Conspiracy (45 page)
Authors: Dana Black
I lived for those times, though I was busy with my studies and with the usual round of supervised callers and dances that were part of the college’s social life. Many nights I lay awake wondering when next I would see him again. Many other nights, as my time came around each month, I worried about the consequences of our lovemaking and wondered whether I would soon be sent home in disgrace. But that never happened. Whether it was because of precautions on Steven’s part or simply by chance, I did not know.
Naturally, I never gave myself to another man. Though I had many suitors, many very attractive, I did not take any of them seriously. I was saving myself for Steven.
And, yet, as my college years began to come to an end, a change came over our relationship. It began one Saturday in October when Steven told me of the great stone castle his father was building for himself on Legacy, just in the centre of the clearing where the two of us had first met. Steven spoke of it lightly, the way he always did on those rare occasions when either of us mentioned our parents. My father remained Brad Graybar’s outspoken enemy, and his hatred, from what I could gather from Steven, was returned in kind.
Steven described the plans for the building, quite ornate, and then he said, ‘I suppose you’ll want to marry me just so you can be mistress of the place someday when Brad gets tired of it.’
His flippant tone stung something inside me and I flared back. ‘You’d be wiser to marry me. Then my father might let you set foot on Legacy someday, provided I ask him to.’
The intensity of my reply surprised him. It even surprised me. But there it was. Even though five years had gone by and I was a child no longer, I still clung to the belief that one day Legacy would belong to our family again.
He glossed over it, but that afternoon was the beginning of the end for the idyllic love Steven and I had shared, the end of the time when the two of us, young and clever, could laugh at the rest of the world, with its poor, misguided foolish wrangling. Oh, we kept up the pretense that day, together in the soft double bed of his hotel room, where the roar of the New York City trains and the endless carriage traffic filtered through the shuttered window only dimly. But even as I shook with ecstasy in his arms, at the back of my mind I knew that when I returned home things could never be the same. He was Steven Graybar, and I was Catherine Rawlings, and once we were both back in Grampian there would be no convenient way around that fact.
I cried that night, silently, so as not to awaken Lisa or her family. And when the day finally arrived for me to graduate under the proud gaze of my parents, the tears I wept were not all tears of happiness.
And then it was back to Grampian, where within a few weeks the world my parents had so carefully prepared for me, and that other world, the one I had built for myself so happily with Steven, were to collide and change my life forever.
PART ONE
Grampian
Chapter One
May, 1875
When I heard a cry coming through the dark pines from somewhere to my right, I had already slowed my horse to a walk. I had been about to swallow my pride and wait for Steven Graybar to catch up with me, for riding here on the unfamiliar north side of Legacy had confused my sense of direction.
The voice came again, still from too far away to distinguish the words, although I could plainly hear the anguish in the tone. Was it Steven’s voice? No, definitely not. I was certain I had never heard a cry like this before.
I reined in my horse, stopped, and listened. The cry seemed to come again, fainter this time, a moaning mixed with the wind in the pine boughs above me. Was it my imagination, or did the voice cry out ‘No!’? I brushed a few wisps of my auburn hair back away from my eyes and tried to see what was over that way. But all I could see was the dark gloom of a pine forest, the great trunks with their dead lower branches, the green boughs high overhead that blocked out the sun, and the sweet-smelling dark carpet of brown pine needles that covered the forest floor and gave it an eerie stillness.
Should I go and see what the trouble was? I hesitated. It was late afternoon, and I really ought to have been on my way back some time ago. Unless I returned home soon, I would have to explain why I had stayed so long at the Saturday afternoon riding lesson that was to be the usual thing for me now that I had finished school. And if Father had the least notion that my story required checking, he would soon find out that I had missed my lesson and had instead gone riding with Steven Graybar.
I could not face the thought of that battle now. Even though I knew it would have to come sooner or later, I wanted to keep Father from learning about Steven for as long as I could.
Father and I had fought enough as it was during the past week. Ever since I had been home we had quarreled about his plans for me. He wanted to have me marry someone, of course - some wealthy prospect whose capital would fit in with Father’s business empire. And, naturally, I refused to listen to his talk of a ‘practical’ marriage.
‘I’ll choose my own husband when I’m ready for one,’ I had said, ‘and not before!’
