Kathleen Winsor - Forever Amber

Frances submitted, but she was unresponsive. Her hands rested lightly on his shoulders, her body held taut and her lips were cool and passive. His arms tightened and his mouth forced her lips apart; the blood seemed to vibrate through his veins with the intensity of his passion. He felt sure that this time he could bring her to life, make her desire him as violently as he did her.

“Frances, Frances,” he murmured, a kind of pleading rage in his voice. “Kiss me. Stop thinking—stop telling yourself that this is wicked. Forget yourself—forget everything and let me show you what happiness can be—”

“Sire!”

She was beginning to push at him now, a little frightened, arching her back and trying to bend away from him, but his body curved over hers, his hands and his mouth seeking. “Oh, Frances, you can’t put me off any longer—I’ve waited two years —I can’t wait forever—I love you, Frances, I swear I do! I won’t hurt you, darling, please—please—”

It was true that he was in love with her. He was in love with her beauty and her femininity, the promise of complete fulfillment which she seemed to offer. But he did not really love her any more than he had ever loved any other woman; and he believed furthermore that her show of virtue was a stubborn pretense, designed to get something she wanted. In his relations with women as in all other phases of his life, his selfishness took refuge in cynicism.

“Sire!” she cried again, really alarmed now, for she had never realized before how powerful was his strength, how easy it would be for him to force her.

But he did not hear. His hands had pushed the low-cut gown far off her shoulders, and he held her hard against him, as though determined to absorb her body into his own. She had never seen him so blindly excited and it terrified her, for her emotions did not answer his but fled to the opposite extreme—she was scared and disgusted. And all at once she hated him.

Now she put her crossed arms against his shoulders and pushed, and at the same time she gave a sobbing desperate cry. “Your Majesty, let me go!” She burst into tears.

Instantly he paused, his body stiffening, and then he released her, so swiftly that she almost lost her balance. While he stood there in the darkness beside her, so quiet she would have thought she was alone but for the sound of his breathing, she turned away and continued to cry—not softly but with whimpering sobs so that he would hear her and regret what he had done. And also so that he would realize she was even more offended than he could possibly be. For she was afraid now that he might be angry.

It seemed a long time, but at last he spoke. “I’m sorry, Frances. I didn’t realize that I was repulsive to you.”

Frances whirled around. “Oh, Sire! Don’t think that! Of course you’re not! But if I once give myself up to you I’ll have lost the only thing I have that’s any value to me. A woman can no more be excused because she gives herself to a king than if he were any other man. You know that your own mother says that.”

“My mother and I do not always think alike—and certainly not on that point. Answer me honestly, Frances. What is it you want? I’ve told you before and I tell you again—I’ll give you anything I have. I’ll give you anything but marriage—and I’d give that if I could.”

Frances’s voice answered him crisply. “Then, Sire, you will never have me at all. For I shall never give myself to a man under any other conditions than marriage.”

He stood with his back to the windows and his face in darkness, and she could not see the expression of savage anger that brushed across it. “Someday,” he said, in a soft voice, “I hope I’ll find you ugly and willing.” He went past her swiftly and out the door.

AMBER DID NOT like being shut up in a black room; it made her melancholy. But at least the fact that she was supposed to be in mourning secured her from what would otherwise have been an intolerable number of visits from every friend, acquaintance and remote relative of the entire family. Her child, a girl, had been born just a few days after Samuel’s death. And she would have been expected to give a gossips’-feast, a child-bed feast, and a great reception following the christening.

As it was she received calls only from close relatives and friends of the family, though many others sent gifts. During these she sat half propped in bed, looking very pale and fragile against all that sombre black. She smiled wistfully at her visitors, sometimes squeezed out a tear or two or at least a long sigh, and looked fondly at the baby when someone said that she was as much Samuel’s image as if she had been spit out of his mouth. She was polite and patient and as decorous as ever, for she felt that she owed Samuel that much at least in return for the great fortune he had left her.

She scarcely saw the immediate family at all. Each of them came just once to her room, but Amber knew that it was only out of a persistent sense of duty to their father. She realized that now he was dead they expected and wanted her to leave as soon as she could get out of bed. And she did not intend to linger there any longer than necessary.

