Cheyenne Captive (42 page)

“No,” she said. “I—I’m very pleased with the ring. Sapphire has always been my favorite.”

“I can’t wait for everyone in Boston to know how lucky I am!” He jumped to his feet eagerly. “Let’s go ask Father to make the announcement to the crowd!”

Had she made a mistake? Was there any alternative for her?

“Yes, let’s go announce it,” she agreed.

There were many toasts to the couple although she thought Mrs. Shaw looked a little annoyed. Mother whispered to her, “Come to my room afterward. I want to talk to you.”

Summer nodded in surprise. Mother seemed almost sober tonight.

Finally the clock struck twelve and the new year of 1859 was ushered in with a cheer.

It was the wee hours of the morning before the party broke up and Flannigan took her parents home and came back for her and David. She looked doubtfully at the ring glittering on her finger as the carriage moved away from the Shaw estate.

“I’m so glad you accepted!” David said cheerfully. “I was afraid you wouldn’t and I know he is the man for you! It’ll be a wonderful life; you’ll see!”

She thought about Mother a long moment, wondering what she wanted. “You know, Brother, I came back from the West with a changed outlook, a more mature outlook. I see things I never saw before.” She paused a long moment. “David, do you think Father really loves Mother?”

“What a question to ask when you should be thinking about your own marriage.” He sounded evasive.

“I am thinking about marriage,” she answered. “It’s funny I never noticed the unhappiness, the tension between our parents before. And you are evading my question.”

For a moment, she did not think he would answer and when he finally did, his voice was almost a whisper. “Somehow, I think he must have adored her a long time ago,” he said. “He’s older than she, you know, and Mother was a reigning beauty in her day. There’s something between them that’s turned his love into almost an impotent rage and I sense she never loved him.”

“Then why on earth do you suppose she married him?” Summer looked out at the snowdrifts as the carriage rolled along.

“You’ve heard enough to know it has to do with money. From bits of gossip over the years, I’ve decided her father had made some bad investments. The family was almost penniless when along came the brash, rich New Yorker who yearned to be accepted in blue-blooded society. I suppose her father pressured her into it. Maybe she just couldn’t see any alternatives.”

The words made Summer shiver. “Have you not wondered why they don’t share the same bedroom?”

“Sis,” David hesitated and the horse’s hooves seemed very loud on the pavement. “I’m going to tell you something I’ve never told anyone before, something that happened one winter night when we were nine years old.”

She looked at him uneasily. Even in the pale moonlight, she could see the conflict on his face. “Yes?”

“My room is across from Mother’s and yours is down the hall,” he said, “so the noise didn’t wake you, I suppose, but the noise and screaming woke
me
up one night.”

“They were having an argument?”

“An argument?” he snorted. “Father was tearing her door down to get in! I heard the door splinter and he screamed something like, ‘If I can’t have your heart, I’ll take your body! By God! I’ve paid enough for it!’ I jumped out of bed and ran in there when she started screaming.”

He didn’t say anything for a long moment and closed his eyes as if he couldn’t bear the memory.

“And?” she prompted.

“The room was a wreck and Father was naked. He and Mother were struggling as he held her in a tight embrace and her nightdress had been ripped to shreds.”

“Oh, my lord!” Summer gasped.

“When he looked up and saw me standing in the doorway, he shouted at me,
Get out of here! This doesn’t concern you! This is between her and me and that Goddamned ghost! Go back to your room!’ His face was absolutely distorted with livid rage. When I returned and ran out, he slammed what was left of the door behind me and I could hear Mother crying, ’No, Silas, No!’”

“What did you do then?”

He shrugged almost guiltily. “I was only a small child; what could I do? I heard Father screaming something about ‘I’ll have what I paid for one last time, by God!’ and Mother’s weeping. I went back and hid under my pillows so I couldn’t hear the fighting. I don’t suppose anyone else in the house heard the struggle but me.”

“Not the servants?”

“The servants’ quarters are on the third floor,” he reminded her.

Summer collapsed limply against the cushions as the carriage pulled, up before the Van Schuyler home. Mentally, she did a quick calculation of Angela’s age and the facts crashed down on her. That strange, sinister child had been conceived in rape and violence. No wonder Mother couldn’t love the girl. Angela was a constant reminder of a terrible ordeal.

“I never meant to tell anyone, Summer,” he said. “I meant to carry that to my grave.”

She didn’t answer as Flannigan came around to assist them out of the coach and Evans opened the door, took their wraps.

But at the top of the stairs, she stopped and looked at him. “No, I’m glad you told me, David,” she said. “I can almost understand now and feel sorry for them both. There are only a few pieces of the puzzle missing and I don’t think either of us wants to know what they are. At any rate, I’m now sure I’m making the right decision to get out of this house.”
Was she
—
or was she doing exactly what her mother had done?

David put his hand on her shoulder gently. “I’m sorry that, as a woman, you don’t seem to have as many choices as I do.”

“And what choice are you going to make?”

His sensitive face mirrored his indecision. “I don’t know yet, but I promise not to cause any disruption until after the wedding. I love you both too much to create trouble for you.”

She had never loved him so much. “Good night, David.” She hugged him briefly and they parted.

Mrs. O’Malley yawned grumpily as she assisted Summer off with her ball gown and into a fine, silk dressing robe before plodding heavily back up to her third-floor room.

The light shone from under Mother’s door. Summer took a deep breath before rapping softly as she looked to the very end of the hall. There was no light under Father’s door.

“Come in,” Priscilla said.

