Panic possessed me anew and I opened my eyes and flung out my arms and made a violent effort to throw him off and I saw his face, saw him grimace, his mouth a tight, determined line, and he pressed down with the full weight of his strong body and I gasped for breath and felt him move deeper, deeper, brutally impaling me and meeting resistance. I was a tiger, fighting him, but it was futile, completely futile, and there was a terrible pain as I was ripped asunder and I knew I was going to die as the magic had died, as the music had died, and then I felt something new, something incredible, and the pain turned to pleasure and I began to move as he moved and beauty came, shimmering beauty, shattering beauty, and I wrapped my legs around his and lifted my thighs and caught his hair in my hands, pulling it, throwing my head from side to side as the fountain welled within and began to brim. I was no longer a tiger, I was a kitten clawing, purring as the beauty became unbearable and I was lost, lost, soaring into oblivion that loomed just ahead, awaiting with shuddering intensity.
Closer it came, closer and closer, and he filled me fully and I held him inside me and clasped him and caressed him and expressed my love with all my heart and all my soul and all my body and love made us one now and then he pulled back and almost left me and I cried out as he filled me again and yet again, our bodies molded together, straining to come closer still. The glory grew, and he was mine and I was his and never, never would either of us be alone again. I lifted and he lunged and both of us moved to the music of love, and then I felt a bliss so bright, so blazing I knew I couldn’t possibly endure it, not possibly, not a moment more. He shuddered, shouted, shooting, and I felt the life jetting out of him as life left me, too, and I was torn into a thousand shimmering shreds and cast into the abyss of ecstasy.
Chapter Six
Sunlight spilled and splattered through all the windows and filled the house with light. It was a gorgeous day, a glorious day, and I hugged myself and smiled and wondered how I could contain my happiness. Father was in his study and Marie was in the kitchen and Solonge and Janine would be returning soon now, for it was after four, and I knew Hugh would come to call and speak to my father and ask if he would consent to our marriage, and Father would give his consent, I knew he would, and the future would be ours to shape and share. Was it really possible to be so happy, to feel such joyous elation shimmering inside? I smiled again and stepped into the hall and looked at myself in the mirror there and was surprised to see I still looked the same although there was a sparkle in my eyes and a delicate pink flush on my cheeks and my lips couldn’t seem to stop smiling.
I moved on outside into the garden and smelled the soil and the flowers and hugged myself again and strolled in the sunshine and the shadows of the oaks and thought about last night and smiled once more. After we made love he held me in his arms for a long while and stroked my hair and kissed me tenderly and then we had made love a second time and it was even better, leisurely and lazy and lovely, each of us savoring the splendor, and it was almost dawn when finally we got up and adjusted our clothing and brushed off the hay. Slowly we strolled across the fields and past the sleeping village and down the shadowy lane, Hugh holding my hand, silent. The first pink-orange light of dawn was staining the sky as we reached the end of the lane, and there was the cottage, all shrouded in shadow, the pinkish light reflected dimly in the windowpanes. He pulled me into his arms and kissed me for a long, long time and then released me and left abruptly, without a word, and I slipped silently into the house and upstairs to my room and the sky was a pale yellow-white when finally I slept.
Neither of us had spoken during that slow stroll home, both lost in thought, remembering the bliss, the beauty, but words weren’t necessary. We would be married, for he loved me and I loved him, and he would leave Greystone Hall and find some other work and I would be beside him to help him and encourage him and there would be hard times, true, but we would succeed and even the hard times would be good because we would be together. I strolled under the oak trees and daydreamed about the future until Marie called me in to help her with dinner, too impatient for her girls’ return to notice my mood. I peeled potatoes and sliced them thin, grated cheese for the sauce, washed the asparagus and set the table, dreaming all the while. Marie was testy, snapping irritably, but I paid her no mind. She was going to be surprised when Hugh showed up to ask for my hand, but I doubted she’d make a fuss. She’d probably be glad to get rid of me, I thought, though it would mean hiring a servant to help in the house.
