Dangerous Obsession

by Natasha Peters

  “Oh, yes. They were happy together. I hope I can make him as happy. He is so good, so kind.”

  “Do I hear my praises being sung?” Steven leaned over the back of the couch where his mother and I were sitting, and kissed my cheek.

  “None of that,” said Garth McClelland sternly. “You have to wait until you’re married.”

  “Why should they?” Elise demanded. “We didn’t!” Everyone laughed except Gabrielle, who blushed and wailed, “Oh, Mother!”

  “I say, Guv’nor,” said Sean, “I think it’s a mean thing to send a fellow away just when things are getting lively in town. What ever happens in Charlottesville, Virginia?”

  “Boys become men,” his father scowled. “At least I hope that’s what will happen to you.”

  “Please try and persuade David to come to our ball tomorrow night,” Elise said to me. “Did you know that his father is the governor of Massachusetts? Garth knows him very well. He even studied law for a while—David, that is—but gave it up for music. He’s so bohemian!”

  “My goodness, Madame,” I said astonished, “you have found out more about David Thatcher in one night than I did in nearly two years!” I had dragged David to a dinner party at the house the night before, and Elise had taken him in hand.

  Elise slid closer to me and said under her breath, “And I think Gabrielle likes him a little. He certainly seemed taken with her!”

  “You’re really incorrigible, Mother,” said Steven. Stop matchmaking.”

  “Why should I? I brought you two together, didn’t I?”

  “If you mean your transparent little trick with the champagne—”

  “I mean that when you got back to New Orleans and heard that Rhawnie was living here, you were reluctant to see her. Weren’t you? And so I asked you to go and talk to her about the Gabrielle-Boris thing, and you went, and here you are!” She beamed triumphantly.

  “Is this true, Steven?” I twisted around and smiled up at him. “Were you afraid to come and see me?”

  He grinned and said, “You were certainly eager to get away from me In France, remember? All that stuff about trying your wings. Well, what about your wings now? I’m about to clip them, and you don’t seem to mind.”

  “No, I don’t mind. I’m glad.” He put his hands on my shoulders and I pressed one to my cheek.

  It was such a happy evening. I really was part of a family again. I was loved. I was wanted. Nothing could go wrong, I was sure of it.

  After we had our coffee, Elise persuaded Gabrielle to play the piano while we all sang Christmas songs. Steven had a really fine baritone. We sounded so good together that the rest of the company applauded our rendition of “En Flambeau, Jeannette, Isabelle,” one of Elise McClelland’s favorite French carols. After the singing Steven and I moved away from the rest of the group. I stood with him in front of the fireplace, my back to the room. We laced our fingers together.

  “Everyone was so pleased about us. Are you happy, Rhawnie?” he asked tenderly.

  Outside a horse clattered up to the house. Sean wondered who it could be, on Christmas Eve. I think he must have looked out the window, because he shouted something incoherent and ran out of the room.

  “I am so happy I could cry,” I told Steven truthfully. “To have a family again! It’s a wonderful thing, all this love.”

  “You haven’t bought him a new horse, have you?” Elise asked Garth.

  “Certainly not. It’s the last thing he needs. Have you?”

  “You’ll never believe it!” Sean shouted from the doorway. “Look! Just look who’s here!”

  Steven sucked in his breath and grabbed my hands tightly. His face turned pinched and hard. I heard an uneven step and the tap of a cane on the floor. I stopped breathing. I did not have to look around. I knew who had come.

  “Seth!” Gabrielle shrieked. “Oh, Seth!”

  I was grateful for the commotion produced by his arrival. Everyone crowded around him, laughing and talking and crying. Except Steven, who steadfastly maintained his position beside me. He put his arm around my shoulders as if to protect me. He knows, I thought. He knows, but how?

  Then Seth looked up and saw us. His eyes met mine for a moment and I felt my anchor in reality sliding away. I was engulfed by a flood of memories. Memories that swirled around my mind and soul like a poisonous gas, smothering me, sweeping me away from the warm drawing room in New Orleans into another time, another world, where Seth and I had been locked together in a prison of passion.

