Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

“It would,” he agreed.

“Then let’s!”

“You know we can’t.”

“Why not!” Her voice and eyes challenged him. But he merely looked at her, as though the question were superfluous. Both of them were silent for a few moments. “You don’t dare!” she said flatly at last.

Now it came welling back into her again, all the anger and resentment, the hurt pride and baffled affection of these past months. She came to sit beside him again on the rumpled bed, determined to have it out with him now.

“Oh, Bruce, why can’t we go? You can think of something to tell her. She’ll believe anything you say. Please! You’ll be gone so soon!”

“I can’t do it, Amber, and you damn well know it. Anyway, I think it’s time to leave.” He sat up.

“Of course!” she cried furiously. “The minute I mention something you don’t like to hear then it’s time to leave!” Her mouth twisted a little and there was bitter mockery in her tones. “Well, this is one time you’re going to hear me out! How happy d’ye think I’ve been these five months past—sneaking about to see you, scarcely daring to give you a civil word in company—all for fear she might notice and be hurt! Oh, my! Poor Corinna! But what about me!” Her voice was harsh and angry and at the last she hit herself a smack on the chest. “Don’t I count for something too!”

Bruce gave her a bored frown and got to his feet. “I’m sorry, Amber, but this was your idea, remember.”

She sprang up to face him. “You and your blasted secrecy! Why, there’s not another man in London coddles his wife the way you do her! It’s ridiculous!”

He reached for his vest, slipped it on and began to button it. “You’d better get into your clothes.” His voice spoke shortly and the line of his jaw was hard; the expression on his face roused her to greater fury.

“Listen to me, Bruce Carlton! You may think I should be pleased you’ll so much as do me the favour of lying with me! Well, maybe I was once—but I’m not just a simple country wench any longer, d’ye hear? I’m the Duchess of Ravenspur—I’m somebody now, and I won’t be driven around in hackneys or met at lodging-houses any longer! And I mean it! D’ye understand me?”

He took up his cravat and turned to the mirror to knot it. “Pretty well, I think. Are you coming with me?”

“No, I’m not! Why should I!” She stood with her feet spread and hands planted on her hips, watching him with her eyes defiantly ablaze.

The cravat tied, he put on his periwig, picked up his hat and walked through the bedroom toward the outside door, while Amber stared after him with growing fear and misgiving. Now what was he going to do? Suddenly she ran after him and just as she got to him he reached the door, took hold of the knob and turned to look down at her. For a moment they looked at each other in silence.

“Goodbye, my dear.”

Her eyes shifted warily over his face. “When will I see you again?” She asked the question softly and her voice was apprehensive.

“At Whitehall, I suppose.”

“Here, I mean.”

“Not at all. You don’t like meeting in secret—and I won’t do it any other way. That would seem to settle the matter.”

She stood and stared at him in horrified unbelief, and then all at once her fury burst. “Damn you!” she yelled. “I can be independent too! Get out of here, then—and I hope I never see you again! Get out! Get out!” Her voice rose hysterically and she lifted her fists to strike at him.

Swiftly he opened the door and went out, slamming it behind him. Amber flung herself against the panels and burst into wild helpless angry tears. She could hear his feet going down the stairs, the sound of his footsteps fading away, and then—when she quit sobbing for a moment and listened—she could hear nothing at all. Only the faint sound of a fiddle playing somewhere in the building. Whirling around she ran to the window and leaned out. It was almost dark but someone was just coming into the courtyard carrying a lighted link and she saw him down there, rapidly crossing the square.

“Bruce!”

She was frantic now, and thoroughly scared.

But she was three stories above the ground and perhaps he did not hear her; in another moment he had disappeared into the street.

SHE DID NOT see him at all for six days. At first she thought that she could make him come to her, but he did not. She wrote to let him know that she was ready to accept an apology. He replied that he had no wish to apologize but was satisfied to leave it as it was. That alarmed her, but still she refused to believe that all those tempestuous years, the undeniably powerful feeling they had for each other, could end now—tamely, uselessly, disappointingly—over a petty quarrel that could so easily have been avoided.

