From our vantage point we could see Alicia before he did, as she moved among her guests, speaking a word here, shaking hands there. Heads turned to watch her, and there was a whispering as she moved on. The news must have sped around the room as she came among her friends saying goodby. When she moved, the great zigzag of lightning down the front of her dress flashed beneath the gray clouds of chiffon, seeming to signal coming storm. I had the troubled feeling that in defeat Alicia Daven might be a more effective foe than ever and I turned my gaze back to Justin’s face.
He was watching her too, though I could not read his look, and when he spoke to Maggie the deadly chill I remembered was back in his voice.
“I think we both know why this was done,” he said. “We are both aware of the subtle possibilities in punishment and revenge. Though I’d not have expected you to be so bitter, Maggie.”
She turned her back on the rail with its view of the crowd below, her eyes dark with alarm. “But Justin—Justin dear!—this was for you and Marc! That’s all I ever intended—to help you out of a serious jam.”
“There is also the destruction of a woman to be considered,” Justin said, his tone so cold that my heart turned over at the sound of it. “Alicia told me a great deal tonight. The Club Casella has been slipping from her hands for some time. Leo, its former owner, has not, apparently, been trustworthy. And she has lost seriously on other investments as well. Now she loses hope as well as everything else. You understand this, don’t you, Maggie? It’s what you intend, isn’t it? To punish Alicia. That’s really your aim.”
Maggie’s gaze fell. “I—I don’t know much about the business side of this. I only know that she was never worth your interest in her. As a wife her presence at Athmore would be intolerable.”
“You’d prefer Eve as my wife?” Justin said. “Is that what you mean? Is that why you brought her back? Because you believe that Eve and I could never make it together and eventually there would be a divorce? Is that what you hope for? Then everything could go on as before, with you the chatelaine of Athmore for the rest of your life, even though you have to marry Nigel to accomplish this. Of course it would be insufferable for you if I brought Alicia there to live. And we both know why.”
“Justin—you don’t understand!” Maggie cried. “I’ve thought only of your welfare, and Marc’s, all along. I’ve thought only—”
“I don’t care about welfare purchased by arrangements which manipulate my life and injure others,” Justin said. “Now, because such arrangements have been made, I’m committed more than ever to the course you meant to block.”
I sat very still, trying to understand—sure only that the outcome of this duel meant the difference between life and death for me.
Justin must have seen my face, for he reached across the table to cover my hand. “I love you,” he said quietly. “Yet this has changed everything. There’s too much that I’m to blame for in the past. Old debts have multiplied. Prior debts. And I’m not talking about money.”
I knew very well what he meant. Alicia. She was the debt he must honor. Now that Maggie had successfully ruined her, Justin would be committed to her all the more. I did not question his love for me, but without my lifting a finger I had been disarmed and left helpless.
Numbly I looked over the railing, seeking for the woman who had always been my rival, and who had now won, with Maggie’s unintended help. I glimpsed pink lightning and gray chiffon, and saw Marc come up to her, take her rather roughly by the arm. She did not resist him and they moved together toward the door, disappearing through it.
Justin and Maggie had not noticed. Maggie was closer to crumpling than I had ever seen her, defeated by Justin’s words, by the result of her own scheming. The temptation to say nothing of what I had seen was strong. Marc was in a rage, and if anything happened to Alicia—
I put my hand on Justin’s arm. “Alicia has just left the club with Marc. I think he forced her to go with him.”
Justin sprang up and hurried toward the stairs. When Maggie caught my arm and would have held me in my chair, I pulled away.
“Let him go,” she said. “There’s nothing more to be done.”
But I was coming to life again. I could not sit by and remain helpless.
“There’s a great deal to be done!” I cried and knew as I hurried toward the stairs that I had spoken those words before. I did not look back, or know that Maggie followed until she came through the double doors into the foyer. Justin was there talking to Leo Casella. When Leo saw Maggie he touched a finger to his forelock and grinned at her impudently, his dark eyes flashing mockery.
