An Embarrassment of Riches (46 page)

‘You'll tell Alexander what I've said, won't you, Maura?' Henry was asking concernedly.

She forced a smile. ‘Yes, Henry. Of course I will.'

But she didn't want to. She was too terrified of what she might hear.

‘What the hell does it matter what people think?' Alexander demanded explosively. ‘All that matters is that life is bearable again!'

She stood very still. She could hear her heart beating, the blood pounding in her ears. ‘Bearable again?' she asked, forcing the words through dry lips. ‘Do you mean that life with me has been unbearable?'

The whipcord muscles under the linen of his shirt tensed until they bulged in knots. He didn't mean that at all and she damn well knew it. What had been unbearable had been the slights he had received; the boredom of never being invited anywhere.

‘I'm twenty-two, for Christ's sake!' he flared. ‘Not in my dotage! It isn't exactly unreasonable of me to want to go to balls and parties, is it?'

‘No.' Her face was like an ivory mask. He had told her all she needed to know. If Astor and others like him had been led into believing that their marriage was a sham, then the person responsible for that belief was Alexander. He had wanted to be accepted into society again and now, at terrible cost, he had been.

She said unsteadily, ‘You have to tell Astor and everyone else who believes we are not married, that we
are
married. You have to tell them so for Felix's sake.'

He breathed in sharply, his nostrils white. It couldn't be done. Not yet. In another year or two, when the war was over and society was turned on its heels, coming clean about his marriage wouldn't matter. But at the moment he couldn't do it. And at the moment it made not the slightest difference to Felix. He was too young for it to affect him. And he hated being pushed into corners. He hated the whole damned business of feeling in the wrong; guilty; ashamed.

‘No,' he said savagely, pushing his hair away from his forehead. ‘If you don't like it, go back to Tarna.'

His selfishness and his obtuseness were too much for her to bear. She wanted to scream at him that going to Tarna would make no difference, that he would still be publicly calling their son a bastard. Overcome by the magnitude of the harm he was causing Felix she raised her hand, striking him full across the face.

Shock flared through his eyes and then he spun on his heels, striding from the room.

This time she didn't run after him, nor did she call his name.

She made her way to the nursery and abruptly dismissed the surprised nurse. Then she lifted Felix out of his bassinet and held him tight, tears scalding her face. She loved Alexander enough to forgive him nearly anything. But not this. It was too wicked, too irresponsible.

That night she slept alone in their vast, high bed.

Alexander sent no message as to his whereabouts. It would have been impossible for him to do so. He was at the Brevoort mansion, making furious, passionate love to a hungrily receptive Ariadne.

She knew about the affair almost from the very beginning, and the hurt of it was crucifying. She couldn't talk about it with anyone, not Charlie nor Henry, not even Kieron.

‘And what is himself going to do about things?' Kieron asked her as they strolled among the crowds on Broadway.

It was a lovely warm day in early May and spring bonnets were out in abundance, ornamenting the street with flashes of pink and violet and sizzling yellow.

‘Nothing,' she said, striving to keep the bitterness and shame she felt out of her voice. ‘I've spoken to Alexander about the tenements time and time again, Kieron. He doesn't see them as being any of his responsibility. He won't do anything to improve the conditions in them and he won't join the Citizens' Association.'

‘Not even for you,
élainn?'

‘Especially not for me.'

They had been walking along side by side and he now swung his head towards her, regarding her near-perfect profile with sharply assessing eyes.

She had changed since the baby's birth. Instead of being even more happy and radiant she had lost all of the inner zest and joy that was so much a part of her sunny personality. Her beautifully etched face was pale and there were shadows beneath her eyes.

He said abruptly. ‘It's not working, is it? You're not happy with him.'

She didn't turn her head towards him. She couldn't. If she looked into Kieron's concerned, gold-flecked eyes she knew that the tears would come and that she would be lost.

She said instead: ‘I love him. Even though he's being such an
eejit
about the tenements, I still love him.'

