Scarlett

by Alexandra Ripley

  Scarlett imagined the sensation it would cause if an Irish-American widow in her thirties succeeded where all the titled beauties had failed, and her lips curved in a small, secret smile faded at once.

  Fenton showed none of the signs of a man desperately in love. He intended to possess her, not marry her.

  Her eyes narrowed. I’m not about to let him add my name the long list of his conquests.

  But she couldn’t help wondering what it would be like to kissed by him.

  85

  Fenton whipped his horse into a burst of speed and passed Scarlett, laughing aloud. She bent forward, crying aloud to Half Moon to go faster. Almost immediately she had to pull back on the reins. The road curved between high stone walls, and Luke had stopped up ahead, with his horse turned to block the way.

  “What are you playing at?” she demanded. “I could have crashed right into you.”

  “Exactly what I had in mind,” said Fenton. Before Scarlett understood what was happening, he had caught hold of Half Moon’s mane and drawn the two horses close. His other hand closed over the back of Scarlett’s neck and held her head immobile while his mouth fastened over hers. His kiss was bruising, commanding her lips to open, drawing her tongue between his teeth. His hand forced her to succumb. Scarlett’s heart pounded with surprise, fear, and—as the kiss lasted on and on—a thrill of surrender to his strength. When he released her she was shaken and weak.

  “Now you’ll stop refusing my invitations to dinner,” said Luke. His dark eyes glittered with satisfaction.

  Scarlett gathered her wits. “You presume too much,” she said, hating her breathlessness.

  “Do I? I doubt it.” Luke’s arm curved along her back and held her against his chest while he kissed her again. His hand found her breast and squeezed it to the border of pain. Scarlett felt a surging response, a longing for his hands on all her body, and his brutal lips against her skin.

  The nervous horses moved, breaking the embrace, and Scarlett was nearly unseated. She fought for balance on the saddle and in her thoughts. She mustn’t do this, she mustn’t give herself to him, give in to him. If she did, he’d lose interest as soon as he conquered her, she knew it.

  And she didn’t want to lose him. She wanted him. This was no lovesick boy like Charles Ragland, this was a man. She could even fall in love with a man like this.

  Scarlett stroked Half Moon, calming him, thanking him in her heart for saving her from folly. When she turned to face Fenton, her swollen lips were stretched in a smile.

  “Why don’t you put on an animal’s pelt and drag me to your house by my hair?” she said. There was precisely the right blend of humor and contempt in her voice. “Then you wouldn’t frighten the horses.” She urged Half Moon into a walk, then a trot, heading back the way they had come.

  She turned her head and spoke over her shoulder. “I won’t come to dinner, Luke, but you may follow me to Ballyhara for coffee. If you want more than that, I can offer you early luncheon or breakfast.”

  Scarlett murmured softly to Half Moon, urging hurry. She couldn’t read the meaning of the scowl on Fenton’s face, and she felt something very like fear.

  She had already dismounted when Luke rode into the stableyard. He swung a leg over and slid down from his horse, throwing the reins to a groom.

  Scarlett pretended not to notice that Luke had commandeered the only groom in sight. She led Half Moon inside the stable herself to find another boy.

  When her eyes adjusted to the dim light, she stopped in her tracks, afraid to move. Cat was in the stall directly in front of her, standing barefoot and bare-legged atop Comet, with her small arms outstretched for balance. She had on a heavy Aran jersey, borrowed from one of the stableboys. It bunched over her tucked-up skirts, and the sleeves hung past the ends of her fingers. As usual her black hair had escaped its braids and was a mass of tangles. She looked like urchin, or a gypsy child.

  “What are you doing, Cat?” said Scarlett quietly. She knew the big horse’s edgy disposition. A loud noise could spook him.

  “I’m starting to practice circus,” said Cat. “Like the picture in my book of the lady on the horse. When I go in the ring I’ll need a parasol please.”

  Scarlett kept her voice even. This was more frightening even than Bonnie. Comet could shy Cat off, then crush her. “It would be more fair if you waited to start next summer. Your feet must feel very cold on Comet’s back.”

