Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

“You know,” said Philip finally, and now he looked directly at her, “it doesn’t seem as though you’re my step-mother. I can’t make myself believe it—no matter how I try. I wonder why?” He seemed genuinely puzzled and distressed; almost comically so, Amber thought.

“Perhaps,” she suggested lazily, “you don’t want to.”

She had begun to make the flowers into a wreath for her hair, piercing the tiny stems with one sharp fingernail, threading them dexterously together.

He thought that over in silence. Then: “How did you ever happen to marry Father?” he blurted suddenly.

Amber kept her eyes down, apparently intent on her work. She gave a little shrug. “He wanted my money. I wanted his title.” When she looked up she saw a worried frown on his face. “What’s the trouble, Philip? Aren’t all marriages a bargain—I have this, you have that, so we get married. That’s why you married Jenny, isn’t it?”

“Oh, yes, of course. But Father’s a mighty fine man—you know that.” He seemed to be trying to convince himself more than her, and he looked at her tensely.

“Oh, mighty fine,” agreed Amber sarcastically.

“He’s mighty fond of you, too.”

She gave a burst of impolite laughter at that. “What the devil makes you think so?”

“He told me.”

“Did he also tell you to keep away from me?”

“No. But I should—I know I should. I should never have come today.” His last words came out swiftly and he turned his head away. Suddenly he started to get to his feet. Amber reached out and caught at his wrist, drawing him gently toward her.

“Why should you keep away from me, Philip?” she murmured.

He stared down at her, half kneeling, his breath coming hard. “Because I—Because I should! I’d better go back now before I—”

“Before you what?” The sun through the leaves made a spatter of light and dark on her face and throat. Her lips were moist and parted and her teeth shone white between them; her speckled amber eyes held his insistently. “Philip, what are you afraid of? You want to kiss me—why don’t you?”

PHILIP MORTIMER’S CONSCIENCE troubled him. At first he tried to avoid his step-mother. The day after she had seduced him he went to visit a neighbour and remained away for almost a week. When he returned he was so busy visiting tenants that he seldom appeared even for meals, and on those occasions when he could not avoid meeting her his manner was exaggeratedly stiff and formal. Amber was angry, for she thought that his ridiculous behaviour would give them both away. Furthermore, he was the one source of amusement she had found in the country, and she had no intention of losing him.

One day from the windows of her bedchamber she saw him walking alone across the terrace from the gardens. Radclyffe was closeted in his laboratory and had been for some time; so Amber picked up her skirts and rushed out of the room, down the stairs, and onto the brick terrace. There he was below. But as she started after him he glanced hastily around and then dodged into a tall maze of clipped hedges—it had been planned seventy years ago when such labyrinths were the fashion and now had grown so tall that it was almost possible to get lost there. She reached it, looked about but could not see him, and then ran in, turning swiftly into one lane after another, coming up against a blank wall and retracing her steps to start down another path.

“Philip!” she cried angrily. “Philip, where are you!”

But he made no answer. And then all at once she turned into a lane and found him there, caught, for it was closed at the end. He glanced uneasily about him, saw that there was no escape, and faced her with a look of guilty nervousness. Amber burst into laughter and threw over her head the black-lace shawl she had been carrying.

“Oh, Philip! You silly boy! What d’you mean, running away from me like that? Lord, you’d think I was a monster!”

“I wasn’t,” he protested, “I wasn’t running away. I didn’t know you were there.”

She made a face at him. “That wheedle won’t pass. You’ve been running away from me for two weeks now. Ever since—” But he looked at her with such protesting horror that she stopped, widening her eyes and raising her brows. “Well—” she breathed softly then. “What’s the matter? Didn’t you enjoy yourself? You seemed to—at the time.”

Philip was in agony. “Oh, please, your Ladyship! Don’t—I can’t stand it! I’m going out of my head. If you talk that way I’ll—I don’t know what I’ll do!”

Amber put her hands on her hips and one foot began to tap impatiently. “Good Lord, Philip! What’s the matter with you? You act as if you’ve committed some crime!”