He took her arm as they crossed an intersection, saying grimly, ‘I don't know how you can. The man's a thousand times worse than Lord Bicester for he's landlord to thousands more than Bicester is or ever will be. He doesn't deserve to live, let alone to have your loyalty.'

She stopped walking. She knew how Kieron felt about the Anglo-Irish who had robbed their fellow countrymen of their homes and land, and she shared his contempt for them. And she also knew the lengths that some Irishmen were prepared to go in their efforts to overthrow British rule.

‘Are you a Fenian, Kieron?'

He had stopped walking also and was looking down at her, his cap perched jauntily on his thickly curling hair, his faded blue working-shirt open at the throat.

‘And if I am, sweetheart?'

Her stomach began to tighten in knots. The Fenian Brotherhood was sworn to the overthrow of British rule by force. And to the murder of individuals if that murder was deemed to be warranted.

She said tautly, ‘Alexander isn't Anglo-Irish, Kieron. There's no reason for him to be on any Fenian death-list. Promise me that he isn't? Promise me?'

His strong-boned face was inscrutable and for a moment she was overcome with almost overwhelming fear, and then he said, ‘I've become a Fenian because I want to see a revolution in Ireland, not because I want to settle scores with Alexander and his like.'

She let out an unsteady sigh of relief. It was bad enough that instead of being friends, Alexander and Kieron felt only contempt for one another without that contempt degenerating, on Kieron's part, into anything worse.

‘I took bed-sheets and diapers to the O'Farrells last week,' she said, turning the conversation away from the dark, dangerous subject of the Fenian Brotherhood.

‘I know. Katy told me.' She wondered how often he saw Katy O'Farrell and if he was a little in love with her.

They had begun walking again and she said apologetically, ‘I'd do more if only I could, but I don't have access to any money of my own and even though I am Mrs Karolyis, it would feel like thieving to take from Karolyis linen-cupboards.'

‘So where did the linen come from that you took to the Bowery?'

‘I sold a trinket Charlie Schermerhorn bought me when he returned from his stay in Virginia.'

His eyes darkened. The situation was ridiculous. She was married to the richest man in the state and if she wanted to make a charitable gift of bed-linen and diapers she was reduced to selling a gift in order to have the money to be able to buy them.

‘I know what you are thinking,' she said, guessing wrongly. ‘You're thinking that I would raise far more money if sold a dress or a piece of jewellery.'

‘No, I'm not. I know damn well why you don't. It's the same reason you don't take from Karolyis cupboards. Am I right or am I not?'

A slight smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. ‘You're right.'

A young girl walked past them, eyeing Kieron appreciatively as she did so.

Kieron was oblivious. ‘When I first heard the name of the man you'd married,
élainn
, I thought you were going to be able to bring pressure to bear on him and transform the lives of thousands. What went wrong?'

She remained silent. She wanted to tell him that her marriage had gone wrong but she couldn't bring herself to find the words.

She said instead, ‘It's going to take time, Kieron. Alexander is a very complex personality.'

It wasn't true. Alexander was as transparent as glass. She knew exactly why he had embarked on an affair with Ariadne Brevoort. The lies he had told in order to become once more socially acceptable had filled him with guilt and shame, and in order to rid himself of that shame he had had to convince himself that it was she who was at fault, not him.

That was why he had hurled the ridiculous accusation that she had married him because she had known the kind of wealth his name stood for. And that was why he was now seeking sexual comfort elsewhere. He couldn't continue coming to her bed when they both knew how grievously he had wronged her, and of how grievously he was wronging Felix.

It was Kieron, now, who fell silent. He walked at her side, a slight frown knitting his brows. Two emotions were tearing through him and he didn't know which was uppermost.

For a while, when he first realized the kind of power and wealth that Alexander Karolyis possessed, he had been fiercely optimistic that Maura would be able to sway him and that he would embark on a great improvement programme where his properties were concerned; that he might even pull the lot down and begin building afresh; begin building model housing for those of little means.

