The Other Eden

by Sarah Bryant

  Slowly he turned back, and looked at me across the turgid darkness. Finally he said, “The truth is, I don’t know.”

  “But she’s Anna’s child. All of that was true.”

  He nodded.

  “So if she isn’t yours, she’s his.” He said nothing. I shook my head. “Why did you lie about this, of all things?”

  “For the same reason Elizabeth lied to you. So that she would never think herself unwanted.”

  I couldn’t bear to ask whether there was more. Perhaps a part of me already knew that it no longer mattered. I turned away, hiding the pain of the confession beneath brusque efficiency.

  “Come on,” I said. “We have to get her out of here.”

  “He’s worked so hard to bring us here, I hardly think he’ll let us leave so easily.”

  “We can try,” I snapped, “unless you’d prefer to wait here for him to find you.” I began to walk back the way I had come. In a moment, I heard him follow.

  All the while we made our way through the maze, my intuition of impending disaster deepened. Therefore, I wasn’t much surprised to see the faint glow in the window of the tower room when we arrived back in the rose garden. We hurried through the ballroom into the room with the deer’s head, but when I tried to open the door that would take us to the entrance hall, it was locked.

  “How can it be locked?” I cried.

  Alexander tried it as well, but it wouldn’t give. Trying the shutters on the nearby windows, we found that they had been latched from the outside.

  “Can we get out through the gardens?” he asked.

  “Maybe,” I said, “if we can find a way over the wall. But there might be a better way. Come on.”

  Without waiting to see whether he followed, I rushed off through the door that led toward the tower. The doors I tried along the way were all locked. When we reached the hallway that led to the tower, it seemed too dark. I groped along the wall to my left. There were no inner shutters, but there were outer ones, and they’d been closed and no doubt locked over the iron-latticed panes.

  With deepening foreboding, I made my way down the corridor and pushed open the door to the tower stair. I didn’t have much hope that Dorian would have overlooked this last means of escape, so I wasn’t really disappointed when I found the door under the stairs tightly locked as well.

  I couldn’t see Alexander; I reached out, and our hands met and linked. “This has gone on long enough,” I said. “Let’s go up and have this over with.”

  “I’ll go up,” Alexander said with a touch of vehemence that suggested his spirit wasn’t entirely broken. He handed Tasha to me. “You take her and find a way out of here—there must be one, somewhere.”

  “And I could break both our necks looking.”

  “This is my fight, Eleanor.”

  “No, Alexander, it’s ours.”

  “At least stay down here.”

  “And what if he’s not up there at all? What if he’s hoping that you’ll leave me alone, just like this?”

  He sighed. “Come, then, but stay behind me.”

  We weren’t halfway up the stairs before my arms were aching with Tasha’s weight, my head thick with dizziness brought on by lack of food and sleep and the array of substances my body had absorbed over the past few days. When we finally reached the top, Alexander stopped short in the doorway, but I pushed past him.

  Dorian turned from the French door and regarded us for a moment. Then his smile widened and slid into the nightmare leer. Inadvertently I stumbled backward. Alexander’s arms closed around me, and we stood like that in the doorway, staring at Dorian as he crossed his arms over his chest and said with polite coolness, “Won’t you come in?”

  ELEVEN

  ALEXANDER was the first to break the deadlocked silence. “What have you done to Natalya?”

  Dorian smiled. “You don’t really think it would be to my advantage to tell you that yet?” I noticed that the British clip was gone from his voice; a faint French accent had replaced it.

  “Damn you! What could possibly be worth a child’s life?”

  “Or a wife’s,” I said.

  Dorian’s smile slackened to a frown. “That’s a dangerous speculation.”

  I met his eyes squarely. “It’s no speculation. It’s all there in the painting.”

  “Eleanor,” Alexander warned.

  Dorian took a step toward us, and then seemed to think better of whatever impulsive menace he had intended. Instead, he began to pace the margins of the room.

  “A painting doesn’t prove anything,” he said. “Nor can you.”