It was like stepping into another time period. Summer frowned. The decor hadn’t been changed since the house was built. Mother’s large room was done in pale pinks and burgundies with large cabbage roses on the walls and fabrics.
It looked like the sanctuary of a woman who does not care about the present, has no hope for the future, and prefers to live in the past.

“You really ought to redecorate,” Summer said without thinking. “The wallpaper is yellowing.”

“I like it just the way it is,” Priscilla said from where she stood before the fire. She wore a dressing gown of pale pink velvet and Summer looked at her and knew she was seeing almost the ghost of a great beauty.

There was an open, crystal box of potpourri on the table and Summer took a deep breath of the scent of faded rose petals saved from her mother’s garden. It hadn’t occurred to her before but the whole house seemed to have that faint scent, that ghost of dead roses about it.

“You wanted to see me?”

“I thought, just once,” Mother said uncertainly, moving to stare out the window, “I thought we might try to carry on a conversation.”

Summer bit her lip, deciding not to make a bitter comment about how impossible it was to communicate with someone who is in an eternal narcotic haze. Incredibly, Mother seemed sober at the moment.

She waited, not knowing what to say next to this pathetic stranger who was her mother. She wondered if Priscilla had forgotten Summer was in the room. Mother stood staring out at the rose garden that lay below her window.

“I hate winter,” she whispered so low that Summer strained to hear her. “I hate winter,” she said again. “It’s very dreary and lonely and my roses die. Summer is my favorite season; that time that roses bloom and warmth and love flourish.”

She wasn’t sure if Priscilla expected a reply. Mother seemed to have forgotten anyone else was in the room and was talking to herself.

The music box sat on the table where it had always been since Summer could remember. She ran a finger over it, really looking at it for the first time. It was a cheap, small music box and Summer wondered idly about it as she opened the lid. Father’s pride would never have allowed him to give such an inexpensive gift.

As she opened the lid, the music tinkled out: ’
Tis the last rose of summer left blooming alone ... all her lovely companions are faded and gone ...

“Don’t touch that!” Mother said so sharply as she whirled around that Summer snapped the lid down with a startled motion. Priscilla’s face reflected a storm of emotions and she acted as if she were about to speak and then turned back to the fire.

Why have we always been such strangers? Summer thought sadly. Is it that we are too much alike? Is reality so hard for you to bear that you must escape to your sherry or your rosegarden? Like me, did you think you had no alternatives?

“You’re really going to marry Austin Shaw?” Priscilla didn’t turn away from the fire.

“Yes, in late June.”

Priscilla laughed mirthlessly. “That should make Silas very happy! The only thing that would make him happier than getting his hands on some of the Shaw interests is marrying your brother off to the Peabody banking money so Silas can own that, too, when her father dies.”

“I’m afraid he’s going to be disappointed there,” Summer answered, wondering what this was about. “I think David has decided to go his own way no matter how furious it makes Father.”

“Good for David!” she said with such a flash of spirit that Summer was astonished. “Silas has bought everything he ever wanted with his damned money, including me! There ought to be one person in the world who can’t be bought! Although those who make a bargain with the devil shouldn’t be bitter when their note is called! It really isn’t sporting!”

Summer stared at her, startled at the rare show of energy and courage from a woman she had come to regard as a rather pathetic, helpless dove.
Once, she thought, her mother had had all the passion and spirit of Summer. Was she seeing herself as she would be twenty years from now?

The thought was disconcerting and troublesome. “You’re behaving very strangely tonight, Mother. Are you telling me you do not approve of my marrying Austin?”

Priscilla looked her directly in the eyes. “Do you love him?”

Uneasily, Summer avoided the direct look and question. “After all these years, it’s interesting that you are suddenly terribly worried about my future.”

“New Year’s Eve has a way of making people reflect on their past and futures, making old ghosts come back to haunt them. I know I haven’t done right by any of my children and I’m attempting now to rectify my mistakes by stopping you from going down the path I took.”

Summer stared at the faded roses on the walls. “Surely you must have expected that after all these years I would probably marry Austin Shaw.”

“I have nothing against the Shaw boy although I detest his bitchy mother heartily! I think you can best her easily. But ever since you returned, I keep seeing something in your eyes that tells me you are in love with another man, probably someone your father wouldn’t approve of or you would already have told Silas about him.”

The scarred, bronzed face came to her mind. “You’re right, of course! I haven’t given you enough credit, Mother, for perception. Yes, on all counts! Father would disapprove of the man heartily!”

“Then that’s probably the one you belong with!” She came over to Summer. “I want you to go back to that man. I have a little money hidden away, not much, but certainly enough for a train ticket one way! Go back to your soldier, or rancher, or whatever he is with my blessings!”

Tears came to Summer’s eyes. “How could you know about the other man? And why, tonight, are you deciding to go up against Father?”

She paused, almost wistfully. “Because, tonight, as you announced your engagement to a rich man, I saw myself as I was twenty years ago and I don’t want you to make the same mistake I did. Not every woman gets a chance at a once-in-a-lifetime love and if you’re lucky enough to find it, run after him, damn the consequences, and don’t look back! Do you hear me? Don’t look back!”

The realization dawned slowly on Summer. “Who was he, Mother?”

A very soft, gentle look came over her mother’s face as she remembered. “His name was Shawn O’Bannion and he was very poor and Irish Catholic. He had very black wavy hair and eyes as green as shamrocks. Shawn was strong and sensitive and had a way with the soil. You should have seen the roses he grew. That’s my only link to him now; my roses.”

She tried to imagine her mother wrapped passionately in a man’s arms as Priscilla stared regretfully into the past. It occurred to Summer that she had never seen her parents in a loving embrace; not even once.

“Did Shawn not want to marry you, Mother?”