by Fine, Clara
“What?” She asked, frowning when they only laughed. “What?”
“Never you mind,” Grandma said, and Caro put the box back on the shelf.
Chapter Eight
The night of Aunt Beth’s dinner party, Cam wandered out to the kitchen. She could already feel the beginning of a headache pounding between her eyes. Caro and Mary were busy at the house, so Grandma was alone in the kitchen reading the cards when Cam entered. She was frowning. “What’s happening at the house?” she asked when she caught sight of her granddaughter.
“A dinner party,” Cam said wearily.
“Shouldn’t you be preparing for it?” Daphne shuffled the playing cards with a practiced hand and dealt them again.
“I am,” Cam said. “I’m completely dressed and groomed. I slipped down here to gather my wits. I will have to be very clever and very cautious tonight.”
“Oh?” Her grandmother asked with smile, “Are dinners so dangerous these days?”
“Not all dinners,” Cam said, holding her skirts as she turned so that they didn’t sweep through the soot. “But Brent… I mean, Mr. Anderson is coming, and he has a way of making everything dangerous.”
“So don’t go,” Grandma said, dealing three cards and slowly turning the first one over.
“It’s not that simple,” Cam said. “If I start to snub Brent now people will talk. They seem to be under the impression that he is particularly fond of me . . . what a joke.” She said, but instead of the flippant tone she had intended, her voice sounded hoarse and a little pained.
“Indeed.” Grandma said, but instead of looking at Cam she was staring at the three cards in front of her, a deep wrinkle forming on her brow. “Strange,” she murmured, and picked up the middle card to study it more closely.
Cam cleared her throat and continued. “Poor Aunt Beth must think that she is about to have one of her dearest wishes come true. She’s probably making wedding plans even as we speak.”
Grandma glanced up at the word ‘wedding.’ “Your aunt expects you to marry him?” She glanced from the card in her hand to Cam’s face. “Do you care for this Mr. Anderson?” Grandma asked with surprise.
“I don’t know him well enough to care for him,” Cam said. “We’ve never actually socialized.”
“But you’ve conversed with him many times.” Grandma set down her cards and stared up at Cam.
“We don’t converse.” Cam said. “We tell pretty lies and play word games. We try to learn each other’s secrets, all the while pretending that we aren’t terrified, when really, I think we both are.” She stared out of the kitchen window as she spoke, watching as a raven landed on a fence post, his wings gleaming under the bleeding orange of the setting sun.
“Well, whatever you and Mr. Anderson do together, I have never seen you this way over a man before.” Her grandmother’s tone was weary.
“I don’t feel anything,” Cam said firmly, “except fear. He is too clever and too determined, and his brother’s wife is dying. He will do whatever is necessary for his brother’s sake, and we must do whatever is necessary for our own sakes.”
“That’s all?” Grandma asked hesitantly. “Those are the extent of your feelings towards Mr. Anderson?”
“That’s all,” Cam said resolutely. Somewhere under all of her determination every lie was burrowing into her heart and making it weep blood, but she ignored the pain. “It is his duty to protect John and Hattie, just as it is my duty to protect you and Caro.”
She turned to face her grandmother, and was startled by the despair in her grandmother’s eyes. “Don’t talk that way, Cam. It frightens me. I am so afraid that I have been selfish with you.”
“Selfish?” Cam knelt by her grandmother’s side. “When have you ever been selfish?”
“I wanted a companion,” her grandmother said. “After your mother...” she swallowed. “After the fire. I had Caro, but I missed my little girl. And then that Elizabeth came barging in and decided to raise you girls herself. Helen was just a baby and Elizabeth took such good care of her that I hardly saw the child. Diana was older, but she was so devoted to your father that she barely left his side. I thought that you girls were going to grow up strangers to me. Then you came out to the kitchens. You looked so lost, and I so desperately needed someone to care for.”