“’Evening, Boss,” he said.
There was something about his impudence that jarred me. It was as though he occupied a place of privilege and knew very well that she would not reprove him. But I had no time to think about that now.
Justin pushed past the fellow, and Maggie and I followed him to the street. On the sidewalk Justin explained briefly.
“Leo tells me that Marc and Alicia have started back to Athmore in Marc’s car. I’m going after them. I don’t know what Marc intends, but he’s drunk and I don’t trust him. You two can come with me, if you want to.”
“I’ll come,” I said without hesitation.
Justin held out his hand to me, and his clasp was strong and sure. Behind us, as we ran toward a taxi, Maggie stumbled in her high heels, but she came too. Somehow she had roused herself and there seemed a new urgency in her. That meant she had thought of something—and I did not trust her when she was driven by secret purpose.
When we reached Justin’s garage, it was nearly twelve o’clock. It would take nearly four hours to reach Athmore, and Marc and Alicia had a good headstart.
XIII
Once the environs of London were left behind, the night was dark and sometimes a little misty. Most of the time I could see no stars. The headlights of the car rushed ahead cleaving the blackness, seeming to cut a swath through hedgerows and trees and fields. Eventually there were hills, and the roads grew even more winding. Sometimes we caught the shine of water as we swept past ponds or lakes. When we could we skirted the larger towns, and slowed for crooked village streets.
For a while we drove in silence and Justin held the wheel as though he would urge his own desire for speed upon the car. He drove well and never recklessly, but we were pushing to the limit of what these winding English roads would take. I did not know what it was he so feared that lay ahead. There was no chance of our overhauling Marc, who always drove as though he bore a charmed life—and tonight was in no condition for such driving. In the back seat Maggie hardly stirred, and I did not look at her during that first hour.
But we could not go on like that, endlessly bound by tension. We could not, by hurling ourselves at the road, stop whatever might be happening on ahead. Unexpectedly, it was Maggie who broke the strain of that long silence.
“Isn’t it time you stopped feeling guilty about Alicia?” she asked Justin. “You’ve held yourself responsible for steps she has taken deliberately with her eyes open.”
“I am responsible,” Justin said. “I made what has happened possible.”
“Nonsense!” Maggie cried. “It’s the chess game all over again—your taking the blame when the rook was destroyed, though you weren’t at fault and we all guessed as much.”
“Marc has always been too much protected,” I put in bitterly.
“Marc? Who’s talking about Marc?” Maggie challenged.
“But it was Marc who destroyed the rook, and—”
“Of course it wasn’t!” Justin snapped.
I moved my hands despairingly. “Why can’t you say what you mean? Why can’t we speak the truth for once—all of us?”
Justin reached out to clasp his hand about my own tense fingers. “Hush, darling. Not now. Be patient for a little while longer, Eve. The game isn’t over and I’m worried about the next play.”
After that there was silence again, with only the wind rushing
past through the night. Sometimes the stars came from behind the clouds, but there was no moon. Neither Justin nor I spoke again. It was Maggie who once more broke the silence, miles later.
“Why are you in such a desperate hurry, Justin? What does it matter now if Marc and Alicia have gone home? What are you worried about?”
He answered her coolly. “I’m concerned about two things. One of them is leaving Alicia with Marc. He’ll undoubtedly blame her for what happened to the club. The other is my concern for my car and my workshop back at Athmore, if Marc gets home ahead of me, as he’s certain to—”
Maggie laughed unpleasantly. “You’ve never been fair to Marc. Do you really think he’d touch your car?”
“I don’t know,” said Justin, his tone grim.
I remembered Marc’s words—that Justin had always won, so far.
After a while the headlights and the rushing wind made me sleepy and I tried to curl sideways with my cheek against the back of the seat so I might doze a little. But every now and then I’d jerk awake and find that I’d been drowsing with my head against Justin’s arm. I wanted to stay that way and I knew he wanted me there. But I could not stay—not yet. After a while I sat up very straight, making myself as uncomfortable as I could in order to keep starkly awake. But that was even worse because of the turns and twists my thoughts could take, the unanswerable questions that kept rising in my mind.