  “If you believed that, you wouldn’t have tricked Mary into thinking I was mad.”

  He laughed tonelessly. “Mary came to her own conclusions.”

  “With assistance, no doubt,” I retorted. “Just as my grandmother was assisted into madness.”

  Dorian approached us again, but stopped a few feet away. “Let’s suppose for a moment that you’re right, and I did kill my wife. Do you think that I would resort to such extreme measures without just cause?” He didn’t allow time for an answer. “Let me tell you a story.”

  “I’ve had enough of your stories,” I said.

  “Oh, you’ll be interested in this one.” His eyes lighted on Alexander briefly, and when they returned to me, there was a flicker of amusement in them. “It’s about your aunt and mother. It begins years ago, when they were just sixteen years old. I was twenty, and I’d had my share of affairs, but nothing could have prepared me for Elizabeth Fairfax. I knew the first time I set eyes on her that if I lived till Judgment Day, I would never meet a lovelier woman, or a finer.”

  Dorian paused, studying his smooth hands, then said, “I suppose she wasn’t the obvious choice. Eve was the one men lost their hearts to. She was passionate, dashing, and she made no secret of her admiration for me. But something about Elizabeth’s quiet shyness touched me.”

  He looked up at us, his eyes oddly bright. “Everyone thinks that his own love is the greatest, the purest, the strongest that has ever been or will be.” He didn’t bother to hide the condescension in his tone or in the look that he cast our way. “But I knew it. Every aspect of her character met and matched a corresponding part of mine, like a balm meets an ache. For years I had been tormented by the boundless desire to know and achieve. By the time I met her, I was ragged from searching for a fulfillment I could neither define nor reject. Yet in her presence, I forgot it all. I could rest.” He looked at us again, and there was a plea for understanding in his eyes that almost made me pity him, despite all that he had done.

  “I had come to doubt a woman’s ability to live up to the ideals of virtue and goodness set for her by men. Elizabeth both embodied and eradicated them. Her spiritual wealth was never more obvious than when she played the piano. I think she knew it, too, and that was why she played so rarely.

  “I knew that I could love a woman like her infinitely; I also knew that she did not love me. But I convinced myself that she would come to. I could not conceive, then, that such a love as mine could go unrequited. So I asked her parents for her hand.

  “Mrs. Fairfax had hesitations. Elizabeth was her favorite, and she knew that her daughter was opposed to the idea. But Mr. Fairfax was only too keen. Perhaps he suspected that his daughter meant to attach herself to someone less seemly.” Again Dorian’s eyes settled for a moment on Alexander, then quickly moved on.

  “My one worry was Eve. I knew that hers was but a childish fancy for me; such a volatile girl couldn’t love with the depth and constancy of someone like Elizabeth. Still, the sisters were close, and I doubted that Elizabeth would warm to me if she felt that her twin had been slighted. But I supposed Eve would find someone to console herself with soon enough. Which, of course, she did.”

  He directed this last remark at me. I stiffened with anger, but Alexander checked me silently again.

  “I see that you are becoming impatient,” Dorian said. “There isn’t much more to tell. E
lizabeth was a dutiful daughter. She bowed to her father’s wishes, wrote to me at regular intervals through my remaining years in Europe, and submitted to her situation gracefully when I returned to Louisiana. I could see that her feelings for me had not changed. Once again, I convinced myself that time would bring her around, but she was so cold and silent in the weeks preceding our wedding that even I began to have misgivings.

  “So you can imagine my joy when for the first time, on our wedding day, I saw my love reciprocated in Elizabeth’s eyes. I was surprised by the sudden change, more so by the passion with which she met me that night.”

  He paused for a moment, his eyes restlessly wandering the bare walls. When he continued, his tone had thinned and taken on the hard, sardonic edge that was more familiar.

  “I should have suspected her then, but love blinded me. We moved into the house we’d built between the plantations—this house. I lived in blissful ignorance of the fact that I had married a whore, until she came to me several weeks later with the news that she was expecting a child. It was then that I began to doubt the virtue I had praised so highly. When the child was born at eight months, I knew that I had been played for a fool. Yet I didn’t have proof, and without it I couldn’t send her back to her parents.”

