Forever Amber

by Kathleen Winsor

  "Well, Philip? How long are you going to stand there? Sit down—" She indicated a place beside her.

  He hesitated. "Why—uh—" Then, with sudden resolve, he said briskly, "Thank you, your Ladyship," and sat down facing her with his arms resting on his drawn-up knees.

  But instead of looking at her he kept intent watch on a bee which was going hurriedly from flower to flower, caressing the surface of each, lingering occasionally to sip the last bit of honey. Amber began idly picking the little white daisies that grew profusely in the grass and tossing them one after another into her lap until she had a mound of them.

  "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?"

  Chapter Forty-four

  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 sneering 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?"

  Radclyffe's eyes narrowed, and as he spoke to her he measured each word like precious poison. "Someday, madame, you'll try me too far. My patience is long, but not endless."

  "And then, my lord, what will you do?"

  "Go to your rooms!" he said suddenly. "Go to your rooms, madame—or I shall have you carried there by force!"

  Amber felt that she would burst with rage and raised her clenched fist to strike him. But he stood so imperturbably, looked at her so coldly, that though she hesitated for several seconds she at last muttered a curse, turned, and ran out of the library.

  Her hatred of Radclyffe was so intense that it ate into her brain. He obsessed her day and night until it became a torment which seemed unendurable—and she began to scheme how she might be rid of him. She wanted him dead.

  On just one occasion, and that by accident, did Amber come close to making an important discovery about the man she had married. She had never tried to understand him or to learn what had made him the kind of person he was, for they not only disliked each other but found each other mutually uninteresting.

  One night in August she was considering which gown she would wear the following day—for they were expecting a number of guests, most of them Jenny's relatives, who were coming to be presented to the new Countess and to spend a few days. Amber was delighted at the opportunity it would give her to show off, and did not doubt that they would be vastly impressed, for they were all people who lived in the country and most of the women had not even been to London since the Restoration. The strict respectable old families would have nothing at all to do with the new Court.

  She and Nan were going through the tall standing cabinets in which her clothes were kept, amusing themselves by recalling what had happened the night she had worn a certain gown.

  "Oh! That's what I had on the first night Lord Carlton came to Dangerfield House!" She snatched the champagne-lace and gold-spangled gown out of the huge wardrobe and held it against herself, smoothing out the folds, wistfully dreaming. But she put it back again with sudden resolution. "And look, Nan! This is what I was presented at Court in!"

  At last they took down the white-satin pearl-embroidered gown she had worn the night of her wedding to Radclyffe. Both of them looked it over critically, feeling the material, seeing how it was made, and commenting on how strangely well it had fitted her—just a bit too large in the waist, perhaps, and ever so slightly too small across the bosom.

  "I wonder who it belonged to," mused Amber, though she had completely forgotten it in the eight months that had passed since the marriage.

  "Maybe his Lordship's first Countess. Why don't you ask 'im sometime? It's got me curious."

  "I think I will."

  At ten o'clock Radclyffe came upstairs from the library. That was the hour at which they usually went to bed and he was prompt in his habits, faithful to each smallest one—a characteristic of which she and Philip had taken due advantage. Amber was sitting in a chair reading Dryden's new play, "Secret Love," and as he went through the bedroom into his own closet neither of them spoke or seemed aware of the other. He had never once allowed her to see him naked—nor did she wish to —and when he returned he was wearing a handsome dressing-gown made of a fine East Indian silk patterned in many soft subdued colours. As he took a snuffer and started around the room to put the candles out Amber got up and tossed away her book, stretching her arms over her head and yawning.

  "That old white-satin gown," she said idly. "The one you wanted me to wear when we were married—where did you get it? Who wore it before I did?"

  He paused and looked at her, smiling reflectively. "It's strange you haven't asked me that before. However, there seem to be few enough decencies between us—I may as well tell you. It was intended to be the wedding-gown of a young woman I once expected to marry—but did not."

  Amber raised her eyebrows, unmistakably pleased. "Oh? So you were jilted."

  "No, I was not jilted. She disappeared one night during the siege of her family's castle in 1643. Her parents never heard from her again, and we were forced to conclude that she had been captured and killed by the Parliamentarians—" Amber saw in his eyes an expression which was new to her. It was profoundly sad and yet he was obviously deriving some measure of gratification, almost of happiness, from this recalling of the past. There was about him now a strange new quality of gentleness which she had never suspected he might possess. "She was a very beautiful and kind and generous woman—a lady. It seems incredible now—and yet the first time I saw you I was strongly reminded of her. Why, I can't imagine. You don't look like her—or only a very little—and certainly you have none of the qualities which I admired in her." He gave a faint shrug, looking not at Amber but somewhere back into the past, a past where he had left his heart. And then his eyes turned to her again, the mask sliding over his face, the past resolving into the present. He went on snuffing the candles; the last one went out and the room was suddenly dark.

  "Perhaps it wasn't really so strange you should have made me think of her," he continued, and as his voice did not move she knew that he was standing just a few feet away, beside the candelabrum. "I've been looking for her for twenty-three years —in the face of every woman I've seen, everywhere I've gone. I've hoped that perhaps she wasn't dead—that someday, somewhere I'd find her again." There was a long pause. Amber stood quietly, somewhat surprised by the things he had said, and then she heard his voice coming closer and the sound of his slippers moving across the floor toward her. "But now I've ceased looking—I know that she's dead."

  Amber threw off her gown and got quickly into bed, and the swift sense of dread she had every night grabbed at her. "So you were in love—once!" she said, angry to know that though he despised her he had once been able to love another woman with tenderness and generosity.

  She felt the feather-mattress give as he sat down. "Yes, I was in love once. But only once. I remember her with a young man's idealism—and so I still love her. But now I'm old and I know too much about women to have anything but contempt for them." He put his robe across the foot of the bed and lay down beside her
.

  For several minutes Amber waited apprehensively, her muscles stiff and her teeth tightly closed, unable to shut her eyes. She had never dared actually refuse him, but each night she was tortured with this suspense of waiting—she never knew for what. But he was stretched flat on his back far to his own side of the bed, and he made no move to touch her; at last she heard him begin to breathe evenly. Relieved, she relaxed slowly and drowsiness began to creep upon her. Nevertheless, the slightest move from him made her start, suddenly wide awake again. Even when he left her alone she could not sleep in peace.

  Jenny's relatives came and for several days they were interested observers of Amber's gowns and jewels and manners. None of them approved of her, but all of them found her exciting, and while the women talked about her with raised eyebrows and pinched lips the men were inclined toward nudges and conspiratorial winks. Amber knew what they were thinking, all of them, but she did not care; if they found her shocking she considered them dull and old-fashioned. Still, when they were gone and the silence and monotony began to settle again, she was more impatient than ever.

  By now she had worked Philip to such a pitch of infatuation and resentment that it was difficult to make him use discretion. "What are we going to do!" he asked her again and again. "I can't stand this! Sometimes I think I'm losing my mind."

  Amber was sweetly reasonable, smoothing back the light-brown hair from his face—he never wore a periwig. "There isn't anything we can do, Philip. He's your father—"

  "I don't care if he is! I hate him now! Last night I met him in the gallery just as he was going in to you— My God, for a minute I thought I was going to grab him by the throat and— Oh, what am I saying!" He sighed heavily, his boyish face haggard and miserable. Amber had brought him some momentary pleasures, but a great deal of unhappiness, and he had not been really at peace since she had come to Lime Park.