"Compromised?" he asked with a tilt of his head as he guessed the cause of her agitation, and she blushed deeper, though part of her color was from anger, anger with him for deliberately worsening the situation, instead of helping erase it.
"Could you bear," he asked without inflection when she didn't answer, "to be married to me?"
With wide eyes she stared up at him, wondering what had prompted the offer, never thinking he might be serious.
"To save my reputation?" she asked with what she recognized, deplored, but could not help, as ill temper.
"To save your life," he said bluntly. "If there were circumstance and time, I would chant you a litany of your blue-black hair and your black-eyed Susan eyes, but lacking that, I pose you this question with trust in your understanding and with hope for the future, but most of all to preserve you for that future!"
Uncomprehending and surprised at the depth of her own disappointment she said, out of womanly pique, "And to preserve your fortune?"
She instantly regretted it, ashamed at the pettiness of it, so that when he jerked her to her feet and into his arms she trembled violently and her heart pounded joltingly, but she could not raise her eyes to his face.
"Oh, my fortunes will do well enough, with or without you, though I would infinitely prefer the former. But, you really should give me more excuse."
Startled, she looked up and started to say, "Excuse for what …" but he kissed her, not so gently or shortly as before, but most thoroughly, a retribution without fear.
"What makes you think you can get away with that?" she asked when she was able.
"Sweet Amelia," he said, openly laughing at her with a clear, sure light in his green eyes, "anger was never your forte. I much prefer your docility." Then, he released her so quickly she swayed and sat down on the bed, and he crossed the room, closing the door behind him as he went out.
I didn't say I would marry him, she thought in self-justification, thinking of all the ladylike things she should and could have done. But, I didn't say I would not either, she admitted to herself. Where had he gone? What was he going to do, if anything? He had not said. Would he never say?
| Go to Table of Contents |
Chapter Eleven
THE DOOR OPENED cautiously, and Mary Louise stood framed in it. "May I come in?" she asked.
"Of course," Amelia said, smiling.
She advanced into the room like a vessel in sail with her huge skirts billowing and her black masque rippling gently. "Are you feeling the thing, dear? Nelville told me about your fall. I feel … I feel so guilty, as if somehow I were to blame, as if you were taking my place in danger."
Amelia smiled wearily, "No, except for a few bruises, I'm fine, and of course you had nothing to do with it. At least, I don't think so. I can't imagine anyone wanting to harm me, but I suppose it had something to do with the inheritance, don't you think?"
"I don't know. Isn't that incredible!" Mary Louise said. "You would think by this time we would know." She shrugged, a gesture that made her seem foreign and unfamiliar and Amelia shivered, reminded of how little they had in common, how strange these people were.
With a quick nervousness, Mary Louise moved about the room, clenching and unclenching her hands.
Amelia dressed and straightened her room to the accompaniment of rolling thunder, barely able to see in the darkened room. "Do you know where Nelville went?" she asked after a silent interval.
"No, he only stopped by for a moment to tell me that we two should stay together until his return. I only hope he is making some sort of arrangement to leave."
Staring at her, Amelia said softly, "He asked me to marry him," and waited to see what she would say.
"Did he really? How extraordinary of him! I would never have thought it."
"Thought what?" Amelia asked quickly.
"That he would have felt it was necessary, I mean … he isn't the kind of man to toady to convention."
Amelia blushed a little as she realized Mary Louise, and probably the rest of the house, knew Nelville had spent the night in her room. "He said it was to save my life," she whispered.
"As to that, I could not say. It seems unlikely to me, but I suppose it might help. Knowing Nelville, I would say he was just as capable of protection by other means."
"Yes, but-" Amelia protested in perplexity.
"What I am trying to say, my dear," Mary Louise interjected smilingly, "is that I find it incredible that Nelville should ask any woman to be his wife unless he wanted her to fill that capacity very much, chivalry not withstanding."