It was after five when the fine carriage returned with Solonge and Janine. A footman brought their things into the hall. Both of them were tired, Janine yawning, Solonge exasperated with her mother’s questions and asking her to wait until after dinner for details. Dinner was strained. Father wasn’t feeling well. His face was drawn. Marie was put out with all of us, tapping her fingernails on the table. Janine continued to yawn, and Solonge was silent, looking put out herself, her beautiful face hard. I suspected the ball had not been a huge success, but I wasn’t really interested. I kept listening for Hugh, waiting to hear his step on the porch, his knock on the door. Marie had prepared a fancy dessert, but no one wanted it. Father excused himself and went to his room, and I heard him coughing behind the closed door. Marie told me to clear the table and then took her girls into the front parlor.
I cleared the table and washed the dishes and tidied up the kitchen. He did not come. Marie began to argue with her daughters in the parlor, her voice growing more and more irate, and finally she swept into the hall and went to her room and slammed the door. Janine and Solonge went to their rooms, too, and the house was quiet then and the clock ticked loudly, eight, eight-thirty, nine. I waited, and he didn’t come. I stepped onto the front porch and watched the play of moonlight and shadow on the ground, not really worried, not allowing myself to worry, telling myself there was bound to be a good reason why he hadn’t come to call. I went up to my own room at eleven and tried to read but couldn’t, and it was after two before I put out the light and tried to sleep.
I was standing at the window in the front parlor the next afternoon when Solonge came into the room, looking bored and restless and lovely in a pale salmon orange frock with thin tan stripes. Marie had one of her excruciating headaches and was shut up in her room, the inevitable cologne-soaked handkerchief over her eyes, and Father was shut up in his study. Janine, of course, was taking a nap, and the house was very still. Solonge sighed and looked at me and, seeing my expression, asked if something was wrong. I shook my head and tried to smile, but I couldn’t quite manage it. My stepsister frowned. Never openly affectionate, often hard and bitchy, Solonge was nevertheless fond of me in her way, and she was genuinely concerned.
“Something is wrong, Angie. You’re pale. There’re smudges under your eyes. You look like you’ve just lost your only friend.”
“I—it’s just the heat, Solonge.”
“If I didn’t know better, I’d think you were having man trouble. I’d think you were in love. God forbid,” she added.
“Was the ball a success?” I asked, changing the subject.
“Everyone was very, very polite to us, very tolerant and very condescending and grand. The men were very attentive. They were very intrigued. Janine made a number of conquests and received a number of interesting invitations, as did I. Both of us could have made a small fortune had we been willing to slip out to the gazebo throughout the evening. Neither of us did. I suppose that’s to our credit. We were quite respectable. For once.”
“I’m sorry it wasn’t—pleasant,” I said. “I don’t suppose you’ll be seeing Bart any more.”
“It isn’t likely,” she replied.
“I suppose his father made it very clear he didn’t want any part of you.”
“On the contrary, he made it quite clear just what part of me he did want.” She sat down on the sofa and picked up a fashion magazine, idly flipping through the pages without looking at them. “Shortly after midnight he took me aside and informed me that I
hadn’t a prayer with Bart, that he was sending him on a long tour of the Continent, and then he made me a very attractive offer.”
“He wanted to—to buy you off?”
“He wanted to take me to London,” she said dryly. “He wanted to set me up in a grand apartment and give me a carriage and horses and servants and a monthly allowance.”
“He’s almost sixty!” I exclaimed.
Solonge smiled at my naivete and told me I had a lot to learn, then turned back to the magazine.
As Marie was still indisposed with her headache, I cooked dinner that night and was grateful to have something to keep me busy. After I had cleared the table and washed the dishes, I went upstairs and changed into a pale lavender cotton frock and brushed my hair until it fell to my shoulders in lustrous chestnut waves, and then I went back downstairs to wait for Hugh. I was certain he would come tonight, even though … even though it was after eight and Father had already gone to his room. I waited, patient, forcing myself to be patient, and as the hands moved slowly around the face of the clock I assured myself there was a good reason why he … why he was so late. Hugh loved me, I knew he did, just as I loved him. We were going to be married. We hadn’t discussed it, we hadn’t discussed anything, but it was … it was understood.
