A Westward Love

by V. J. Banis

“My face—it was rather banged up as well....” His voice trailed off and he was unable to meet her gaze.

  “You’re going to be scarred as well?” She felt the taste of fear in her mouth and swallowed hard.

  “Yes. Permanently.”

  As if from a great distance, she heard her own voice saying, “I want to see.”

  He looked up with hope, but it was dashed by her appearance. Her skin had gone ashen white; one could almost see the veins and arteries beneath the flesh, and her eyes were enormous.

  “I must know the worst,” she said.

  Richard was half-afraid she might faint, and if he had been able he would have gone to her to put his arms about her, but he could not. Her eyes met his with such unwavering intensity that at length he reached up and began to unwind the bandages that concealed most of his face.

  She put a hand to her throat, all but strangling herself to prevent the retching that threatened. She watched, mesmerized, as the bandages came away to reveal the still raw, purple scars discoloring his skin. One corner of his mouth—that finely etched mouth she had thought so classical—had been torn downward, leaving him forever leering. He tugged away the last of the cloth and she saw that he had lost all but a remnant of one ear....

  She turned once more to the garden. A bee, lured by her scent, came in to circle twice about her head before flying off again, humming his disapproval.

  It was horrible to think that she must see this not just once, but over and over again, day after day, for so long as they lived. How could she endure it? If she had loved him the way some women were said to love their husbands, the way women did in those romantic novels of which Aunt Tess was so fond, perhaps it would be easier. But she had never pretended to more than affection for Richard; that, and the desire to be married to an earl, a man of wealth.

  “I’m truly sorry,” Richard said. “However, the doctors have assured me there’s no reason why I shouldn’t marry—” His words caught in his throat as Claire turned from the window. He saw the utter revulsion etched upon her face, scarring it as badly as his wounds had scarred his. “—and I, of course, have told them they are fools,” he finished lamely.

  “Richard—I....” She stammered helplessly, unable to conceal her feelings from him, and hating herself for what she knew he saw in her face.

  “It’ll never do,” he said, slamming his fist down upon the arm of his chair. “I’ve known that from the moment they told me.”

  She forced herself, with more willpower than had ever before been required of her, to look directly at him: at the torn ear, at the twisted mouth, at the hideously colored mass of flesh that had once been a patrician face.

  “Richard, I will marry you regardless,” she said with a voice that threatened to break into a sob with each word.

  “And I’m to bed a bride who looks at me as you do? My dear, you are incapable of concealing your true feelings.” He seemed to smile. “Until today that had always been one of your charms for me.”

  “You must know that you have my affection and—”

  “Damn your pity.” He interrupted, his fingers clawing at the plaid as if he would like to tear his broken legs from his body.

  There was a long moment of silence. She had closed her eyes, no longer able to bear the sight before them, but the tears streamed unchecked from beneath her lashes.

  “Shall I release you from our engagement?” he asked in a dull voice.

  When her answer came, it was but a single whispered word: “Yes.”

  “So be it.” He nodded. In his heart he had known all along that this was the inevitable outcome, but yet there had been the hope.... “I think you should go now. It’s pointless to prolong something that’s distasteful for both of us.”

  She gathered her hat and gloves, not bothering to put them on, and started from the room. At the door she paused and would have turned back, but he spoke sharply, saying, “Don’t look at me again, please.”

  Without turning, she said, “Forgive me,” but her voice was so faint and tremulous that he did not hear her at all, and when he looked again, she had gone.

  * * * * * * *

  Her aunt was incredulous. “You must be mad! He’s one of the wealthiest men in the city, scars or no scars. And anyway, who else do you think will have you now? This whole affair hasn’t done your reputation very much good, you must know.”

  She was well aware that the last was true. The Hobbs sisters, who lived directly across the square, and had never quite approved of her anyway, had actually cut her when she’d passed them in the park a short while ago. She had always had a reputation, but her youth, and later her engagement to Richard, had provided her with a certain protection against gossip. Privately she railed against the conventions that allowed a man to do as he wished while condemning a woman for following her own dictates rather than those of the crowd, but she was no fool. She knew that the circumstances under which her engagement to Richard had been broken would harm her socially.

  Public disapproval, however, did not weigh upon her so much as her own judgment of her behavior. At the present time the latter was harsh.

  Though she might agree with the wisdom of Richard’s decision that pity would have been a tragic basis on which to found a marriage, it was hard not to feel guilty when she looked from her bedroom window to see the blanketed, bandaged figure taking the air in his garden. The sight of him filled her with shame and anguish and yet, as if to scourge herself for her weakness and her selfishness, she found herself drawn again and again to the window. She would stare down upon her former fiancé, rarely leaving her place until he had been carried inside by his servants. Whether or not he was aware of her presence she was unable to say, though once or twice he had glanced briefly upward as if he could see her through the curtains.

  It was during this time of brooding that she received a most unusual visit from Richard’s brother, Peter.

  She was glad to see him, as she had had little company of late and was restless with her own. Moreover, she thought that perhaps he had brought some message from Richard. It would have eased her conscience a great deal to know at least that he forgave her.

