Joan Wolf (18 page)

Chapter Twelve

I went into my dressing room, dismissed the waiting Marianne, flung myself onto the chaise longue, and began to weep. These were tears that had waited a long time to be shed, and there was a cathartic quality about the uninhibited violence that I allowed them this night.

I wept for the seventeen-year-old half-child half-woman whose mother had once grabbed her by the chin, stared pitilessly into her face, and demanded, “Annabelle, are you  increasing?”

“N-no, M-mama,” I had stuttered in shocked denial. “How can you ask me such a thing?”

“It’s your skin,” my mother had replied grimly. “It has a sheen to it, almost a pearly look. I had that look once—when I was expecting you.”

I wept for the girl who, out of anger and out of fear, had married a man she did not love and had lied to him.

“I had a fall yesterday, Gerald. I didn’t tell you about it because I didn’t want to worry you, but I think the baby is coming early.”

I wept for the young mother who had held her child in her arms and longed with agonizing intensity for his father to be with her to share in her joy.

I wept for all the happiness Stephen had destroyed when he had uttered those fateful words, “I am responsible, Papa. There is no one else.”

I was exhausted when the tears finally slowed and stopped. My head hurt and I didn’t think my legs had the strength to carry me to my bedroom, so I curled up on the chaise longue instead, closed my eyes, and let my thoughts drift into memory.

And once again I am sixteen years old, and Stephen and I have gone to the lake to be alone.

* * * *

Weston was always beautiful in April. The woods were full of bluebells, wild hyacinths, and violets, and the beds of orange-and-white tulips in front of the house stood at colorful attention to greet a new arrival. The south garden was transformed into carpets of brilliant color separated from each other by neat gravel paths. The oak and elm trees were lightly furred with incipient foliage, and the cherry trees near the kitchen garden were frothy with blossoms.

It was early morning when Stephen and I crept out of the house together to go to the lake. Thrushes and blackbirds were singing as we made our way to the fishing pavilion, where the porch was decorated with trellises of pink and white wallflowers.

The dogs trotted off to explore the shoreline. I leaned my arms on the porch rail and gazed out at the lake, shining so peacefully in the early morning sun. “It’s wonderful to be home again,” I said.

My mother had taken me up to London with her in the middle of March so that she could buy me some new clothes at a London dressmaker’s. The previous Christmas she had decreed that the time had come for me to put up my hair and put aside my schoolgirl frocks, and she was intent on adding to my new wardrobe.

I had been furious about missing the end of the hunting season. Ever since I had turned sixteen, it had seemed to me that my nice, undisturbed life at Weston had been continually disrupted. And when I actually was at home, more and more often it seemed as if Stephen was not.

In fact, Stephen and I had not seen each other since January. After Christmas he had gone on a visit to his uncle Francis, then I had been in London when he had returned to Weston in March. This was the first chance we had had to be private together since my arrival early yesterday evening.

“Didn’t you enjoy London?” Stephen asked now. He was leaning on the rail beside me, and when I glanced at him his nostrils and the line of his mouth looked tense.

“Some of it,” I said slowly. “Mama bought me tons of clothes. She is talking about letting me go to some assemblies and dances this year, so that I will be ready for my come-out next spring.”

Stephen scowled and didn’t reply.

I said, “He isn’t going to help us, is he?”

Stephen still wouldn’t look at me. “No. He isn’t.”

I said in a quiet voice, “I see.”

We had put so much faith in Francis Putnam, who had always been exceedingly fond of Stephen. Surely, we had told each other, surely he would help us to convince the earl and my mother that we should marry. Surely he would allow us to live with him after we were indeed man and wife. He had already made Stephen his heir. He had always seemed to like me. Surely Francis Putnam would take our part.

That we would need help to convince our parents that we should marry was obvious to us both. My mother’s plans for me definitely did not include marriage to a younger son. The fact was, both she and the earl fully expected me to marry Gerald. My mother, of course, had decided years ago that I should marry her husband’s elder son; the earl had reached his decision more recently, when he had seen how Gerald had reacted to the new, grown-up Annabelle over the Christmas holiday.

