The Abandoned Heart

by Laura Benedict

  As soon as she stopped being angry, an odd thing happened: Randolph left her alone completely. He never came near except to fondly kiss her cheek if they met at breakfast or at dinner or after they returned home from an evening out. The only difference was that his lips seemed to linger a second longer if Aaron was particularly close by, as though he knew she was conscious of Aaron watching them.

  How strange, and how strangely pleasant it was to her. They were engaged in a triangular game, and although she had never been a woman to care much for games, this one appealed to her.

  Tamora had quieted. She slept longer in the cold winter mornings, and her circuits around the galleries were less frequent.

  They had a letter from Amelia’s mother, saying that she and Amelia’s father were considering coming south in the spring, once the snow was gone. But only a week later, a letter accompanying the Christmas packages her mother had sent—a pair of woolen mittens and a stuffed screech owl for Tamora, a necklace that had belonged to Amelia’s grandmother for Amelia, and an elaborate walking stick with a carved greyhound’s head for Randolph—suggested that Amelia’s father wasn’t well and wished to stay home through the spring. Together the letters appeared nonsensical, but Amelia was just as glad that her parents would not come.

  The house would impress them, but Amelia knew she would soon tire of her mother’s constant criticisms. Everything had begun to run so well: Maud and Clayton seemed less resentful of her and had begun to follow her requests without question. Harriet was demonstrably sober, which helped Amelia worry somewhat less about Tamora. The rounds of Christmas teas and dinners had been lively, and she had almost come to like Pinky Archer. Less certain was she about Pinky’s constant companion, Selina. But Selina was only a month or so from giving birth, and no woman was at her best when she was struggling with the demands of a pregnancy. It did surprise Amelia that Selina was so socially active, though she supposed that it was old-fashioned of her to expect that a woman would hide herself away for the last few months as she had with Tamora.

  What if there had been something about her confinement that had affected Tamora in the womb? Maybe Tamora’s limitations weren’t so much about the filthy things that Randolph had whispered to her as she conceived, as they were about something that she, Amelia, had done.

  Still, it couldn’t matter. There was no fixing Tamora.

  The New Year’s Eve dinner at Bliss House ended with Randolph declaring that his head cold would keep him from going to Maplewood and the Archers’ party with all their departing guests. Amelia suggested that she would remain with him, but he told her that Aaron would be a better, healthier escort.

  It was a spectacular evening.

  Maplewood was a grand, plantation-style house, fronted by a row of Grecian columns that had been wound with ropes of pine garland and wide red ribbon for the holidays. It was famous for having been built by a grandnephew of Thomas Jefferson, the fact of which no Archer would boast, but left to their sycophants. Amelia watched the older Archer children, who were only three and four, and their cousins gather around the enormous fir tree in the front hall that was lighted one last time for the holidays. They were in their sleeping clothes and robes, and their eyes were bright with wakefulness though it was long past their bedtimes. Two of the boys were poking each other, each trying to get the other in trouble, but the others were less restive. One of the girls had hair as blond as Tamora’s that she wore in a blue velvet ribbon, and the wonder in the girl’s gaze as she watched the lighted candles and glimmering tinsel made Amelia catch her breath. Tamora was afraid of their tree in the front hall and would not go near it.

  “Did you have Christmas trees when you were a child?” Amelia and Aaron had ridden to the party alone in the carriage, and he now stood at her side.

  Amelia laughed. “Oh, no. My father thinks they’re pagan abominations foisted on us by the Germans.” She became wistful. “I loved to see them, though. All my friends had Christmas trees.”

  “The tree at Bliss House is extraordinary. You have a good eye. Randolph should have let you help him furnish Bliss House. If I had only known—”

  “But it wouldn’t have made any difference. You know Randolph has very definite tastes.”

  “He has extraordinary taste in some things.”