His eyes raised again. “I have.”

“What, for heaven’s sake!”

“You know what.”

“I protest—I don’t. Adultery’s no crime—it’s an amusement.” She was thinking that he was a fine example of the folly of allowing a young man to live so long in the country, shut away from polite manners.

“Adultery is a crime. It’s a crime against two innocent people —your husband, and my wife. But I’ve committed a worse crime than that. I’ve made love to my father’s wife—I’ve committed incest.” The last word was a whisper and his eyes stared at her, full of self-loathing.

“Nonsense, Philip! We’re not related! That was a law made up by old men for the protection of other old men silly enough to marry young women! You’re making yourself miserable for nothing.”

“Oh, I’m not, I swear I’m not! I’ve made love to other women before—plenty of them. But I’ve never done anything like this! This is bad—and wrong. You don’t understand. I love my father a great deal—he’s a very fine man—I admire him. And now what have I done—”

He looked so thoroughly wretched that Amber had a fleeting sense of pity for him, but when she would have reached over to press his hand he stepped back as if she were something poisonous. She shrugged her shoulders. “Well, Philip—it’ll never happen again. Forget about it—just forget it ever happened.”

“I will! I’ve got to!”

But she knew that he was not forgetting at all, and that as the days went by he found it more and more impossible to forget. She did nothing to help him. Whenever they met she was invariably looking her most alluring and she flirted with him in a negative way which seemed just as effective as anything more flagrant could possibly have been. By the end of a fortnight he met her again when she had gone out to ride, and after that he was completely helpless. His feeling of guilt and of self-hatred persisted, but the desire for pleasure was stronger.

They found many places to meet.

Like all great old Catholic homes Lime Park was full of hiding-places which had once been used for the concealing of priests. There were window-seats which might be lifted to disclose a small room below the level of the floor. There were panels in the walls which slid back to show a narrow staircase leading up to a tiny room. Philip knew them all. For Amber at least their various rendezvous afforded a dangerous excitement from which she derived far more enjoyment than she did from Philip’s inept love-making.

She did not, however, find it so amusing that she was less eager to return to London. She asked Radclyffe over and over again when they were going back, but invariably he said that he had no plans for returning at all. He would as soon stay in the country, he said, until he died.

“But I’m bored out here, I tell you!” she shouted at him one day.

“I don’t doubt you are, madame,” he said. “In fact it’s always been a puzzle to me how women avoid boredom wherever they are. They have so few resources.”

“We have resources enough,” said Amber, giving him a slanted look, full of venom and contempt. She had started the conversation with good resolutions, but they could not last long under his cold supercilious stare, his srieering sarcasm. “But it’s dull out here. I couldn’t wish the devil himself a worse fate than to be boxed up in the country!”

“You should have considered that, then, when you were attempting to prostitute yourself to his Majesty.”

She gave a harsh vindictive little laugh. “Attempting to prostitute myself! My God, but you are droll! I laid with the King long ago—while I was still at the theatre! Now, my lord, what do you make of that!”

Radclyffe smiled, cynical amusement on his thin pressed lips. He was standing beside one of the great windows that overlooked the terrace, leaning against the gold-embroidered hangings, and his whole decadent figure was like that of a delicate porcelain. She longed to smash her fist against the fragile bones of his cheek and nose and skull, and feel them crumble beneath her knuckles.

“Your own lack of subtlety, madame,” he said quietly, “makes you suspect a similar flaw in everyone else.”

“So you knew it already, did you?”

“Your reputation is not spotless. It was, in fact, very much befouled.”

“And I suppose you think it’s in a better condition now!”

“At least it will not be in a worse one. I have no interest at all in you or in your reputation, madame. But I have a great deal of interest in the repute which my wife bears. I cannot undo the faults you committed before I married you—but I can at least prevent you from committing new ones now.”

For an instant fury brought her close to a disastrous error. It was on the end of her tongue to tell him about herself and Philip, to prove to him that he could not govern her life no matter how he tried. But just in time she controlled herself—and said instead, with an unpleasant sneer: “Oh, can you?”