It was Gerald’s reaction, and our parents’ obvious expectations, that had driven Stephen to talk to his uncle Francis.

The tension in Stephen’s shoulders was visible through the fabric of his old russet jacket. His thin, ringless hands were clenched hard on the porch railing. “He said we were too young to know our own hearts, that we had to give ourselves opportunities to meet other people. He said I should go to Oxford and you should make your come-out. Then, if we still felt the same way after I was finished with school, then he would help us.”

“Did you tell him about Gerald?”

“He said no one would make you marry Gerald if you didn’t want to.”

“He doesn’t understand,” I said despairingly.

Stephen pushed his hair off of his brow. “I tried to explain to him how we felt about each other, Annabelle, but he wouldn’t listen! He said it wasn’t wise of the earl to have thrown us together so much, that it was a good thing I was going away to Oxford.”

“Why don’t we just run away to Scotland, Stephen?” I asked.

In England, minors could not marry without the consent of their parents or guardians, but this was not the case in Scotland. Scotland had no requirements of age or of the posting of banns. Scotland required only a mutual declaration exchanged before witnesses for a marriage to be legal. Runaway couples from England traditionally headed for the border town of Gretna Green, which was only ten miles north of Carlisle.

“If we try to make a run for Scotland, and we are caught, they will separate us completely,” Stephen said grimly. At last he turned to face me. “Do we want to take that chance?”

My mouth quivered and I shook my head.

“Don’t, love....” Stephen stepped forward and gathered me into his arms.

I pressed against him and then we were kissing, our mouths open to each other, our arms holding on to each other as if our very lives depended upon it.

We had learned a lot about kissing in the last six months, but this was different from anything we had known before. There was a frantic quality to this kiss that reflected not only our three-month separation, but also the blow our hopes had taken from Francis Putnam’s refusal to help.

I felt the heat of his body through the thin cotton of my dress. It was an old dress and the bodice was too tight. His hand moved tentatively to cup my breast. Shocks of sheer delight shot through me. With a little murmur of pleasure, I pressed myself against his fingers.

“Annabelle—” He pulled his mouth from mine, and I found myself staring into narrowed glittering eyes that were almost black with desire. “We have to stop this now,” he said in a harsh, laboring voice. “If we don’t, I won’t be able to stop at all.”

“I don’t want to stop,” I said.

He drew a deep, shuddering breath. “You don’t know what you’re saying.”

I punched him on the shoulders with both my fists. “Don’t you dare say that to me, Stephen Grandville! You sound like all the rest of them.” I punched him again, hard. “I know what I want. I have always known what I wanted. I want you!” And I punched him one more time.

He captured my fists in his hands.

“Annabelle. Oh dear God, Annabelle. I love you so much.” And he bent his mouth to mine once more.

There was an old chaise longue inside the pavilion, and that is where we went. It was not a smooth lovemaking. We neither of us had any experience; all we had was a great and urgent need. All those years of riding astride did not make Stephen’s penetration any easier for me, and I bled.

But neither the pain nor the blood mattered. What mattered was that we had done it; we had pledged ourselves in the most irrevocable way either of us could imagine. I belonged to Stephen and Stephen belonged to me.

“Nothing can ever part us now,” he had said to me as we lay pressed against each other on the narrow chaise longue that smelled faintly of mildew and fish.

And I had believed him.

* * * *

I lay now on another chaise longue next door to the bedroom where I had slept with Stephen’s brother. Gerald had been a master at making love—unlike Stephen, he had had plenty of practice—but his love had been counterfeit coin. My body had responded to Gerald, but afterward I would lie awake for hours, suffocated by a fog of depression, longing with all my being for the gold that I had lost.

I had told Stephen tonight that I hated him, and I had spoken the truth. I did hate him. But I loved him, too. I always would.

My head was pounding, and I rang the bell for Marianne and asked her to bring me a cold cloth to put on my forehead.

I slept late the following morning. When I finally awoke the headache was gone, but my scalp felt tender and I decided against joining the family in the dining room. Instead I had tea and a muffin in my dressing room.