  He didn’t touch her arm, but he moved imperceptibly closer and now the sounds of the room receded from them. She knew it was just her imagination, but the hall was heady with the scents of candle smoke and pine. She felt her color rise, and it had nothing at all to do with the warmth generated by the candles or the number of people in the room.

  “Why are you so kind to me, Aaron?”

  “I’m not kind, Amelia. Randolph is my closest friend here in Old Gate. And I truly value your company.”

  Understanding that he certainly wanted to say more, she was afraid of betraying the inappropriate feelings that threatened to overwhelm her. If only she could speak plainly.

  “You’ve no need to be modest. Of course you’re kind.”

  The smile he gave her was rueful, but it changed instantly as their host, Robert Archer, joined them, patting Aaron on the back. “There’s dancing upstairs. Amelia, I hope you’ll save a round for me. We plan to keep you amused as Randolph seems to have given up on us this evening.”

  “Are you here to escort me upstairs?” Amelia kept her voice light. Flirtatious. It wasn’t very natural to her, but she had to break the tension she had been feeling with Aaron. The distance that Randolph had given her had made her realize how much she needed Aaron.

  “It would be a distinct honor to escort you. I’m sorry Randolph is under the weather, but I think it’s rather a coup to have you to ourselves. I know that Randolph draws all of your feminine attention when he’s extant.”

  Amelia heard the dig at Randolph. Randolph drew plenty of feminine attention, and not just her own. It occurred to her that Randolph had—in addition to bedding the girl in the cottage—bedded women that were in this very room. But as he was back at Bliss House, for just this evening she could pretend he didn’t even exist. She intended to enjoy herself.

  Laughing, she took Robert’s arm.

  “Will you come, Aaron?” Robert asked. “The countryside’s best is here tonight, lovely young women ready to start the New Year with an eye to the future. I know one or two who were asking if you’d be here this evening.”

  “Of course. I’ll follow along in a moment.”

  As Robert, with great flourish, guided her up one wing of the hall’s grand staircase, she looked down to see that several young women in pastel dresses had settled around Aaron like a rabble of butterflies. She had never been part of a mindless group of girls. Or perhaps it wasn’t fair to call them mindless. They were only doing what young women were supposed to be doing: looking their loveliest in order to get the attention of men like Aaron. Men from good families who had stable careers and could make them respected wives and mothers. It was how society worked. Aaron bowed slightly to the girls, and Amelia noticed how the candlelight illuminated the shades of red in his hair. She had to stop herself from thinking about touching his hair. Touching him. Robert was speaking and she caught that he was telling a joke in time to laugh with appreciation.

  When Aaron finally came to the ballroom, firmly in the clutches of the young women, she found herself grateful that he did not overpay her attention. It would be unseemly, and she had already nearly given herself away.

  She spent the evening answering questions about where Randolph might be and dancing with the most reputable husbands. Each time Aaron came into view, she quickly looked away, wanting to be careful.

  They danced twice during the evening, but when the leader of the small orchestra counted down the last few seconds until midnight, she did not see him. There were kisses (none overly passionate, as befitted their class) and hands were vigorously shaken as though everyone were congratulating themselves on surviving to the New Year. After midnight, the scene felt anticlimactic, and
she wanted more than anything to go home, to sit in the carriage with Aaron, alone and unseen, as Clayton drove them. Did she dare speak to him and tell him how she felt? That she was desperate to be with him?

  The second time they danced was after midnight, and soon afterward it was time for the seated breakfast at the long tables the servants had set up downstairs while everyone was dancing. But her place card was far from his, and on the same side of the table, so she could not even see him.

  By the time they left in the carriage, she was in such a state of nerves that she could hardly speak. Aaron talked of the coming year and his hopes for an early spring that would allow them to finish the outside projects that Randolph had planned. Amelia hardly heard him, but when he spoke of finishing his own house in town, she did listen. There would be no more seeing him every day. No more talks in the library after dinner if Randolph was gone, no making plans for adding to the garden, no listening to him read to Tamora.