  He paused, looking at me, and the alien coldness in his eyes made me shudder. When he resumed his narrative, his tone had hardened such that the falseness of its forced disinterest was clear.

  “It was only a matter of time. Before it was a year old, Elizabeth sent the child away. She claimed to have been unwell since its birth and unable to take care of it properly. She told me she sent the child to Eve, who had run away herself by then. She also claimed not to know where Eve was living—a convenient, if unlikely, omission.

  “Of course I realized that the wretched child was with its father, and that my wife meant to join them as soon as she could rid herself of me. I didn’t give her the opportunity. As soon as I knew what she had done, I locked her up in this tower. I turned visitors away, and explained to the servants that my wife was unwell and wished to be left alone.

  “I attempted without success to have her sister and the child traced. Time passed; Elizabeth maintained her innocence. She challenged me to find proof of her betrayal, knowing that I couldn’t act without it. Hard as I tried, I could not. I even began to wonder if I had been mistaken . . . and then she made her great mistake.”

  Dorian turned to face us. He reached into the inner pocket of his jacket, withdrew a tattered piece of paper, and held it toward me. I handed Tasha to Alexander and took the paper from Dorian. It was blotting paper, covered in faint scrawls and ink spots, but on one side it showed the reverse images of several lines of writing:... tell you I am coming to you, just as soon as I can find a way out. Louis suspects treachery, and will no doubt harm me if he should discover our secret. If something should happen to me, please keep Eleanor safe, and when she’s old enough, tell her about us. Give her this necklace to remember me by.

  “She’d already sent the letter through one of the servants,” he said. “But she’d forgotten to destroy all of the evidence.”

  I looked up at him, my mind full of the image of Eve’s gashed face beneath the icy window in the ground. “You bastard,” I said.

  His smile tightened. The candle guttered in a breath of wind, and thunder rolled again, this time much closer. “It’s you, my dear, who are the bastard—and that’s the least of it.” He looked contemptuously from my face to Alexander’s. “If that photograph didn’t prove it to you, then this paper should, just as it proves that your mother was a whore.”

  “You’re wrong!” I cried.

  Alexander reached for my arm, as if to pull me back. “Eleanor, don’t.”

  Shaking him off, I said, “She was writing to her sister! She loved you more than you deserved, even if she did lie to you.”

  Dorian’s look fluctuated between interest and uncertainty. “How would you know that?”

  “Eleanor!” Alexander cried, but it was too late. Every moment since I had met Dorian Ducoeur had been building toward this confrontation, and there was no way to stop it now.

  “You fool!” I said. “You could see that she’d changed on your wedding day, but not why. Elizabeth never loved you, and she never could have pretended to.”

  “Don’t toy with me, Eleanor,” he said through clenched teeth.

  “This is no game! Elizabeth wasn’t my mother, Alexander isn’t my father.” He continued to stare at me, uncomprehending. “You are!” I cried. “You married Eve!”

  For a terrible moment we all stood paralyzed by the words. Then Dorian reached out and struck me across the face. Through the tears that sprang to my eyes, I caught my reflection in the cracked mirror. There was a long red scratch along one cheek. The next second I leaped at Dorian and tore at his face with my fingernails until he managed to pin my wrists together.

  “That’s enough,” he said.

  I seethed with fury, beginning to comprehend the magnitude of what he had taken from me. “You killed her!” I screamed. “You killed my mother!”

  Alexander laid Tasha down, stepped forward, and pried Dorian’s fingers from my wrists. He pushed me toward the doorway, putting himself between Dorian and me.

  “You won’t kill another innocent woman,” he said.

  “Perhaps not,” Dorian answered, smiling faintly. “One way or another, though, you two will pay.”

  “For what?” Alexander cried. “Eve Fairfax was innocent. The only crime committed here was yours!”