‘You’ll do as you’re told!’
He glared at me, but I would not be intimidated. If he was a fighter, so was I.
‘You’ll not tell me to sit around idle here in Grampian for single rich men to look at! I’m not going to! You’ve not brought me up as some .. . display creature, and I’m not about to begin now. If I’m going to stay here, I want to work!’
Yet Father refused to let me have anything to do with his business affairs, just as I refused to discuss any suitors. Even though there were hundreds of things I could have done to help, even though I had worked on his account books before, during summers home from school, and even though I had been the only woman in my class at college to receive top honors in a business course, Father still turned a deaf ear. All week long we had been in an angry stalemate. Neither of us would give in.
But I could not give in. If Steven thought that I was seeing someone else, even to please my father ... it was impossible! Only this afternoon Steven had tried to force me to tell Father that we were engaged, and I had ridden off in tears .. .
I did not want to think about that. I shook my head, trying to clear my mind. I was here on the north slope of Legacy, with no one in sight. Steven had not caught up with me. After the quarrel we had just had, he might very well have decided to let me ride off and spend the rest of the afternoon alone.
The moaning up ahead had grown fainter. Perhaps someone had been hurt. I peered in the direction where the sound had come from. Was I mistaken, or were the woods less shadowy over there?
I turned my horse that way and went forward at a walk between the quiet, tall trees. Soon I had reached the crest of the mountain. Up ahead I could see a thick row of blue spruce, and above them I could see the bright afternoon sky. Beyond that row of spruce trees there was a wide clearing.
The stone mansion! There was only one clearing on Legacy … the clearing I had known since I was a little girl. And that was the land where Brad Graybar had built his mansion last year.
I had never seen it, of course, but Steven had told me about the huge stone building that the people in town called ‘Graybar’s Castle’. Inside, the mansion was said to be even more extravagant than the homes on ‘millionaires’ row’ in Grampian. Brad had bought old-world oil paintings by the square foot, they said, and stained glass and sculptures by the hundredweight. Wood-carvers had worked for months on the ornamentation alone. After out-spending everyone, Brad now could look down on the rooftops of the other millionaires’ mansions along the river, as though they were so many little insects far below him. And even though I could scoff at such a transparent attempt to buy status, it was hard not to be fascinated by what Brad had done. Twice since I had been back in Grampian I had climbed the flights of stairs to our fourth-floor cupola and looked out, trying to see the outlines of the ‘castle’ at the top of Legacy. But I had not been able to find it among the trees.
My pulse quickened as I dismounted and walked ahead of my horse between the last of the tall pines. The castle had to be behind the wall of spruce, even though I could not see it.
The spruce had been planted so close together that they scarcely had room to grow. But my horse smelled something. It snorted and jerked at the bridle, nearly tearing the reins out of my hand. Whatever it was afraid of was not far away.
I steadied my horse and looked again at the wall of trees. Should I go in there? Of course, I was trespassing on Brad Graybar’s land, but someone might be in danger. Then, even as I hesitated the voice came again, this time louder and more frightened.
I made up my mind, walking up to the trees and parting the boughs of the nearest one. Instinctively, I crouched low, as close to the trunk as I could get, while I peered between the limbs and the stiff blue-green needles.
I could see clearly. On the other side of a wide green lawn stood what could only be Graybar’s Castle. The high walls were smooth, shaped in the graceful lines of an Italian villa, and covered with that heavy yellow stucco they said Brad had brought in by railroad. On the far side I could see one of the two stone towers that gave the mansion its medieval quality. This turret rose a full sixty feet into the air, and its companion piece around at the front rose even higher. I could see the top of the front tower over the pink-tiled roof, the stone blocks with the open spaces between them calling to mind a shadowy host of defenders who might be hidden there, ready to hurl down missiles and arrows at any attackers. Amidst the green of the lawn and the darker green of the surrounding forest, the castle seemed richly elegant, even from this distance. And, yet, though the afternoon sun flooded over the pink roof and the high walls of the castle’s western side, the building looked strangely cold. Breathtaking, imposing, but cold.
Then I saw two men on horseback coming around to the lawn from the other side of the mansion, about a hundred yards away. Behind the two horses were ropes. The riders were dragging something along the ground.
In a moment I realized that what they were dragging was a man.
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