  “Oh.” Cat slid onto the floor at once, next to the metal-shod hooves. “I didn’t think of that.” Her voice came from deep in the gated stall. Scarlett held her breath. Then Cat climbed over the gate with her boots and wool stockings in her hand. “I knew the boots would hurt.”

  Scarlett willed herself not to grab her child in her arms and hold her safe. Cat would resent her relief. She looked to her right for a groom to take Half Moon. She saw Luke, standing quietly and staring at Cat.

  “This is my daughter, Katie Colum O’Hara,” she said. And make of it what you will, Fenton, she thought.

  Cat looked up from her concentration on tying her boot laces. She studied Fenton’s face before she spoke. “My name is Cat,” she said. “What is your name?”

  “Luke,” said the Earl of Fenton.

  “Good morning, Luke. Would you like the yellow of my egg? I’m going to eat my breakfast now.”

  “I would like that very much,” he said.

  They made a strange procession; Cat led the way to the house, with Fenton walking beside her, adjusting his long stride to her short legs. “I had my breakfast before,” Cat told him, “but I’m hungry again, so I will have breakfast again.”

  “That strikes me as eminently sensible,” he said. There was no mockery in his thoughtful tone of voice.

  Scarlett followed the two of them. She was still unsettled by the fright Cat had given her, and she had not yet quite recovered from the moments of passionate emotion when Luke kissed her. She felt dazed and confused. Fenton was the last man on earth she would have expected to love children, and yet he seemed to be fascinated by Cat. He was treating her exactly right, too, taking her seriously, not condescending to her because she was so small. Cat had no patience with people who tried to baby her. Somehow Luke seemed to sense that and respect it.

  Scarlett felt tears fill her eyes. Oh, yes, she could love this man. What a father he could be to her beloved child. She blinked rapidly. This was not the time for sentimentality. For Cat’s sake as well as for her own, she had to be strong and clear headed.

  She looked at Fenton’s sleek dark head, inclined toward Cat. He looked very tall and broad and powerful. Invincible.

  She shivered inwardly, then rejected her cowardice. She would win. She had to, now. She wanted him for herself and for Cat.

  Scarlett nearly laughed at the scene Luke and Cat presented. Cat was totally absorbed in the delicate business of cutting off the top of her boiled egg without shattering it; Fenton was watching Cat with equal concentration.

  Suddenly, without warning, desperate grief drove Scarlett’s amusement away. Those dark eyes watching Cat should be Rhett’s, not Luke’s! Rhett should be the one fascinated by his daughter, Rhett the one to share her breakfast egg, Rhett the one to walk beside her, matching his pace to her small steps.

  Painful longing carved a hollow in Scarlett’s breast where her heart should be, and anguish—so long held at bay—flooded in to fill it. She ached for Rhett’s presence, for his voice, for his love.

  If only I’d told him about Cat before it was too late . . . If only I’d stayed in Charleston . . . If only . . .

  Cat tugged at Scarlett’s sleeve. “Are you going to eat your egg, Momma? I’ll open it for you.”

  “Thank you, darling,” said Scarlett to her child. Don’t be a fool, she said to herself. She smiled at Cat, and at the Earl of Fenton. What was past was past, and she had to think about the future. “I have a suspicion you’re going to have another yolk to eat, Luke,” Scarlett laughed.

  Cat said goo
dbye and ran outdoors after breakfast, but Fenton stayed. “Bring more coffee,” he told the maid, without looking at her. “Tell me about your daughter,” he said to Scarlett.

  “She only likes the white of the egg,” Scarlett answered, smiling to mask her worry. What should she tell him about Cat’s father? Suppose Luke asked his name, how he died, who he was.

  But Fenton asked only about Cat. “How old is this remarkable daughter of yours, Scarlett?”

  He professed astonishment when told that Cat was barely four, asked if she was always so self-possessed, if she had always been precocious, if she was very high-strung . . . Scarlett warmed to his genuine interest and talked until her throat was raw about the marvels of Cat O’Hara. “You should see her on her pony, Luke, she rides better than I do—or you . . . And she climbs everything like a monkey. The painters had to pluck her off their ladders . . . She knows the woods as well as any fox, and she has a built-in compass, she never gets lost . . . ‘High-strung’? There’s not a nervous bone in her body. She’s so fearless that it terrifies me sometimes. And she never carries on when she gets a bump or a bruise. Even when she was a baby she hardly ever cried, and when she started walking, she’d just look surprised when she fell, then got right back up again . . . Of course she’s healthy! Didn’t you see how straight and strong she is? She eats like a horse, too, and never gets sick. You wouldn’t believe the number of éclairs and cream buns she can tuck away without turning a hair . . .”