  It seemed, however, that Peter had other things on his mind. For several minutes they exchanged some rather desultory small talk, then he suddenly said, “I shall be leaving soon. Everything’s been arranged.”

  She looked at him blankly. “Leaving?”

  “For the Americas, Claire.” He pouted. “I told you about it when we were in the country.”

  “Oh yes.” She had only a vague memory of some dinner conversation they’d had. It was about some plan of his to set out in search of his own fortune. Since it had seemed that her own was assured at the time, she had paid little attention to his conversation.

  “They say it’s all right there,” he continued with enthusiasm. “A bit savage in spots, and not half-civilized. They say too that a man’s judged there for what he does, not for his titles or his connections. A lot of younger sons have gone off there and done all right for themselves.”

  “How fortunate for them,” she said.

  “I’ve heard tell of places where precious gems lie about on the ground, just waiting to be picked up, and entire cities made out of gold. It staggers the imagination, though some swear that it’s true. They say a man can make himself rich if he half tries.”

  He paused expectantly, as if awaiting some significant reply from her. When it was plainly not forthcoming, he said, “My brother’s fixed a trust for me, so that I can depend on an income, though it’s modest. And I’ve already arranged for the purchase of a house.”

  “Why are you telling me all this?” she asked abruptly.

  He stared down at his hat, turning it around in his hands. “I have prayed, I have fallen on my knees before the Almighty, I’ve vowed my life to his glorious service—”

  “Peter, I—”

  “—I want you to come with me. To America.”

  She was struck dumb by the suggestion
. She stared at him.

  “As my wife, I mean,” he added.

  “Why, I—I’ve never dreamed of such a thing.”

  He stood up, so suddenly that he nearly toppled the tea table at his side. “There’s nothing to keep you here now. Not since your engagement’s broken.”

  “But this is my home, how could I leave it?”

  “You had a home once with your father, but you left it to come here.” He argued with the fervor of a man who has thought in advance of every objection. “And had you married my brother, you would have left here to go to Everly Hall.”

  “That’s hardly the same thing, is it?” she replied, though by now she had gotten over the worst of the shock. “I mean, the Americas are halfway around the world.”

  “They speak the same language, so it wouldn’t be exactly like going to a foreign land.”

  “I—I don’t know what to say.”

  “I pray I haven’t offended you,” he said.

  “With your proposal? No, but it’s so unexpected. You must give me time to think.”

  He cleared his throat. “I’m to leave in a fortnight,” he said.

  He looked so anxious that she could not help smiling, for the first time in several days. “Then I promise I shall think about it at once,” she said.

  She had gotten up as she spoke, and now Peter dropped to his knees before her, clasping her hand and bringing it to his lips.

  He was silent, and she suddenly realized that he was praying. She found the scene a trifle awkward, but she could hardly snatch her hand away in mid-prayer. There was nothing she could do but wait patiently until he had finished.

  It seemed an interminable time later when he finally rose, smiling at her. But the time had not been wasted, true to her promise, she had already begun to think about what he proposed.

  * * * * * * *

  They were wed a week later, in the chapel at Everly Hall. The Earl himself, still convalescing, was unable to attend.

  A week after that she found herself on a sailing ship, in the middle of a seemingly endless ocean. She was on her way to a place called Virginia.

  PART I

  THE CITIES OF GOLD

  CHAPTER ONE

  By the time they reached Virginia Claire had realized that she had made a mistake. It was several months, however, before the big blowup came.

  She and Peter simply had nothing in common. She had, in fact, come to the tardy realization that she had not known Peter at all when she had agreed to become his bride, and, increasingly, what she learned she did not like.

  Even his religiosity, which she had been aware of before, had proven far more excessive than she had suspected. It seemed that he was forever in prayer, forever beseeching his God’s forgiveness for some failing or another.

  Not that she was antireligious. She had her own ideas and beliefs, but she had not prayed, nor entered a church, since the day of her father’s death. To her mind, Peter’s constant knee bending profited no one except perhaps his breeches maker.

  She had supposed that with all the fire he channeled into his religion, Peter would be an indifferent lover, but that had been far from the truth. He was as passionate in making love to her as he was in his prayers.

  She might have found that acceptable—she had discovered that the physical aspect of a marriage was not as unpleasant as she had been led to believe—only she had gradually discovered that Peter’s ardor included a cruel streak that grew more pronounced as their married life lengthened. Whereas in the beginning he had treated her respectfully, even gingerly, he quickly became more lascivious and less thoughtful of her.

  He was more concerned with taking pleasure than giving it, and it seemed that a great deal of his pleasure came from inflicting pain. In the height of his passion he might suddenly sink his teeth into the tender flesh of her shoulder, or tear at her with such fury that his nails drew blood. Once, in the midst of a quarrel as they were dressing for dinner, he suddenly seized her and began to beat her with his belt, ending by flinging her to the floor and assaulting her cruelly.

  By the time they had arrived in Virginia, it had become commonplace for her to rise from their bed bruised and bleeding, though afterward Peter was invariably filled with contrition, alternating between begging her forgiveness and praying to his God—until the next time his lust was aroused.

