.”
I met his eyes, willing myself to a cold hardness, knowing that if I did not he would read my lie.
“We’ve had a long talk,” I went on, “and he was very contrite. He begged my forgiveness. He loves me, he wants us to try to be man and wife—to have a family.”
The grin vanished. Page stared at me, the black pupils of his eyes growing wide. Then suddenly, with one savage movement, he swept the glasses from the table, dashing them to the floor in a jarring crash.
“You expect me to believe that? After”—he swallowed hard— “after we made love and you . . . My God! Did what you swore to me mean nothing?”
“At the time it did, yes. But I spoke out of despair, not out of true love, Page.”
Could Sarah Bernhardt have done better? But the price it cost me to utter those words without betraying myself I hope never, never to pay again.
“You do not love me? Say it! Say that you lied, that you were false. Say it, damn you, say it!” He grabbed my arm, digging his fingers into it.
I was glad of the bruising pain, welcomed it. Anything to keep me from weakening. “I do not love you anymore,” I repeated.
“You never did.”
“It was a young girl’s love. I’m a grown woman now. Married.’’
“To a man you swore you hated. And now suddenly, after a chit-chat with Roger, you’ve changed your mind. He’s become a husband you cannot leave. Look at me, damn it! Look at me!’’
Again I met his eyes, flashing with blue anger and behind the blue anger, a terrible, terrible hurt. And for a moment I was tempted to tell him it was all a cruel lie, that I didn’t mean it, that I was his, would always be. But I knew that this pain would pass, that his wound would heal. But if he had to lose Wildoak, it would mean a lifetime of silent regret and unspoken reproach.
I got to my feet. “I must go.’’
“Yes, go,’’ he said sarcastically. “Perhaps his charm lies in his money, that house he is building for you on the Heights. Yes, now that I think of it, I am sure that is why you changed your mind.’’ He rose, grasping me by the shoulders. “I have little to offer but a struggle here and, if we go away, poverty most likely. You couldn’t bear that. Miles Falconer’s daughter, born with a silver spoon, coddled, spoiled—’’
“Page, please. I see no point in continuing this discussion. Please let me go.’’
“Let you go?’’ He tried to kiss me, and I turned away again. “Let you go so you can run to him? Damn you! Well, run, then, but first I’ll give you something to remember me by!’’
He swung me off my feet and into his arms.
“Don’t! I’ll scream! Put me down!’’
His face was livid with anger. He strode to the door while I kicked violently in a flurry of petticoats, struggling against his hard chest as uselessly as a creature caught in a steel trap. He rammed the door open and kicked it shut behind him.
When we started up the stairs I leaned down, grabbing the newel post, hanging on to it. He chopped my hands away. I gasped at the sharp pain. “You beast!’’ I cried, beating at his chin.
He ignored me, swiftly ascending the stairs. My heart was beating wildly now. “Where are you taking me?”
His silence, that determined jaw, his hard eyes, were those of a frightening stranger. It was a Page I did not know, did not like.
When he threw me on the bed I cried out, “You said you loved me. Page!”
“My word is as good as yours!”
He grabbed my feet and pulled my shoes off. I kicked him and the blows from my stockinged feet he brushed aside like worrisome gnats. When he reached for my skirt I twisted aside and slid from the bed, running for the door. But he was too quick. He caught me by the collar, ripping the cloak from my back. Then, spinning me around, he knocked me against the wall.
“You’re hurting me. Page! You’re no better than Roger, you fraud!”
“You said you preferred Roger. Why are you complaining?” He looked down at me with narrowed eyes, his chest heaving in fury. “I could kill you!”
He lowered his head and brought his mouth down on mine in a savage, hurting, punishing kiss. Then I was up in his arms again and on the bed before I could catch my breath. He didn’t take the time to remove my skirt, but pushed it up on my thighs, pulling my drawers down. I pummeled him, bringing my knees together, trying to roll away, but he held on. And then we were tumbling, falling to the floor.
The fall stunned me for a moment. The child! I wanted to scream, Oh, God, don’t hurt it! But my lips were crushingly sealed by his. He tore my legs apart and entered me. As I felt the fullness of his organ and its deep, penetrating thrusts, a new fear gripped me. Downstairs I’d been able to hide my feelings with a curt voice, a cold smile. But here in his arms, despite the violence and savagery, my soul was laid bare, my quivering flesh so mutinous to my will, an affirmation of all Page meant to me. Thankfully he was too far gone in his own frantic passion to notice the sudden tears crowding the lashes of my closed eyes.