Amelia turned away from the bright inquisitive eyes and went to the window, watching, without seeing, the approaching storm. In a lull in the nearly continuous thunder, she said, "I didn't say yes."
"Of course, you didn't. It was very badly done of him, I think. How dare he think that just because he, a mature man, has fallen in love at a moment's notice, you teach him a good lesson. He has had everything his own way far too long!"
"Do you think he does, love me, I mean?" Amelia asked, ignoring the rest of the spate.
"I think nothing else," Mary Louise said with wide eyes. "Do you?"
"Why didn't he say so, then? Why pretend?"
"Who knows? Though this is hardly the most romantic situation, and Nelville, despite his hardness, is a romanticist."
Amelia started to answer caustically, but her attention was caught by movement outside. Near the grove of pines that held the little love temple two people struggled. She called over her shoulder to Mary Louise, and they watched the curiously remote, soundless action of the fight.
A woman, her gown blowing in the rising wind and her dark hair flying from its pins, seemed to be arguing with the man who held her by the wrists. In a flash of lighting, they recognized Reba, and the man who held her wrists was James! Amelia glanced at Mary Louise, wondering whether the old woman was as startled as she was, but Mary Louise hadn't taken her eyes off the couple below them, so small in the distance.
Reba tried to break the grip on her wrists with a dipping twisting motion, but James would not let her go. He seemed to be speaking to her with an earnest, supplicating tilt to his head. Shaking her head violently, Reba jerked backward and James let her go so quickly that she fell and he towered above her with clenched fists. Scrabmbling on the ground, Reba crawfished away from him with the wind blowing her skirts inside out and her face pale and wild in the glow of the lightning flashes.
Coming to her feet, she ran, heading for the house. James lurched after her a few steps, but she outdistanced him quickly. He whirled away, smacking a fist into his palm; then, slowly his shoulders sagged, and with a bowed head, he turned and followed Reba to the house.
Mary Louise and Amelia stared at each other. "Poor James," Mary Louise said reflectively, "I have thought for some time that Reba was playing with him, out of boredom and neglect, you know. I was afraid she was starting something she could not stop; but, then she always loved the spice of danger, or she would never have married into this family." She smiled wryly and went on. "I suppose she loves Sylvestor, or else, after discovering how bereft of material wealth we all are, and how weak in other ways, she never would have stayed."
"I saw her meeting someone in the grove a few weeks ago," Amelia volunteered.
"A breathless adventure for both of them, I'm sure," Mary Louise answered with irony. "The temple of love has seen a great deal in the way of assignations, but it was only a flirtation, I think."
"Did it seem to you that she was afraid of him?" Amelia asked thoughtfully.
Mary Louise looked at her sharply. "Possibly. Why?"
When Amelia shook her head unable to explain, but plagued by a feeling of unease, Mary Louise tilted her head and smiled saying, "Ah, dear, it is a dangerous thing, to play with a man. She might well be frightened."
Outside, the wind whipped around the house with a wintery whining unlike the usual summer storm. Somewhere a jalousie came loose and banged against the house
, and clasping her arms, Amelia shivered, suddenly chilled.
"I wish we could light the lamp," Mary Louise said fretfully, "and I expect we had better close the jalousies and windows. It will be raining soon … at least I think it will." She cast a worried gaze out at the gray sky with its sluggishly toiling, yellow-tinted clouds.
But, when they had fastened the jalousies and closed the windows, the close air of the room was stifling and smelled of old walls and stale linen and mice brought out by the sulphurous odor of the approaching storm. They heard Reba come down the hall and their eyes met. Then, Mary Louise continued her pacing, a habit of hers when agitated. They both felt the weight of the waiting, not really knowing for what, or for whom, they waited.
"I've just realized, I haven't had breakfast," Amelia said ruefully, to break the tension.
"I suppose you haven't," Mary Louise said. "Why don't you-"she was interrupted by a knock on the door, followed by Katherine's entrance.
