Winter Is Past (25 page)

Was she in some resting place awaiting the resurrection, as his people believed? Was she at Abraham's bosom? He couldn't escape the image of her in some bottomless pit without a glimmer of light or hope. Or worse, was she burning in the flames? He knew from his study of the Scriptures that God's wrath was expressed in flames. He knew his people's tradition taught a way to
Heaven by good deeds. A person could help his departed loved one into Heaven by saying the correct prayers over them.

He had spurned participating in all those traditions, considering them superstitions, but now the doubts assailed him. Was his daughter now paying for his negligence? Was her grandmother's piety enough to ensure Rebecca's entry into Heaven? Or would her father's sins be visited on her? What about her grandfather's sin? After all, the God they served said the sins of the fathers would be visited on the children to the third and fourth generation.

Simon's father had lived a life of ignoring the religious precepts that were inconvenient to him, and making up for breaking the Law by giving more generously to the synagogue. With every new mill opened, he would give enough to erect a hospital ward or establish an orphanage. When the rabbi had objected to his having Simon baptized in the Church of England, Leon Aguilar had donated enough to build a new synagogue and found himself a rabbi who would turn a blind eye to his business dealings.

Would the good outweigh the bad in the Aguilars' balance sheet? During the day, Simon's rational mind took over and he managed to dismiss these fearful thoughts, but in the wee hours of the morning, they came alive in all their gruesome possibilities. Was the God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, that fearsome God that demanded an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth, now extracting His payment from the Aguilar family? Was that righteous, Holy God, which had sent a plague upon the children of Israel when they had built themselves a golden calf, now laying His curse upon Simon's offspring?

When Simon would finally drift off into a light sleep, he'd awake with a start in a cold sweat, seeming to hear his daughter's cries from the burning pit. He covered his ears, thinking he'd go mad.

He tried putting off the moment of retiring to his bedchamber until everyone else had gone to bed. He'd sit for hours over the coffee and brandy with the poets and philosophers Eugenia had permitted around her table. They would get deeper and
deeper into their cups, but Simon refused that escape. They even offered him opium, encouraging him to find relief from pain in the mind-dulling smoke. They would sit in their numb state and spout the greatest inanities as if they were revealing to him the secrets of the universe.

He refused these aids, having an even deeper dread of losing all control and seeing what he had only dimly imagined, in all its horrifying clarity. If he was under the influence of a drug he might not be able to return from that deep, bottomless pit. If his natural imagination could vividly present him with a taste of hell and damnation, what would the enhanced image of a mind inflamed by alcohol and opium be like? So, he drank sparingly and remained with them only because he didn't want to face the solitude of his bedchamber.

In the mornings, he rarely rose from bed before mid-morning, more often than not lying there till noon. No one else bestirred himself before that hour.

Eugenia was as good as her promise; she left him to his own devices during most of the day, but always made her presence and availability known to him in various subtle ways. Her unspoken message to him was crystal clear. Whenever he wanted her, she would give herself to him.

So, why didn't he seek that solace? At least it would mean not having to sleep alone at night, he thought cynically to himself.

Lady Eugenia Stanton-Lewis was beautiful, intelligent, charming and accomplished in every way. Though past the first flush of youth, she was nevertheless still in her prime, perhaps even more beautiful because of her sophistication.

Why wasn't he tempted, then?

Was it her lack of virtue? A woman who would pick and choose her lovers as deliberately as a chess player, with the tacit approval of her husband, somehow left him cold. Yet, what kind of a hypocrite was he to judge her? Hadn't he treated people the same way—weighing, analyzing, judging how best they could serve him in his present and future plans?

He must be mad, indeed, not to accept what she offered him. He continued to examine his behavior as he lay in bed, preferring to think about anything but what lurked in the shadows of his mind.

Perhaps it was also his grief, as Eugenia tactfully implied, that kept him from satisfying himself with her. Wouldn't it be the most natural thing to assuage his grief in the arms of a woman?