“And I needed someone to care for me,” Cam said, covering her grandmother’s wrinkled hand with her own palm, “so it’s a good thing that I did come looking for you, isn’t it?” The tears that she had held back when they discussed Brent had been freed and she could feel them gathering in her eyes.
“I worry sometimes that you would have been better off if I had left you to be raised by your aunt.”
“Oh, Grandmother, no,” Cam was shocked by her grandmother’s confession. Grandma had never shown anything but disdain for Elizabeth. “Elizabeth and I...” she licked her lips. “We are not very compatible. We do not see eye to eye on anything, and I know that she is often as frustrated with me as I am with her.”
“But,” Grandma said, and to Cam’s horror she saw that her grandmother’s eyes were also full of tears. “I have made you that way. Perhaps if you had spent most of your time with her, as Helen did, you would be happier. Lighter. There is a shadow in your eyes that never goes away. I put it there.”
“No,” Cam said, and her voice was like steel but a few tears spilled down her cheeks. “No you did not, Grandmamma. If there are any shadows in my life Kat Varennes but them there. She is responsible for my demons, not you.”
“But you are different, even from your sisters.” Grandma said. “You should have more friends. You should be able to enjoy parties.”
“I have friends, Grandmamma, and I don’t like big gatherings.” High society was treacherous and unforgiving. Cam had no desire to be its next victim.
“But you should. You should. . ."
"What?" Cam interrupted, painfully aware of the bitterness in her own voice. "Accept suitors so that I can be ruined like Diana? Marry so that I can have children and die before they are old enough to remember my face?"
Her grandmother flinched. “You should live, Cam. Just live. I love you dearly, but we are both dwelling in a dream. Your visits to the kitchen, your life out here . . . we both know it can’t last.”
“And why not? Because Aunt Beth says it can’t?” Cam wasn’t sure whether to feel sorry for her grandmother or betrayed by her.
“Because it shouldn’t, Cam. Because you shouldn’t spend the rest of your life paying for the sins of your ancestors.”
Cam opened her mouth to say that she wasn’t doing anything of the sort, and what sins, when there was a knock at the kitchen door. Cam stiffened immediately, and she and her grandmother shared a wide-eyed glance. No one who belonged in the kitchen knocked. Mary didn’t knock. Caro wouldn’t dream of knocking.
“Hello?” Cam’s grandmother called out tentatively as Cam slowly stood, brushing off her skirt. She had promised herself that she would be careful with her dress in the kitchen, and then she’d gone and kneeled in it. “Come in,” Cam’s grandmother called when Cam was presentable.
“Excuse me?” It was Brent, looking handsome enough to break hearts in his evening wear. She’d never seen a man who filled out a coat quite like Brent. He smiled and she felt like melting. “Hello Cam,”
He held out his hand and she flushed and went to him. It wasn’t until she had taken his hand that she remembered that her grandmother was watching. She glanced back at Grandma, who was staring at their clasped hands with her eyebrows raised all of the way to her hairline.
Cam tried to surreptitiously tug her hand away but Brent gripped it all the tighter. “I’m Brent Anderson,” he said politely to Grandma.
Cam’s grandmother introduced herself warily, but all of the while Brent was shrewdly scanning the kitchen. Cam shifted nervously as he studied the playing cards, the roots on the table and the basket of charm bags at the hearth.
When he opened his mouth
Cam fully expected to be assaulted with questions, but Brent just smiled. “So this is Cam’s kitchen,” he mused.
“And you’re Cam’s Mr. Anderson,” Grandma responded.
“Yes, I suppose I am.”
Cam’s face heated still further. “They’re probably waiting for us up at the house. Please excuse us Grandmamma.”
“Of course,” Grandma said with unusually stiff courtesy. “Goodbye Mr. Anderson.”
“We’ll meet again,” Brent said with great certainty.
Caro and Mary were on their way in as Cam and Brent left, and they both openly stared at Brent as Cam led him back to the house. Brent eyed them as well. “I suppose that was Caro?” He said as they neared the house.
Cam was surprised that Brent remembered. She had only mentioned Caro to him once. “Yes.”