"How are you this morning, Amelia?" she asked brightly, then stopped as she saw Mary Louise.
Defiantly Mary Louise stood her ground and Katherine's mouth tightened before she went on, determinedly ignoring her. "We were all worried about you, Amelia."
"I'll live, thank you," Amelia said dryly.
"Are you sure you are all right? You were quite shaken up last night. I suppose it's just as well that you are going to have a husband to look after you, if you are going to keep having alarms."
"What?" Amelia answered stupidly, thinking she meant Nelville and wondering how she could possibly have known.
"James was quite ecstatic when I told him that you had decided to accept him. Of course, I knew you would when you had had a chance to think about it. I suppose you would rather have told him yourself, but I couldn't resist, seeing the poor boy so dejected."
Amelia looked to Mary Louise for help, but she was watching Katherine with a closed-in secretiveness on her face.
"But, Katherine," she tried to interrupt the flow of words, tried to object. Katherine disregarded her.
"Few girls know their minds about these things. Respect and liking count far more than all your possessions, I have observed. Don't you agree?" She looked to Mary Louise for support, a tactical mistake.
"No," Mary Louise said stonily, checking the rush of words.
"I did not say I would marry James," Amelia said positively, if shakily, in the brief silence.
"But, you did, last night," Katherine said with obvious patience.
"I couldn't have. I don't remember it."
"Remember it or not, you certainly did," Katherine said tightly, insistently, "and you can't back out now."
"But, I never had any intention of marrying James, so I couldn't have said such a thing. I don't know where you get the idea, but regardless of anything I may or may not have said, you must understand that I cannot marry James." Panic caused the words to tumble from her lips as she felt the pressure of Katherine's will and could see the determination that compressed her lips. Then, a faint scraping sound in the hall caught her attention, and she saw James standing in the doorway, his face white and his pale blue eyes in frozen accusation on her.
"Oh, but why? Why?" Katherine asked a little distraughtly as she saw James in the door.
Feeling hemmed in, cornered by their strangely intense emotions, Amelia searched her mind for something to say, some shield to hold between herself and the strong pull of Katherine's will and James's hurt face. "I cannot marry James because I am going to marry Nelville," she said loudly.
There was a sudden silence, James turned to Katherine. "But, you said she was going to marry me," he said, in a voice of angry reproach. His eyes sparkled with glints of light and his hands were clenched into fists. "She would be happy to marry you, you said," he mocked with a touch of infantile sarcasm in his voice.
"Oh, Jamie," Katherine said, "I really thought she would. I didn't mean to mislead you. I just didn't know." Her hands fluttered helplessly toward him, but he turned on his heel and left her, dragging his leg behind him like a little boy drags a forgotten toy, and Katherine called after him in desperate tones, "Jamie! Wait, James!"
Throwing a look of malignant hate at Amelia, she followed him and they could hear her calling his name, her voice echoing in the wide, dark hall above the sound of the wind.
After a long moment, Amelia turned to Mary Louise. "What do you think of that,?" she asked in bewilderment.
"Poor James, two women jilting him in one morning, and yet I can not feel sorry for him, really. He wears his martyrdom so bravely, yet so conspicuously. There. I am being typically French and typically female, vicious on both counts. Forgive me for burdening you with my thoughts. But, do not worry about James; he has Katherine, he has always had Katherine."
"I didn't mean to hurt him."
"Certainly not. You would be a very unfeeling person if you did. But, you have only hurt his pride, his image of himself. He will recover."
Amelia smiled at the ironic tone of Mary Louise's voice; but then her smiled died, as in a flicker of lightning, she saw plainly the frown of doubt and the wondering dark eyes above her masque.
"Well!" Mary Louise said briskly before Amelia could speak, "I suppose you realize you have committed yourself to marriage now, regardless of what you did or did not intend before?"
