Fortune's Mistress (3 page)

“
What does Cheswick say to this?” Olivia broke into her thoughts.

“
Cheswick ...” Marianne began, then hesitated. She knew quite well what her sister’s response would be, and steeled herself for it. “I am afraid Cheswick . . . does not know.”

“
Does not know!” Olivia choked. “Why did you not tell him at once?”

“
To what end?” she asked simply.

“
To what end!” Olivia’s eyes flashed. “Only consider your situation. You are alone, without protection or support. How can you be so idiotic?”

“
Listen but a moment,” Marianne said calmly. “I know I must seem foolish— “

“
Seem!”

“
— but trust me. I do know what I am about. To begin with, Cheswick is about to be married.”

“
All the more reason he should know!” Olivia insisted. “It is no secret his will be nothing more than an alliance of estates. If only he knew, he might— “

“
I know. He might feel duty bound to make some settlement on me, true, but I am not the sort of woman for whom sacrifices are made. Nor do I wish to be. In any case,” she went on quickly, “I shall get along quite nicely without his support. I have already purchased a small house. I have enough put aside to provide for myself and the babe for the foreseeable future.”

“
So you will go to the end of the earth?” her sister said bleakly. “You cannot know about childbirth, Marianne. It is no easy thing, for all I have been so fortunate. And in Cornwall! You will be hard-pressed to find an apothecary to attend you, let alone a surgeon.”

“
Country women have been bearing children for centuries, Olivia,” she said wryly, “and seemingly with less difficulty than is met in the city, for all our learned physicians.”

“
Are you absolutely determined in this course?”

Marianne nodded.

“Then we shall never meet again,” her sister said hopelessly.

“
Of course, we shall. It will simply be more difficult to arrange.” She walked ahead a bit, frowning. Leaving Olivia, indeed, was her only regret. She would see her sister again, though. She would make sure. “Olivia,” she said softly, as she turned and stretched out her hand. “Will you not see that this is the only way? Will you not wish me happy?”

Tears sparkled in Olivia
’s eyes, and she could feel them rising in her own. “How can you doubt me?” her sister asked, her voice trembling. “I have ever wished, prayed, that some happiness might be yours. I have been so blessed in life! It has hurt me to my core to see you so isolated, so chained to a fate that might have been anyone’s through a moment’s folly.”

Marianne shook her head.
“I was altogether foolish.”

“
You were trusting,” Olivia exclaimed bitterly. “Were we not raised to be biddable and sweet? To yield to whatever whims— “

“
Do you not see?” Marianne interrupted. “It simply does not matter anymore. It is time to forget the past. And now— now I have the ability, the opportunity, indeed, the duty to do so. To leave it behind, and start two new lives.” She paused and blinked back the tears. “Perhaps,” she went on, “I can still make something good from all of this.”

Olivia pulled her shawl more tightly about her and looked up into the sky.
“You will have all my thoughts and prayers,” she whispered.

“
And your silence?” Marianne asked. “No one must know of this.”

Her sister attempted a smile.
“Except for William. He does ask after you, you know, although you have never met. And I keep no secrets from my husband.”

Marianne nodded silently, as she wondered for the hundre
dth time what it would be to enjoy such a companionship. She did not know what the future held, but she prayed that a measure of happiness would not be forever withheld.

Marianne sat back on her knees and wiped her hands on her apron, before bracing them against the dull ache in her back. How good it was to be in a garden, to be nurturing green things! She had never before been allowed the freedom to plunge her hands into soil, and she did so these days with enthusiasm. The smell of the earth was sweet, and her heart was light.

Even though she had been engaged in her new life less than two months, she surveyed the scene before her with satisfaction: a garden of her very own. Despite the waning summer, the
flowerbeds were wild with color, pink clashing against gold against violet, like a disheveled trunk of bright silk ball gowns.

That was wh
at she liked best about this garden, she decided. Years of neglect had engendered its own beauty. Grown beyond artificial borders, it was no longer forced into any shape except that which nature intended. All evidence of patterned pathways lined with stiff rows had been erased, and she planted and pruned judiciously, respecting the wildness which held sway here. Now opening to the sunlight that arched above the rooftop, the flowers looked carelessly lovely, as if they had just arisen.

In a way, this late summer blossoming mirrored her own state, she thought with a slight smile. It was just as well, however, that summer would soon be coming to an end. Already, the sun seemed paler in the sky than it had a month ago. Soon enough she would be unequal to such exertion as had been her custom these last weeks. A winter fireside and a pile of novels would hold a charm of their own, she was sure.

Marianne looked fondly toward her house. Rosewood Cottage was as sweet a haven as she could have dreamt. Its rosy bricks were partially obscured by ivy, and the diamond pane windows glinted as they caught the sun. It was all her own, hers and the babe’s.

She had stepped with very little difficulty from her old life into the new. But what diffi
culty could there be, she asked herself, moving from the constraints imposed by censure to the freedom of anonymity? From being a possession, to again commanding her own destiny? Erasing a sordid past and replacing it with innocent new life?

Despite her fears, no one in the village seemed to question the arrival of the
“newly widowed” mother-to-be. Her story of a husband killed on the Peninsula was not unusual. Nor did she deny the rumor that had somehow arisen that his toplofty family had turned their collective back on her. For the most part, the villagers seemed content to leave her to the solitude of widowhood, and happy enough that her purchase and tenancy of the cottage would generate positions for several of their sons and daughters.