“Sam’s mother. What about the young woman with her?”
“Her niece, Mary.”
“I see.”
Cam hoped fervently that he didn’t see too much.
***
The dinner was agony. Cam was tormented by the longing that raged in her blood whenever Brent was around. She had never before looked at a man and wanted him so badly, but Brent seemed to be the exception to every rule. In the candlelight the combination of his perfect smile and his piercing green eyes was almost demonic, and the way that the light gleamed over his skin made Cam lick her lips.
As the evening drew on Cam began to see the same suffering in his eyes that welled beneath her breast. He watched her like she was the only person in the room, and Cam longed for a few minutes alone with him just to see what he would do. But Aunt Beth watched them with the eyes of hawk, taking care not to leave them unchaperoned for even a second. Cam knew that her aunt was hearing wedding bells already and was determined that nothing spoil the match.
If I had known that the walk from the kitchen to the house would be our only time alone together, I would have taken advantage of it— then Cam blushed, startled by her own thoughts. Brent was turning her into a person that she barely recognized.
After he bid them farewell and departed that evening, Cam was left restless and discontented. Aunt Beth was thrilled by how ‘splendidly’ the evening had gone, but Cam was so frustrated she wanted to jump out of her window.
Instead, she waited until dusk. She stood by her window and traced patterns on the glass until everyone, Caro and Grandma included, had retired to bed. She opened her window without a trace of hesitation or guilt, and when the fresh night air hit her face she felt better than she had all evening.
She climbed down from the balcony without any definite destination in mind, but as soon as her feet touched the earth some unknown impulse drew her toward the kitchen. Cam wasn’t sure what she was looking for until she climbed the creaky steps and opened the door. Then it was as though the conjure that lingered in the kitchen was calling her name. Cam was strangely calm as she crossed the kitchen in total darkness. She should have felt guilty, she should have felt afraid.
She didn’t.
She climbed onto a chair to reach the top shelf, and was struck by a memory that she had forgotten long ago. She remembered herself as a small child, climbing onto a stool so that she could look into her mother’s jewelry box. She had been entranced by all of the sparkling stones that gleamed from within. Her mother had caught her admiring the jewelry, and instead of punishing her she had allowed Cam to try every piece on. Even the enormous brooch that made the front of Cam’s dress sag it was so heavy. Cam smiled at the memory, even as she lifted the old, ornately carved wooden box from the top shelf.
The bone was still there, exactly as Cam had last seen it. Cam reached for it, feeling its power humming through her fingertips as her hand drew nearer. She hesitated, bit her lip, and then lifted the bone. It was lighter than she would have expected, hardly heavier than a small chicken bone. Cam gripped it for a moment and then slipped it into the pocket of her nightdress. The magic enveloped her, changed her, and a strange exultation filled her. She left the box where it was and ran outside, out onto the grass.
She was heady with conjure as she twirled on the shadowed lawn, entranced by the sight of her own nightdress swirling and vanishing around her legs, a blur of ivory, white silk eternally shifting into night. The sky was the dusky pink of a dying rose, and Cam could taste the thunder on her tongue. The wind was wet, a balmy kiss against her skin, but the rain was yet to come. Cam could scent it amid the smell of fallen flowers as blossoms streamed from the dogwood trees and azaleas.
Cam spun again and again, like a child, afraid that she would fall if she stopped. Her heart pounded wildly and she threw her head back and laughed. She loved to be barefoot. She loved to be free and she loved laughter. Why did she have a life that denied her all three? The thought was sad but somehow that sadness could not pierce the euphoria that had filled her and infused her with the kind of courage that she had always longed for.
This is who I am.
She could feel the bone working; she could feel herself vanishing as swiftly as the setting sun. How strange it was, this feeling of finding herself even as she disappeared. If she encountered someone, anyone, right at this moment, she would tell them the truth. She would tell them who she was and where she came from and how her mother really died. She would tell anyone anything they wanted to know. The bones gave her invisibility, and the invisibility gave her honesty. Somehow it was easier to admit what she wanted when she was bodiless, little more than a mind and a heart blown by the wind.