  By the time he helped her down from the carriage, her hand had gone cold in her glove, and she meant to bid him a quick good night. Bliss House was dark but for a single lamp in the hall and the sconces on the second-floor gallery. It felt empty. In lamplight, the distant dome always gave her the sense of being in some antique Italian church, and she could only just see the strange glow of the stars. Aaron had told her that Hulot, the architect, had used a formula of paint that he wouldn’t share with anyone but the man who mixed the paints. Even Aaron, his closest assistant at the time, didn’t know what the secret was.

  She removed her gloves and turned to go upstairs.

  “Amelia, is there anything wrong?”

  She turned back. “Of course not. It’s been a long evening—or I should say morning. I’m no longer used to balls lasting until three a.m. Sleep well.” Her heart was agitated, making her footsteps unsteady, and she held onto the railing as she ascended. Was he watching her? He did not follow her immediately, and she was already in her room, her coat off and her ear pressed against the door, when she heard his footsteps on the stairs.

  She could not sleep and felt she would never sleep again. That he had asked her if anything was wrong told her that she had left him with the impression that she might be angry or frustrated with him. She hadn’t meant to seem cold when she was feeling exactly the opposite. Perhaps he thought she was jealous? The young girls had worried her. When she looked in her mirror, she knew she looked every one of her forty years. Practically an old woman! It was a miracle that she still had all of her teeth and that her hair had stayed blond, though in a harsh light, strands of gray had begun to peek through.

  What was she compared to those girls? She had to know. She had to tell him that it wasn’t that she was angry with him, but that she loved him. Loved him, as she had no other man.

  Bliss House was well made, and her bare feet made no sound on the gallery floor. Aaron had thoughtfully turned out the sconces near his room, just as she had turned out the ones near hers. There was enough light from the front windows and the dome to make her way, but she could see no details on the faces of the portraits she passed or the patterns of fabrics on the furniture. It was as though she had come out of her room into an alternate world.

  Am I not leaving my own world behind? No longer daughter, wife, mother, but now a mistress? If he will have me!

  If she had not driven him away with her uncertainty and, yes, jealousy. She would be no better than the woman-child who was about to bear Randolph’s bastard. Would the child even be able to speak English? Or would it only speak her heathen tongue? That the girl in the cottage might bear Randolph a son hadn’t before occurred to her. He hadn’t given her a son.

  But Aaron might.

  No light shone beneath Aaron’s bedroom door, but as soon as she was inside and closed the door behind her, she sensed he was awake. Waiting for her. She was certain then that if she had only waited in her room a few minutes more, he might have come to her.

  He didn’t speak as she slowly crossed the Aubusson rug that Monsieur Hulot had acquired in France for the pleasure of Randolph Bliss’s treasured wife.

  Amelia’s whole body was shaking with cold and anticipation. She wore one of the several fine, nearly transparent gowns that Randolph had sent her as part of her trousseau almost nine years earlier. Her mother had thought it scandalous, but was too grateful for Randolph’s money to object. Amelia had kept the two she had never worn wrapped in their silken envelopes and had religiously replaced the lavender when it was no longer fresh. Had she, perhaps, been saving one for this night without understanding why?

  Standing over the bed, she looked down at him, certain she would burst into either tears or laughter from happiness. When she reached out her hand to touch him, he grabbed it and pulled her sharply toward him.

  “Why did you come, Amelia? What do you think you’re doing?” His voice was loud and vehement. It was nothing like she had imagined it would be: tender, even grateful.

  “But I thought—”

  “I didn’t imagine you’d be so foolish. Don’t you see that this is exactly what you shouldn’t be doing?”

  There was genuine concern on his face, and she wanted to touch that face, to tell him that she knew what she was doing—no, perhaps she didn’t quite know what she was doing, but whatever it was she had to be doing it. She couldn’t bear not to be close to him—but he held her hand, her forearm so tightly that he hurt her.

