Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

“Oh! Is the lady sick?”

Radclyffe brushed her aside. “My wife is indisposed,” he said coldly. “But it’s no serious matter. I’ll attend to her myself. Show us to a room and send up supper.”

Rebuffed, the landlady climbed the stairs ahead of them and unlocked a clean lavender-scented chamber, but whenever she thought that the Earl was not looking she glanced surreptitiously at Amber. She lighted the candles and soon had a brisk blaze in the fireplace. Then, just before going, she hesitated again, looking with real distress at Amber where she lay on the bed, just as the footman had put her down.

“My wife does not need your attention!” snapped Radclyffe, so sharply that the woman gave an embarrassed start and hurried from the room. He walked to the closed door, listened for a moment and then, apparently satisfied that she had gone on, returned to the bedside.

Though now fully conscious, Amber felt dull and heavy and irritable, her head ached and her muscles were stiff and sore. She drew a deep sigh. For several moments both of them remained silent and waiting, but at last she said: “Well, why don’t you untie me? I can’t get away from you now!” She looked up at him sullenly. “How damned clever you must think you are!” She had already begun to realize that he must have tied her merely to satisfy some brutal whim of his own, for deeply drugged as she had been it would not have been necessary in order to move her about.

He shrugged and smiled a little, frankly pleased with himself. “I believe I’ve studied chemistry to some purpose. It was in the wine, of course. You couldn’t smell it or taste it, could you?”

“D’ye think I’d have drunk it if I could! For the love of God untie these ropes—my legs and arms are dead.” She was beginning to twist about, trying to find a more comfortable position and to make the blood run again, for she felt so cold and numb that it seemed to have stopped altogether.

He ignored her request and took a chair beside her, with the air of a man who sits down to console a sick person for whose condition he has no real pity. “What a shame you couldn’t meet him. I hope he didn’t wait too long.”

Amber looked at him swiftly—and then, very slowly, she smiled, a malicious cruel little smile. “There’ll be another day. You can’t keep me tied up forever.”

“I don’t intend to. You may go back to London and Whitehall and play the bitch whenever you like—but when you do, madame, I shall bring suit to get all your money in my possession. I think I would win it, too, with no great difficulty. The King may be willing to lie with you—but you’ve a long way to go before he’ll discommode himself for you. A whore and a mistress are not the same thing—even though you may not be able to see the difference between them.”

“I see it well enough! All women aren’t such fools as you like to think! I see some things you may think I don’t, too.”

“Oh, do you?” His tone had the subtle sneering contempt with which he had almost habitually addressed her since the day of their marriage.

“You may pretend it’s only my money you want—but I know better. You’re stark staring mad at the thought of having another man do what you can’t do. That’s why you brought me off. And that’s why you tell me I’ll lose my money if I go back. You fumbling old dotard—you’re—”

“Madame!”

“I’m not afraid of you! You’re jealous of every man who’s potent and you hate me because you can’t—”

His right hand lashed out suddenly and struck her across the face, so hard that her head snapped to one side and the blood came rushing to the surface. His eyes were cold.

“As a gentleman I disapprove of slapping a woman. I have never, in my life, done so before. But I am your husband, madame, and I will be spoken to with respect.”

Like a vicious spitting cat, Amber recoiled. Her breathing had almost stopped and her mottled golden eyes were glowing. As she spoke her lips lifted away from her teeth like a malignant animal’s. “Oh, how I detest you—” she said softly. “Someday I’ll make you pay for the things you’ve done to me—someday I swear I’ll kill you ...”

He looked at her with contempt and loathing. “A threatening woman is like a barking dog—I have as much respect for one as for the other.” There was a knock at the door and though he hesitated for a moment at last he turned his head.

“Come in!”

It was the landlady, cheerful and pink-cheeked and smiling, carrying in her arms a table-cloth and napkins and the pewterware for the table. Behind her came a thirteen-year-old girl balancing a tray loaded with appetizing food; she was followed by her little brother with two dusty green bottles and a couple of shining glasses. The landlady looked at Amber, who still lay half on one side, propped on her elbow, covered with the robe.

