She wanted to tell him that he was leading her back into a dream they had had after Riverrun, a dream that would be so easy to fall back into with no compunction. “Eric,” she said, “I don’t want any promises.”
“But Cass—”
“No,” she said sharply, perhaps more so than she’d intended. “I don’t want any promises. There are too many miles, too many days. But I’m not so proud as to be foolish, either. I’ll accept your help. But I’ll pay you back.”
“Don’t be silly, Cass.”
She broke away from him and slid off the bed, moved to the window and looked out over the street through the thin film of curtains. There were lights in the windows opposite, a man walking below with a lantern in his hand, horses and riders, a landau that made all the other traffic give way before it.
“I will pay you back, Eric,” she repeated. “Whatever it is, I will pay you back.”
“But you’re a woman, Cass!”
She spun around, hands held tightly to her sides, chest rising and falling with furious determination. “I know what I am, and I know who I am.” She stepped to the side of the bed and knelt on the mattress, the look in his eyes as they focused on her breasts no longer exciting her. “I will do what I said I will do, and it doesn’t make much difference to me now whether you believe me or not. I will do it! Now let’s stop talking, all right? It’s late, and I have a lot of things to do tomorrow.”
He seemed angered by her outburst, and for a moment she thought she had lost him by her declaration. Instead, however, he laughed loudly and long, grabbed at her arms and pulled her down on top of him. She struggled when he tried to kiss her, wriggled to get away from the hands that roamed at will over her body, and finally aimed a slap at his head to keep him away. He only laughed all the more heartily, however, and pinched at one thigh until she yelped.
“Whatever you say, wench,” he said, grinning, rolling her breasts in his palms until she could not contain the moan that struggled in her throat, the curses that followed it, and the lovemaking that drugged her into a sleep dominated by dreams of a storm-tossed sea and a pair of gray eyes that rose from the water; gray, and searching, before turning to black.
Chapter Nine
The following day, near to noon under an overcast sky threatening rain, Cass left Eric snoring in the bed and dressed again in her mourning clothes. Now that she had determined not to leave the country—and, she thought with a twinge of guilt, perhaps give up the one chance she would have at a happiness she might never again know—she realized that the only person who could help her in an effective way was Hiram Cavendish. Through his good offices, she might be able to find a decent place to stay until her plans were more firm. And the more she thought about it, the more anxious she was to begin. Toward the end of the night, the sea that had been in her dreams was replaced by the faces of the three men who had raped her and destroyed her home. The problem was getting to them now that they had fled into the unknown territory of the South. She remembered the last night of the carriage’s wild ride through the countryside, and the shots that had been fired and the sound of the man falling into a body of water. It had felt like heresy, but she had prayed upon awakening that whoever it was had not been killed or captured, but was still alive and waiting for her. It was a fantasy, wishful thinking, and Eric would have been rightfully scornful had she told him.
And what would he have said if she’d mentioned the last of the dream—the scarred face of Vern Lambert superseding all else with his demonic leer? Him she would save for the last, because the one thing Eric did not know—and would not know if she could help it—was her plan to return to Riverrun. She knew that Lambert would be there and nowhere else. It was what he had been after, and since Eric had deserted it, she was sure he would have lost no time in reclaiming it as his own.
She stood in the front hall and looked back up the stairs. For a moment she could see a vague impression of Agatha standing at the top of the landing, scowling and shaking her head.
“I’m sorry, Aunt Aggie,” she said to the spectre of her conscience, “but I have no choice.”
She drew on an elbow-length pair of black gloves delicately laced at the cuffs and retrieved a parasol from the stand near the door. Carefully, she removed from her expression all traces of her grim resolve, replacing it with the proper attitude of solemn alertness she knew her neighbors required. Not, she thought with a mirthless grin as she reached for the knob, that they approved of her at all; they must have seen Eric’s coming and going over the past several days—the coming early in the evenings and the going the following mornings—but at the moment she did not care what they thought or whom they told. Gossip, in whatever form, was too trivial a matter now to concern her. She had more important things to worry about first, such as living. And dying.
The street, as usual, was crowded, but no one seemed to notice her as she descended the steps and joined the throngs that moved to and away from the square at the end of the block. For once she was glad that she could move anonymously amid so many different types of people. Philadelphia, as its citizens were quick to point out to the uninitiated, the symbolic as well as the actual birthplace of the new nation, was for many immigrants and diplomats the first port of call after New York in the New World. As a result, there was a grand mixture of costumes and languages in the streets, as well as the rough, crude dress of outland men and women who drifted into the city from the mountains and plains in the less developed sections of the land between here and the Mississippi.
Hooves and carriage wheels lifted a frightful clatter over the cobblestones; laughter and jeers, the distant sound of band music on the green at the square, all made Cass more positive than ever that her decision to remain had been the proper one. The only mark of guilt she bore, and which she successfully suppressed, was her decision not to return to Gettysburg. She could not. Once she had learned from Mr. Jackson what had been done with the bodies found in the wreckage—the root cellar having collapsed when its supports burned with the house—she could not bring herself to view what she had once known as a moderately thriving farm. She did not want cinders and ash to mar that memory. Later, she thought, when all is done, I’ll go back and visit the graves. Later, but not now.
