The Blackstone Chronicles (15 page)

“Well, she got over that,” Jules said, slipping an arm
around his wife as the quartet in the minstrel’s gallery began playing a waltz. “Marrying you was still the best thing I ever did.” Pulling Madeline close, he swept her across the library floor in a few graceful steps. A moment later the rest of the party had joined in the dancing.

The portrait on the wall, and Jules’s mother, were quickly forgotten as the party swirled on.

Rebecca felt as though she were going to suffocate.

The air in the room was thick with smoke from the rows of votive candles that lined the altar, and heavy with the choking perfume of incense.

The droning of Gregorian chants didn’t quite drown out the sound of her aunt’s voice as Martha Ward, on her knees next to Rebecca, mumbled her supplications and fingered the rosary beads she held in trembling hands.

An agonized Christ gazed down from the cross on the wall above the altar. Rebecca cringed as her eyes fixed on the trickle of painted blood oozing from the spear wound in his side. Feeling his pain as vividly as he must have felt it himself, she quickly moved her gaze away from the suffering figure.

It had been nearly two hours since they finished supper, and her aunt had led her here to beg forgiveness for the thoughts she had harbored during the meal. But how could Aunt Martha have known what crossed her mind when she caught a glimpse of the party going on next door? She’d barely had time to think at all before Aunt Martha, seeing her gazing out the kitchen window at the Hartwicks’ brightly lit house, had pulled the blinds down, taken her by the arm, and marched her into this downstairs room that served as her aunt’s private chapel.

It wasn’t really a chapel at all, of course. Originally it had been her uncle’s den, but shortly after Fred Ward left, her aunt had converted it into a place of worship,
sealing the windows that once looked out on a lovely garden with curtains so heavy that no light penetrated them. Where there had once been a fireplace—which on a night like this might have blazed with crackling logs—there was now an ornate fifteenth-century Italian altar that Janice Anderson had discovered somewhere in Italy. Venice, maybe? Probably. Rebecca had found a book in the town library with a picture that showed a piece very much like Aunt Martha’s. For all Rebecca knew, it might be the very same one.

The pungent aroma of incense and smoking candles filled Rebecca’s nostrils and stung her eyes. Finally, when she was certain that her aunt was so far lost in her prayers that she wouldn’t notice her absence, Rebecca eased herself onto the hard wooden bench, the only furniture in the room except for the altar and the prie-dieu upon which her aunt often knelt for hours at a time. As soon as her knees stopped hurting enough that she trusted them to hold her, she slipped out of the chapel and up to her room.

After changing into her nightgown, Rebecca was about to turn back the coverlet on her bed when she heard the sound of an automobile engine starting, and went to the window. It had begun to snow, and the night had turned brilliant in the glow of the streetlights. Next door, the party was breaking up, and Rebecca easily recognized all the guests as they said their good-nights to the Hartwicks. Maybe, after all, she should have accepted Oliver’s invitation, she reflected. But it wouldn’t have been right—Madeline Hartwick meticulously planned every detail of her dinners, and the last thing she’d have been able to cope with would be the last-minute appearance of an uninvited guest.

Still, it would have been nice to have gone, and spent an evening with smiling people, and pretend that they were her friends.

That’s unkind, Rebecca told herself. Besides, Oliver
is
your friend!

As if he’d heard her thought, Oliver, who was seeing Lois Martin into her car, suddenly looked up. Smiling, he waved to Rebecca, and she waved back. But then, as first Janice Anderson and then Bill McGuire followed Oliver’s glance to see who he was waving at, she felt a hot surge of embarrassment and quickly stepped back from the window. If Aunt Martha caught her, she would spend the next whole week repenting in the chapel!

Going to bed, Rebecca turned off the light and lay in the darkness, enjoying the glow from beyond her window and the shadow play on her ceiling and walls. Soon she drifted into a sleep so light that when she came awake an hour later she was barely aware that she’d been sleeping at all. She listened to the utter silence in the house. No chants drifted up from downstairs, which meant that her aunt, too, had gone to bed. It must be very late, Rebecca thought.

What had awakened her?

She listened even more intently, but if it had been a noise that had startled her awake, it wasn’t repeated.

Nor had any strange shadows appeared on her ceiling.

Yet something had disturbed her sleep. After several minutes, Rebecca slipped out of her bed and went to the window, this time leaving the light off.

The night was filled with snow. It swirled around the streetlights, burying the cars in the street and covering the naked trees with a glistening coat of white. Next door, the Hartwicks’ house had all but vanished, appearing as nothing more than an indistinct shape, though a few of its windows still glowed with a golden light that made Rebecca think of long-ago winter evenings when her parents had still been alive and her family snuggled in front of the fireplace and—

A sudden movement cut into her reverie, and then, out of the shadows of the Hartwicks’ porte cochere, a dark figure appeared. As Rebecca watched, it went quickly
down the driveway to the sidewalk, crossed the street, then vanished into the snowstorm.

Save for the footprints in the snow, Rebecca wouldn’t have been sure she’d seen it at all. Indeed, by the time she went back to bed a few moments later, even the footprints had all but disappeared.

As the grandfather clock in the Hartwicks’ entry hall struck the first note of the Westminster chime, the four people in the smallest of the downstairs rooms fell silent. The big, encased timepiece in the entry hall was only the first of a dozen clocks in the house that would strike one after the other, filling the house with the sounds of gongs and chimes of every imaginable pitch. Now, as the clocks Jules had collected from every corner of the world began marking the midnight hour, Madeline slipped her hand into her husband’s, and Celeste, on the sofa opposite her parents, snuggled closer against Andrew. None of them spoke again until the last chime had finally died away.

“I always thought the clocks would drive me crazy,” Madeline mused. “But now I don’t know what I’d do without them.”