  Once again I felt stripped and naked under those eyes. I was sure that he could read my deepest thoughts and most secret dreams. A chorus of “No’s!” thundered inside my head. I should have known that he would sense my new happiness, and that wherever he was in the world, he would come to find me and take it away from me. I wanted to shout at him, to shout out my anger and loathing.

  But I didn’t shout. I smiled serenely and said, “Will you introduce me to your visitor, Steven?”

  I saw Seth’s eyebrows lift, ever so slightly. He was thinner and harder looking, clean shaven, without even the mustache he had sported in Europe. There was more grey in his hair. His eyes—his eyes were just like Steven’s. And the line of their jaws was identical. Even their noses were similar. Steven had seemed familiar to me. Of course I felt that I had known him for a long time. I had known his opposite number. For they were like opposite sides of the same coin: one fair, the other dark; one kind, the other cruel. Light and shadow. Good—and evil.

  His eyes flickered over me appraisingly. He smiled and approached us.

  “Welcome home, Seth,” Steven said. I was surprised to hear in his voice an echo of my own feelings towards the arrogant, black-hearted devil who stood in front of us.

  Rhawnie, this is my younger brother, Seth. Seth this is my fiancée, Rhawnie, Baroness of Ravensfeld.”

  1 extended my hand. “How do you do. Monsieur?” What would he do? What would he say? He would unmask me, I was sure of it. He was a spoiler.

  “This is a pleasure and an honor, Baroness,” he replied. He lifted my fingers to his lips and his kiss was too long, too lingering. I snatched my hand away as soon as I felt his hold ease. “Well, your fiancée, I congratulate you both. When is the happy day? I’d like to come to the wedding.”

  He wasn’t going to expose me. Not yet. That gave me a little time, a little breathing space.

  “We haven’t set a date yet,” Steven said. “And we haven’t made a public announcement. But I thought you should know.”

  “I appreciate that,” Seth said with a little mocking nod. The air between them was electric with feelings that I couldn’t understand. I was suddenly aware that while this encounter had been taking place everyone else in the room had fallen silent, watching us—and waiting. But for what?

  Then Elise began to laugh and the tension in the room dissolved. She berated her son in good motherly fashion for not writing and remarked on how thin and tired he looked. Garth asked where he had been keeping himself.

  “Various places,” Seth replied. “I’ve been gold-mining in California and fomenting revolution in Nicaragua and Cuba lately.”

  “With old Lopez’s boys!” Sean shouted. “You see, Guv’nor, I told you I should have gone with those filibusters! I would have met Seth!”

  Steven told me later that the filibusters were adventure-seeking no-accounts who gathered at the Maspero Slave Exchange in New Orleans to plot against the government, to trade tales, to collect money for causes like the liberation of Nicaragua and the annexation of Cuba.

  Garth McClelland snorted. “Revolutionaries in short pants.”

  “Tell me about California, Seth,” said Sean eagerly. “Is it true what they say, that the gold’s just lying on top of the ground, waiting to be picked up? Oh, I say, Guv’nor, let me take just one more year off from school! I’ll make us all rich!”

  Seth grinned at his little brother. “You’d have to dig the gold out of the ground first, Sean. Then you’d have to keep
yourself from being killed to hang on to it—and your claim. You’d probably come down with scurvy or Malaria or dysentery, too.”

  “It sounds just horrid,” Elise declared. “Gold indeed! Just another excuse for men to leave their homes and families to go off gambling and whoring—”

  “Mother!” Gabrielle said.

  I didn’t join the laughter. Garth hugged his wife, who came no higher than his shoulder, and said, “Sounds like just the thing for a man newly retired from politics. I’ll hop the next boat—”

  The conversation swirled around me. I felt sick. The heat in the room seemed overpowering. Steven and I sat apart from the rest, listening silently to the stories of Seth’s adventures. I wondered later how I managed to keep from leaping out of my seat and running from the room. Every so often Seth would shoot a look in our direction. I tried to meet his gaze squarely, without blinking, just to show him that I wasn’t afraid. I sensed that Steven, too, was tense and on guard.

  Sean was enthralled by his older brother’s exploits. He hung on Seth’s every word, asked a hundred and one questions, and groaned loudly when his father reminded him that would be time enough for adventure when he had finished his education.