"Oh no, I only wanted to stop them, to make them go away and leave me alone," she said, even as she wondered if, strictly speaking, that was true. "You don't think Nelville will hold me to it, do you?"
"Not if you did not mean it. I only thought, well, I thought perhaps you did mean it."
Amelia smiled and shook her head.
"You were hungry, I think," Mary Louise said with a laugh, "and so am I. Cassie, my maid, has been so demoralized by the storm and what she calls her second sight of the future that I have had only coffee this morning. Why don't you see if Bessie has come and we can have breakfast here? I think that will be best, until Nelville returns."
Glad to have something to do, Amelia nodded and turned to go, but as she went out she glanced back and saw Mary Louise with her hands to her eyes and her shoulders hunched inward as if over some secret pain. For a moment, she hesitated, then went. Everyone was entitled to his secret sorrow.
Pausing in the hall, she looked out through the door glass, attracted by the sight of the storm. Bits of trash and torn leaves and small branches and fine dust whirled before the wind with now and then a frantic bird caught for a moment in the whirlwind. A huge clap of thunder, like the cracking slap of a giant's hand, shook the house, and forked lightning sprang in fiery lace across the gray-black sky. Shivering, yet fascinated, Amelia stared out as the thunder crashed again. Then, she remembered her errand and stepped away from the door and continued downstairs.
At the foot of the stairs, a gust of wind swirled under her skirts, causing them to rise, and dirt stung her eyes. Holding her skirts down, she ran down the last few steps and into the front parlor where a lighter gloom and noise of wildly flapping drapes showed an open window. Squinting against the flying dust, she pulled the jalousies, closed and locked them, slammed the window down, and turned to look at the room. Papers still eddied, settling to the floor, while on the desk the journal from which they had come lay open, a large book such as plantation entries were often kept in. Amelia picked up the papers one by one and carried them to the desk. Wondering how they should go back since they seemed to be unnumbered, she turned the binder cover up and saw printed: MY HISTORY OF THE CIVIL WAR, BY JAMES HARVESTON in a childishly cramped hand. She smiled, thinking it was the diary James had spoken of that he had kept of the earlier Civil War years. Turning a few pages and seeing the scraggly, uneven writing of a young boy, she was sure of it. The writing ended with several blank pages and then began again. A date caught her eye. She turned back, mildly curious to read it again.
The date was the day before, laboriously written at the top of a page filled with small cramped words. There could be no mistake, even t
hough the boyish handwriting continued.
Amelia read a few words almost automatically, as she glanced at the page. Then, she went back, afraid that, somehow, she had missed the sense of it; but, no. There was no sense. An endless procession of words marched across the page, words Amelia was unfamiliar with, yet which leapt to her eyes for what they were, endless filth. Sometimes a single word would be repeated, another paragraph would contain variations on the theme of human and animal nastiness, all the more horrible somehow because it was meticulously recorded in the unformed childish hand. Quickly, Amelia flipped through the book, but all the pages, after that first small attempt at a diary dated during the war years, were the same.
Dropping the book like a contaminated thing, Amelia backed away, then whirled as the door behind her banged violently against the wall and James stood there.
"What are you doing?" he shouted, his face contorted with mingled rage and pain. His eyes were distraught, red-rimmed, and his hair was wildly tangled. He held his arms away from his body, slightly curved, with the hand hooked into claws.
"James," Amelia whispered, shocked at his appearance and the look of maniacal rage on his face as he advanced on her. She backed away. Then, seeing his eyes on the papers she had kept in her hand when she dropped the journal, she held them out to him. He snatched at them, and with a curiously gentle motion laid them in the journal and closed the cover. Then, he began to stalk Amelia. She backed away from his animal-like limping progress. Above the sound of the storm, his breathing could be heard, harsh and painfully rough, followed by the dragging scrape of his foot.
Her heart pounding with fright, Amelia spoke to him. "What is it, what's the matter?"
The Secret of Mirror House Page 16