None of these reasons satisfied him completely.

What kept him from experiencing the bliss—however fleeting—of an illicit relationship?

Was it the memory of someone else? Was it the picture of a fresh-faced woman who knew nothing of the art of cosmetics, but whose inner beauty gave her a radiance no rouge or powder could ever duplicate?

Was it the memory of that loving, gentle hand stroking his head as she had Rebecca's so many times in the past? The memory of those soothing words she'd whispered, and which he scarcely let himself believe even now, and of that soft kiss—had he imagined it?—that she'd planted on his head?

Simon reentered the castle after his walk. The baron's Scottish retreat had proved to be a mammoth stone fortress. No one was about as Simon walked down the flagstone entry beneath a variety of trophy heads jutting out from the oak-paneled walls, staring ahead with their glass eyes like mute sentinels.

He wandered toward the library, thinking of time in terms of so many hours to kill. He had just poured himself a shot of scotch whiskey from a decanter left out for the guests, when Eugenia entered the room.

“There you are. How was your walk?”

“Fine,” he said, regarding her over the rim of his glass, beginning to be annoyed with her ability to appear silently at his side the moment he entered a room. In his present state, it made him think of a wraith.

She certainly didn't look like a wraith. As usual she was exquisite. Simon wondered whether she ever looked rumpled. Her
attire today consisted of a lovely royal-blue gown trimmed with a blue and green tartan. The color only accentuated the pale satin of her skin and deepened the green of her eyes.

“You look beautiful,” he commented, thinking such beauty shouldn't be wasted. It seemed a pity she had so few guests here. In London, at least, she graced a salon where dozens of men flocked to pay her court.

“Thank you.” She gave him a soft smile, then reached for his glass. She took a sip, her gaze holding his. She handed the glass back to him, her fingers making contact with his.

“I worry about you.” As she spoke, she touched the curls over his forehead. “All this walking, and yet you are looking paler than ever. Are you sleeping?”

“Not well.”

She tsk-tsked, moving her head slightly from side to side. “I could help you, you know.”

“Could you?”

She removed her hand from his face. “You know I could. You've been awfully coy with me.”

“Have I?” He wasn't sure if he wanted this conversation to lead where he suspected it would, but felt powerless to stop it.

“Yes, Simon,” she replied patiently. “It's time you stopped playing the innocent. You are a big boy, and if you ever hope to succeed in the world, you have to begin playing by its rules.” She turned away as she spoke and walked to a vase of flowers a few steps away.

Her words reminded Simon of his father, and he had to make a conscious effort to dispel the distasteful image of a cunning manipulator who played by the rules that he himself created. Was Eugenia cut from the same cloth? Surely not the beautiful vision of female frailty who now took out a yellow chrysanthemum and twirled it around, watching it. “Rule number one—don't keep a lady dangling indefinitely.”

Simon looked down at his drink. “You are absolutely right. I have been an awful bore, haven't I.” He drained the glass in one
swallow, realizing he might as well be hanged for a sinner as for a saint.

“You can be quite tedious at times with your
mal humeur
and injured looks,” she went on, her back still to him.

“Undoubtedly,” he agreed as he set his glass down on the silver salver beside the vase, its
thump
signaling his resolution to play the game to its conclusion.

“It's understandable, but really Simon, we have all been through what you have been through.” Now that he'd finally decided to be amenable, she seemed to want to punish him. “You lost a daughter. Who hasn't lost someone?”

“I understand that,” he said evenly, hurt despite himself by her callousness.

She turned to him, putting the flower up to his cheek and twirling it against his skin. “I am not a woman used to being ignored.”

He eyed her lazily. “I have just been telling myself that your beauty is being wasted here.”

She smiled at the comment, mollified to a degree. “It needn't be, if the right man were to notice it.”

“Am I the right man?” He covered the hand that held the flower to his face.