  “And you are the only two people who know it,” Dorian said, advancing on us with clenched fists.

  For a moment, sound and movement were suspended; even the candle flame ceased its restless flickering. The next, everything collapsed into noise and confusion. The wind blew the French doors open with a clash, shattering most of the panes, and the candle went out. A roll of thunder crashed, followed by a flash of lightning. Dorian lunged toward me, but Alexander interceded, smashing a fist into his perpetual half-smile. As Dorian reeled back, Alexander turned to me, clutching my arms so hard that they showed the marks of his fingers for days afterward.

  “Take Tasha and get out of here however you can.”

  “No!” I cried, panic finally obliterating logic. “I won’t leave you!”

  “Please, Eleanor! Think of Tasha!” Alexander’s eyes were wild, his chin in the stubborn set I knew so well. I closed my eyes; he took it as agreement. “Don’t stop until you’re back at Eden. I’ll find you . . .”

  He kissed me, then turned to face the dark shape that was advancing again. Clutching Tasha, I ran down to the next landing, wrenched the door open, and entered the labyrinthine corridors.

  Slowly my eyes adjusted to the dark again, and I finally found a hallway that looked familiar. By the time I reached the main staircase it seemed that hours had passed.

  On the first-floor landing, I caught the smell of smoke. By the time I reached the bottom we were enveloped in an acrid haze, which seemed to come from the direction of the tower. I laid Tasha on a sofa and grabbed a candelabrum from a table, then began to hammer at the lock of one of the shutters. After what seemed an interminable effort, it broke. An unnatural brightness showed through the cracks of the outer one. I smashed the window, and easily broke the rotten wood of the outer shutter. Then, lifting Tasha, I climbed through.

  Lightning had split one of the oaks by the tower, and half of it had fallen against the side of the house. It must have been this that started the fire that was spreading now in leaps and bounds, devouring the dry wood of the house’s interior. I sank to my knees in the grass, powerless to do anything but watch and weep.

  As if echoing this sentiment, the rain that had threatened all night finally came. It was not the usual heavy, pelting rain, but a soft one, warm as blood, without the strength to thwart the fire. I knelt there and watched as Tasha came to her senses enough to wrap her arms around my neck and bury her face against my breast.
I knelt there as the last window filled with fire. I knelt until Colette’s strong brown hands came under my elbows, forcing me to my feet, and Mary prized Tasha from my shivering grasp. They took one look at the house and turned away. They accepted what I would not accept for months: they had arrived too late.

  TWELVE

  IT was years before Mary admitted to me how close I came to dying in the next two weeks. Mercifully, I don’t remember much about them. My first memory following the fire is of a sky so blue it seemed to be a mistake, enclosed by a utilitarian white window frame. Shifting my eyes downward, I saw that I lay in a similarly white bed in a white room with a strong, sterile smell, which could not quite cover the insidious smell of sickness. I was unmoved by the sight of the tubes snaking into my arms from lunglike bags above me, nor by the pity in the eyes of the young nurse who sat by my side, adjusting the flow of liquid through those tubes. Each breath I took was a massive effort to shift the weight of my rib cage. My chest ached and my throat was raw, but I managed to whisper:

  “Where am I?”

  The nurse smiled at me. “You’re at St. Anastase Hospital, in New Orleans.”

  “Where is Mary?” I asked.

  “Mrs. Bishop is with the child, Tasha.” The nurse’s voice was like a lullaby. I wondered whether the voice was a result of her calling or vice-versa. “You can’t see her yet, but I’ll tell her that you’ve asked for her. She’ll be glad. She’s been terribly worried.”

  These words took a moment to sink in. When they did, I asked, “What’s wrong with me?”

  “You have double pneumonia. You’ve come through the worst of it, but you had us all worried for a while.”

  I put a hand to my throat. It was only when I touched bare skin that I recognized the unconscious impetus, and that the diamond was gone.

  “Where is my necklace?” I asked.

  The nurse gave me a puzzled look. “You had no jewelry on when they brought you in, except the ring.”