  Under other circumstances, she might have found a certain charm in her new home. Virginia was a beautiful land of green fields and rolling hills, not unlike England’s own farmlands. As it was, however, her disillusionment with her married state translated itself into a resentment of the home to which her husband had brought her, with the result that she found nothing about it she liked.

  Their house was small and, compared with what she was accustomed to, cramped. It was nearly a two-hour drive to the home of their nearest neighbors, the Hensheys, Virginia planters who were crude and boisterous compared to the gentlefolk of London. She could not raise any enthusiasm for their talk of tobacco and politics and slavery, and accordingly lived in an isolation partly of her own making. This only served to intensify the differences between herself and Peter.

  Unable to defend herself against her husband’s physical attacks, she took to launching her own verbal attacks, lashing out with her tongue as cruelly as he with his violence. She ridiculed him for the meanness of their existence after the glitter of her London social life. She laughed at his religious ardor, inciting him to almost murderous fury.

  Most of all she mocked him for the dreams of wealth and success that had brought him to America. “You and your precious gems,” she said in a voice dripping with scorn. “Your cities of gold! We haven’t even the land to raise tobacco like your fellow bumpkins, and must live on your brother’s meager charity.”

  “There are fortunes to be made here.” Peter defended himself, though with less conviction than before. “I’ve heard of gold—”

  “There’s your gold,” Claire said, slapping at a bare arm. “The color of mosquitoes—the only gold you’ll ever lay your hands on.”

  Yet it was not only Peter who spoke of such fantastic treasures, for whenever the Virginia planters gathered for amusement there was always a certain amount of talk of the vast wilderness that lay to the west, and always the tales included descriptions of great wealth and undreamed-of treasures. A ship’s captain, the brother of one of the local women, stopped on his way back to Boston, having rounded the Horn and actually traded in the Spanish colony of California.

  “They took me to see one of their farms,” he said while his listeners sat spellbound. “They call them ranchos, and a single one of them might be as large as an entire state, with great herds of cattle, stretching farther than the eye can see.”

  “But the gold,” someone asked. “What of the gold?”

  “It’s there,” the captain assured them. “They’re canny not to show it, but it’s there.”

  “I’ll wager there’s no more gold there than there is in Virginia,” one of the men said.

  The captain, warming to his tale, and not eager to lose his audience, gave rein to his imagination. “You’re a fool to say so. I myself saw an Indian so laden down with it that he couldn’t walk at all, and had to be carried by a team of warriors.”

  Less than a month after the captain, another visitor, this one a cousin of their neighbors, the Hensheys, arrived. He had been west, to a city called Memphis, and even farther, to an outpost known as St. Louis, frequented by trappers, adventurers, and others who had actually ranged into the uncharted lands that lay beyond the cities of America. He too had stories to tell, and to add believability, he had one of the gems of which he spoke—a large milky-blue stone known as a turquoise—mounted in a disc of beaten silver.

  “I traded a fortune for it,” he explained, while the stone was circulated among them. “It’s said to have come from a tribe of Indians who live far to the west. Their streets are lined with it, and their houses made of silver.”

  Claire rega
rded this story, as she had the others, as nothing more than a fairytale, and while the others listened in rapt attention, she initiated instead a mild flirtation with the eldest Henshey son, a sallow-faced gadabout whom she wouldn’t have looked at twice in London.

  In their carriage on the way home, Peter was still agog over the stories of turquoise fortunes. “A man could return from a journey like that a millionaire,” he said, speaking more to himself than to Claire.

  “From what the gentleman said, I gather a number have tried, without returning,” Claire said.

  “Still, if a man went with God on his side....”

  Claire laughed derisively. “Oh, Peter, really.” She mocked him, despite the dangerous glint in his eyes. “Do you honestly think God’s got nothing better to do than to traipse around with you looking for a turquoise mine? Don’t you suppose all the others said their prayers? And it didn’t stop them from being eaten, or whatever happened to them.”

  He lashed out at her, the force of the blow knocking her head back against the side wall of the carriage, bringing blood to her lips.

  “Bitch,” he spat at her, seizing her throat in one hand. “You have the nerve to ridicule me, after spending the night making eyes at that Henshey lout?”

  “He may be a lout, but at least he works at something,” she replied. “Even if it’s only a tobacco farm. As for you, you’re a nothing, a poor relation who hasn’t the gumption to do anything for himself. You’ll never find that fortune you’re always prattling about because you aren’t man enough to go out and find it.”

  “Damn you,” he muttered, his fingers tightening on her throat until she thought he really meant to strangle her. Suddenly the hand was gone, tearing instead at the bodice of her dress, baring her breasts to the pale moonlight.

  She struggled against him. “For God’s sake,” she gasped, hoarse from the grip of his hand at her throat, “not in the carriage, the driver—”

  “To hell with the driver,” he muttered. He forced a knee between hers, prying her legs apart, and in a moment more he was upon and within her. She ceased to resist, lying limp and passive beneath him until the quick rigidity of his body told her he had reached his peak and was finished.