He didn’t come that evening, nor did he show up the next day, nor the next, and after a week had passed a terrible fear gripped me and it was all I could do to hold it at bay. I mustn’t give in to it. I mustn’t. I was very, very calm, going about my duties with a cool demeanor that belied the fear and anguish raging inside. I slept very little. I grew pale, my face drawn, but no one seemed to notice. I smiled and pretended nothing was wrong, but something was terribly wrong. I knew that now. Men took advantage of foolish, innocent girls, and after they had what they wanted they sauntered away without the least remorse, but Hugh … Hugh wasn’t that way. Not Hugh. Hugh loved me. Steadfastly, I kept hope alive and held the fear at bay and continued to make excuses for him.
He hadn’t come yet because he … because he was busy making arrangements for our future. We certainly couldn’t live in the stables at Greystone Hall, nor would he continue to work there. He was finding suitable employment, hiring on as bailiff at some other estate, finding a cottage for us to live in. He hadn’t come yet because he wanted to have everything set up before he spoke to my father. Yes, that was it, and such things took time, certainly more than a week. I must be patient. I mustn’t give in to the fear and panic that surged just below the surface, waiting to tear me asunder. He loved me, he had shown it in a hundred different ways that night under the misty purple-gray sky, and I must have faith in him. He would come soon now, maybe this afternoon, maybe tomorrow, and Father would give his consent and we would be married.
I tried very hard to believe that.
Three more days passed, each an eternity, it seemed, and it had been a week and a half now. Marie needed some things from the village, and I was glad to go for them. Any distraction was welcome. The sky was a dark blue. Although September was almost over, it was still unseasonably warm and the leaves hadn’t yet begun to fade. I walked to the village with grief in my heart and the shopping basket on my arm, nodding to passersby on High Street, even smiling at a few of them, very calm, very natural, no one suspecting the emotions inside. I stopped at the fishmonger’s and selected the salmon Marie would poach, then stepped over to the greengrocer’s and carefully selected lettuce and carrots and vivid yellow squash. I was putting peas into the basket when I heard a cry of delight behind me and turned to see Eppie hurrying toward me. She gave me an exuberant hug and told me how marvelous it was to see me and said she had just come in to purchase a few provisions and wasn’t it grand we’d run into each other. Then she grinned and stepped back, proudly displaying her thickening waist.
“February,” she confided. “I’m not really showing all that much. What do you think?”
“I—I think you look glorious, Eppie.”
And she did. Her cheeks were fuller and tinted a delicate pink, her eyes a deep, velvety brown, aglow with contentment. Her straw-colored hair, piled up on top of her head as usual, had a glossy sheen, like silk, not straw, and, no longer skinny, Eppie bore no resemblance to a giraffe. She was pretty, almost beautiful in her dusty rose cotton frock. Love and incipient motherhood had brought about this transformation, and it was a wonderful transformation indeed. I took her hand and squeezed it affectionately, glad Eppie, at least, had had her happy ending.
“I’m ever so excited!” she continued. “Jamie is, too. He didn’t want me to walk all the way to the village and back but I told him that was nonsense and informed him I simply had to pick up some things. Sugar. Flour. Beans. That charming boy who works behind the counter is going to deliver them after he gets off. Are you almost finished? I’ll walk part way with you.”
I put a few more things into my basket and paid for them, and then Eppie and I left the greengrocer’s and strolled down High Street. I shifted the heavy basket from one arm to another as Eppie, vivacious as ever, regaled me with details of life on the farm with Jamie. She was becoming an accomplished cook and Jamie simply adored her trifle and Yorkshire pudding. Beeswax worked wonders on furniture if you didn’t use too much and rubbed it in good, it gave wood a rich gleam. The chickens were laying more eggs now that they’d changed feed. She was still a bit nervous when she had to reach under the hens to get their eggs but she hadn’t been pecked in ever so long, they were growing used to her. The cow was a sweetheart and stood so still while she did the milking and she churned her own butter and it took forever. Jamie had tilled a patch of ground for her behind the house and she had started her own vegetable garden. I tried to show a proper interest, but it was difficult when I felt so bleak, so empty inside. Eppie’s blissful contentment only emphasized my own unhappiness.