Alicia, wealthy and secure, able to fend for herself, was one thing. Alicia, cheated of all she had, or losing it disastrously, was something else. Justin would not walk out completely on an Alicia who needed him in her desperation, and somehow I would not have loved him as much if he had been willing to. But how far must he go in helping her—how far?
Once we stopped at a hotel in a good-sized town and found someone to make us tea, bring us a bit of stale cake, permit us to break the strain of urgent night driving. But even then we drank quickly, scalding our throats, choking on dry crumbs—and were back in the car as quickly as possible.
At least we were awake now, and Maggie was talking again, harking back to what Justin had said at the club.
“Whatever happens, you can’t lose Athmore, Justin. You can’t go down such a foolish road!”
“Athmore won’t be lost,” Justin said. “The house is a piece of England. It will go on for a long while, in any case. Does it matter, really, who lives there now?”
I heard my own voice, objecting. “It matters to you!”
Justin kept his eyes on the road. “Who am I? How long does any one man last? I’m already older than John Edmond Athmore was when he died, and his death had no effect on Athmore Hall. It did not burn down till long after, and out of the ashes sprang the present Athmore.”
Maggie answered him quietly. “If this house ends, no one will build it up again. Those times are gone forever.”
“I know,” Justin said, and we drove on in silence.
He was Athmore now. No one else would preserve it with such love and care. But this talk of burning houses disturbed me, made me anxious and uneasy. There were often flames when I dreamed of Athmore.
I began to strain my eyes to watch for the place from which we could see the house long before it was reached.
A lopsided moon was up by this time, and it appeared intermittently through scattered clouds. The roads grew more familiar. We could see out across fields, and there was no glow of anything burning. At last the distant outlines of Athmore rose in a dark hump on the horizon, briefly glimpsed before woods closed about it. The house was there and I breathed more easily. One dread could be dismissed.
To my surprise, Justin did not turn down the road that led toward the house. Instead he chose a side road that wound off in another direction. In a moment I realized that our detour would take us to Grovesend.
Maggie stirred in the back seat and sat up to look around. She must have noted our change of course, but she said nothing. Her angry impulse to prick at Justin and make him equally angry had died away. Once when I looked back at her I saw her face, white and strained in the moonlight, and knew that she was now every bit as tense as Justin. It was not a burning of the house either of them feared, but something more ominous, and even more dreadful because it concerned someone near to them both. Marc, who was brother and foster son.
Alicia’s woods and rhododendron hedges grew high, blocking out any sight of her house from afar. We were upon it suddenly and Justin drove around the end of the hedge and stopped before her door. Marc’s car stood at the curb and lights glowed at lower windows.
Justin got out at once. “Take it,” he said to me. “Drive back to Athmore with Maggie.”
I did not want him to go into that house. All my doubts of Marc, and of Alicia too, rose up to shatter my control.
“No, please!” I begged him. “If you must go in there, let us wait for you here.”
“I don’t want you to wait,” he said flatly. “I can get home on foot if I have to. I’ll watch you out of sight, but don’t come back—either of you.”
“Do as he says,” Maggie ordered me.
We were out of sight of the small hidden house all too quickly. There was no use in looking back. The car was unfamiliar to me and I drove slowly, unused to the righthand drive. Behind me Maggie said nothing at all. Raw nerves had been exposed between us, and we could not pretend to be at ease with each other.
Like Grovesend, Athmore was lighted, despite the hour. The outdoor dogs came barking, and we saw that the windows of the Hall of Armor were bright, though it was nearly four in the morning. More lights burned above in the great library, but the wings were dark except for the usual dim hall lights. No lamp burned in Justin’s room, or in Dacia’s above.