That hope was now crushed. It was obvious that Maura had absolutely no influence on Alexander and, although she hadn't said so, it was also obvious that her bizarre marriage was rapidly falling apart at the seams. And that was the reason for the second emotion coursing through his veins. Coupled with the savage disappointment over her failure to change the living conditions for those in Karolyis slums was heady euphoria at the thought of Maura free of her marriage vows.

He had long ago recognized the
eejit
he had been when he had walked away from her at Ballacharmish. Even then she had been infinitely desirable. Now, dressed in the finest silks and satins that money could buy, she looked like a vision from heaven. At the thought of her minus all her finery his heart banged against his ribs like a hammer. Naked, she would be the most beautiful sight on God's green earth.

He said at last, knowing that to rush things would be to scuttle any chance he might have, ‘You know where to find me if you should need me, sweetheart.'

She looked up at him with gratitude and affection. He looked wonderfully strong, with his broad shoulders and deeply muscled chest. With Kieron as family and friend she would never be alone and she would never be unprotected.

‘I know,' she said, a shadow of a smile touching her mouth. ‘I must go now, Kieron. Goodbye, God bless.'

He watched her cross Broadway, his thumbs hooked into his broad leather belt. He watched the Karolyis carriage emerge as if from out of thin air. He watched the liveried footman hand her in and close the door after her.

Would a woman who had known such a lifestyle ever be content being the wife of a stable-manager?

The Karolyis carriage clattered away in the direction of Fifth Avenue and he began to walk again. He wouldn't be a stable-manager if Maura was his wife. They would leave New York for the wide open spaces of the West. He would buy a ranch. Build it up. Breed horses. They would live the life they would have lived if he had asked her to marry him a year ago.

He pushed his cap even further back on his thick curls and began to whistle ‘The Gypsy Rover'. Alexander Karolyis was nothing but an interlude in Maura's life. And his sixth sense told him that it was an interlude that was about to come to an end.

Even though she knew that Charlie was aware of Alexander's liaison with Ariadne Brevoort she couldn't talk to him about it, any more than she had been able to talk to Kieron about it.

Charlie called round to see her as often as he had always done, although now he did so with deep and ill-disguised embarrassment.

‘I don't understand it!' he exploded suddenly one afternoon after they had just paid a visit to the nursery. ‘Alexander was happy as a king at Christmas, at Tarna. What went wrong?'

‘I don't know, Charlie,' she had lied, not able to bring herself to discuss Alexander's weakness of character. ‘Perhaps he loves her and perhaps he never loved me.'

Charlie choked, unable to say to a lady the only words that sprang to mind. What Maura had said was hog-shit and both of them knew it. Alexander loved her. It had been thunderingly obvious right from the start. Alexander had always called
him
a knuckle-head, but if anyone was being knuckle-headed now, it was Alexander. And he was going to tell him so.

Henry had not been remotely embarrassed by Alexander's behaviour, but he had been deeply distressed.

‘The main trouble is Alexander's age,' he had said, trying to present Alexander's unspeakable behaviour in the best light possible. ‘Alexander is only twenty-two, my dear. He's little more than a boy.'

‘I know.'

She was embroidering a nightshirt for Felix and was grateful that she had an excuse for keeping her eyes lowered.

Henry continued in his vain effort to explain away Alexander's idiocy.

‘The real problem is that he didn't sow enough wild oats,' he said, not utterly certain of the truth of his statement. ‘He fell in love with the Hudson girl when he was eighteen and he was still besotted with her when he left for his Grand Tour. Then there was his riding accident and he was on his back for nearly a year. Then he met you.'

‘Yes.'

Henry remained silent, hoping that she would continue the conversation; hoping that she would enlighten him as to what had really happened between the two of them aboard the
Scotia.
She knew what he was waiting for, but even though he was her dearest friend, she couldn't bring herself to speak about her meeting with Alexander.

She said instead, ‘No matter how few wild oats Alexander may have sown, it's no excuse for what he is now doing, Henry.'