But it was only Jemima who said what the others were thinking. “Well—now that you’ve got Father’s money I suppose you expect to buy a title with it and set yourself up for a person of quality?”

Amber gave her an impudent mocking smile. “I might,” she agreed.

“You may be able to buy a title,” said Jemima, “but you can’t buy the breeding that goes with it.” That sounded to Amber like something she had heard one of the others say, but the next words were Jemima’s own: “And there’s something else you can’t buy, either, not if you had all the money there is. You never can buy Lord Carlton.”

Amber’s jealousy of Jemima had faded, since she knew her to be securely trapped in marriage, to lazy contempt. There was nothing she had to fear from her now. And she gave her a slow, sweeping insolent glance. “I’m very sensible of your concern, Jemima. But I’ll shift for myself, I warrant you. So if that’s all you came for, you may as well go.”

Jemima answered her in a low tense voice, for Amber’s smugness and indifference made her furious. “I am going—and I hope I never see you again as long as I live. But let me tell you one thing—someday you’re going to get the fate you deserve. God won’t let your wickedness thrive forever—”

Amber’s superiority dissolved into a cynical laugh. “I vow and swear, Jemima, you’ve grown as great a fanatic as the rest of them. If you had better sense you’d have learned by now that nothing thrives so well as wickedness. Now get out of here, you malapert slut, and don’t trouble me again!”

Jemima did not trouble her again, and neither did anyone else in the family. She was left as strictly alone as if she were not in the house at all.

She sent Nan about the town searching for lodgings—not in the City but out in the fashionable western suburbs that lay between Temple Bar and Charing Cross. And about three weeks after the baby’s birth she went herself to look at one Nan had found.

It was a handsome new building in St. Martin’s Lane, between Holborn, Drury Lane, and Lincoln’s Inn Fields, where she would be surrounded by persons of the best quality. The house was four stories high with one apartment on each floor and there was a top half-story for the servants. Amber’s apartment was on the second floor; a pretty young girl just in from the country with her aunt to find a husband was above her, and a rich middle-aged widow occupied the fourth. The landlady, Mrs. de Lacy, lived below Amber. She was a frail creature who sighed frequently and complained of the vapours, and who talked of nothing but her former wealth and position, lost in the Wars along with a husband whom she had never been able to replace.

The house was called the Plume of Feathers and a large wooden sign swung out over the street just below Amber’s parlour windows—it depicted a great swirling blue plume painted on a gilt background and was supported by a very ornate wrought-iron frame, also gilded. The coach-house and stables were up the street only a short distance. And the narrow little lane was packed with the homes and lodgings of gallants, noblemen, titled ladies and many others who frequented Whitehall. Red heels and silver swords, satin gowns and half masks, periwigs and feathered hats, painted coaches and dainty high-bred horses made a continuous parade beneath her window.

The apartments were the most splendid she had ever seen.

There was an anteroom hung in purple-and-gold-striped satin, furnished with two or three gilt chairs and a Venetian mirror. It opened into one end of a long parlour which had massed diamond-paned windows overlooking the street on one side and the courtyard on another. The marble fireplace had a plaster overmantel reaching to the ceiling, lavishly decorated with flowers, beasts, swags, geometrical figures and nude women. The chimney-shelf was lined with Chinese and Persian vases, there was a silver chandelier, and the furniture was either gilded or inlaid with ivory and mother-of-pearl. Nothing, Mrs. de Lacy explained proudly, had been made in England. The emerald-and-yellow satin draperies were loomed in France, the mirrors came from Florence, the marble in the fireplace from Genoa, the cabinets from Naples, the violet-wood for two tables from New Guinea.

The bedroom was even more sybaritic. The bedstead was covered with cloth-of-silver and all hangings were green taffeta; even the chairs were covered with silver cloth. Several wardrobes were built into the walls and there was a small separate bench-bed with a canopy and tight-rolled bolster for lounging, surely the most elegant little thing Amber had ever seen. And there were three other rooms, nursery, dining-parlour and kitchen, which last she did not expect to use.