“Well!” she said briskly. “Madame is better now? I’m glad! It’s a good supper if I do say so, and I want you to enjoy it!” She gave her a friendly woman-to-woman smile, obviously trying to convey that she understood what a young wife must go through with her first pregnancy. Amber, her face still burning from the slap, forced herself to smile in return.

LIME PARK was over a hundred years old—it had been built before the break-up of the Catholic Church, when the proud Mortimers were at the height of their power, and its stern elegant beauty expressed that power and pride. Pale grey stone and cherry-red brick had been combined with great masses of square-paned windows in a building of perfect symmetry. It was four stories high with three dormers projecting from the red slate roof, with its many chimneys so exactly placed that each balanced another, and with square and round bays aligned in three sections across the front. A brick-paved terrace, more than two hundred feet long, overlooked the formal Italian gardens that dropped away in great steps below. In marked contrast to the decay of the town-house, Lime Park had been carefully and immaculately kept; each shrub, each fountain, each stone vase was perfect.

The train of coaches circled the front of the house at a distance of several hundred yards and drove around to the back courtyard, where a fountain played many jets of sparkling water. Some distance to the west could be seen a great round brick Norman dove-cote and a pond; on the north were the stables and coach-houses, all handsome buildings of cherry brick and silver oak. A double staircase led to the second-story entrance, and the first coach stopped just at the foot of it.

His Lordship got out, then gallantly extended his hand to help his wife. Amber, now unbound and completely recovered from the effects of the drug, stepped down. Her face was sulky and she ignored Radclyffe as though he did not exist, but her eyes went up over the building with admiration and interest. Just at that moment a young woman ran out the door overhead and came sailing down the steps toward them. She shot one swift timid glance at Amber and then made Radclyffe a deep humble curtsy.

“Oh, your Lordship!” she cried, bobbing up again. “We weren’t expecting you and Philip has ridden over to hunt with Sir Robert! I don’t know when he’ll be back!”

Amber knew that she must be Jennifer, his Lordship’s sixteen-year-old daughter-in-law, though Radclyffe had made no mention of her beyond her name. She was slender and plain-faced with pale blonde hair which was already beginning to darken in streaks; and she was obviously very much awed by her two worldly visitors.

Ye gods! thought Amber impatiently. So this is what living in the country does to you! It no longer seemed to her that she had lived most of her life in the country herself.

Radclyffe was all graciousness and courtesy. “Don’t trouble yourself about it, my dear. We came unexpectedly and there was no time to send a message. Madame”—he turned to Amber —“this is my son’s wife, Jennifer, of whom I’ve told you. Jennifer, may I present her Ladyship?” Jenny gave Amber another quick fugitive glance and then curtsied; the two women embraced with conventional kisses and Amber could feel that the girl’s hands were cold and that she trembled. “Her Ladyship has not been well during the journey,” said Radclyffe now, at which Amber gave him a swift glance of indignation. “I believe she would like to rest. Are my apartments ready?”

“Oh, yes, your Lordship. They’re always ready.”

Amber was not tired and she did not want to rest. She wanted to go through the house, see the gardens and the stables, investigate the summer-house and the orangerie—but she followed the Earl upstairs into the great suite of rooms which opened from the northwest end of the gallery.

“I’m not tired!” she cried then, facing him defiantly. “How long have I got to stay shut up in here?”

“Only until you are prepared to stop sulking, madame. Your opinion of me interests me not at all—but I refuse to have my son or my servants see my wife behaving like an ill-natured slut. The choice is your own.”

Amber heaved a sigh. “Very well then. I don’t think I could ever convince anyone that I like you—but I’ll try to seem to endure you with the best grace I can.”

Philip was back by supper-time and Amber met him then. He was an ordinary young man of about twenty-four, healthy and happy and unsophisticated. His dress was careless, his manners casual, and it seemed likely that his most intellectual interests were horse-breeding and cock-training. Thank God, thought Amber at first sight of him, he’s nothing like his father! But it surprised her to see that though Philip was so different from him Radclyffe was deeply attached to the boy—it was a quality she had not expected to find in the cold proud lonely old man.