I had been surrounded by such a constant press of people the day before that this morning I felt the need to be alone. So I collected the dogs, slipped out the back door of the house, and went for a meandering walk around the estate, ending up at the lake.

I was surprised to find that Stephen and Giles were before me. As I approached the fishing pavilion from along the shoreline, I saw the two of them, standing knee-deep in the water in front of the pavilion, throwing stones.

Giles’s clear, childish treble carried easily through the soft summer air. “I think I know how to do it, Uncle Stephen! Watch me”

“Go ahead,” Stephen said.

Giles threw the stone with a flick of his wrist, and as we all watched intently, the stone skipped once, twice, then three times before it sank beneath the water.

“Did you see that?” Giles said excitedly. “I made it skip!”

“That was perfect,” Stephen said. “Three skips is excellent.”

Stephen was obviously trying to make friends with his son. I ignored the sudden cramp around my heart and walked forward. The dogs announced my presence.

“Mama!” Giles came splashing out of the water to jump up and down in front of me. “Did you see that? Did you see me skip the stone? “

“I did, darling. Three times! I’m impressed.”

“Uncle Stephen showed me how.”

I said, “I don’t know why it should be so, but there is something about stones and water that triggers an irresistible compulsion in the male animal to throw.”

Stephen grinned, turned to face the lake, and flung the stone that was in his hand far out into the water.

Giles made a noise that was indicative of great admiration.

I said austerely, “Fortunately, females are not burdened by so primitive an urge.”

My loyal son felt that I was belittling myself and tried to reassure me. “You throw good, Mama,” he said. “For a girl.”

“Thank you, darling.” I looked at Stephen, who was still standing in the water. “Did you come to the lake just to teach Giles to skip stones? “

“No.” He began to wade toward me. “Actually, we came to try out Giles’s new fishing pole. We just got distracted by the stones.”

“Uncle Stephen is going to take me out in the boat, Mama,” Giles said. “I told him I would catch him a fish for his dinner.”

“At the rate you have been catching fish, Giles, there won’t be any left in the lake,” I said.

Giles laughed gleefully. “Then I will have to fish in the ocean!”

Stephen had come to stand beside Giles. Before commencing the stone-throwing lesson, he had removed his blue single-breasted morning coat, his neckcloth, his stockings, and his boots, and he had rolled his shirtsleeves up to his elbows. He appeared completely indifferent to the fact that his neck, his forearms, his feet, and his calves were still bare.

Well, I thought irritably, why shouldn’t he be? God knows, Annabelle, you have seen him wearing less than this.

But
I
was uncomfortable. My own green jaconet gown, worn with only one petticoat, was extremely lightweight, and I was wearing only green walking shoes and no stockings. I folded my arms across my breasts, forming a protective shield against my own acute awareness of him, and said, “You haven’t fished yet?”

“Not yet,” Stephen said.

“Come with us, Mama,” Giles urged. “There is room in the boat for you, too.”

“You know I don’t like boats, Giles.”

“The lake is as smooth as glass, Annabelle,” Stephen interrupted. “You can’t possibly feel ill on a surface as calm as the lake is today.”

Giles looked up into his father’s face and smiled approvingly.

Sudden emotion caught at my throat, clogging it, and tears stung my eyes. I shaded my eyes with my hand and stared out at the lake as if trying to make up my mind.

“All right,” I said at last. “But I don’t want to go out too far.”

“It’s a small lake, Annabelle,” Stephen said. “It isn’t possible to go out too far.”

Stephen and Giles picked up their poles and we all began to walk in the direction of the single rowboat that was floating in the water at the end of the small wooden dock.

“The oars are in the fishing pavilion,” I said. “I’ll go and fetch them.”

By the time I returned with the oars, Stephen and Giles had put their fishing poles in the boat and Giles was sitting on the small front bench seat, looking expectant.

Stephen said, “Shall I help you, Annabelle?” and put his hands on my waist as if he would lift me down into the boat.

The material of my summer dress was thin, and there was no way I could disguise the shock that jolted through me at the touch of his hands. I jerked away from him and said in a voice that sounded unnecessarily shrill, “I am perfectly capable of getting into the boat by myself, Stephen.”