And when the letter to the merchant had been written in Cavendish’s presence and dispatched by the fastest means possible, it was as though a gentle chain of elegant fashion had been taken from around her neck. She was unalterably free. At first a pleasantly giddy, then darkly melancholy feeling. But nevertheless, she was free to do what had to be done.
She walked quickly to the corner and paused, looking at the trees dotting the square beyond the low, polished, black iron railing that bordered it, the grass where a number of children played and nurses walked quietly with their infant charges. It should be a portrait, she thought as she turned to her left; something to hang in every room in every house, a reminder that life goes on when war is too far distant to blacken the sky with smoke and the night with the voices of cannon.
I’m being morbid, she told herself, and with a quick shake to drop the cloak that had settled round her shoulders, she headed quickly past Independence Hall toward the business district in which the old lawyer kept his firm. She noticed, as she walked, a number of young men and wondered why they too were not in uniform.
She decided they must be the lucky ones who had the money to pay other men to replace them in the draft.
Money, she thought; it all came down to the amount of money one had. It buys places to live, food to eat, and protection from the fools who run countries as stupidly as they had run this one. Stupidly, she added silently, to let it tear itself apart because some men were too greedy to see beyond the color of their gold to the color of human beings.
A buckboard laden with bolts of cloth and barrels of foodstuffs swerved suddenly in front of her and she stepped back with a sharp cry while the driver wrestled with whip and reins to calm the horses drawing the vehicle; and as she did so
she bumped into a man who had moved too closely behind her.
“Excuse me,” she muttered, pulling her skirts away from the dirt kicked up by the team.
“Not at all, Miss Bowsmith,” the man said, touching his fingers to a gray silk hat and moving away quickly.
She nodded absently and walked on, glaring at the buckboard still having trouble in the middle of the street, tying up traffic now as several carriages tried to maneuver around it and caught themselves in positions where backing up was the only possible extrication. It wasn’t until she had reached the section of the city she’d been heading for that the realization struck her that the man she had collided with knew her name. She stopped, nearly bumping into someone else, and gazed back in the direction from which she had come. The man was long gone, however, and she could not remember seeing his face. It puzzled her, especially since she was almost completely unknown in Philadelphia; but, she told herself, there was nothing she could do about it, and so she promptly put the thought aside.
The Cavendish and Roe law office was in a narrow cul-de-sac flanked by similar firms, all uniformly somber in the faces they presented to the world. There was no foot traffic here, nor were there any carriages tethered to the brass rails when she turned into the street and headed for the fourth door down. She walked more slowly now, suddenly apprehensive about her reception. Cavendish would certainly disapprove of her coming, especially after the cold way she had treated him the day before, and he was, she thought, just the type of wizened old man who would bear an unreasonable grudge for the smallest slight as long as there was no money to be lost thereby, even glimpsed in a client’s future. She hesitated and very nearly turned herself around before an abruptly cold gust of moist wind pushed at her skirts and hat. With an angry glance at the sky and a shake of her head, she pushed open the glass-paned door and tried not to wince at the high-pitched bell that jangled insistently at her entrance. She paused on the threshold for her eyes to adjust to the dim lighting inside, a light filtering through dust-gray curtains on the windows and hardly augmented by the few lamps scattered about the reception area. Beyond a low railing a short distance into the room was a large, canted desk at which sat a young man in short sleeves, his collar held by only one button, working diligently at a ledger book easily as long as his arm. Cass waited a moment for him to look up since the rest of the area was deserted, then coughed impatiently into her fist. The man looked up, scowling, and brushed back a thick lock of hair from his forehead. Cass smiled at him and his scowl vanished as he scrambled to slam the book shut and fasten his collar with fumbling fingers. He then slipped into his broadcloth jacket and hurried to the railing’s gate.
“Miss Bowsmith, yes, how good to see you again. May I be of assistance?”
The fascination in his young eyes was almost too much to bear, and she had to cough again lightly to keep from laughing. “David,” she said, “has Mr. Cavendish come in yet this morning?”
“No, ma’am,” he said, his disappointment evident in his voice. “He won’t be in until after lunch. Mr. Roe, he won’t be back until the end of the week. Went to New York, you see. Something about a meeting, I don’t know.”
Cass thought a moment, placing a gloved finger to her chin. Then she reached into her purse and pulled out a small sealed envelope with the lawyer’s name written on its face. “Well, I’m afraid I can’t wait, David. Would you see that he gets this for me? Please, David?
“I want him to read it as soon as he can. It has to do with my aunt’s house on Jordan Lane. And will you tell him please that I would appreciate his company at tea this afternoon if he can spare me the time.” Then she added a coin to the envelope, which David deftly tucked into his waistcoat. “And something else, please, David.”
“Whatever you say, ma’am.”
And she knew he meant it. From the way he looked at her, ignoring the black veil and black dress, seeing the woman beneath it, she knew she could ask anything of him; he was love-struck, and for the uncomplicated moment, as docilely pliant as a pet.