“Well, you’ll never have to,” Jules assured her. “Actually, I’ve got a line on an old German cuckoo that I think might go nicely on the landing.”

“A
cuckoo?”
Celeste echoed. “Dad, they’re so corny!”

“I think a cuckoo would be fun,” Jules said. Then, sensing that not only was Madeline going to take Celeste’s side, but Andrew was too, he relented. “All right, suppose I put it in my den?” he offered in compromise. “They’re not
that
bad, you know!”

“They are too, and you know it,” Madeline replied. Rising from the sofa with, a brisk movement that conveyed to Andrew that the evening was at an end, she
picked up Jules’s port glass, despite the fact that half an inch of the ruby fluid remained in it.

“I guess I’m done with that,” Jules observed.

“I guess you are,” Madeline agreed. She leaned down to give him an affectionate kiss on his forehead.

“I hope Celeste takes as good care of me as Mrs. Hartwick does of you, sir,” Andrew Sterling said a few minutes later as he and Jules stepped out into the snowy night.

“I’m sure she will,” Jules replied, throwing an arm around his prospective son-in-law’s shoulders. “Or at least she’ll come close. Nobody could take as good care of a man as Madeline takes of me.” His voice took on what seemed to Andrew an oddly wistful note. “I’ve been a very lucky man. I suppose I should count my blessings.”

They were at Andrew’s car now, and as Andrew brushed the snow off its windshield, he glanced quizzically at the older man. “Is something wrong, sir?”

For a moment Jules was tempted to mention the audit, then decided against it. He’d managed to get through the entire evening without talking at all about his worries at the Bank, and he certainly had no intention of burdening Andrew with them now. None of it, after all, was this young man’s fault. If there was blame to be borne, Jules thought, he would certainly bear it himself. “Nothing at all,” he assured Andrew. “It’s just been a wonderful evening, and I am, indeed, a very lucky man. I have Madeline, and Celeste, and I couldn’t ask for a better son-in-law. Get a good night’s sleep, and I’ll see you in the morning.”

As Andrew drove away, Jules swung the big wrought-iron gate across the driveway, then started back toward the house. But coming abreast of Madeline’s car, still free of snow under the porte cochere, he noticed that the driver’s door was slightly ajar. As he pulled it open in preparation for closing it all the way, the interior light flashed on, revealing a small package, neatly wrapped, sitting on the front seat. Frowning, he picked it up, closed
the car door tight, and continued back into the house. Pausing in the entry hall, he turned the package over, looking for some clue as to where it had come from.

There was nothing.

It was simply a small box, wrapped in pink paper and tied with a silver ribbon.

Had Madeline bought it as a gift for him?

The pink paper was enough to put that idea out of his mind. Nor was his wife the kind of woman to leave a gift sitting in her car, not even concealed in a bag.

As he stood at the foot of the stairs, Jules realized that Madeline had not bought the gift at all.

No, she was the intended recipient of the gift, not the giver.

But who was it from? And why had it been left in Madeline’s car?

Without thinking, Jules found himself pulling the ribbon from the package, and then the paper. A moment later he’d opened the box itself and found himself looking at a small silver locket.

A locket in the shape of a heart.

His fingers shaking, he picked the locket up and opened it.

Where a picture might have been—should have been—there was nothing.

Nothing, save a lock of hair.

Closing the locket, Jules clutched it in his hand and gazed up the stairs toward the floor above. Suddenly an image came into his mind.

An image of Madeline.

Madeline, whom he’d loved for more than a quarter of a century.

Whom he’d thought loved him too.

But now, in his mind’s eye, he could see her clearly.

And she was in the arms of another man.

As he put the locket in his coat pocket, Jules Hartwick felt the foundations of his world starting to crumble.

“M
other, for Heaven’s sake, look outside!” Celeste Hartwick said as she came into the breakfast room the next morning and poured herself a cup of coffee from the big silver carafe on the table. “It’s fabulous!”

But even with her daughter’s urging, Madeline barely glanced at the sparkling snowscape that lay beyond the French doors. Every twig of every tree and bush was laden with a thick layer of white, and the blanket of snow that covered the lawns and paths was unbroken save for a single set of bird tracks, apparently made by the cardinal that was now perched on a branch of the big chestnut tree just outside the window, providing the only splash of color in the monochromatic scene.

“Okay, Mother,” Celeste said, seating herself in the chair opposite Madeline. “Obviously something’s wrong. What is it?”

Madeline pursed her lips, wondering exactly what to say to Celeste, for the truth was that though something was, indeed, wrong, even she herself had no idea what it was. It had begun last night, when Jules had come up after seeing Andrew out and closing the gate. When he entered their bedroom, he’d barely looked at her, and when she’d spoken to him, asking if something was wrong, he positively glared at her and informed her that if something were wrong, she would know it better than he. Then, before she could say another word, he’d disappeared into his dressing room and not come out for
nearly thirty minutes. When he finally appeared in his pajamas, he slid into bed beside her, then turned out the light without so much as a good-night, let alone a kiss. Having picked up very clearly that he was in no mood to communicate with her, she’d decided that rather than make this unexpected situation worse by trying to drag the problem out of him in the middle of the night, she would let it go until morning. She’d managed to sleep—at least sporadically—but every time she awakened, she could feel him lying stiffly next to her. Though she’d known by the rhythm of his breathing that he was as wide awake as she, he’d made no response when she’d spoken to him.

Now she asked her daughter, “Were you still up when your father came in last night?”

Celeste nodded. “But I didn’t see him. I heard him come up, but I was in my room. Did something happen?”

“I don’t know—” Madeline began. “I mean, I think something must have happened, but I haven’t the slightest idea what. It was the most peculiar thing, Celeste. When your father came to bed last night, he was barely speaking to me. He—”