  When Scarlett heard the hoarseness in her voice, she looked at the clock and laughed. “My grief, I’ve been bragging for an age. It’s all your fault, Luke, for egging me on so. You should have shut me up.”

  “Not at all. I’m interested.”

  “Watch out or you’ll make me jealous. You act like you’re falling in love with my daughter.”

  Fenton raised his eyebrows. “Love is for shopkeepers and penny romances. I’m interested in her.” He stood and bowed, lifted Scarlett’s hand from her lap and brushed it with a light kiss. “I leave for London in the morning, so I’ll take leave of you now.”

  Scarlett stood up, close to him. “I’ll miss our races,” she said, meaning every word. “Will you be back soon?”

  “I’ll call on you and Cat when I return.”

  Well! thought Scarlett after he was gone. He didn’t even try to kiss me goodbye. She didn’t know whether it was a compliment or an insult. He must regret the way he acted when he kissed me before, she decided. I guess he lost control of himself. And he sure is scared of the word “love.”

  She concluded that Luke showed all the symptoms of a man who was falling in love against his will. It made her very happy. He’d be a wonderful father for Cat . . . Scarlett touched her bruised lips gently with the tip of a finger. And he was a very exciting man.

  86

  Luke was very much on Scarlett’s mind during the following weeks. She was restless, and on bright mornings she raced alone over the routes they’d followed together. When she and Cat decorated the tree, she remembered the pleasure of dressing up for dinner the night he first came to Ballyhara. And when she pulled the wishbone of the Christmas goose with Cat, she wished that he would return from London soon.

  Sometimes she closed her eyes and tried to remember the way it felt to have his arms around her, but every attempt made her tearfully angry, because Rhett’s face and Rhett’s embrace and Rhett’s laughter always filled her memory instead. That was because she’d known Luke such a short time, she told herself. In time his presence would blot out the memories of Rhett, that was only logical.

  On New Year’s Eve there was a great racket, and Colum marched in beating the bodhran followed by two fiddlers and Rosaleen Fitzpatrick playing the bones. Scarlett screeched with joyful surprise and ran to hug him. “I’d given up hope that you’d ever come home, Colum. Now it’s bound to be a good year, with a beginning like this.” She got Cat up from her sleep, and they saw in the first moments of 1880 with music and love all around them.

  New Year’s Day began with laughter as the harm brack shattered against the wall, showering crumbs and currants all over Cat’s dancing body and upturned, open-mouthed face. But afterwards the sky darkened with clouds, and an icy wind tore at Scarlett’s shawl when she made the rounds of New Year’s visits in her town. Colum took a drink in every house, liquor, not tea, and talked politics with the men until Scarlett thought she would scream.

  “Will you not come to the bar, then, Scarlett darling, and raise a glass to a brave New Year and new hope for the Irish?” said Colum after the last cottage had been visited.

  Scarlett’s nostrils flared at the smell of whiskey on him. “No, I’m tired and cold and I’m going home. Come with me and we have a quiet time by the fire.”

  “A quiet time is what I dread most, Scarlett aroon. Quiet lets the darkness creep into a man’s soul.”

  Colum walked unsteadily through the door of Kennedy’s bar, and Scarlett trudged slowly up the drive to the Big House, holding her shawl close around her. Her red skirt and the blue and yellow stripes on her stockings looked drab in the cold gray light.

  Hot coffee and a hot bath, she promised herself as she pushed open the heavy front door. She heard a stifled giggle when entered the hall, and her heart tightened. Cat must be playing hide and seek. Scarlett pretended to suspect nothing. She closed the door behind her, dropped her shawl on a chair, then looked around.