  “But why, Guv’nor?” Sean demanded. “Look at Seth. He qualified as a doctor and he’s not using his education at all. If you ask me, he paid off those coves at the Sorbonne and in Heidelberg to say he’d done his work and he spent his time having fun.”

  “Oh, we can’t be sure of that, Sean,” Steven spoke for the first time. “Maybe Seth’s been nursing the miners in California and helping the afflicted in Cuba. Good Dr. Seth.”

  Seth gave his brother a lopsided grin. “That’s right, Steve. I’m one of the world’s great humanitarians.”

  My head was spinning. Seth, a doctor? I would never have believed it, never. Well, why not He had saved me when I cut my wrists and he had delivered my baby, hadn’t he? But I thought doctors were supposed to have more reverence for life, and more compassion. He was such a fraud. If only they knew, these people. They had missed him. They all adored him—except Steven. If only I could tell them the truth.

  Gabrielle sat very close to Seth, who petted and teased her and told her how pretty she had become.

  “I suppose you have a pack of admirers, Gaby?” I could see that he was fond of her. I had never known him to behave so tenderly towards anyone.

  “She could have,” Sean put in, laughing, “but she’s pining away from love for some Russian cove named Boris. Steve thrashed him and he left town pretty quick.” Gabrielle jumped up, her fists clenched. “Steve!” She looked over at Steven. “You—didn’t! How could you! How could you do such a thing? Why didn’t you tell me? Oh, I hate you. I hate you!”

  Elise put her arms around her daughter and cooed, “There, darling, it’s all right. Steven only acted in your best interests. You know how we felt about Prince Azubin. He should have called at the house. His behavior was insulting, to all of us.”

  Gabrielle pushed her mother away. “You don’t understand, any of you! I can’t bear it, living with you all!” Steven stood up and looked at his pocket watch. “It’s twenty past eleven. I don’t suppose you still want to go to midnight mass, Gaby?”

  “Yes,” she cried. “I do want to go! Please, Steve?”

  “Then you have just enough time to run upstairs and wash your face. Anybody else want to come? Seth?” Seth declined. Sean decided he would stay home, too, but his mother told him to go.

  “To keep Gabrielle company. She’s feeling particularly left out tonight, because of Rhawnie and Steven.” She turned to Seth. “We’re so excited, Seth! I’m glad you are home, so glad. Everything will be fine now, won’t it? And you’ll get to know Rhawnie and to love her as we do. I’m so happy, darling. This is the most wonderful Christmas present of all!”

  He hugged his mother and looked over her head to me. I couldn’t read anything in his eyes. He was too good a gambler to give himself away. But I wanted to die on the spot. No good could come of the situation. Someone would be hurt—Steven or his mother or me. It was an intolerable mess.

  If I were really brave, I said to myself, I’d speak. Now. But a Gypsy’s first Impulse is to run from trouble. So I kept silent and bid them good-night, Seth and Elise and Garth, and allowed myself to be marshalled into the carriage with Gabrielle and Sean and Steven. When we had gone half a mile I turned to Steven and told him that I had a headache. He directed the coachman to go to the house on Esplanade Street first.

  “I’ll come in with you,” he said. He asked Gabrielle and Sean to stop for him on the way home from mass. They drove off. I thought that Gabrielle’s spirits had recovered rather quickly. She even gave me a little hug before I left the carriage.

  Anna opened the door. She was beaming, happy about our engagement, but when she saw our faces she became anxious. I kissed her and asked her to bring some brandy up to the music room and to prepare the samovar. Then Steven and I went upstairs.

  I had decided that I had to tell him. I couldn’t live, knowing that Seth could expose me at any time. I had to be free of them. I wasn’t sure if Steven would still want to marry me after he knew the truth, but I would leave that to him. I had to tell him.

  Steven paced the floor. I kneaded my hands. We hardly looked at each other and we didn’t speak until after Anna had brought the brandy and started the tea brewing. Then Steven poured himself a large measure of brandy and downed it in one swallow. He followed that with another. This was a bad sign: Steven was not a heavy drinker.

  “You didn’t tell me about this brother,” I said. My voice sounded shaky and out of control. But he didn’t seem to notice. “I find it strange that no one in your family ever mentioned him before.”