She looked for him everywhere she went.

Each time she entered a crowded room her eyes swept over it, searching for him. When she walked through the Privy Garden or along the galleries she expected and hoped to see him there, perhaps only a few feet ahead of her. At the theatre and driving through the streets she kept an eager alert watch for him. He filled her mind and emotions until she was conscious of nothing else. A dozen different times she thought that she saw him. But it was always someone else, someone who did not really look like him at all.

Not quite a week after their quarrel she went to a raffle at the India House in Clement’s Lane, Portugal Street, which opened just off the Strand and had several little shops patronized by men and women of fashion. On that day every surrounding street was blocked by the great gilt coaches of the nobility and crowds of their waiting, gossiping footmen.

The room, which was not a very large one, was packed full of ladies with their lap-dogs and blackamoors and waiting-women, as well as several gallants who stood among them. Feminine voices and high little shrieks of laughter babbled through the room like a spring freshet dashing headlong toward the river. China tea-dishes clinked and taffeta skirts whistled softly.

The raffle had been under way for an hour or more when the Duchess of Ravenspur arrived. Her entrance was spectacular, made with the sense of showmanship and ostentation which proclaimed her still more actress than great lady. Like a wind she swept upon them, nodding here and smiling there, well aware of the sudden lull she had caused, the murmurs that followed after her. She was, as always, splendidly dressed. Her gown was cloth-of-gold, her hooded cloak emerald velvet lined in sables and there was a spray of emeralds pinned to her great sable muff. The blackamoor carrying her train wore a suit of emerald velvet and his skull was bound in a golden turban.

Amber was pleased by their interest, malicious as it was, for only jealousy and envy ever got a woman such attentions from her own sex she thought. Next to a man’s admiration she valued a woman’s envy. Someone quickly placed a chair for her beside Mrs. Middleton, and as she took it Jane’s face clouded with the resentful troubled expression of a pretty woman forced into comparison with one far handsomer.

Amber saw at a glance Middleton’s ambitious costume, too expensive for her husband’s modest estate, the pearls that had been given her by one lover, the ear-drops by another, the gown in which she had been seen more times than was fashionable and which should have been on her waiting-woman’s back several weeks since.

“My dear!” she cried. “How fine you look! I vow and swear, that gown! Where’d you ever get it?”

“How kind of you to say so, madame, when of course you outshine me by far!”

“Not at all,” protested Amber. “You’re too modest, with every man at Court adying to be your servant!”

The fencing-match of compliments ended when a young Negro brought Amber a bowl of tea which she took and began to sip while her slanted eyes moved about the room—looking for him. He was not here either, though she would have sworn that was Almsbury’s coach in the street. They were preparing now to auction off a length of Indian calico—the expensive flowered cotton which the ladies liked to have made into morning-gowns, because of its extreme rarity. The auctioneer measured down an inch of candle and stuck a pin into it, the candle was lighted, and the bidding began. Middleton gave Amber a nudge and smiled at her slyly from over the top of her bowl, glancing off across the room.

“Well! Who d’ye think I see?”

Amber’s heart stopped completely and then began to pound.

“Who!”

But even as she spoke her eyes followed Middleton’s and she saw Corinna sitting just a few feet away, but half-turned so that only the curve of her cheek and the long black arc of her lashes was visible. Her cloak fell slantwise, concealing the grotesque bulge of pregnancy, and as she moved her head to speak to someone her full profile appeared, serene and lovely. Amber was seized with a fury of murderous hatred.

“They say,” Middleton was drawling, “that his Lordship is mad in love with her. But it’s no wonder, is it?—she’s such a beauty.”

Amber dragged her eyes away from Corinna, who either did not know that she was in the room or pretended not to know it, and gave Middleton a savage glare. The bidding was idle and the customers inattentive for, as at the theatre, they were more interested in themselves than in what they had ostensibly come for. Without much success the auctioneer tried to whip up some competition; the calico was a beautiful piece, printed in soft shades of rose and blue and violet, but the highest bid so far was only five pounds.