And what do you want, Cam?
The answer didn’t come in words, but in a vision that filled her mind’s eye, taking her by surprise. Then again, how could she be surprised? She had been carrying Brent’s image in her heart for weeks, almost since their first meeting. He had never been far from her thoughts. But she had locked those thoughts away, imprisoning him at the back of her mind, just as surely as she herself was imprisoned at Cypress Hall.
Now she was free. Now she could have whatever she wanted.
Cam didn’t walk; she ran. Her feet had no form and her shape could not be seen. In the night she was little more than a shadow, a shadow that burned with longing.
I am a fool, she thought.
But it was a beautiful, beautiful night to be a fool.
***
Brent stood on his brother’s porch, still dressed and wide awake. He was restless. He ached too much to sleep. The effort of restraining himself at the ball had all but killed him. God knew Brent had wanted women before, but the longing had always been more physical, the desire for release more than for a particular woman. And even if there was a particular woman, another one would usually do if the first was unwilling. With Cam it was different. She was at the root of everything. She was the one he wanted. No one who wasn’t her was sufficient. He wanted Cam or no one. But that day in the woods she had pulled away like his hands burned her.
He understood. There was darkness between them, a rift that wouldn’t heal. No amount of desire or love could change the fact that she was dishonest and he was desperate. They had the potential to cause each other just as much pain as pleasure, and that was why Brent had to let her go, even though it went against his grain, even though it nearly killed him. He would let her go because he would rather die than hurt her. He would let her go because she was right to resist him, even though it was so hard to reconcile that resistance with the naked longing that he had seen in her eyes.
Even now he was fighting with himself. He knew that she wanted him. He knew that if he had just a few minutes alone with her in the dark he could change her mind. He knew that he could make her ache the way that he did. He knew–
He knew that someone was watching him…
He turned, staring into the darkness, hunting for whoever hid there. “Who’s there?” He asked loudly. His rifle was just inside the door, but he didn’t bother to get it. He was frustrated enough that he could probably seize and beat to death any intruder without even winding himself.
The breeze touched his hair, and he smelled flowers and rain on the wind. As the air settled he heard faint footsteps and the whisper of cloth. The movements were soft and nonthreatening, but whoever it was had moved closer. When the wind blew again, he could scent something else on the breeze, a sweet scent, as familiar as the warm gaze of whoever watched him. “Who’s there?” He asked again, but more softly this time.
There was silence, but for a single, quiet sound. It was all that was needed to tell Brent who was there.
Cam. The realization shook him to the core. He wasn’t sure why he still couldn’t see her, but he knew she was here. She had come to him.
Sweet girl, what are you thinking?
There would be no escaping the inevitable now.
***
Cam watched from just a few yards away as the expression on Brent’s face changed from wary and hostile to a smile so wicked that it was almost dangerous. She had been standing invisibly in the shadows, gazing at his face, drinking him in with her eyes, when he had apparently sensed that he was being watched.
“Who’s there?” He asked a third time, and this time his voice was strangely gentle as he started down the porch steps, his eyes gleaming green in the soft darkness. A strange feeling grew in the pit of Cam’s stomach. The way he was acting… It was almost as if he knew…
“Cam?” God! He did know.
“Cam? It’s alright sweetheart,” he said, his voice slightly hoarse on the last word. “Come out where I can see you. I want to see you.”
Good luck, Cam thought, and laughter bubbled to her lips. At some other time she would have stifled it, slipped away into the shadows with her hand over her mouth. Not tonight. She laughed freely, letting her mirth dance on the wind around them. His head turned sharply, eyes fixing on the spot where she stood, and the intensity in them made her shiver. There was a thrumming low in her belly, and every inch of her skin sparked to life, sensitive and charged under his searching gaze. The force of her response to him made her stop laughing. Her breathing changed and she licked her lips.