I braked the car beside the garage and saw with relief the guard posted on duty. While Maggie quieted the dogs, I jumped out and spoke to the man. He told me that there had been no disturbances, that all was well. I had to see Justin’s special car for myself. The small garage was locked, but the guard had a key and I asked him to open the door and turn on a light inside. The gray car stood untouched and safe, as Justin had left it. No one had meddled with it tonight while he was away. Or perhaps that was only because Marc had not reached home as yet. He had stopped first at Alicia’s, not knowing that we would follow soon after.
“Come along, Eve,” Maggie said wearily, all her animosity gone. “Let’s go inside. I want to talk to Nigel. He must be reading in the library. Justin’s no use to us now.”
We left the guard to put the car we’d arrived in away, and went toward the house. Morton met us at the door, looking sleepy, as though he had been napping on a couch downstairs.
“You’ve been up all night?” Maggie asked, considerate as always of those who worked for her.
“I thought it best, Mrs. Graham,” he said. “Mr. Barrow is also waiting up in the library. Mr. Marc phoned on his way home, but he has not appeared.”
She thanked him and went toward the stairs. I came with her, having no desire to go off alone to my cold, dark room. I would wait up until Justin returned from Grovesend. I cared about nothing else.
In the library Nigel sat before a table, amusing himself with a game of solitaire. He looked up as Maggie and I hurried in, and she went toward him at once—though not into his arms as a woman might, returning to the man she loved. He rose to greet her, nodded to me, and watched as she dropped into a chair.
Her blurted account of what had happened at the club seemed almost incoherent, and when Nigel turned to me in bewilderment, I supplemented her story. He heard us out, and when Maggie came to a faltering halt he chided her gently.
“What has upset you so? How is anything different from what it was before? Of course it’s quixotic of Justin to take on Marc’s debts under the changed circumstances, but fairly typical, wouldn’t you say? What is worrying you, Maggie?”
“I’m not sure,” Maggie admitted. “Marc came back to Grovesend with Alicia, and I don’t know what he means to do. He’s been drinking and�
�and—” She broke off, distraught and unlike herself.
Nigel remained unperturbed. “Look, my dear, you’ve been up all night and you’re weary to the point of making no sense. I’m fagged too. That telephone call of Marc’s sounded a bit reckless, so I stayed up. But since he’s made it home safely, I think we can all turn in.”
“No, no! You don’t understand!” Maggie grew frantic again. “I’m afraid of what Alicia may incite him to do. Everything has gone against her and she’ll place the blame wildly. I’ve seen in the past how she can stir Marc up when she chooses. You don’t know him as I do, Nigel. He can take terrible chances! He can be dangerous when he’s angry.”
“Dangerous to whom?” Nigel asked, still quiet and reasonable.
Maggie almost snapped at him. “To Justin, of course. Marc is going to blame what has happened on Justin. He has always been jealous of his brother, and if Alicia suspects that Justin still loves Eve in spite of everything, she may—”
Nigel threw a quietly amused look in my direction. “Do you mean that our plan to bring Eve back and recall Justin to his senses is working out?”
“Nigel, be serious!” Maggie cried. “You should have seen Justin’s face tonight whenever he looked at Eve. I’ll never again doubt his feeling for her. But he’s still driven by this sense of responsibility toward Alicia.”
“That’s ridiculous,” Nigel said.
“Of course it’s ridiculous. But I can’t expect you to understand how Justin feels.”
“Thank you,” Nigel said dryly. “I fancy Justin can take care of himself and of Marc as well. Though I believe you’re right to distrust Alicia. In any event, there’s absolutely nothing we can do at the moment. Aren’t you willing to grant that, at least?”
Maggie moaned and twisted her hands together, and I stared at her in growing dismay. What she had said made increasing sense to me. Nigel might be calm about this, since it was not really his affair. Now he was the outsider—while I was not. I was involved all the way down the line as far as Justin was concerned. I belonged to Athmore. And I could see what Alicia might do with Marc.
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