She moved her hand away from his and brought the flower up to her exquisitely formed nostrils, as if to remind him she was the one establishing the rules. “Are you? That is the question, is it not?”

He was in no mood to be toyed with. Why couldn't they just get on with it? “I realize the honor you are bestowing on me.”

“I feel I have been extremely patient. You have been here over a month, and yet you've ignored me the entire time.” Her well-modulated voice took on a petulant tone.

“I must apologize once again,” he said. “If I've been removed, it has only been because of my grief. You invited me here to get away from people. I'm deeply grateful for that. It is not your fault if I can't seem to shake my gloom.”

“I
invited
you here so we could be
alone.
” Her voice lost its huskiness and became hard.

“With your husband?” he asked.

“Griffith and I understand each other. Besides, he is no longer here.”

“So I see.” Simon picked up a snuffbox from the table. “His presence does seem to pervade the place, don't you find?”

“Oh, Simon, your scruples are a tad middle-class, are they not?”

He smiled at her, though he didn't find the situation amusing in the least. “That is, after all, my background.”

She yawned. “I try to overlook it, but you do make it rather apparent at times.”

“Forgive me.” He bowed ironically.

“Oh, come on, Simon, let us get past this charade. I didn't invite you up here to have you traipsing through the moor all day and sit with those old cronies all night. I invited you here because I find you attractive. I expected we could have a mutually satisfying seduction. How much more clearly must I spell it out for you? It is not every man I favor, Simon.” She tapped him with the chrysanthemum, her voice resuming its coy tone. “Do you know what my favor implies?”

Simon liked the turn of the conversation even less. “I believe I do.”

“I can make or break a gentleman's public career, do you understand that?” She no longer looked like a woman to him. She reminded him more strongly of his father and his ilk, laying their plans, dealing with people's lives with no consideration to right and wrong, concerned merely with the profit line.

“You think much of yourself,” he said lightly. “Are you indeed so powerful?”

Her laugh was deep and rich. “Do you want to try me?” She tossed the flower aside and ran her fingernail up his chest. “Liverpool is considering you for junior lord, is he not?”

He kept his expression neutral, not wanting her to see how much her knowledge surprised him. “And if he is?”

“Do you want it sealed and delivered by the time you return to London?”

“I shall have it, one way or another,” he replied evenly.

She smiled. “I wouldn't be so sure. It has been some months, hasn't it?”

He looked at her, distaste beginning to cool any ardor he could have worked up. “I have made it to where I am without a lady's favor.”

Her voice softened as she took a step closer and regarded him. She was so close that Simon could detect the powdery surface of her skin.

“You have done well with your family's wealth. But there is always that taint of—How shall I put it?” She pursed her beautiful lips. “The Levant?”

At her words, Simon flinched as if she'd slapped him. Very deliberately he removed her hand from his chest and took a step back. “Forgive me,” he said quietly, suddenly realizing the awful mistake he'd made in coming here.

He went up to his room and told Ivan to begin packing. Then he went down to the stables and informed his groom and coachman that they would be leaving the following morning at first light.

 

When Lady Stanton-Lewis came down at noon the next day, she asked a servant for Simon's whereabouts. She was informed he had left a little after dawn. “I see,” she said calmly, her voice revealing nothing of the sudden, violent rage she felt within her.

A few days later she was back in London. The next evening she knocked on her husband's door as he was preparing to go out for the evening.

“How was Scotland after I left?” he asked dutifully as his valet put the finishing touches to his cravat.

“Loathsome.” She watched as the valet helped him into his coat and then stood back to inspect the result. She waited, knowing her husband would dismiss the man shortly. Griffith knew she never came to see him unless she had something specific she wanted to discuss.

Sure enough, a few moments later they were alone. Her hus
band gave himself a final inspection in his mirror as he asked her, “Yes, my dear, you wanted to see me about something?”