  “When I saw you dancing, when I danced with you—” What did she want to say? The words wouldn’t come. If only she could touch him. Show him. She had imagined them coming together in perfect communion. Not the shameful coupling she had with Randolph. Yes, he had taught her to please him, and she had not gone unsatisfied, but there was always the ugliness of it. His vile words. The spoken presence of others in their bed. With Aaron, it would be only the two of them, their deep admiration and affection for each other purifying their union.

  “Don’t you see that this is what Randolph wants? He’s made you weak, Amelia. Get out. Get out now.”

  “I don’t understand. In the woods—every evening we’ve spent together. You want to be with me. I know you want to be with me.”

  He shook his head. “No. Don’t make me say it. Go back to your room. You have to forget about this.”

  Now she pulled away and he let her go. She was still shaking. A low fire burned in the fireplace, and the room was chilly. She was supposed to be in bed with him, warm and cherished. Beloved.

  “God, Amelia. I didn’t want to do it. He made me do it.” Aaron swung his legs over the edge of the bed and sat up, naked to the waist, looking muscular but also vulnerable. He pushed his hands through his thick hair, and she remembered wanting so badly to touch it herself only a few hours earlier. But the memory felt like it was coming to her from a different life.

  “We could go away together. I have money, Aaron. Money that Randolph doesn’t know I have. We could leave here, and you could work for yourself. It will be enough.” The begging words came out of her mouth, and she was stunned by them but found she couldn’t stop. Until that moment she hadn’t even considered leaving Bliss House. Leaving Tamora. But she knew she would if he said he wanted her. She had never begged anyone like this in her life.

  He got off the bed and took her by the shoulders. “You have to stop this. Someone will hear. Don’t say any more, Amelia.”

  “Is it because I’m old? I can please you. I promise that I can please you.” She was still begging, but in the back of her mind were the words he made me do it. “Why can’t we be together? He won’t know, and if he did he wouldn’t care. He doesn’t care, Aaron! He doesn’t care if I live or die. Why should I be faithful to him when he hasn’t been faithful since the first month of our marriage?”

  “You have to calm down, Amelia. Breathe. You’re going to faint if you don’t breathe.”

  It was all coming apart. She was coming apart. She tried to breathe but even when she calmed slightly, she was still shaking. “What did Rand
olph tell you? What did he make you do?”

  Aaron looked away and dropped his hands from her shoulders.

  “Why can’t you tell me?”

  “I should have stopped it. Seeing you like this—I was wrong, Amelia. You don’t deserve this.”

  Now she was silent.

  “It was money. I cheated Randolph. I did the billing for the final costs of Bliss House, but I made a second set of bills and charged Randolph more than Hulot told me to. Randolph caught me. Hulot fired me, but Randolph told me that if I stayed here in Old Gate, that if I worked for him, did what he told me to do, he wouldn’t prosecute, and would talk Hulot out of prosecuting.”

  He wasn’t looking at her now, but at the fire. He looked young. So young and pitiable.

  “I don’t even know why I did it. Never before in my life had I thought of stealing anything from anyone, Amelia. It’s not like I didn’t have enough money. It was something about being here every day, seeing the house come together, brick by brick. It made me want things—things I had never even thought about having before. And then when Randolph told me I had to stay, had to help him finish the spring projects, do whatever he told me to do, I couldn’t leave.”

  “I see.”

  “I don’t know why he wanted me to do this to you. I’m your friend. I swear I’m your friend, Amelia. I was going to tell you. But I had to have a plan to get away from here. He said if I made you fall in love with me, if we—” He looked away again. “Then I was supposed to humiliate you.”

  She understood.

  Looking down at her gown, she again realized her own near-nakedness, but this time felt real embarrassment and gathered the sides of the full gown to hide herself.

  “You and Randolph will be happy to know, then, that you’ve succeeded. Please forgive me. I’m the one who was weak.”

  They stood there in silence, the fire casting its dim light on their flushed and troubled faces.