When he was finished, he rose. I lay there, my hair veiling my face.
“Now you have good cause to hate me,” he said.
Somehow I managed to rearrange my clothes and get into my shoes and cape. He was holding my horse when I came out. I suffered his hand under my elbow as he helped me into the gig. Our eyes did not meet.
“Good-bye, Page,” I said coldly.
“I wish you the worst of luck,” he replied bitterly.
I cried all the way back to Fairchild.
Chapter 33
Mrs. Plummer was singing “Listen to the Mocking-Bird” in a high, trilling voice to the accompaniment of a young man with lank reddish hair. Seated on sofas and chairs scattered about the drawing room, the guests listened with feigned attention, fighting boredom and the heavy-lidded aftermath of a ten-course dinner.
Roger, shielding his mouth, leaned over and whispered, “I understand you took a spin this afternoon in the Plummers’ gig.”
So I had been seen. “Yes, Roger.” No point in denying it.
“You went alone?”
“The other women were napping. I wasn’t a bit sleepy and thought a ride would pass the time.”
“Where did you go?”
“Along the river road a few miles up and back.”
“Not to Wildoak?”
“No.” I wished it were true, wished the whole thing had never happened, that my terrible lies, Page’s anger and pain, and the savage assault had been nothing more than a nightmare. The only thing I could be thankful for was that no harm had come to the baby.
Roger seemed to believe me, for he asked no more questions.
We returned to Richmond the next day, and Roger went off to the mill. I thought I was safe then, that all I had to do was put the past behind me and try to make up to Roger for the child’s sake. I would have to think and plan now only for it. Whatever happened to me no longer mattered. The future belonged to the son or daughter I would bear. It would be Page’s legacy, all I’d ever have of him and the memory of our love.
I told myself that inducing Roger to make love to me might not be as difficult as I had feared. Apparently things had gone well for him at Fairchild, leaving him in a good mood. John Ryan, he informed me in a singular burst of confidence, had invited him to become part of the “Martin organization,’’ a group of railroad officials, attorneys, and businessmen who were building a political machine that would put their own people in office.
“They think very highly of me,’’ he said. “And I believe I can prove my worth to them.’’
I made an enormous effort to share his optimistic frame of mind. Smiling and chatting at the breakfast table, one would think I had not a care in the world. I got the catalogs Roger had brought home off the shelf and began to peruse them, poring over
the illustrated sofas, chairs, carpets, and draperies, marking those I liked with a dark-blue pencil and dog-earing the pages. I gave a tea and invited the literary ladies for one of our Thursday afternoons. I even unlocked old Mr. Prescott’s study, with the idea of sorting out his books and papers, discarding or giving away those we would not want to take when we moved.
Roger must have approved of my renewed interest in the house on the Heights, in my small social ventures. Now when I shopped or went out on calls, his bloodhound no longer shadowed me. Roger was pleasant, civil, respected my privacy, often bringing me hothouse posies just as he’d done while courting me in London.
Meanwhile, I managed to screen Page from my thoughts by keeping busy. Every night, exhausted from a long day’s schedule of activities, I would sink into bed, thinking, I must get Roger to come across the hall to me. Then, invariably, I would fall into a sound sleep. But sometimes at four in the morning I would waken as though a knife had been suddenly plunged into my breast. There in the shadowed room, in the ticking silence, with a small draft of wind blowing the curtains at the open window, I would think about Page. I would recall every moment of our last meeting with anguish—-his angry face, his brutal kisses, his bitter words. Hate and love, understanding and bafflement, tenderness and hardness, would war with one another as I tossed and turned, my spirits sinking lower and lower. There were times in those predawn churnings when I felt that the only way to put an end to my torment was to do away with myself. I couldn’t go on without Page, a Page who now believed me heartless, uncaring, and selfish. What was the use of it all? In those long hours I would even descend to considering how my death could be accomplished. A dose of arsenic? Should I slit my wrists, or throw myself under a train, as Anna Karenina had done in my favorite novel?
But toward morning, as I listened to a neighbor’s backyard rooster crowing triumphantly at the lightening sky, my disposition would revive. I would fall into a deep sleep again, to waken once more with the determination to cope, to do the best I could. I had Page’s child to think of.
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