Legacy of Secrets (47 page)

She flung herself onto the bed and began to cry as she hadn’t in a long time. Not since she had received Ciel’s letter with the terrible news that her mammie was dead. Later she dried her tears and told herself not to be so silly and that maybe, just maybe, it was possible that if she became Mrs. John Porter Adams, Pa would forgive his prodigal daughter and she would be able to go home again to Ardnavarna.

S
HE AVOIDED
M
R.
A
DAMS
for a week, sending the little maid to wait on him, afraid of his eager eyes, watching for an answer. Night after night she lay awake, thinking about what it would be like when she was his wife. She would be mistress of this house instead of a mere housekeeper. She would have the power of money and position. She could do what she liked with the somber old house, she could entertain and give parties. It would almost be like old times.

The following evening she went to the library. She knocked on the door and waited for him to call, Come in. He was at his desk by the far window overlooking the garden. He leapt anxiously to his feet as she walked the length of the room and stood before him, her head held up proudly, her back straight.

“Well, Lily?” he said.

“I accept your proposal, Mr. Adams,” she said calmly. “I shall be very happy to become your wife.”

T
HE MARRIAGE QUIETLY TOOK PLACE
two weeks later, at the lovely Park Street Church. The bride wore a fitted jacket of deep-blue corded silk over a swirling cream silk skirt. Her straw hat was trimmed with silk flowers and she wore a bunch of violets tucked into her waist and a large sapphire and diamond pin, a wedding present from her husband, at her throat. No guests were invited and two strangers had to be summoned from the street to act as witnesses. Lily’s hand shook as she signed the register. She looked so pale and nervous that her new husband put a steadying arm around her.

“You have made me the happiest man in the world,” he said as they left for their two-week honeymoon in Vermont.

The old Colonial Inn was simple but charming, with a white-pillared portico and a shady porch overlooking the gardens and a fast, narrow river. The only sounds were country ones: the rushing of the river, birds’ song, sheep and cows, and the occasional bark of a playful dog. If the
proprietors were surprised by the obvious age difference between the bride and the groom, they did not show it as they conducted them to the two-bedroom suite he had reserved.

He left her alone in her room to change for dinner and Lily sat on the white counterpaned bed, thinking with dread of her wedding night. Panic swept over her and she trembled with fear as she remembered cruel Dermot Hathaway. She knew what was expected of her tonight and she knew she could not go through with it. It was all a terrible mistake. She should never have married him. Once again she just had not thought and now it was too late.

She wondered if it would have been easier if he were a young man, and she thought of Finn, so dark and vital and handsome, looking at her with those hungry eyes. But John was old. His hair was gray, his hands were pale, and his body … she shuddered, unable to think further. He is a gentleman, she reminded herself; it will be all right. Then she remembered the other Lily, the seventeen-year-old star of the debutante year who had been confidently predicted to marry well. She could have married any one of a dozen handsome young men and now, at twenty-one, just look where she was.

Her head ached and she ran to the window and flung it open, filling her lungs with the cool evening air. She told herself she had just married one of Boston’s finest men, that he was clever and cultured and rich. She reminded herself that she would be one of Boston’s great ladies, a pillar of society again, reprieved at last of her guilty past. She told herself she would give dinner parties for her husband and afternoon teas for the ladies, and maybe even a grand ball. Her new husband loved to travel and she would accompany him: she would buy wonderful clothes from the Paris couturiers, from Worth and Paquin and Doucet. And then the young Mrs. Adams would dazzle all of Boston with her beauty and her flair and her social grace. And maybe Pa would forgive her at last.

Keeping the picture of her glowing future firmly in the
forefront of her mind, she dressed for dinner in a soft green gown of clinging mousseline de soie with a wide neckline that bared her shoulders. She tied the violet satin sash and tucked a bunch of violets at her waist. She put up her hair and anchored it with little pearl pins, and when her husband knocked on the door she lifted her chin, took a deep breath, and said she was ready.

They were the only guests in the white-paneled dining room, and Lily ate nothing. She stared silently out the window at the darkening view of trees and meadows, listening to the rushing sounds of the river and the late evening trill of the birds while her husband poured champagne that she did not drink.

John was no fool. He knew she was nervous and he thought he understood. But he was inexperienced in the mysterious ways of women and he did not know what to do. “Why don’t you try the ice cream, my dear?” he said helpfully. “They tell me it’s homemade.”

Lily looked at him, her sapphire eyes spitting anger. “For God’s sake, don’t treat me like a child!” she snapped.

He stared at her with surprise. “I’m sorry. I just thought the ice cream might please you.”

“Well, it doesn’t.” She turned her head and looked moodily out at the gardens again.

“You must be very tired, Lily,” he said mildly, and she turned and glared at him again. He smiled, holding up a protesting hand. “And no, before you say it, I am not treating you like a child. I’m merely behaving the way I assume a concerned new husband would act under the circumstances.” He took her hand across the table and said gently, “Lily, I think I understand what you are going through right now—all your misgivings and wondering if you have done the right thing marrying a man so much older than yourself. And all your fears about our honeymoon. I want to reassure you that I shall not disturb you. You have your own room and it will stay yours until you choose to invite me to share it.”

Lily saw the sincerity on his face and she said, ashamed,
“You are the very nicest man I have ever met. It’s just that I haven’t even had time yet to get used to calling you ‘John,’ instead of ‘Mr. Adams.’ It’s all happened so quickly.”

He smiled, relieved. “It didn’t take too long to move from ‘sir’ to ‘Mr. Adams.’ About a week, as I remember. So I shall live in hope.”