“Thank you,” she said, smiling just enough to send a blush to his cheeks. “I want you to see to it, somehow, that Mr. Cavendish does not do anything about selling the house until I talk with him. If he comes in with papers, do what you can to mislay them, understand?”
His expression told her he did not, but he would do it anyway only because she asked him and not because of the money that had changed hands.
“Is there anything else, ma’am?” he asked eagerly.
“No,” she said. “Thank you, David.”
She turned to leave, then, and had her hand stretched out to the door when he cleared his throat and called out to her.
“Yes?” she said, turning back to him.
“There was a gentleman in here this morning, right after we opened—I opened, actually. Mr. Cavendish lets me because he knows he can trust me. I’m good at that, you see. I’m going to be his partner when I’ve studied long enough. He told me that just last week, you know. I’m going to have my name on the window and everything, if all goes well.”
“I’m sure, David,” Cass said. “But what about the gentleman you mentioned?”
“He—well, he was here to see you. Not see you, actually; he was just trying to find out where you lived.”
Cass frowned as she listened. The old lawyer had said nothing to her about a visitor, and she wondered what manner of man he was that the name should be kept from her. “Who?” she said, fighting her intense curiosity. “Do you know his name?”
David looked downcast, as though he had betrayed her without knowing it. “No, ma’am, I’m sorry. I only know he was in the army—ours, of course. A fierce looking man he was, too. He had only one hand and a great red patch over his left eye. Tall, though, and looked as if he could lift a horse without half trying. He wasn’t very nice either, I remember that, too. He did a lot of yelling when I said I couldn’t give out the addresses of the clients.” He grinned, then, and rubbed a hand against his coat. “I think I would have put a fist into his ugly face if there hadn’t been a lady present at the time. She was waiting for Mr. Roe. She wouldn’t believe he’d left for New York.”
“Did he leave a message for me?”
“Who? Mr. Roe?”
Cass frowned her exasperation and tapped her purse against her side. “No, David, I mean the gentleman who was asking about me. Did he leave me a message of some sort?”
“As a matter of fact, he did,” David said, darting back to his desk and yanking out a drawer. Muttering to himself, he fumbled through some papers until, with a short exclamation of triumph, he held up an envelope sealed with a smear of dark green wax. “Here,” he said, handing it to her. “He gave me a dollar to get it to you. I would have come when it was time for lunch, but now here you are so I don’t have to leave. Mr. Cavendish doesn’t know about it, of course, and I won’t tell him. Is it very important?”
Cass did not answer. She turned the envelope over in her hands searching for signs of the sender, but found only her name scrawled across the front, and nothing else. When she looked up, David was watching her intently, but she only smiled shortly and gave him a brusque nod before she hurried back into the street. She was tempted to tear open the envelope immediately, but something in the manner of its coming to her made her wait. Impatiently, then, she retraced her steps until she had reached the square near her aunt’s house, passed through a gate in the fencing and found a deserted bench beneath a chestnut tree drooping pathetically in the humid heat that had settled over the city. She smoothed her skirts and sat primly, ignoring a gaggle of children racing by behind a spinning hoop. She took a deep breath, exhaled slowly, and held the envelope briefly in front of her eyes before tearing off its end and pulling out the message inside. The paper on which it had been written was small, the handwriting miniscule. And when her gaze automatically jumped to the signature at the bottom, a veil of dizziness passed over her and she had to clutch at the bench’s seat to keep herself fr
om falling. The city’s sounds around her merged into a continuous roar, her heart raced until she thought she would faint. She leaned back and closed her eyes for a moment, waiting for the trembling of her hands to calm long enough for her to read the message.
My Dear Cassandra,
No doubt, by this time, you have been led to believe that I am dead. Obviously, nothing could be further from the truth. If my writing is somewhat awkward and somewhat feminine, it is because I am having a friend do the work for me. She is not well versed in the manners of the educated, and I must stop her frequently for the corrections I know a schoolteacher would demand. Nevertheless, she is faithful to me, which is more than I can say for Cassandra Bowsmith. In my direst hour of need, you deserted me, Cass, and I will not forget you for it, nor will I forgive. Your friends, if I may call them that, did not search the hiding place well enough to find me. I had been driven by heat and smoke into a far corner of the cellar and there I waited, praying for your return, drinking the water that sifted down through the soil, once desperate enough to dine on an over-eager rat who thought me more dead than I was. But I survived, Cassandra. I survived that hell you thrust me into. And I damn your soul for it, and the souls of your parents too weak to think of more than themselves! I understand from certain friends that you intend to leave the country in the company of another man. I should have known that a farm girl would have the morals of the animals she tends, but I was blinded by the smiles, those false and insidious smiles you cast in my direction. I should have known, but I did not, and I have paid the price for it. I may not be the whole man you once knew, Cassandra, but I am man enough to know when my pride has been callously dealt with. And since my limitations have driven me from the service I faithfully attended for most of my adult life, I am now free to do what I will. And what I will, Cassandra, you will learn soon enough. It took me quite a while to find you, and now that I have, I will not let you go without exacting the payment that is due me. Expect my friends, Cassandra. They are legion. And when we finally meet again, God help you. God help you
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