We left High Street and were nearing the side road where Eppie would have to turn off to get to the farm. Lost in thought, I was paying very little attention to her chatter and didn’t catch the first part of her question.
“—awful about Lord Meredith?” she said.
“What? I—I’m sorry, I didn’t—”
“Of course I don’t believe The Bastard was responsible for his death, but I suppose he was, in a way. They did have a fierce argument and Lord Meredith had his stroke immediately afterward, just dropped dead on the spot, he did, but you couldn’t call that murder!”
I stopped. I seemed to grow cold all over.
“Eppie, what—what are you talking about?” My voice sounded strange to my ears.
“You mean you haven’t heard? No one’s been talking about anything else for the past four days! Where have you been, Angie! Four days ago The Bastard went storming into the house and into his father’s study and they had a furious argument, both of them yelling at each other, and then Lord Meredith hit The Bastard with his cane and The Bastard tried to wrest it away from him, and Lord Meredith dropped dead!”
“I—I hadn’t heard,” I said. Could that be my voice?
I was standing there on the road and the sky was deep blue and the sunlight slanted through the limbs overhead and made shadowy patterns on the ground and I was holding the basket by its handle and it was heavy and Eppie was standing beside me and I knew who she was, of course, but I seemed to be somewhere else and nothing was familiar, everything was curiously distorted and diffused and I was seeing it through a haze.
“Lady Meredith came rushing into the room and started screaming at the top of her lungs and Clinton came rushing in behind her and yelled for the footmen. They overpowered The Bastard and he was carted out to the stables and locked up and put under guard! Janie Yarbro’s mother got all the details from the Merediths’ cook and Janie came tearing out to the farm to tell me all about it. I was stunned, just stunned. You could have knocked me over with a feather!”
How many times have I longed to kill him, kill her? There’s murder in my heart still. He had said those words that night, under the pal
e silver stars, but he hadn’t killed his father. His father had dropped dead as Hugh was trying to wrest the cane from him. I stared at Eppie through the haze and felt a dizzy sensation and was afraid I might faint. I didn’t. I shifted the basket from one hand to the other, perfectly composed, so calm on the surface. Eppie clasped her hands together, caught up in the excitement of the drama she related with such gusto.
“Lady M. claimed he had killed her husband and said she’d see he hung for it! They sent for the doctor and sent for the authorities and the doctor came immediately. He said it was death from natural causes, Lord Meredith had been in poor health for some time, but Lady M. wasn’t satisfied with that. The authorities arrived late that evening, they had to come from a long way off, and she had calmed down some by that time and knew she couldn’t have him hung for murder so she told them The Bastard had stolen some of her jewelry and Lord M. had caught him in the act and that’s why they were fighting. She showed them the jewelry—a diamond necklace, a diamond and emerald bracelet—she said he had them in his pocket when the footmen overpowered him.”
“They—they took him away,” I said.
Eppie shook her head, brown eyes aglow with excitement. “They locked him up in the stables, like I said, a burly footman standing guard over him with a pistol. It was two in the afternoon when they took him out there and well after eleven when Clinton took the men out to the stables with a lantern—” She paused for dramatic effect. “It was empty!” she exclaimed. “The Bastard was gone and they didn’t find the footman till the next afternoon. He was trussed up like a hog, on his stomach, his hands and feet tied behind him and the rope looped around his neck so he couldn’t struggle without stranglin’ himself. He was under the hay. The Bastard had jumped him and grabbed his pistol, knocked him out with the butt. That poor man was tied up there under the hay for over twenty-four hours! He heard the men come into the stables, of course, but he couldn’t move because of the rope around his neck, couldn’t cry out because he had a gag stuffed in his mouth. The Bastard got away!”
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