Lily knew that what she had said was true, and that he was the very nicest man, and that she was lucky to be his wife. Filled with shame for her outburst, she lifted his hand and pressed it to her cheek. “Would you mind if I left now?” she said quietly. “You are right. I am tired.”

He accompanied her to the stairs, dropping a brief kiss on her cheek. “Sleep well, my darling,” he said, watching her walk tiredly up the broad staircase. And he thought his new wife looked as beautiful and fragile as a naiad in her flowing green dress. Afterward, he went out to the porch to smoke a cigar, listening to the hoot of a barn owl in the woods and thinking contentedly what a very lucky man he was.

Lily unhooked the dozens of little buttons and let the soft dress slide to the floor. She walked to the window and leaned her arms along the sill, gazing yearningly into the soft darkness.

This should have been the most wonderful night of her life: she would have been married in the family chapel, and the Big House and all the grand houses in the area would have been filled to overflowing with her wedding guests. Pa would have walked her down the aisle, proud of his beautiful young daughter in her virginal white lace dress; and the handsome young man who, in her dreams always seemed to have the face of Finn O’Keeffe, would have been waiting for her at the altar. There would have been soaring organ music and wonderful flowers, Ciel would have been her only bridesmaid, and her mother would have shed joyous tears. Afterward, there would have been a magnificent ball, and later that night she and her lovely young husband would have linked hands and looked conspiratorially at
each other, laughing, and they would have stolen away to their room, to be alone together at long last.

The familiar smell of John’s cigar smoke drifted upward into the window and she thought of what her mother would have told her on her wedding night. “You must always remember your duty,” she would have said firmly, and Lily knew she was right. She had “made her bed” and now she would have to lie on it, with her husband.

She put on the new white satin nightgown and brushed her long black hair one hundred strokes, remembering the lovely silver brushes she had pawned long ago. She told herself now she could buy more silver brushes if she wanted, as many as she damned well pleased. But she didn’t want them. She did not want anything, except for this night to be over.

She walked across the charming little sitting room to her husband’s bedroom. She turned down the lamp, climbed into the big brass four-poster, and pulled the covers up to her chin. Closing her eyes, she waited.

John finished his cigar. He lingered for a while, enjoying the cool night air and then with a pleased sigh he told himself again that he was a very lucky man. He had thought his life was full before, but now, with Lily by his side, it was complete. He said good night to his hosts and strode up the stairs to his room. He undressed in the dark, thinking how delicious the scents of the garden were coming in through the open windows. But there was another scent, the familiar sweet spicy smell of Lily’s cologne.

He turned to look at her lying in his bed and he shook his head, smiling. “Can it be true?” he whispered, sitting beside her. He turned her hand palm-up and pressed soft kisses into it, and then he whispered, “Are you sure, Lily? I wanted you to have time….”

“I am sure,” she said bravely.

He climbed into bed and lay next to her and it was she who reached out and put her arms around him. He groaned and pulled her closer, trembling, and they lay quietly together. He stroked her hair and kissed her face; he
ran his hand over the soft smooth skin of her arms and her naked back, and Lily clung tightly to him afraid that if she did not, she might change her mind and run away.

When John made tender gentle love to her it was all so different from Dermot Hathaway that she wondered why she had been afraid. He was sweet and considerate and she knew it meant a lot to him, though it meant less than nothing to her. It was her “duty,” she reminded herself. It was part of the bargain in becoming Mrs. John Porter Adams, because God knows, sinner and exile that she was, she had little else to offer him but her body.

T
HE HONEYMOON PASSED PLEASANTLY:
they went for long walks in the countryside or lazed by the river; they read and they ate delicious dinners, alone in the dining room, the only guests. The night before they were to return home, John told her he wanted to hold a reception to introduce her to Boston society. “After all, you are now related to most of them,” he said. “And I can’t wait to show you off to all those old battle-axes who have been trying to marry me off to their granddaughters and nieces for thirty years.”

The invitations were engraved and hand-delivered and Lily threw herself excitedly into the preparations. Before her marriage she had fired the cook and maids and employed new staff, because she did not want anyone in her home who remembered when she was just the housekeeper.

She planned a buffet menu she thought would please her smart guests. Of course, there would be champagne and a dozen different cold dishes because the evening promised to be very warm. She unearthed the Adams’s family silver and had the massive platters and candelabra polished and buffet tables set up in the big dining room. She hired a string quartet to play discreetly in a corner of the music room, and employed a florist to turn the entire house into a bower of blossoms. She wished she had had time to go to Paris to shop first but decided that she would wear her
wedding outfit because it was the prettiest thing she possessed. And then John opened the big safe at the back of a cabinet in the library and showed her the family heirlooms, the diamonds and emeralds, rubies and sapphires, and told her that now they all belonged to her.

To say that the ladies of Boston were stunned by the announcement of John Porter Adams’s marriage was an understatement. “But who
is
she?” they demanded excitedly over their teacups. “They say that she is a foreigner. He must have met her on his travels, because no one in town remembers ever seeing her.” And they sent their acceptances by return of post, hardly able to hold back their curiosity until the night of the reception.

Lily thought triumphantly that the house looked a dream of perfection as she walked around making sure everything was in its place. The grand stairway had been turned into a rose pergola and a dozen footmen in deep blue silk livery lined the steps. There were flowers everywhere and the soft strains of her husband’s favorite Mozart concerto drifted from the music room. The buffet tables were a wonderful sight, all crisp white damask and tall bouquets of lilies in silver vases, and the family silver. John poured the champagne and raised his glass in a toast. “To my wife, the most beautiful woman in Boston,” he said solemnly, because he really meant it.