  “Happy New Year, The O’Hara,” said the Earl of Fenton. “Or is it Marie Antoinette? Is this the peasant costume all the best dressmakers in London are creating for costume balls this year?” He was on the landing of the staircase.

  Scarlett stared up at him. He was back. Oh, why had he caught her looking this way? It wasn’t what she’d planned at all. But it didn’t matter. Luke was back, and so soon, and she no longer felt tired at all. “Happy New Year,” she said. And it was.

  Fenton stepped to one side, and Scarlett saw Cat on the stairs behind him. Both Cat’s arms were held up for her two hands to steady the gleaming jewelled tiara on her tousled head. She walked down the steps to Scarlett, her green eyes laughing, her mouth twitching to keep from grinning. Behind her trailed a long, wide slash of color, a crimson velvet robe bordered with a wide band of ermine.

  “Cat’s wearing your regalia, Countess,” Luke said. “I’ve come to arrange our marriage.”

  Scarlett’s knees gave way and she sat on the marble floor in a circle of red, with green and blue petticoats spilling from beneath. A flicker of anger mixed with her shocked thrill of triumph. This couldn’t be true. It was too easy. It took all the fun out of everything.

  “It seems our surprise was a success, Cat,” said Luke. He untied the heavy silk cords at her neck and took the tiara from her hands. “You may go now. I have to talk to your mother.”

  “Can I open my box?”

  “Yes. It’s in your room.”

  Cat looked at Scarlett, smiled, then ran giggling up the stairs. Luke gathered the robe over his left arm, held the tiara in his left hand, and walked down to stand near Scarlett with his right hand reaching down to her. He looked very tall, very big, his eyes very dark. She gave him her hand, and he lifted her to her feet.

  “We’ll go into the library,” said Fenton. “There’s a fire, and a bottle of champagne for a toast to seal the bargain.”

  Scarlett allowed him to lead the way. He wanted to marry her. She couldn’t believe it. She was numb, speechless with shock. While Luke poured the wine she warmed herself at the fire.

  Luke held a glass out to her. Scarlett took it. Her mind was beginning to register what was happening, and she found her voice.

  “Why did you say ‘bargain,’ Luke?” Why hadn’t he said he loved her and wanted her to be his wife?

  Fenton touched the rim of his glass to hers. “What else is marriage but a bargain, Scarlett? Our respective solicitors will draw up the contracts, but that’s just a matter of form. You know, surely, what to expect. You’re not a girl or an innocent.�
�

  Scarlett set her glass carefully on a table. Then she lowered herself carefully into a chair. Something was horribly wrong. There was no warmth in his face, in his words. He wasn’t even looking at her. “I would like for you to tell me, please,” she said slowly, “what to expect.”

  Fenton shrugged impatiently. “Very well. You’ll find me quite generous. I assume that is your chief concern.” He was, he said, one of the wealthiest men in England, although he expected she had found that out for herself. He genuinely admired her astuteness at social climbing. She could keep her own money. He would naturally provide her with all her clothing, carriages, jewels, servants, et cetera. He expected her to be a credit to him. He had observed that she had the ability.

  She could also keep Ballyhara for her lifetime. It seemed to amuse her. For that matter, she could play with Adamstown, too, when she wanted to muddy her boots. After her death Ballyhara would go to their son, even as Adamstown would be his upon Luke’s death. The joining of contiguous lands had always been one of the chief causes for marriage.

  “For, of course, the essential feature of the bargain is that you provide me with an heir. I’m the last of my line, and it’s my duty to continue it. Once I get a son on you, your life is your own, with the usual attention to maintaining a semblance of discretion.”

  He refilled his glass, then drained it. Scarlett could thank Cat for her tiara, said Luke. “I had, needless to say, no thought of making you the Countess of Fenton. You’re the kind of woman I enjoy playing with. The stronger the spirit, the greater the pleasure in breaking it to my will. It would have been interesting. But not as interesting as that child of yours. I want my son to be like her—fearless, with indestructible rude health. The Fenton blood has been thinned by inbreeding. Infusing your peasant vitality will remedy that. I note that my tenant O’Haras, your family, live to a great age. You are a valuable possession, Scarlett. You will give me an heir to be proud of, and you won’t disgrace him or me in society.”