  “Not so strange.” Steven sipped his second brandy. “The prominent families in New Orleans don’t talk about their black sheep. They grieve for their strays, sigh for them, pray for them. But they can’t brag about them and so they don’t talk about them at all. It’s very painful for Mother. We went through a bad time with Seth. She cried a little whenever his name was mentioned. So we just got out of the habit of talking about him, even of thinking about him. It wasn’t hard. He wasn’t there. We never knew where he was, if he was alive or dead. Like a tom cat that keeps straying farther and farther from home until one day—you never see him again. That’s Seth. Never writes. Never sends word. Nothing. But every seven years or so, like the plague, he turns up to cause trouble, to awaken old memories and to reopen old wounds.”

  “You sound so bitter, Steven,” I said wonderingly. “I don’t understand. It isn’t like you. The minute he came into the room tonight, something happened to you.”

  Steven put his arms around me. “I love you so,” he murmured. “It spoiled your evening, too, didn’t it? You feel everything so deeply. Poor darling, your heart is racing.”

  “I suppose I was rather surprised to see him,” I said with greater truth than he knew. Steven, there is something I must tell you,” I began.

  But he wasn’t paying any attention. “Did you see the way he looked at you?” he said angrily. “Arrogant bastard. I wanted to punch his face in.” He broke away from me and looked down at his clenched fists. “Look at me,” he said disgustedly. “That’s what seeing him does to me. Good old steady, reliable Steve McClelland turns into a snarling dog when his own brother comes into the room. Kill the fatted calf, bring out your best wines. Greet the prodigal with open arms! It’s laughable, isn’t it? And sickening.”

  He was really distraught. I fussed over him and made him sit on the plush settee near the samovar. I put another glass of brandy into his hand and said, “Why, Steven? Tell me about it, please. What has he done that is so terrible? What is so awful, so dreadful that you can’t forgive after many years? Whatever is past is past. It is a weak and foolish thing to carry resentment from year to year. Leave it. Forget it.”

  He groped for my hand. I sat close to him. “I know I’m a damned fool. Blast him! Why
did he have to come back now?”

  Silently, secretly, I echoed his sentiments.

  He said, “Seth is three years younger than I am. We’ve always been in competition, as far back as I can remember. He always instigated it, though. He was always daring me, challenging me. He had to prove that he was as good as I was at everything, even though most of the time we were growing up he was a couple of inches shorter and a few pounds lighter. He had to run faster, play harder, take greater chances. We were devils, both of us. I don’t know how Mother put up with us.”

  I smiled thinly. “That’s what mothers are for, dearest.”

  “You saw how he limped?” Steven asked. I nodded. “It was my fault. He’ll have that limp until the day he dies. And I did it to him.

  “We were still very young,” Steven said. “It was the summer before I went off to Harvard. I was sixteen, Seth was thirteen. We were riding together at Highlands and he challenged me to race. We headed for a fence first and both cleared it all right. Then he spotted a tall hedge. It must have been at least seven feet high. He dared me to take it, and then he whipped up his horse and raced towards it. I shouted at him not to be a damned idiot. He didn’t listen. It had been raining. The ground was soft and my horse slipped a little and I fell behind. But I was determined not to let him show me up—he being only a kid and me a big college man—or almost. I saw him clear the hedge. But then I heard his horse scream. I knew he’d gone down. I was only a few yards away. I should have pulled my horse up short, even if it meant falling myself. But I didn’t do it. I was damned if I was going to let him think that I was afraid of that hedge.”

  He was very tense as he spoke, so taut that he was trembling slightly. I put a reassuring hand on his arm. He felt as hard as steel.

  “I shouted for him to clear out, that I was coming over, too,” he said in a low voice. “My horse cleared the hedge without any difficulty. And we came down right on top of Seth.”

  I gasped and my hands flew to my mouth.

  “Her hooves cut into his left leg,” Steven went on grimly. “We all went down in a heap then. He’d struck his head and he hadn’t heard my warning. It was a mess. Mud and blood everywhere. Seth was white as a sheet. His leg was bleeding badly. I strapped my belt around his thigh and somehow I got him up on my horse and back to the house. His horse had broken two legs. We had to send a man back, to destroy it. Seth was unconscious by the time I got him home. I rode for the doctor. I was sure that he would die. I felt sick and scared.”