She arose from her knees and stretched in the bright sunlight. Kneeling in the damp earth had made her a little stiff, and the notion of a ramble over the hills now seemed the very thing. She fetched a shawl from the house, for the wind off the sea seemed sometimes to penetrate to her very bones,
then strolled off into the countryside.

A winding path l
ed the way to a green dale she had grown fond of, where a circle of stones, centuries old, stood stark against the horizon. She had encountered few other people on previous walks, and none in the vicinity of the stone circle. Local legend told of seven virgins who had been turned to stone there for dancing on the Sabbath, and the country folk considered the place to be haunted by both the spirits of the poor damsels and the fairy folk with which the land, she was told, abounded. In a way, it seemed she haunted it herself, for since she had first discovered the circle and heard the stories, she had returned to it time and again.

Around the stones, she saw that bunches of bright violet flowers had sprung up since her last visit, and she stooped to pick a few. When she and Olivia had been children, it was their custom to fashion crowns for themselves out of any hapless wildflowers they discovered, and her fingers began to fashion a coronet, seemingly of their own accord.

Marianne seated herself on one of the stones which had fallen sideways in the grass, and looked out over the landscape which stretched forward, green and gold, before giving way to more rugged outcroppings of dark rock. In the far distance, the dull roar of the sea made its timeless complaint.

She had fashioned two small crowns when she heard an uneven gait approaching through the grass. Startled, she looked up and saw to her dismay a golden hound running toward her on
three legs, its left quarter dipping as it bounded toward her. She sat perfectly still as the dog slowed, then ambled up and lay its large head in her lap, looking up at her with huge brown eyes. Her uncertainty faded.

“
And where have you sprung from?” she asked as she began to stroke its head. “Did the fairy folk conjure you up to bear me company, or are you merely one of their number in disguise?”

The dog yawned, then cast his soulful eyes up to her, as if to say he would certainly tell her if only he could. He leaned heavily into her as she scratched under his chin, and she saw that, though the dog was missing a leg, the wound was long healed and had closed almost invisibly. Along the thin scar she thought she could perceive faint evidence of stitches having once been set there. Who would take such
care, go to such expense for a dog? she wondered.

The dog sniffed at the flower wreaths that still lay in her lap, and, laughing, she placed one on his golden head and, in
a extravagant moment of whimsy, another on her own. Panting, he smiled up at her in a doggish grin.

“
There,” she said softly. “Though autumn is on the air, we shall both be crowned with summer while we may.”

Just then, the dog pricked up his ears and turned away from her. Almost at once, she heard
a distant voice call, “Caliban! Where the devil have you gone? Here, boy!”

The dog wheeled away from her at this summons, the crown falling down over one ear as he ran. The sound of a human voice brought Marianne to her feet. She spun from her perch with an apprehensive start, and stepped behind the nearest stone pillar.

Although she could not yet see the stranger, Marianne immediately had recognized in his tones the inflection of her own class. This was no mere countryman, but one who had undeniably sprung from the heart of the
ton.
The sensation of vulnerability, the fear of exposure, washed over her like a sudden shower, prompting a shudder she was unable to quell. As she flattened herself against the stone, she experienced as well an odd annoyance rising in her at the notion of an intruder in her dale. She recognized quite well the foolishness of such a feeling, but still, she felt deflated, as if a magic spell had been broken.

“
Good boy, Caliban, but what is this?”

Marianne peeped out from her shelter behind the stone column, and caught a glimpse of the gentleman as he emerged and knelt beside the dog. He fingered the wreath curiously for a moment before saying,
“I cannot but say it becomes you, friend.”

He looked about,
then caught sight of Marianne before she could slip behind the boulder once more. He approached her at once, and closer inspection of him brought Marianne up short, for he was not at all what she had anticipated. His accent had brought to mind the polished figure and style of a Corinthian. She expected hair
à la
Brutus, and a cravat done in the Mathematical at the very least. The gentleman who greeted her just then fit this picture not at all.

His hair was bright gold and badly in need of cutting; his linen was tied in a simple knot. While aristocratic, his face was marred by a long fine scar, which traced a path from his chin to his left ear. It looked, she thought unaccountably, as if he had been grazed by the sharp steel edge of an angel
’s wing in some encounter between the celestial and the mundane.

There was something more, though. The gentleman looked . . . alive. That was the only word for it. His eyes smiled, his color was high. When he moved, it was with true purpose, rather than mere achievement of effect. The impact of his presence, of his eyes on her, was almost palpable, so very different from that of the indolent rakes who had until recently comprised her male acquaintance.

He stepped forward, smiling pleasantly, as he placed one hand dramatically over his breast, “‘Most sure the goddess on whom these airs attend! Vouchsafe my prayer may know if you remain upon this island and that you will some good instruction give how I may bear me here; my prime request which I do last pronounce, is, 0 you wonder! if you be maid or no?’”

“‘
No wonder, sir,’” Marianne replied, recognizing Shakespeare’s lines from
The Tempest,
“‘but…’”Her voice trailed off as she recalled the remainder of the speech,
but certainly a maid.
That would never do, for she had been anything but a maiden these five years. As the words died on her lips, she felt the color rise to her cheeks.

When the gentleman stood before her, he exe
cuted a deep bow and, despite her chagrin, Marianne felt a smile tug at the corners of her lips. It had been a long while since she had enjoyed even the smallest gallantry. She refrained, however, from returning the gesture with a curtsey, although the instinct to do so felt altogether natural, here on this greening hillside. Instead, she hastily pulled the coronet from her hair, and merely nodded at the gentleman.